[Ebon]

So here’s my first update in quite a while. I’ve beat Fable: TLC more times than I can count. After a while, I decided to challenge myself to see how fast I could complete the game without using any hero saves or file manipulations.

My record for completing Fable: TLC is 2 hours and 22 minutes, and that’s with letting the credits play all the way through. That means I beat Jack the Dragon in around 2 hours and 10 minutes.

So here’s my new refined tips and tricks, this time with doing a speed run in mind.

On trading: Appearance does matter along with your Guile skill. However, your Appearance and Scariness max out after a while at +100 each. What I’ve found is once you’re at +100, it doesn’t matter what you wear, so long as it doesn’t bring your Appearance below +100. So I don’t really bother with clothing or Armor for the most part (as I said above, Armor doesn’t matter so long as you have the Physical Shield active).

On Fishing: If you are interested in a speed run, skip it. For the most part, it takes too much time, and doesn’t provide enough reward. There are a couple exceptions, but on the whole, don’t bother.

On Silver Keys: Once again, skip ‘em, if you are interested in the speed run. I pick up just 5 of the easiest to acquire, and forget the rest. On the whole, you’ll realize they aren’t worth the time and effort.

On Experience: I stick to a pretty similar build as I described above. I’m a battle mage with maxed out Physical Shield, Berserk, Slow Time, Multi-Strike, Assassin’s Rush, Multi-Arrow, and Enflame. In my first posts I described how you can accumulate a lot of experience by repeatedly turning on and off your Physical Shield. I’ve figured out a couple tricks since then. First, it works best if you set the Physical Shield to 3-5 of your hotkeys. I usually put it on 7, 8, and 9. That way, I can hit all three buttons repeatedly. This lets you cast the spell much faster and many more times while your CM runs down. It only takes a second to run through your mana, then swallow a Will potion, and do it again. This allows you to get a lot of Mana XP very early in the game.

However, in addition to Physical Shield, Summon actually works better and faster using this trick. It casts quicker, takes less mana, and allows you to gain more XP even faster. After getting Physical Shield, Summon is actually the second spell I get because it makes it so easy to get all the other spells I need. Like I said, I usually hotkey Summon to 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 early in the game. I used to be addicted to this trick, and whenever I got my Combat Modifier above ten I’d use it to rack up 10,000+ in Will XP. In the interest of doing a speed run, I started limiting myself to only doing it a couple times when needed. As you go through the game, you are easily going to max out your stats, so you don’t need to do this all the time. I do it at the end of quests and that’s about it.