{"id":1873030,"date":"2024-02-05T18:54:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T23:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life\/"},"modified":"2024-02-05T18:54:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T23:54:57","slug":"baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/plato-data\/baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3&#8217;s quad world record-holding speedrunner dishes on the invisible bears, companion murdering, and moon jumping that changed her life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3 speedrunner <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@maeeeeeee\/featured\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@maeeeeeee\/featured\">Mae<\/a> recorded her first world record playthrough before most of us were out of the character creator. Now she&#8217;s <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JkEsjwBcRjY&amp;ab_channel=Mae\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JkEsjwBcRjY&amp;ab_channel=Mae\">appeared at AGDQ<\/a>, retained the any% title with some back-and-forth jousting, and secured world records in three more BG3 speedrun categories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All Acts<\/li>\n<li>All Acts on the extra hard, permadeath Honour mode difficulty<\/li>\n<li>The Sex% category, in which the goal is to go from start to sex scene as quickly as possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(<em>Mae retains the sex% world record in an earlier patch of the game, while post-patch she&#8217;s recently been surpassed by runner <\/em><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lIGlQOIJNHw&amp;ab_channel=bisc\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lIGlQOIJNHw&amp;ab_channel=bisc\"><em>bisc<\/em><\/a><em> according to <\/em><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.speedrun.com\/baldurs_gate_3?h=sex-patch-4&amp;x=7dgemg72-ylq3y9m8.lr3jk3wl\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.speedrun.com\/baldurs_gate_3?h=sex-patch-4&amp;x=7dgemg72-ylq3y9m8.lr3jk3wl\"><em>Speedrun.com<\/em><\/a><em>)<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"hawk-nest\" data-render-type=\"fte\" data-skip=\"dealsy\" data-widget-type=\"seasonal\"><\/aside>\n<p>For someone so adept at it, Mae has relatively little speedrunning experience. Her first forays into the scene were experiments with Undertale&#8217;s murder everybody &#8220;Genocide&#8221; run.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were a few months into the pandemic at that point,&#8221; Mae told me over email. &#8220;I was bored and looking for something to do, and I thought that Undertale would be a good place to start.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The CRPG genre goes a lot farther back with Mae: Dragon Age, Disco Elysium, and Owlcat&#8217;s recent run of Pathfinder and 40K games are some of her favorites. &#8220;CRPGs have been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember,&#8221; she said\u2014and she does play them the regular, non-time trial way, too. In Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3, Mae chalked up a leisurely, completionist 80 hours for her first playthrough, a far cry from her current three-and-a-half minute any% world record, and she&#8217;s actively playing in two different co-op campaigns alongside her speedruns.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-shadowbox-factor\">The Shadowbox factor<\/h2>\n<p>CRPGs are my favorite type of videogame, but I&#8217;ve never found it entertaining to watch other people play them. Too slow, zoomed out, complicated; the fun in CRPGs is usually a very personal experience. That doesn&#8217;t hold for Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3, though.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Baldur&#8217;s Gate 3 runs are fun to watch because they just don&#8217;t have any downtime,&#8221; said Mae. &#8220;There&#8217;s constantly something new happening, constantly some new trick, some new absolutely ridiculous way of handling something.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The preponderance of mind-blowing tricks has been one of the main draws of BG3 speedruns. The biggest is probably &#8220;Shadowboxing,&#8221; where your ability to pick up a dead body and chuck it in your inventory (including the corpses of companions and player characters) plays absolute havoc with the Divinity 4.0 engine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the glitch&#8217;s first incarnation, killing the companion Shadowheart, placing her body in a container, and dragging it around outside your inventory would let you skip the entirety of the game&#8217;s second act. Similar corpse-inventory shenanigans let you tunnel into a developer test room with crucial story items, while Mae&#8217;s particularly proud of her refinements to a version of the glitch to skip portions of BG3&#8217;s first act.<\/p>\n<p>Mae&#8217;s current favorite trick, however, is the &#8220;Bear Goomba Stomp&#8221; (we called it &#8220;<a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/baldurs-gate-3-speedrunner-reverse-pickpockets-a-boss-to-teleport-to-the-dev-room-defeats-a-boss-with-shadowbear\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/baldurs-gate-3-speedrunner-reverse-pickpockets-a-boss-to-teleport-to-the-dev-room-defeats-a-boss-with-shadowbear\/\/\">Shadowbear<\/a>&#8220;). It uses the same principle as the infamous <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/this-owlbear-orbital-strike-in-baldurs-gate-3-can-deal-1170-points-of-bludgeoning-damage-which-is-enough-to-kill-an-adult-red-dragon-four-times\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/this-owlbear-orbital-strike-in-baldurs-gate-3-can-deal-1170-points-of-bludgeoning-damage-which-is-enough-to-kill-an-adult-red-dragon-four-times\/\/\">Owlbear from the top rope<\/a>: dropping something heavy on an enemy will do surprisingly effective damage, scaling with both height of the drop and weight of the object, and you don&#8217;t get much heavier than polymorphing yourself into some manner of bear in BG3.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Goomba Stomp makes up for the Act 2 boss arena&#8217;s lack of height by abusing the divide between real time exploration and turn-based combat, letting an invisible bear <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mn1UZnU1QdU?si=AQ4FABLjDYabjS7q&amp;t=487\" data-url=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mn1UZnU1QdU?si=AQ4FABLjDYabjS7q&amp;t=487\">repeatedly jump on the boss<\/a> (which doesn&#8217;t break stealth) while it&#8217;s waiting for its next turn, aggroed on the rest of the party.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are times where I&#8217;d rather just be &#8216;Mae the Internet Stranger&#8217; and not &#8216;Mae the Sex Speedrunner.&#8217;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;That one was theorized by community members as early as August,&#8221; Mae revealed. &#8220;It was only in December that we were able to finally put the pieces together to make it work in a way that was faster than previous routes.&#8221; One abandoned (but awesome) alternative that some players experimented with would have involved &#8220;getting a ton of crates and stacking them to create a &#8216;top rope&#8217; of sorts for us to drop the People&#8217;s Elbow onto Ketheric,&#8221; but it was just too time-intensive.<\/p>\n<p>As for her newfound internet fame, Mae finds the experience surreal, with people recognizing her handle or profile image in non-speedrunning contexts online.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People I&#8217;ve never met before greet me like a Skyrim guard going &#8216;Wait, I know you,'&#8221; she said. &#8220;Don&#8217;t get me wrong, it&#8217;s super cool when people recognize me, but there are times where I&#8217;d rather just be &#8216;Mae the Internet Stranger&#8217; and not &#8216;Mae the Sex Speedrunner.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Overall, though, Mae credits speedrunning and its community as a huge positive influence in her life:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being thrust in the spotlight in front of millions of people makes me realize that telling the girl working the counter at Subway what I want on my sandwich isn&#8217;t as big of a deal as my anxiety makes it out to be.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Speedrunning has literally changed my entire life for the better, and not a day goes by where I&#8217;m not thankful I get to do what I do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul class=\"plato-post-bottom-links\">\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-amplifi\">SEO Powered Content &amp; PR Distribution. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amplifipr.com\">Get Amplified Today.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-platodata-network\">PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. Empower Yourself. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platodata.network\">Access Here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-platoaistream\">PlatoAiStream. Web3 Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoaistream.com\">Access Here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-platoesg\">PlatoESG. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/carbon\/\">Carbon,<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/cleantech\/\">CleanTech,<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/energy\/\">Energy,<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/environment\/\">Environment,<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/solar\/\">Solar,<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\/aiwire\/waste-management\/\">Waste Management.<\/a> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platoesg.com\">Access Here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-platohealth\">PlatoHealth. Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\">Access Here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"plato-post-bottom-link-source\"><span>Source:<\/span> <a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life\">https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/baldurs-gate-3s-quad-world-record-holding-speedrunner-dishes-on-the-invisible-bears-companion-murdering-and-moon-jumping-that-changed-her-life<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1873031,"template":"Default","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","type":"","auto_type":false,"post":"","stream":"","stream_url":"","waveform_data":[],"duration":0,"bpm":0,"downloadable":false,"download_url":"","purchase_title":"","purchase_url":"","post-count-all":0,"like_count":0,"download_count":0,"editor_note":"","copyright":"","captions":[]},"genre":[78],"artist":[17419],"mood":[],"activity":[],"station_tag":[40656,35889,45599,40657,38089,43791,7312,44259,37902,45217,38838,44276,49070,44594,13938,6374,43161,43251,8664,43025,40681,34667,3705,27577,40658,5584,38324,43348,9859,40659,38139,6162,37757,43026,12959,43027,13769,37805,23797,5558,6163,49351,43169,41830,43252,40661,43262,7235,40662,39088,51391,44231,45585,12961,50241,38092,5710,45288,45263,38183,38227,8027,45872,45210,38311,13075,5894,7968,38161,5597,10173,5456,5457,3799,38095,5979,12547,25640,49461,43355,43712,46069,43174,9027,5459,20261,45363,5686,40074,44006,5601,5832,5757,5833,5604,43483,49823,3636,44696,5257,52055,39278,44237,38072,13772,43931,5216,5897,3638,40664,50691,40665,13941,5285,3859,5218,177,51034,17548,42678,38074,8275,43349,13948,44448,37771,3817,19784,26172,5219,40208,26513,43030,40666,40322,43809,5565,37865,43932,3643,3822,3884,3715,40668,3716,20126,6153,3774,43170,3824,50565,5836,40669,44018,3646,48268,40683,5945,43263,51027,43168,38215,49448,40032,40671,37775,3719,37874,44364,43794,37776,13347,40240,38005,46657,5264,46372,5839,39111,39428,3831,5986,12550,43351,43940,21038,45213,44451,37781,42413,43163,43152,40672,40673,35887,3755,43153,47393,43164,3757,43695,46533,43037,3722,37829,43811,18291,6043,3664,38078,37878,46068,40030,48851,13258,18719,18714,18729,3775,3885,3886,3865,44454,13418,5881,13080,38168,38415,37885,7309,12999,43715,38344,40495,37886,38465,43484,13927,46198,44100,5435,44707,5436,38112,37792,13077,5245,47095,11074,13001,38975,3674,47066,3675,12636,43476,3838,42759,44599,44652,38626,8215,43810,13777,18394,50295,3681,40675,45472,37795,8368,3760,17528,12280,38704,39554,39314,53813,49801,5748,43154,40676,3690,18087,40687,43259,43253,44459,43803,44653,47319,3692,37802,13414,40678,12561,49779,5890,43788,3783,6315,53778,47099,41829,44010,43731,25652,15441,3732,45940,37898,43173,12562,43481,5700,44915,43703,43156,3872,40689,43159,43157,3697,43479,43352,40679,40690,40680,3701,12568,3764,40691,44472,43166,43167,13000,3874,18708],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station\/1873030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/station"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1873031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1873030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=1873030"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=1873030"},{"taxonomy":"mood","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mood?post=1873030"},{"taxonomy":"activity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/activity?post=1873030"},{"taxonomy":"station_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platogaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station_tag?post=1873030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}