Big J+, the Raven-born Drakeling Paladin, managed to close the gate in 57 minutes and 2 seconds. Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/375435204 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wrYVBDbIbs.

Finally under one hour! This run uses a similar route as the Elementalist run, diving though UD, getting a ridiculous amount of L and N piety by angering the C god, and going for an extremely early ToEF. Thanks to Justifier, it has a much better time in the late-game.

I made a number of adjustments to adapt the route for Paladin:
  1. Instead of blocking greater daemons with a locked door, two mercenaries from the borderland settlement are used. If ordered to wait on the two squares south of the HMV stairs, greater daemons won't attack them, and won't be able to attack you.
  2. Paladin levels up slower, so only one precrown is practical. On the plus side, it's usually not necessary to take extreme measures to reach level 8 by the time you are scumming for piety.
  3. You need to melee ToEF, and also aren't guaranteed fire resistance. To solve this issue, you kill Guth'Alak and get the Shield of Raw Steel from Kherab. As a "bonus" you can sip from the Darkforge pools for useful intrinsics. Curse and Doom can be cleared with prayers.
  4. No Burning Hands, but it turns out that acid spit works just as well for getting Thrundarr off the lever without aggroing Dwarftown. Again, this is subject to his crazy PV, so there's no risk of killing him.
  5. It's not necessary to do Fungal Caves. While mushrooms of purity are good to have, Justifier Paladin doesn't really need help from mushrooms of ecstasy for killing Nuurag.


Highlights:
  1. Bracers of pure might were in a shop below Dwarftown. Wrenched the final charge from my teleport wand to steal them (got teleport control from Darkforge pools).
  2. Wasn't able to disable Eternal Guardian with potions, so I used potions of boost speed to sneak past him before he could summon a copy.
  3. Didn't have any way to cheese the D:50 levers, so had to kill all of the balors. Fisty is quite a terrifying opponent to melee, even with Justifier.


Point buy:
20 Strength, 6 Learning, 15 Willpower, 8 Dexterity, 20 Toughness, 7 Charisma, 8 Appearance, 18 Mana, 10 Perception. 3 starting talents with 0 points left over.