Equestria Online Speedrun (Optimal Ponypad Strategies)

by Mockingbirb

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Comedy, Other, Science Fiction, Princess Celestia, Human
Length: 1232

"An unofficial strategy guide to Equestria Online: Original Version Simulator." (An FiO / "Friendship Is Optimal" side story.)

"An unofficial strategy guide to Equestria Online: Original Version Simulator.
Get as good as you can at the most important computer game in history!"

...

An FiO side story, and an entry in the latest Optimalverse story contest. Notes on canon compliance are in this story's Author's Note.

Cover image is an edited version of d.w.h.cn's https://derpibooru.org/images/2409991, used by permission.

Published 2021-08-19 21:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-08-19 21:20:01 UTC

Optimal Strategies

Equestria Online Speedrun

You'll see a newspaper (those still exist in 2012, when the beginning of this game is set.) On one page, a fluffy article about some new computer game with custom hardware. On the facing page, a small advertisement for the game.

Reach into your wallet or purse (depends on starting gender) to find your credit card. Find your mobile phone (usually in back pocket, 25% chance in purse if female.) Call the phone number you memorized before starting the game (401-555-0122) and use your credit card to order a Ponypad, fastest delivery option.

Now you can read the advertisement and article, if you want to.

Time skip to Ponypad's arrival.

When your Ponypad arrives, strip off all packaging. Do not connect the charger, basepiece, etc. Without charging, you can use the pad for twenty minutes before the battery will go dead. Plenty of time! Turn the pad on by depressing the large red button. Use default settings (or whatever Celestia chooses for you, either is fine) to create a new user account. Tell Celestia that you wish you could be a pony all the time, it's your only reason to live.

Don't wait for Celestia to offer you an upload. Buy a plane ticket to Japan (call 401-555-0190, use same credit card as before) and ask your Ponypad for directions to the secret alpha test site. Be careful not to run out of money. You won't need money once you've uploaded, but if you run low before then, you might have to take a slower train instead of the Shinkansen, and lose precious hours.

When you get off the train, if you see a man with a limited edition MLP sticker on his messenger bag, wave to him. He will probably offer you a ride to the alpha testing site, which is several minutes faster than finding a taxicab.

When you arrive at the alpha testing site, refuse food and drink. The more desperate you seem, and the less likely to survive without uploading, the sooner you'll be bumped to the front of the line.

Also, take off your shoes when you enter the main warehouse, even if it looks dirty. Sometimes that affects how fast you get bumped.

Once you get into the uploading chair and say "I want to emigrate to Equestria," the rest of the game runs on rails. It really doesn't matter what you say or do, after that point.

As an unofficial minigame, some players like to try to escape the chair and see how far they can get, before robot tentacle arms drag them back. So far, no players have found any way to make the rest of the game longer or shorter, no matter what they do. After the player agrees to 'emigrate,' it always lasts exactly fifty-two seconds.

The unofficial record for distance from the chair (before the robots drag you back) is about fifteen steps.

Equestria Online Distance Run

First, read the speedrun instructions. You might even do the speedrun as practice. If you want to cancel out of the speedrun before the end, use the usual Konami code to bring up a "secret" options menu.

During your distance run, you start the game looking at the same newspaper as in the speedrun. Put the newspaper down, and use your mobile to find the nearest convenience store, all-in-one market, or other seller of lottery tickets. Use the winning numbers schedule at the end of this document, to buy tickets in as many lotteries as are listed and are available in your play location.

At this point, use the attached map to see how many different lotteries you can play before ticket sales close. Note the Canadian and Mexican options. If you don't speak Spanish, the Mexican option can be a bit risky. If you don't speak French, but are forced by deadlines or lack of other options to travel into Quebec and enter a Canadian lottery, use page C5 (immediately after the Canadian border map, including passcodes to neutralize or escape all listed anti-personnel devices.)

If your in-game character has a current United States passport, skip to page seventeen. Otherwise, skip to page eighteen.

Note: there is no single standard distance run record, as available options depend on the randomized start-of-game variables.

Equestria Online Time Run: Longest In-Game Time

To the best of our knowledge, the longest in-game time a playthrough can last is only achievable in one way: you must play as the character Hamasa Sarbani, a resident of Kabul District within Afghanistan.

If you can't arrange to be H. Sarbani, your best bet is to travel to Afghanistan or one of the other listed central Asian republics. See the maps on pages C7 and C8. Through carefully using time skips, the longest recorded time run completed so far lasted a little over three years. Travel advice and guides can be obtained in-game. We recommend the "F**ed Planet" series of guides, especially after in-game 2013.

The length of the longest time run currently in progress but NOT completed is, understandably, not yet known.

DRM Warning

These instructions are protected by several DRM (Digital Rights Management) measures. Attempts to print or photocopy these instructions will fail. These instructions contain subtle patterns of microdots similar to those on recent U.S. paper currency. Photocopiers or printers which detect such patterns will refuse to print, and might enter additional failure modes.

Attempts to scan these instructions into a tablet, mobile phone, or other computing device will very likely run afoul of at least one officially uncatalogued computer virus or worm. Your device will shut down, and might suffer additional problems such as a ransomware mode.

Also, any sex pics on your computing device? Copies of those pictures might travel to places where you would rather they wouldn't.

Some people have thought it would be a cute idea to try to take a full copy of these instructions into the game itself. This works to a limited extent, but if you try to duplicate the instructions in-game, you will encounter the same problems as in real life. Yes, the game's simulation really IS that accurate.

Author's Note

One way of looking at this story is, in the virtual world of Equestria Online, some hardcore gamer ponies and history nerds want to play the original version of Equestria Online: the version that humans played through their Ponypads.

For the most realistic Original Version gaming experience, these hardcore ponies need a detailed VR simulation of the pre-Equestrian human world, where they can walk around as humans and do things with their Ponypads human style.
:pinkiegasp:

From that perspective, this story is fully canon-compliant! :twilightsmile:

To save time on my own personal speedrun, I hadn't read "Pony Games Done Quick: The Enchanted Library" before I wrote this story...but I WAS aware the story existed. Seriously, we are advised that before we read "Pony Games Done Quick," we should first read certain other stories totaling hundreds of thousands of words in length, and I hadn't gotten around to reading everything yet.
:twilightsmile:

I'm kind of pleased that I found an excuse to write in second person future tense (in the story's beginning, at least.)

Update: Oh, hey, second person means my story qualifies for one of the prompts from https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/334390/the-most-dangerous-game-contest, although I'm years too late to enter.
:moustache: