2009-09-10, 09:39 AM
This is like the traveling salesman problem, but not quite. The traveling salesman problem only calculates the optimum amount of distance required to go between two places. It does not calculate the optimum set of actions to take to complete something quicker (time vs. distance). If you wish to calculate the time, you'd either have to have a computable hits/kill for each class in the game or have some sort of heuristic to calculate these things. However, even then the algorithm can fail. For example, the algorithm would likely say for you to complete Subani's Legacy at some point while you're in NLC - but if you're a blaze wizard you'll have a hard time killing fire tusks and therefore it's not a good idea to do it. Furthermore, there are different numbers of quests for every job tree in the game - Aran has it different than Cygnus which has it different than Adventurers. These all increase complexity. Plus, you are not calculating the time it takes to travel to the area where to kill the monsters. Traveling to Dark Rashes is a lot faster than traveling to Skelegons.
In short, optimizing distance is very possible, but optimizing the time is much harder.
I believe the quickest method of completing quests in a small amount of time is this: Level up to at least 100 so all of the quests will be available to you. Complete quests area by area. If area A wants you to go to area B, wait until you decide to complete all of the quests in area B before completing that quest in area A.
In short, optimizing distance is very possible, but optimizing the time is much harder.
I believe the quickest method of completing quests in a small amount of time is this: Level up to at least 100 so all of the quests will be available to you. Complete quests area by area. If area A wants you to go to area B, wait until you decide to complete all of the quests in area B before completing that quest in area A.