It’s faster than making notes on the in-game map.

Keep a notepad handy and track the reactor code pen-and-paper.

Try to have perfect knowledge of enemy weaknesses: hitting the 4x damage with a weapon they’re vulnerable to means you’re eliminating chip damage risk by not leaving enemies alive when you’re madly running from one task to another.

And on the harder difficulties, enemies ALWAYS respawn near/at the auto-docs given Restoration Bays on later levels won’t revive you at 100% health. They take up more inventory space than med patches, but since you’ll be going through those like a crack addict the first aid kits will save you needing to run to an auto-doc for a fast full heal: two or three will do. With them switched to safe, getting surprised pinned by respawning enemies is now survivable.

Get to the Restoration Bays as fast and safely as you can and flip them over to have infinite lives: they’re on every floor except 8 and 9.

Know the levels perfectly so you can get to the optimum weapons, key items you need and mission objectives without being cornered by enemies.Active pause on puzzles to have more time when you’re not going to use a logic probe.Safety saves at the start of every level is freaking helpful when you ♥♥♥♥ up a floor (Levels 8-9 usually or against Hoppers on Level R). My old time was 6 hours 10 minutes and change.

I’ve only beaten the original game once on the hardest difficulty 7 hour time limit before it came back on Steam (I have my original floppy disk copy and got it working on DOSBox to do it years ago SS1 Portable would be the equivalent now) and have not attempted a speed run yet with the SS: Enhanced Edition.

System shock 2 difficulty