Asherons Call: Dereth's Arcanum has Measured The Derethian's Ground Speed !

I've always wondered how run skill actually converted into running speed, so I wrote a script to accurately measure the distance traveled when running for 15 seconds. I performed these tests on a flat level area and threw out any measurment where I bumped into an object or the running animation paused due to lag. I also measured the speed in two directions to make sure there wasn't any slope effect (you run slower uphill and faster downhill. I repeated measurements to make sure the results were consistant. I decided the map units were the most useful unit of distance measurement as all locations are designated this way. After some initial speed measurements, it turned out that map units per minute was a good way to measure speed.

Having established my measuring criteria, I began building a table of run skill vs. speed. Imagine my suprise when I found out that the slowest run speed is always 1 map unit per minute! This occurs when any character reaches 200% burden, regardless of their run skill. The maximum possible run speed appears to be 3 map units per minute with an estimated run skill of around 500. The highest speed that I actually measured was 2.81 at a skill of 385, but extrapolated the curve to estimate the maximum speed. Other speed points were 1.5 @ 45, 2.0 @ 115 and 2.5 @ 240. I'm still working on a general formula to calculate speed from skill.

I then did measurements of how burden affects run speed. Contrary to the Character Information window, overburden does not reduce your run skill by the stated percentages. It does, however, approximate your actual speed reduction. If you consider your unburdened speed to be 100% and your speed at 200% burden to be 0%, then your run speed is 200 - your burden%. Or to express it precisely:

burdened run speed = 1 + (your_unburdened_speed - 1) * (200 - min(200 , current_burden %) )

Conclusion: the skill degradation with burden does not occur in 10% increments and does not jump up to 10% at 100% burden, but is a smooth transition from full skill to no skill.

Here is a link to the image chart detailing run vs speed.

*edited to correct a few discrepancies with the formula and to include a run speed chart.