Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness - Information from MisterPRMiller

The bounty in question is "Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness," the fourth game in the series.  Despite having the reputation at release of being a buggy mess, it has ironically proven to be the most resilient.  Especially considering that you start the game literally two rooms away from the final boss room.  There are several possibilities for a skip.

Normal progression (in REALLY broad strokes) through the game looks like this:
Start -> Day 3 (Dr. Cranium's plot finishes) -> Day 5 (Gypsy plot starts/finishes) -> Day 6 (Save Vampire Girl) -> Day 7/8 (Game done)
Key items absolutely necessary to complete the game include 5 Rituals, 1 Staff of Erana

The first is the obvious; warp into the final room.  It's not as simple as that, though.  Even if we were to get into the final room, we would still need one major item that is only received right before the end-game begins: the Staff.  So it would consist of a room warp, but also, a way to glitch the item into your inventory (or in the case of the Wizard, into your spell list).  This would cut the entire game, from about 31 minutes on current records down to about 3 or 4, maybe less.  It would be a mega-warp (but not the biggest in the series.  QFG5 has a warp that cuts the Any% from an hour down to 5 minutes. This would cut all items required except the Staff.  It is non-negotiable in that room, as far as we can tell, because the last thing you do is click the Staff on the final item.

The second is a way to trigger the end-game earlier by saving the little vampire girl Tanya, which gives your character access to the Staff and triggers the events of the endgame.  This is normally done on Night 6.  To trigger the dialog options that allow her to be saved, you need a Doll in your inventory as well as knowledge of the Destiny Spell- the spell you learn from the Gypsy Camp.  If there was a glitch that could be used to trick the game into thinking you know about the Destiny Spell, we could probably shave about... 10ish minutes off of the run.  I haven't been able to test this idea because the Debug Scripts aren't the easiest to work with, but if we could get the Doll as early as the starting hours of Morning 3, which gives us a 3-day head-start compared to the normal time you'd save her.  In theory, I believe we could end the game on Night 4 or 5 with this route.  This wouldn't skip any items, but the endgame is kicked off officially by a script that executes when you save the little vampire girl.  So far, we believe you MUST save the little girl to get to the endgame.  You also get the Staff through doing this.  Collecting the rituals doesn't take too long.

The final, which is THE MOST likely to exist, is a glitch into the Gypsy Camp early.  The Gypsy Camp cannot be accessed until Day 5 at the earliest.  There is an invisible wall (wolves) that block your character's pathing.   HOWEVER, beyond that invisible wall, the door to the inside of the one wagon exists.  We know that because with the Debug Scripts activated, you can warp your character into the loading area which allows you to trigger later dialogs as if you already had completed that section.  This would also trigger the ending on Night 4 or 5, but would add the Gypsy Camp events  (which includes dialog and cutscenes).  We just can't get past that wall.  This could save quite a bit - we're actually not entirely sure.  The game has been re-routed within the last year.  I believe it would save about 5 minutes in Any%, and perhaps more in 100%.

There was some hope with a glitch in King's Quest VII (which runs on the earlier engine version, SCI2.0) - in KQVII, you can click back and forth quickly and cause characters to warp.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to help in our game, but the fact that it can happen in the engine at all gives me hope.  ChuckGrody provided a video of how it worked there.  We couldn't reproduce it in QFG4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh2py-qXrM4

A bonus idea, one that I didn't consider until I sat down to write, would be a way to glitch the rituals and other items into your inventory.  This would save LOTS of running through the forest, and could be a monster time save.  For example, there is a point where you need to collect a certain characters hat to gain access to Baba Yaga's hut.  If we could glitch the ritual and the Good Humor Bar into the inventory, we could skip Baba Yaga entirely.  Glitching the other rituals would also skip the swamp trek, the fight with the Master Wraith (currently the only unskippable combat), the basement of the monastery which has a cutscene, and the Will-O-Wisps which is a notoriously glitchy mess.

This could save... gosh, I don't know, 15 minutes of time?  Maybe more?

There might be some merit in this, although I wouldn't know where to start.  I can think of one example that MIGHT help; in the Paladin route, you get a broom which you need to combine with hair that can be collected from the Rusalka to save her soul.  You can get multiple copies of the hair just by asking her.  Now, when you click the hair on the broom the first time, the resulting created item is what you would expect: a broom with hair.  When you click more hair on the broom after that, it graphically glitches into other items.  Unfortunately, this wouldn't even help in Paladin Any%, because you can only trigger this quest line after meeting with the gypsies... hence the entire point of this bounty.   But there could be other possibilities.
I'm willing to pay out for any major advances in this game.  And if multiple people find multiple ways, I'll pay out multiple times.  c-square on the TASvideos.org has done TAS's of QFG1 and QFG2 from bounties I've put up, and he'll vouch - I pay out very quickly.  I should also mention that I have TAS bounties up still for QFG3 Any%, QFG4 Any%, and QFG5 Any%.  I love this series; that's why I love to see it broken.

When I ran this series for RPG Limit Break 2016, my Any% time for all five games was close to 1:30:00.  This game has an import/export function; at the end of game one you can export your character to bring to game two.  And so on, through the series.  Importing in speedrunning actually makes the games harder, because your stats in games 2 and 3 are so low most monsters can one-shot you and you need to find clever ways to bypass most puzzles.

Three years later, Davidtki and I are both below 1:00:00.  I never thought that was possible, but I would LOVE to see the game go sub-45:00, and with QFG4 literally taking up 30:00 of time, this is the one to break.