Ravenswatch - Pied Piper Ch1 Itemless/Talentless (1P Nightmare)

Not the best run, not the coolest run, but a quick and dirty deathless Ch1 showing just how much leeway you have to amass a healthy amount of items and xp even in the absolute worst case scenario: zero items or talents that boost your clear speed. Sometimes you get completely RNG screwed; no immediately useful items, no mission-critical talents - but solo is scaled generously enough that you can get by without them. As a flex, I chose not to take any of the starting talents either, even though those are guaranteed.

This was a pretty favorable seed, too; I probably could've completed most of the map if I wasn't trying to prove a point and it would have been in excellent shape for the rest of the run, especially with Charmstone + Seven-League Boots + Hungry Grass.

For faster clear speed in solo, you want to fight easier POIs during the day and harder ones at night (multiplayer enemies are so dense that you pretty much always want to fight at night there). If the ch1 quest is the straw house, you definitely want to wait until night, Lv4, or after amassing any source of big damage, otherwise it's liable to be impossible to clear (daytime pig explosions, corrupted giant tree spam, etc.). I don't think it's worth bothering with grimoires unless you're Lv4 with healthy damage, since if you get multiple corrupted heavies you can time out through no fault of your own. It's never a big loss to walk past them since they all come with fast travel points.