I'm playing a (modified) Serpent's Skull campaign. We're L4, and about to start off through the jungle. We know there are others trying to beat us to our destination, so speed matters. I'm looking for (affordable) strategies to improve our net overland speed. Here's what I've considered so far:

• Wear light (or no) armor so we don't slow our base speed below 30'
• Oxen to carry our gear - they have a 40' base speed, and will keep us at a light load.
• Trekking poles add +10% to our overland speed (cost 15 GP)
• Walking >8 hours / day covers more ground...but at the risk of fatigue and nonlethal damage if they fail a DC 12 CON check. Going at least 9 hours seems safe, as folks can hopefully sleep off the nonlethal, and we do have a healer with us too. Or...
• Marching coffee lets you go 9 hours without risking nonlethal (cost: 1 GP / day)
• Hustle 1 hour / day this doubles our walking speed for 1 hour.
• Hustle a 2nd hour / day this will give everyone 1 nonlethal, and fatigue us...but if we're willing to go to bed fatigued (and risking an evening encounter fatigued) we can get an extra 3.33 miles / day (assuming we have our trekking poles).
• Hire a L3+ skald an L3 Skald with 12 CHA will have 8 rounds of raging song, which can be 8 hours of marching song, which DOUBLES our speed for 8 hours (and we can hustle the 9th without penalty) (no idea what the cost or availability of this is, but it might be pricey or impossible)

At this stage, my thought is that we plan for 9 hours, with poles + coffee. If we can't get a Skald, we only hustle for one of them. If we get a Skald, we hustle all nine!

What've I missed? (We don't expect to be able to ride mounts because of the difficult jungle terrain. We have 100s of GP to spend on this, but not 1000s.)

I'm playing a (modified) Serpent's Skull campaign. We're L4, and about to start off through the jungle. We know there are others trying to beat us to our destination, so speed matters. I'm looking for (affordable) strategies to improve our net overland speed. Here's what I've considered so far:

• Wear light (or no) armor so we don't slow our base speed below 30'
• Oxen to carry our gear - they have a 40' base speed, and will keep us at a light load.
• Trekking poles add +10% to our overland speed (cost 15 GP)
• Walking >8 hours / day covers more ground...but at the risk of fatigue and nonlethal damage if they fail a DC 12 CON check. Going at least 9 hours seems safe, as folks can hopefully sleep off the nonlethal, and we do have a healer with us too. Or...
• Marching coffee lets you go 9 hours without risking nonlethal (cost: 1 GP / day)
• Hustle 1 hour / day this doubles our walking speed for 1 hour.
• Hustle a 2nd hour / day this will give everyone 1 nonlethal, and fatigue us...but if we're willing to go to bed fatigued (and risking an evening encounter fatigued) we can get an extra 3.33 miles / day (assuming we have our trekking poles).
• Hire a L3+ skald an L3 Skald with 12 CHA will have 8 rounds of raging song, which can be 8 hours of marching song, which DOUBLES our speed for 8 hours (and we can hustle the 9th without penalty) (no idea what the cost or availability of this is, but it might be pricey or impossible)

At this stage, my thought is that we plan for 9 hours, with poles + coffee. If we can't get a Skald, we only hustle for one of them. If we get a Skald, we hustle all nine!

What've I missed?

Things that don't work:

• We don't expect to be able to ride mounts because of the difficult jungle terrain: our GM has ruled that horses aren't trained for this purpose.
• We have a collective budget of 100s of GP to spend on this, but not 1000s.