Feasible method of cracking long, randomised passwords?

[CracktainCrunch]

if you have some specific idea, you could also develop/program your own password generator (for instance a python script or whatever) and pass the candidates to hashcat like this:

Code:

python generate_password_candidates_combine_and_filter.py | hashcat -m 12500 -a 0 -w 3 -r rules/best64.rule hash.txt

of course the python script must be coded by you first and include all the "policies" and filters that you need. The rules are somehow required to achieve max. speed if the python script is quite slow and the hash type is fast. You could also think of using very special / dedicated rules e.g. rules that do not change the length etc (the rule file best64.rule does contain all sort of rules and might - in your specific case - also generate some "invalid" password candidates).

Not really a specific idea since the password most likely is something like "QTSQfy9VVpHaRdcD%". I downloaded the archive from a usenet board but don't remember which one.
My idea was to generate a bunch of passwords like this and use them in a wordlist to attack the archive. I have no clue if that even makes sense speed wise so I decided to ask first before starting a project only to find out that I have wasted my time reading up on python and program my own password generator and so on.
But your help is very much appreciated. I have no clue about how to use rules. Will have to read up on it.