Wow, you completed & submitted this run before I had a chance to look at any WIP other than the one that got to the magic key.
This is a nice run and had several suprising moments:
1) Using the poison needle on the bomb crags was very nice :) At first, I forgot you had it and was like WTF, am I about to watch you kill for creatures with 400hp by hitting them for 1-3 damage?! Then I was like, "oh yeah :S"
2) In the navel of the earth: confusing the simiac and having him kill the metal slime is genious :D Later with the gold bashers it was very nice as well.
3) The route to greenlad was nice, I didn't think of that
4) You butchered the orochi! very nice :)
5) giving the merchant your unneeded items so they go to the vault was a very creative idea :)
6) You got the thor's sword from the granit titans, major cool points. And this saves you from getting the sword of kings, which is very nice.
Possible Improvements:
1) At the beginning you should NOT have done the fast message speed (sorry I didn't notice this in your first wip). By putting it on slow, you can manualy scroll through messages which is quicker.
2) Perhaps you shouldn't get the get the until after you die? The pilgrams are useful for heal spells, but the wizard is just one more person to kill off and to later revive.
3) You should have the party members attack each other in pyramid in order to die quicker. You do this by selecting attack, and then selecting the arrow above the enemies's names, this will give you a list of your own party members to attack.
4) In isis - getting the 70 & 60 gold pieces were worth it?
5) The path getting the meterite armband was interesting, did you test to confirm it was faster than simply walking from the queens room? or getting it first then backtracking to that room?
6) In Kanave, you moved past the shopkeeper and then euipped & used items. It would have been faster to do this while your movement was already stopped at the shop. You move a little and then do it again, again this cost time.
7) If you have any control whatsoever on level ups, manipulating a stat to have NO gain is a nice timesaver too. Especially when you get 1 point of luck. Making that 0 will save about 1 second.
8) Again at isis, you should get to the shop and then equip your items
9) You should use memory watch for hp values. Metal slimes have a chance of having 3 hp instead of 4 which could ease your leveling up sections of this run.
10) In the kandar fight, watching his hp will also help in making decisions since his regeneration is random. You may be able to get lower regen numbers which could reduce the # of hits he needs to take
11) Perhaps you should get to the final key by returning to barahata, that way you can stop by jipang on the way. Then later, you can return right to it to fight the orochi.
12) Going to a place with metal babbles and settling for metal slimes seems silly. Even taking a long time to maniuplate the encounter or running from the slimes seems faster than going through the long slime fights. If the rng doesn't seem to let you get them, go get the red orb
first and then come back with a new rng. Also, the one time you got a babble was during the day, perhaps they are more common then? At the very least, they seem no less common at night, so perhaps you don't need to use the lamp.
13) In the mirror of ra cave, I question whether opening a chest of 56 gold is worth it. The higher gold & seeds might be, but you should check to see if they actually paid off since you had to walk extra steps, open the chest, use the item, and use extra heal spells to manipulate away encounters. Perhaps getting one more dancing jewel in the silver orb cave would be faster than opening these chests.
14) was casting infernos on the boss troll even worth the time & mp it took? or was it to get the right outcome? I know it is a long shot, but I REALLY want to see a thor's sword manipulated there :)
15) I would think it is possible to manipulate the movements of the pirate ship to be moving toward you instead of away from you.
16) again, why get small amounts of gold in the ship? Perhaps a dancing jewel is a bigger payoff then taking extra steps and using heal spells.
Plus you aren't down to 0 gold after you buy all the equipment for the baramos fight. You need to plan exactly how much you need and only get that.
17) I think getting metal slimes along the way is a mistake since you can get metal babbles in the cave of necrogod.
18) Once you got healmore, you could use it to manipulate the rng differently than heal, did you try both to see which one gave a better outcome?
19) Ice clouds give you a snowblast sword, which isn't as good as the thunder sword (or thor's sword :P) but sells for 48,000 gold. Not as cool as manipulating a huge casino payoff but should cure your gold problems much faster (though a pain to manipulate). It would also save you from casting snowblast in the orochi fight.
20) When you got the merchant, it would have been quicker to return to alaihan rather than walk out. If you couldn't afford the mp at the time, then simply return to eginbear and then go back to get the red orb later.
21) I think returning to portoga may be a bit faster to get to the new town.
22) You can get the yellow orb without return. Go outside, and come back in. Then, go outside and walk until nighttime. Go back to the town, and it will grow as normal. I thought I got it to work by simply running from an encounter too, but I don't know for sure. Also, using the lamp of darkness (not giving it to the merchant) may work the same way.
23) when you buy your weapons & armor, you should equip them then. Again it is better to do those things while already stopped. Or you should walk right up to baramos and do it then.
24) At the island where you get the phoenix, there are glacier bashers that leave the mysterious hat which reduces mp consumption. Perhaps manipulating one of those could save some inn usage later.
25) Why get the magic bikini if you aren't going to equip it and see that hot 8-bit pilgram booty? ;p It has the same effect as magic armor, so it wouldn't hurt you to have it equipped. So equip it sooner rather than at the zoma fight where we barely get to see it anyway. Though if you
were ever to redo it, you probaby wouldn't be able to get it anyway.
26) In the sacred amulet tower, why did you use the acorns of life and only get 2hp? Is that even worth the time it takes to get & use it? Same for the 1 that gave you 4hp. You have time before you need use them, why not wait until a better opportunity when it will give you 5hp?
27) Intelligense & vitality seeds are actually useless and give you less mp & hp rather than more. Unless you are manipulating luck, don't take the time to use these.
28) Did you try using heal spells to mainpulate the ortega fight into being shorter? Even shortening it a round or two would save a lot of time.
29) The big payoff for having healers instead of fighters/soliders is that zoma fight :O Major damage from the onslaught of healall's :) I wonder though if you couldn't fight less babbles and defeat zoma at the lowest level that you get healall. You have plenty of hp/mp to spare in that fight. He should be possible a few levels lower.
I think this run is more of a test run than a polished TAS. The problem is that you don't have enough control over the rng in this game to ensure that these improvements wouldn't get negated by some bad luck. As a result, I don't think this movie should be rejected based on this. Overall, I think this run is a good contribution to the site, and the final time is much lower than I expected.
For those who don't know, there is a glitch in this game that will allow you to essentially manipulate your inventory to contain just about any item you want. This would result in drastic shortcuts, by my estimates it would save at least 30 minutes. A glitched run I think would be less repetive and a whole lot shorter. Some say that there should be both version epresented on the site but I disagree.
I vote yes to this run on the basis that a future glitched run obsolete it (though currently, there is no one who is actively working on it). Until then, I think this run should be published on this site :)
