I can confirm that 14Eph would be much faster than 14Eir. Assuming we're counting turns, not frames, here's a rough estimate at total lengths of each chapter (well, not-so-rough for chapters I actually got to):
9Eph: 9 turns
10Eph: 3 turns
11Eph: 6 turns
12Eph: 4 turns
13Eph: 5 turns
14Eph: hard to say, but I'd guess aroung 7 turns
15Eph: again, hard to say, but somewhere around 5 turns
16Eph: 9 turns seems reasonable
9Eir: 4 turns, probably
10Eir: 3 turns
11Eir: 5, maybe?
12Eir: I can't imagine it being faster than 7 turns
13Eir: 1 turn
14Eir: 9 turns
15Eir: 6 turns
16Eir: 8 turns
Based on this, Eirika's route looks faster. However, I'm terrible at judging times for rout chapters. Also, you won't be able to recruit Cormag in her route, which will probably cost you several turns against bosses.
There won't be more than a difference of one or two turns in the end, I'd imagine.
Actually, Molotov beat these chapters in 8, 5, and 6 turns respectively in his run.
CrimsonPride wrote:
I'm gonna see if I can dig up the old forum site on the infamous "Knoll Bug".
That was most likely a hoax. Even if it somehow turns out to be true, I don't think it would be useful. You have enough RNG-abused units at this point, and I don't see any places in chapters 15-21 where giving Knoll additional weapon types would be useful for speed purposes.
Hm, that makes Eirika's route definitely better. You'll probably lose a turn in chapter 19 without a promoted flier, and a turn against the demon king without a pierce critical, but this could be solved by levelling Vanessa or Tana more than I did.
I'm gonna see if I can dig up the old forum site on the infamous "Knoll Bug".
That was most likely a hoax. Even if it somehow turns out to be true, I don't think it would be useful. You have enough RNG-abused units at this point, and I don't see any places in chapters 15-21 where giving Knoll additional weapon types would be useful for speed purposes.
It's not a hoax. Someone took a video using a camera on their GBA of it being abused - it's on the forum I can no longer find. Secondly, it can possibly be done with absolutely any shaman class character(I think).
One more thing - by using the control the enemy glitch, you can get any character in the game levels in dark magic.
Giving Myrrh something like Wretched Air when using this glitch makes her INCREDIBLY powerful, although I can only see that as useful for the last stage..but useful nonetheless.
Fomortiis has 20 luck, so it's hard to get even a 1% critical rate against him. Since you won't be spending enough turns to gain supports, there are a few options available for a 1-battle kill:
1. Any WK with a killer lance (or other critical-increasing lance), 2 pierces, one of which is a critical. Requires 22 speed.
2. Tana or Vanessa WK with Vidofnir, pierce triangle attack.
3. Myrrh with Dragonstone, critical hit.
(4. Lute with Excalibur, 2 criticals. Not going to happen, but included for completeness. Saleh will run into a magic cap, so he won't work.)
Tana and Vanessa can promote with the Master Seal from chapter 15. Training one of them shouldn't be too hard with RNG abuse.
As for Wretched Air, I'm not sure I see a point. Dragonstone deals more damage to every monster in the game (including Fomortiis), and the only human you'll want to kill after Wretched Air becomes available is Lyon. The 1-2 range is an advantage, but I don't see any use for it. Dragonstone had 20 uses left after killing Fomortiis in Molotov's run, so I doubt breaking the weapon would be an issue.
Of course, this is assuming that you even use Myrrh in a TAS. While she is useful in a console run, you will have better RNG-abused units by the time you recruit her, and any role she has as a boss killer is easily replaced by manipulating Pierce. Her low movement means that she can't keep up with your units without the Swiftsole, which should probably be used on your wyvern knight instead. Also, watching the "level up" animation takes time, and Myrrh will do that a lot if you use her.
Joined: 2/13/2007
Posts: 448
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Luck will be a problem to manipulate but thanks to luck manipulation... The current Pokemon Blue catch 'em all run has one point where it manipulates 3 straight 1/256 chances... A 1/16777216 chance in real life.
Has anyone consdiered which characters to recruit and which to not?
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As of April 6th, 2012:
After a long absence, here we go again?
Presuming Eirika's route, here's how I'd rate the characters:
Eirika--needed to capture thrones
Seth--your main battle force
Franz--useful for some early chapters, but declined in usefulness, at least for me
Gilliam--completely useless
Moulder--possibly consider using him for the warp staff, though that requires getting him to an A rank in staves
Vanessa--early flier. Possible candidate for promotion to Wyvern Knight
Ross--completely useless
Garcia--usable in early chapters due to high strength
Neimi--completely useless
Colm--might be useful for opening some doors. Recruit him anyways, to stop the "NPC phase" from appearing
Artur--useless
Lute--useless. Don't recruit.
Natasha--uesless.
Joshua--his killing edge would be useful if Seth ddin't have enough skill to critical just about anything he needs to.
Ephraim--I don't see him getting much use
Forde--useful for a few chapters
Kyle--see above
Tana--starts at a higher level than Vanessa, so may be a better candidate for promotion
Amelia--Maybe recruit her (with Franz, not Eirika), but only for her speedwings
Innes--might be a bit useful
Tethys--If I have to say anything here, you don't deserve to do this run
Gerik--can promote to ranger instantly, which may be useful
Marisa--unrecruitable in a speedrun
L'arachel--useless
Dolza--helps with a few of the Baels int he next chapter
Ewan--don't bother recruiting
Cormag--unrecruitable in a speedrun
Rennac--can't see him getting much use, considering he has the same move as Colm (iirc)
Duessel--useful when Seth can't handle all the enemies
Knoll--useless
Myrrh--I don't see her getting any use
Syrene--not sure if you can recruit her. If you can, she'll be useful for triangle attacks
Spamming Moulder's staff level is only useful if you're strictly aiming for minimum turns. I don't think staff spamming has a chance of being worth it otherwise. Hence, he's not worth using.
Syrene has 8 movement, and thus will certainly play some part in chapter 18. I don't know what you meant when you said you didn't know if you could recruit her, since she joins automatically at the end of chapter 17 if she survives. As for the triangle attack, it's useless unless you have a 0% critical rate against the target (such as Fomortiis). When possible, it's faster to just manipulate a critical hit.
Also, you forgot to mention Saleh.
I wasn't sure whether Rridgway was doing minimal turns or minimal frames, so I mentioned Moulder.
Also, I can't believe I forgot that Syrene joins automatically after the chapter, despite remembering it for all the other NPCs.
Saleh will have roughly the same function as Duessel if you aren't spamming for the warp staff.
Does the Demon King's weapons come in the form of items?
If they do, using the glitch..they're stealable. Although I'm not sure who can use them.
The Nightmare staff is usable by anyone (and gives them a staff level), and Demon Light and Ravager should be usable by Myrrh. Of course, this is all moot, since Fomortiis will never get a turn, and thus the glitch won't be activated.
Joined: 2/13/2007
Posts: 448
Location: Calgary, Alberta
When you get to the armoury in chapter 5, you must decide how much to buy and of what there becuse it is the earliest you can get javelins.
Also, don't forget to grab Orsons items in chapter 5X (for later use)
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As of April 6th, 2012:
After a long absence, here we go again?
Well, since Rridgway doesn't seem to be doing this run, I thought I might pick it up again. I never really intended to put it down forever, I just made it seem that way to encourage other people to pick it up while I was still disinterested.
However, now I'm not so sure about my decision to measure time in turns rather than frames. Minimizing frames will require more thought here than it would in most games, what with wanting to minimize scrolling and things like that. The main advantage is that I won't have to worry about the freaking warp staff, as I'm almost positive it won't save time in this sense.
Before I start, does anybody have any suggestions about things I didn't do before but should, or things I did but shouldn't?
I sent you a PM about manipulating the RNG. In a run like this, the more RNG abuse you do, the better. A few other things I noticed:
You press buttons far too late. Experiment to find the earliest time that pressing certain buttons has an effect. You may be surprised at the result. For example, when you move a character and tell him to wait in your current run, you lose 2 frames starting movement, 2 frames ending movement, 2 frames pressing up, and 3 frames pressing A, for a total of 9 frames.
Nearly all cutscenes can be skipped before they appear, but some require that you press start in a 1-frame window. I usually turbo start twice while testing these (once for odd frames and once for even frames).
If you're aiming strictly for lowest time, you may want to minimize the time spent trading before battle. Of course, since you need to buy a lot of javelins, you'll probably want to go to the pre-battle trade menu sometimes.
I think there were some strategies which could be improved, both on a large scale and a small scale. Small things like unnecessarily killing an enemy with Franz in chapter 1 or missing in chapter 13 tend to bug me a bit.
I've responded to your PM. Very informative. Here I'll respond to the other stuff:
I realized that I pressed the buttons too late, but not until I was well into it. This was one of the things motivating me to stop the run for a while.
Yeah, minimizing trading will be a pain, too. My philosophy before was to bring the minimum number of characters, but that just wastes time, unless I have to deselect characters for other reasons.
And yes, I did do things like make unneccesary kills because I thought boosting exp would be helpful. Now that I realize that prepromotes are more than good enough to cover all my needs, I won't be doing this as much, if indeed at all.
Joined: 2/13/2007
Posts: 448
Location: Calgary, Alberta
The list of chapters that that the "enemy-control" glitch is abuseable follows thus:
(by the way, sometimes the glitch works (for me on my game cartridge) with thrones, forts and house entrances not just snags and lava spaces). Could somebody check if i'm not crazy?
1. za'ha woods
2. narube river
3. za'abul marsh
4. that mountain pass i cant rememer the name of
More will come as i remember them.
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As of April 6th, 2012:
After a long absence, here we go again?
Are you still working on this run? I'm interested in seeing it.
Anyway, a few things I forgot to mention:
First, hold L while choosing characters. It makes that window scroll faster.
Second, the cheat to completely remove fog of war is 3202BCFD 0000. The same disclaimer that came with my other cheat (all units vision +15) still applies: use it for planning only, since the movie will desynch if you record with this cheat on.
Third, I'll explain the bug I used to make multiple characters move to the same location in FE7. I've tested, and it works on all 3 GBA FE games. Basically, the path-drawing routine is one frame behind the cursor. If you press up on one frame and down+A on the next (whether holding B or not), the path will be drawn to the space above the cursor (assuming a path can be drawn there), but the game will check the cursor's location to see if you can move there. Since you can draw paths to locations where your characters are standing, this means you can make someone follow such a path. I also used this to subvert a few Lyn's mode restrictions, but that doesn't apply here. Obviously, this works in any direction, as long as the cursor reaches the square you make the game check on the same frame that you press A.
If you have multiple characters on the same space, the character with the highest slot number is used whenever the game wants to know which character is in that space. (e.g., if that space gets attacked or you press A or L on that space) NPCs have higher slot numbers than PCs. If the game wants to know where a certain character is, it correctly identifies that space. This also means that pressing L repeatedly won't always reach everyone on the map under these conditions.
Joined: 2/13/2007
Posts: 448
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Strangely enough, a glitch like this has recently been discovered in Age of Empires: Age of kings for the DS. I see that this glitch could be used for multple units for the offenseive purpeses. Good work.
Renting this space for rent.
Trying to fix image on this site. Please cut slack.
As of April 6th, 2012:
After a long absence, here we go again?
Strangely enough, a glitch like this has recently been discovered in Age of Empires: Age of kings for the DS. I see that this glitch could be used for multple units for the offenseive purpeses. Good work.
What are you talking about, dude? As you probably know (since you started this topic) the discussion is on Fire Emblem not Age of Empires @_@
On Topic: This game has a very impressive TAS capability, especially (sp) due to the difficulty of juggling frames/turns as well as luck manipulation... I salute all who have worked on this, and any other FE tas
<o \o
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
I'm a terrible person who hasn't even started this run. I took one look at the RNG spreadsheet, got intimidated, and didn't look at it again until now. However, I've started up again, and am through the prologue, which obviously isn't worth posting due to being basically exactly the same as my previous attempt with slightly better curcor movement and such. I'd have to restart after hearing that holding L makes the menu go by faster anyways, so maybe it's not so much of a loss that I haven't worked on it.
EDIT: Scratch that, I just realized that I forgot to turn off subtitle scrolling while in the options menu, putting me right back at the beginning of the prologue. However, it's 1:00 in the morning, so I'm going to bed instead of fixing it.
EDIT2: Through Chapter 1. Will post a WIP at chapter 2, since again, chapter one has little worth showing (other than the shift to equipping Seth's silver lance, which allowed me to beat the boss in one round and keep Eirika alive and get a good levelup without wasting hundreds and hundreds of RNs).
