Uh, I got kind of distracted from this. Right now the wood golem boss is dead about 7 minutes into the run, and I'm still trying to figure out the fastest way to get the necessary gold for the boomerang and fire breath.
Disregarding the gold bullions I'm not allowed to sell, there's only 1 gold bullion I can get reasonably fast (in 380 frames, probably worth it at 1.3 gold/frame), and 3 more gold bullions I could get in 2300 frames total (probably not worth it, 0.65 gold/frame). The best enemy group I've found so far early on gives 280 gold in 160 frames (1.75 gold/frame) but I don't think I encounter it more than once, and everything else is more like 1.1 gold/frame, but all slightly different. I only need to find 1100 gold before Goradus, but then I need 3000 more by Icycal... Probably I'll have to fully optimize every possible place I can get gold at a rate of 1 gold/frame or better, then redo it all with the slowest few cut out. I wish I could skip the fire breath to avoid having to collect all that gold, but every boss fight I don't have it on will take about 10 times longer than normal.
I've also done some tests on the other bosses and found that some of them are going to be fantastically difficult to TAS properly thanks to the boomerang (although that's the part I'm looking forward to the most).
EDIT: I think I've found the optimal gold route:
- Start with 400 gold
- Get 500G from rescuing Nami
- Get 240G from killing a group of 3 bats in the Wind Cave
- Get 280G from killing an ogre and one-eyed-bat at the Hot Springs entrance
- Get 360G from killing a group of two one-eyed bats in Deviant Den
- Get 150G from selling Mail's Short Sword
- Get 500G from selling one Gold Bullion
- Spend 2000G to buy a Boomerang for Mail
- Acquire 4 Gold Bullions in the Mine (1 to make up for the one sold earlier, and 3 for selling later) (a trick that avoids riding the platforms up again makes the extra 3 worth the time)
- Get 720G from killing two groups of animal warrior + fireball chain in the Zoth Shrine
- Get 200G from killing one two-sworded enemy in Icycal
- Get 150G from selling Gaw's Fire Ball
- Get 1500G from selling 3 Gold Bullions
- Spend 3000G to buy Fire Breath for Gaw
This route collects precisely 5000G (the minimum necessary), and spends roughly 54 seconds (in total) on collecting that amount of gold. Now it should be fairly straightforward to make this TAS, or at least, no further planning should be necessary.
