Thanks a bunch Rolan! This is greatly appreciated! Just checked out how many RN's it took to beat the Prologue in 4 Turns and...wow, I'm glad you guys are here. It took more than 160 wobbles to get that critical...yeah, glad I didn't end up having to do that without a script. Thanks!
So, dondon151 released a series of patches for 5 of the Fire Emblem games. The only alteration is that the growth rates of all units have been reduced to 0%. These would be worthy hacks to be TASed, in addition to the regular versions of the games, since the playstyle will be so different and more characters would have to be used, meaning a more tactical experience.
http://www.mediafire.com/?77mupw7xc62w90k
The games that have patches are:
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (SNES)
Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi (GBA)
Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) (GBA)
Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones (GBA)
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (DS)
There are a couple of oddities with the patches (Xane in FEDS is effectively rendered useless, lacking his Imitate skill), but for the most part they seem to work fine.
After amaurea made a lua script that shows on-screen a list of RNs and some battle stats, i modified it to do more stuff:
Filter Mode: By Pressing "Q" the Battle Data dissapears and it allows you to Turn On the Input Mode.
Input Mode: By Pressing "I" it allows you to introduce conditions into the script, so the script will tell wich nunmbers satisfy said conditions, for instance, you want to look for a critical, 75% Hit and 3% Critical.
You just need to introduce 75 in frame advance using the number keys in the middle of the keyboard, after you introduce the 2 numbers, a "<" will appear, you can press left and right to change between 6 different operators, so i choosed "<" and later stablish if the number you introduced is to calculate Hit (Hit are calculated different from all other) by pressing H, afterwards i press Enter. Then introduce 03 and choosed "<", afterwards i press Enter and then "O" to deactivate Input Mode, this will go back to Filter Mode, and it will show wich numbers satisfy the stablished conditions, in adittion, it will tell the distance of the 3 nearest numbers that satisfy the conditions between 500 numbers.
Copy/Pasted this straight from my FE7 Submission. Just making this post to let you know the script is finished now and im releasing it to public.
Script
Video doing a little demonstration and showing the interface:
Link to video
The Description of the video have some stuff you should check.
I've been thinking for some time about a ranked TAS of FE7. Now it may not be as entertaining as a pure speedrun, but from a strategy level it will be very interesting to see what is possible in ranked play.
So without further ado, let's look at Lyn mode. Getting all 60 Tactician stars is almost impossible for a regular player, but it should be easily manageable in a TAS.
Ranks in FE7 are split into 5 categories:
Tactics is the number of turns taken in each chapter. Each chapter has a turn limit, and going over that lowers the ranking score.
Survival requires all units to stay alive.
Funds is the total cash value among all your units (gold + total item wealth). You need to reach 80% of the total funds requirement to get A rank.
Experience is the amount of experience points needed to earn in that chapter to reach the rank requirement.
Combat is the percentage of battles that result in a kill compared to overall battles. 40% or more kills in a chapter is enough for the A rank.
Prologue
5 turns, 100 experience points, 848 g Funds
Not a hard one at all. Batta gives almost a level in himself, and the other bandit gives the rest.
Chapter 1
7 turns, 200 experience points, 1184 g Funds
I want both of the cavaliers to still be level 1 at the end of this chapter. Lyn can take most of the kills.
Chapter 2
7 turns, 200 experience points, 240 g Funds
Here's where TASing is basically required. The only item you get is a vulnerary for 300g to Funds. Because the Funds requirement is so low, I can only "spend" 60 g worth of weapon uses. Each use of the iron sword costs 10 g, and each iron lance use costs 8 g. I need to use 2 iron lance uses to bust through the wall, so that limits my uses to 44 g.
Now here's where things get really annoying. Glass (the boss), gives 77 exp to a L1 unit. The other bandits are either level 1 or level 2, giving 30 and 33 exp each respectively. So, in order to hit the 200 requirement and meet the Funds requirement, I would have to kill 5 enemies including the boss in one hit each, killing 3 L1 Bandits, and a L2 Bandit, all with L1 units. Not only that, at least three of those kills would have to be done with the Iron Lance (8x3+10x2=44). All 5 kills are needed to be critical hits.
This is basically the main reason the cavaliers should be not used for almost any combat in Chapter 1. Lyn will be at least L2 at the start of Ch1, and using her at all will ruin the exp requirement since the enemies will give less exp than a L1 unit would receive. Since the number is so exact, she should be used to kill almost all the enemies in Ch1, and take the boss kill in addition.
Chapter 3
7 turns, 300 experience points, 2632g Funds
This should be relatively easy to reach. Florina and Wil join, so this should allow for more spreading around of the exp requirement. The village with 2000g should be visited.
Chapter 4
8 turns, 450 experience points, 270g Funds
Relatively easy one. Everyone can be assigned to various parts of the map to meet the exp requirements. Dorcas joins and can contribute to experience.
Chapter 5
4 turns, 250 experience points, 1168g Funds
Serra and Erk join. Serra should be healing at every opportunity to aid in clearing the exp requirement for the upcoming chapters.
Chapter 6
7 turns, 250 experience points, 14424g Funds
Matthew and Rath joins here. I can skip the armorslayer and still reach Funds rank. Rath brings 5000 g at the end of the chapters, and the robe is worth 8000 g, the rest of the funds comes from Matthew and Rath's starting equipment (2500g).
Chapter 7
6 turns, 350 experience points, 1752g Funds
Lucius and Nils join here. Nils dancing every turn is not only practical in quickly clearing the map, it aids in meeting the exp rank. Pure Water village is 900g towards funds, so that's a given to collect.
Chapter 7x
7 turns, 450 experience points, 3560g Funds
I'll want to have Matthew steal items here, especially the Lockpicks since that alone is worth 1/3rd of the Funds requirement (1200 g). There are 3 possible vulneraries to steal, and 1 droppable one. The hammer is worth 800g more to Funds, but costs 80 g to get (1 use of the Lockpick). This brings the items available to a total of 3120g of Funds. Unless the reinforcements also have Vulnaries, there's no way to reach the rank requirement. I'll have to check back to see if it is possible. Otherwise, I may have to settle for B rank Funds here (2670g minimum)
Chapter 8
7 turns, 500 experience points, 1440g Funds
The lancereaver alone is enough to cover the funds rank.
Chapter 9
8 turns, 650 experience points, 1114g Funds
Wallace's gear alone covers the rank requirement. The torch in the village is a nice luxury at 500g more.
Chapter 10
12 turns, 450 experience points, 6400g Funds
Everyone should be slowing down in terms of experience gain, but there's more than enough enemies to reach the rank requirement. Lundgren alone will give 100 to whoever kills him. The Energy Ring is needed to reach Funds requirement.
So far, it is looking like 59/60 Tactician stars is possible in Lyn Hard Mode (LHM). 60 is certainly possible in Normal.
a ranked TAS of FE7. Now it may not be as entertaining as a pure speedrun,
Not at all. I will probably never seriously sit down a watch any 'any%' FE run. A ranked run I was interested in seeing as soon as I had played the game.
I'd consider it interesting but I'm not sure it would be published. I guess you could try to pass it off as 100%.
Which route would you be going down? ENM and HHM are the only reasonable choices, but HHM requires an SRAM that isn't produced by another published video (which is even worse than just requiring SRAM).
I can always do a separate HNM run to unlock HHM, not a hugely difficult thing to manage. The main thing is that in order to really do a HHM ranked run, you'd need to get Nils to L7 in Lyn Mode. In order to S-rank Lyn Mode and achieve this exp requirement for Nils in time, he needs to take some turns dodging enemy hits, as well as dancing every turn. He ends up about 50 exp short otherwise, if he dances every turn possible to reach A Tactics. Annoying to watch, but this can be spread across multiple chapters so it wouldn't be that obnoxious.
I think it may even be worth just doing each mode as a separate submission. Lyn Mode is short, and each mode has its own ranking division. At the very least, it can be used to evaluate how much interest there would be in ranking the other modes.
I can always do a separate HNM run to unlock HHM, not a hugely difficult thing to manage. The main thing is that in order to really do a HHM ranked run, you'd need to get Nils to L7 in Lyn Mode. In order to S-rank Lyn Mode and achieve this exp requirement for Nils in time, he needs to take some turns dodging enemy hits, as well as dancing every turn. He ends up about 50 exp short otherwise, if he dances every turn possible to reach A Tactics. Annoying to watch, but this can be spread across multiple chapters so it wouldn't be that obnoxious.
Why would you want to take 19xx? I was under the impression that that was a bad idea in ranked runs.
I’m pretty much done messing around with hacks/pointless challenges, so I decided to work on planning the S rank run in whatever form it takes. I don’t know how committed I am to this yet (likely not very much), but I do intend on getting through Lyn mode as a start.
So I took Rolanmen’s TAS, changed the last input so an epilogue file is saved, played up to the “Fin” message and made a new movie from that frame. Any earlier and the new difficulties are not unlocked. As others have pointed out, there’s no access to HHM, I’ll worry about that more once I finish Lyn mode (probably by making separate movies).
Anyway… Here’s a WIP of the first 5 chapters: (link)
Prologue (5 turns)
Turn 2: If I crit the brigand on PP, I fall one space short of reaching Batta. Instead, I have to move Lyn fully and crit the brigand on EP.
Turn 3: Lyn only has 1% crit and 5HKOes Batta, so 2 rounds are needed to kill him. I crit him on this turn in order to facilitate manipulating Lyn’s level-up next turn.
Chapter 1 (4 turns)
Turn 1: Lyn PP crits, Kent EP crits, Sain advances towards a future brigand kill.
Turn 2: Kent moves into a spot that’s great for RN burning, Lyn EP crits, Sain moves into position for a turn 3 brigand kill.
Chapter 2 (5 turns)
Turn 2: With Kent & Sain at lv 1, they cannot break the wall without Lyn’s help.
Turn 3: Unfortunately Lyn can only burn 1 RN at a time and according to Tooth every attack in this chapter must be a critical :/
Turn 4: Another long RN burn, mostly because Sain only has 2% crit and has to dodge 69 display hit to survive. His level-up was completely botched, but there’s nothing I can do about that without wasting even more precious time.
Chapter 3 (4 turns, 331 exp)
Turn 1: Lyn isn’t used here since she’s already lv 3 and thus a strain on the exp rank.
Turn 2: Unfortunately Kent hasn’t leveled up enough to be able to double, so I have to settle for some non-crits.
Turn 3: Wil gets a kill since he’s at lv 1
Chapter 4 (8 turns, 525 exp)
Turn 1: Wil inches towards the wall so he can nab the nearby brigand next turn. Meanwhile, Kent takes out an archer and disposes of a bunch of enemies since he’s the only unit besides Lyn who can ORKO.
Turn 2: Just a ton of PP crits. Since everyone attacked except Lyn (who recruited Dorcas), I wasn’t able to manipulate EP and thus couldn’t get Sain to crit the brigand he faced.
Turn 3: Wolt finishes off the brigand since he is the lowest level nearby unit. The remaining moves are based on rushing for the reinforcement squares.
Overall notes: I’ll probably have to re-do this chapter since I went so far over the exp requirement (125 exp, in fact). The biggest improvement would be to position Kent on turn 1 to kill as many brigands on EP as possible instead of having him PP kill the archer.
P.S. If anyone has a script for tracking accumulated exp gain in a chapter, that would be incredibly helpful.
I can see this type of run being alot more interesting to me than the standard any% runs. I hope you continue with this past Lyn mode, it was good so far even if you are still in the tutorial areas.
I made a messy spreadsheet to track my funds/exp gain in each chapter and was suprised to find I fell short in more places than I expected. Tracking this stuff is tedious to the point where I'm wondering if a script could be made to track funds during a chapter. I'm guessing you'd need to put in a database of the cost/use of each weapon (and certain items), as well as finding memory addresses associated with weapon usage after attacking a given enemy. Or perhaps there's addresses in the memory that tracks funds and exp directly; after all, the game needs to refer to such data when coming up with the tactician stars screen. I haven’t managed to find it so far.
So, stuff that needs to be changed:
Prologue (113 exp, 1020g funds) [100/848]
I was informed there’s a double 1% crit after burning ~1500 RNs. However, after testing this approach turns out to be 790 frames slower. I’ll use the slower approach anyway since it saves a turn and Toothache insists on minimizing the turncount for ranked play.
Chapter 1 (197 exp, 1424g funds) [200/1184]
I have to give one of the cavs an extra kill in order to meet the exp requirement.
Chapter 2 (230 exp, 226g funds) [200/240]
I need to kill one less brigand and cut out Lyn’s sword attack on the wall by having Sain attack it twice.
Chapter 3 (330 exp, 2960g funds) [300/2632]
I can get away with using Wil a bit less, but otherwise hardly anything changes.
Chapter 4 (501 exp, 207g funds) [450/216]
Using Kent more should cut down on unnecessary exp while meeting the funds rank. I’ll also see if I can manage to block the southern reinforcement 1 turn sooner.
---
I also looked into C7x and there aren’t any reinforcements carrying items, so the 3560g funds rank cannot be met. I will try to meet the LNM fund rank of 2600g and see if 60 tactician stars are achieved or not.
Unless I decide to do an S rank HHM TAS or FE9-10 TAS, this is likely my last major project in the world of Fire Emblem speedrunning. Unlike some of my hack TASes (eg/ FEGirls), I put quite a bit of effort into optimizing input & strategies. The only times I get lazy are skipping cutscenes (I turbo start), manipulating level-ups (not everyone needs to get str/skl/spd on every level-up) and a couple strategy nuances in the later chapters, particularly C9.
As predicted, I was able to achieve an S rank and 59/60 tactician stars overall. For some reason chapter 7x's fund rank is impossible to achieve on LHM. In fact, stealing all the treasure barely allows you to meet the LNM funds requirement.
Well, hope you enjoy :) Toothache was gracious enough to provide me with an encode.
Link to videoLyn HM S Rank TAS
You’ll want to watch the vbm running Nitrodon’s tactician stars script. Make a new text document, copy the code, and save as [all files] tactician stars.lua or whatever you want to call it. You may also want to consult SF’s rankings page if you’re unfamiliar with the individual chapter exp/funds/turn requirements.
Prologue
Turn 3: At frame 1647, if you run the FE_RNGcounter script, you’ll see that I burn ~250 RNs in each diagonal direction 8 times, then burn ~125 RNs 8 times, then criss-cross for ~500 RNs before finishing the RN burn normally. This is really just a speed-entertainment trade-off to counter-act the tedium of watching such a long RN burn. It sucks that I have to burn 4139 RNs for the 1% double crit but there’s no way around it. Since I’m starting a new file, the RNG starts at 8,56,21 (or 47,66,60 as the next 3 RNs). Saving and re-setting gives the exact same RN string.
Chapter 1
Turn 2: Kent moves forward for the sole purpose of being in a better position to burn RNs. I can’t move Sain fully, otherwise he’d attract 2 brigands on EP instead of 1, and it’s not feasible to land two 2% crits in a row. Luckily having him DOG Lyn’s square works out.
Turn 3: Lyn has to absorb so that Sain stays level 1. This is a necessary condition for satisfying chapter 2’s exp rank.
Chapter 2
Turn 2: I can’t break the wall in 1 turn since only Sain is capable of 2HKOing the wall, and I can’t afford a 3rd wall attack since that compromises the funds rank (I’m not kidding). Fortunately this doesn’t end up affecting the final turn count.
Overall notes: Because of the chapter’s ridiculously strict exp/funds requirements, I can’t have Lyn attack at all, and can only use iron lances throughout the chapter. Fortunately I can manage to leave 1 brigand alive, otherwise I’d have lost a turn.
Chapter 3
Turn 2: Florina needs to weaken the archer in order to satisfy the exp rank.
Turn 3: Sain weakens the boss for exp.
Overall notes: I tried a strategy very similar to what Roland used in the TAS, but it wouldn’t allow Florina to reach the village (1 space short). Fortunately the approach I used is pretty satisfactory anyway (307/300 exp).
Chapter 4
Turn 1: Kent is positioned such that he’ll eliminate as many enemies as possible on turn 1. The rest of the map is basically a race to the reinforcement points.
Turn 3: Dorcas covers up one reinforcement point, Kent covers the other.
Turn 4: Kent moves out to take care of the 2 remaining enemies, Florina swaps into his old spot to block the reinforcements.
Turn 6: Kent weakens the boss for exp.
Turn 7: Kent burns 3 RNs in order to manipulate the stats of an enemy merc next chapter.
Overall notes: 451/450 exp :)
Chapter 5
Turn 1: I move Sain 1 space right so that neither the brigand nor the merc will attack him. It’s better to kill them on PP with lower level units, in this case Erk and Wil.
Turn 3: Florina buys 2 javelins.
Overall notes: This is one of the few chapters where I could get away with a strategy very similar to Roland’s in his full game TAS.
Chapter 6
Turn 1: Wil and Erk team up for the kill to maximize exp gain. Kent moves solely to protect Wil & Erk from the merc’s attack range.
Overall notes: Basically Roland’s TAS strat with a few tweaks in order to accommodate the exp rank.
Chapter 7
Turn 1: Matthew and Dorcas head east, and Florina ferries over Sain to deal with the remaining enemies. Even though this is a seize map the exp rank is strict enough to basically turn it into a rout map as well.
Turn 2: Sain must be hit by the brigand in order to draw a druid to him that normally goes for Florina (she can’t double them yet).
Overall notes: 380/350 exp, so I could’ve maybe manipulated more crits. I also can’t remember why I chose to ferry Sain… The magic users seem like a more logical choice.
Chapter 7x
Turn 1: Erk, Lucius and Sain PP crit, a bunch of people advance, Wil clears out Matthew's inventory, Lyn moves 1 space (gets her out of the range of a cavalier next turn), Dorcas moves 1 space (allows him to hand axe crit a soldier on turn 3).
Turn 2: Sain and Florina take out the wall, Matthew steals a vulnerary, Erk uses DOG and crits the archer, Nils dances Matthew who then moves towards a cav he must steal from, Kent sets up for a Matthew rescue next turn.
Turn 3: A lot's going on here, but what's important is that Matthew is rescue-dropped into the range of a soldier, with Sain and Florina ahead of him so he can be rescue-dropped again next turn.
Turn 4: Ferrying Matthew where I did is crucial for 5 turning, as it allows him to rob the final vulnerary from the merc on the right pillar. Without doing this I'd fall short on funds. The same applies for every other steal in this chapter.
Turn 5: Kent only has 1% crit and there isn't enough space for quality RN burning, so I have to settle for crit-less quality level-up.
Overall notes: This chapter was pure hell to plan, it took me longer to figure this out than all of the previous chapters combined. There's a wealth of details here that would take forever to describe, but basically there's a lot of spacing nuance needed to deal efficiently with the cramped corridors. Oh, it’s actually impossible to 5* the funds rank of this chapter on HM (hence why I only get 59/60 tactician stars). Don’t ask me what the game developers were thinking.
Chapter 8
Turn 1: I choose Lyn as the person ferried because her prf sword doesn't affect the funds rank. Yes, the funds ranking is just that tight in this chapter.
Turn 2: Dorcas doesn't crit, Serra heals, Nils does a pointless dance... Get used to seeing stuff like this during the chapter since I have to milk every ounce of exp I can get in order to satisfy the rank (500). I have Florina ferry over Erk since Lyn's level is too high to take on the enemies near the boss.
Overall notes: Despite everything I did, I only managed to get 506/500 exp. S ranking is not meant to be TASed >_>
Chapter 9
Turn 1: It turns out the torch isn’t needed (knight crest alone covers funds), but it’s way too much hassle to hex out at that mistake at this point. Lyn’s miss on the merc is deliberate (milking for exp).
Turn 2: Sain’s miss is also deliberate, for the same reason.
Overall notes: I won’t even pretend this chapter’s optimal but it is a total aneurism to plan. I think I managed quite well regardless. There were some mistakes regarding Serra (eg/ should’ve dropped a turn later), and I was expecting more brigand reinforcements to move towards Wil, but otherwise everything goes according to plan. In the later turns Nils and Serra milk for exp, and I barely finish with enough (651/650 exp).
Chapter 10
Turn 1: I have to ferry over Matthew since he gains more exp than everyone else, and this chapter’s exp requirement is just as tight as the previous one.
Turn 2: Normally I’d want to weaken the enemies in the top-right corner, but they’re so easy to ORKO it’s not worthwhile to manipulate player misses. Similarly, Matthew kills the nearby archer instead of weakening him so that Florina & Lyn won’t get hassled on future turns.
Turn 4: Dance Wallace for exp.
Turn 5: I have to deliberately weaken Lundgren for, you guessed it, exp.
Overall notes: 453/450 exp :)
Really appreciate you finishing this, considering how much you seemed to find it a slog at the end.
Despite you saying at one point that rank runs were not for TASing, I for one did find this a more entertaining playtype. Really enjoyed both the wips and the finished product.
Cheers for the run.
I TASed the remaining FOW chapters, including C19xx (Hector mode only).
Link to video
Vbm links:
Chapter 18Chapter 20Chapter 23Chapter 26Chapter 19xx
Notes:
Chapter 18 (3279 frames saved, ~54.65 secs) - I couldn’t find any improvements compared to what Roland did for this chapter.
Chapter 20 (1005 frames saved, ~16.75 secs) - The only advantage of using the torch here is to end turn 1 EP prematurely.
Chapter 23 (601 frames saved, ~10.02 secs) - Marcus kills the mercenary 2 spaces above him because he’s the first enemy to move on EP.
Chapter 26 (7125 frames saved, ~2 mins) - This is where things get interesting. Basically the strategy boils down to controlling the enemies each turn and ending the turn as soon as possible. It’s not quite that simple, however, since the enemies that move first are placed fairly deep into the map, hence why I have to send Marcus chasing after them. I also have to acquire 2 chests, the boots and the rescue staff. What’s interesting is that if I load up an enemy thief’s inventory and acquire a chest item, the thief will send an item to Merlinus. This very exploit is used to acquire the rescue staff. Also, the first enemy phase is so complicated I figured I’d break it down by individual moves:
• Move a mercenary out of Marcus’ way
• Nove another mercenary 2 spaces down (forces an armor to attack Marcus from the left)
• Have 2 mages run away from Jaffar
• Have a hero rescue an archer (the hero is placed such as to force Jaffar to attack the nearby mercenary from below)
• Move another 2 enemies out of Jaffar’s range
• Have a bishop give all his items to a thief
• Advance said thief towards the rescue staff chest
A lot of the enemy placement I do involves forcing an enemy to attack from the particular tile I torched, as this allows me to trigger the glitch. That’s why, for instance, I move an archer above Florina on turn 3 EP. By turn 5 I’m basically spamming end turn since the chests are acquired and I have trapped the first enemy that moves into attacking Florina from a torched spot. Interestingly enough, I have to re-torch that spot on turn 13 in order to keep using the glitch.
Chapter 19xx- On turn 2, I deliberately place Priscilla in between an archer and an armor in order to force another armor to attack her from above. Interestingly enough, I manage to beat the chapter without even injuring a single enemy.
---
The total time saved adds up to about 12010 frames or roughly 3 minutes, 20 seconds.
I also updated the Sacred Stones torch glitch video to include C19 (see here).
Thank you for all this info and tests.
Did you tried to make an enemy kill Nino and rescue Zephiel? Since you can control the enemies at the very beginning of the EP, maybe it's worthy to go and move Marcus over there, but maybe other enemies would move first if you do so. Worth a try i guess.
Link to video
Posted this info just to have it here so it doesn't get lost into memories.
According to the video above, you can link a Japanese copy of Fire Emblem to Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi. If you do this you can skip Lyn Mode saving more than 15 minutes.
According to the video above, you can link a Japanese copy of Fire Emblem to Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi. If you do this you can skip Lyn Mode saving more than 15 minutes.
I think that's only true in the Japanese version, since Fuuin wasn't released outside of Japan. Speaking of which, if you ever decide to redo this game, I'd suggest using the Japanese version, there's a lot of optimisation improvements you could implement at the very least.
According to the video above, you can link a Japanese copy of Fire Emblem to Fire Emblem Fuuin no Tsurugi. If you do this you can skip Lyn Mode saving more than 15 minutes.
I think that's only true in the Japanese version, since Fuuin wasn't released outside of Japan. Speaking of which, if you ever decide to redo this game, I'd suggest using the Japanese version, there's a lot of optimisation improvements you could implement at the very least.
Yeah, that's what I said above. Though, doing this means that I have to level up Florina in Eliwood Mode but that may be easy using the mine glitch in the chapter she recruits.
Grinding Florina in Eliwoot Mode is certainly faster than the 15-20 minutes you'd normally spend in Lyn Mode, so it's worth it on that basis alone. Not to mention you get x3 multipliers rather than x2 for effective weapons, which may speed up a few combats here and there. Mainly, the cursor movement on many maps is far from optimal, especially for RNG advancement, and I'm sure there's probably some tactical refinements that could be implemented too.
Grinding Florina in Eliwoot Mode is certainly faster than the 15-20 minutes you'd normally spend in Lyn Mode, so it's worth it on that basis alone. Not to mention you get x3 multipliers rather than x2 for effective weapons, which may speed up a few combats here and there. Mainly, the cursor movement on many maps is far from optimal, especially for RNG advancement, and I'm sure there's probably some tactical refinements that could be implemented too.
Yeah, there are a few room of improvements here and there. Im trying to link these 2 games on on Japanese with VBALink (http://www.vbalink.info) and im not sure if I should go to a particular screen on Fuuin no Tsurugi to trigger it. Im confused
EDIT: I can link 2 VBA instances to fight in Link Arena wich means that Linking in this emulator do work.
Was bored one day and decided to hex edit the current published TAS to leave the animations on and add delays into it and made this video:
Link to video
And another day was watching Vykan's implementation of the Torch Staff Glitch on Ursula's Map (Ch26) and got some ideas on how to improve it, and came up with this:
Link to video
I saved aprox like 20 seconds, will paste the description to understand what happens:
As the title states it, this is a Concept of a Strategy that ables you to end this chapter as fast as possible using the Torch Staff Glitch that allows you to control the Enemy Phase.
The strategy in a nutshell is that you can complete the map without going into the castle and going into battle, saving some time there. Prevent the enemy to unlock the doors, if the enemy can't reach you, they won't chase you, so I had make the enemies with keys drop them, make the thieves trade with other units to full their inventory and making them to pick the Rescue Staff from the chest, since you are controlling them and their inventory is full you can drop one item to Merlinus, the same happens with the other thieft that picks the Boots. And reduce a lot of time by killing Jaffar and Nino and rescuing Zephiel with the Rescue Staff that is sent to Merlinus, this removes the Other Phase completely. Ursula is also killed so no reinforcements will appear.
Take in mind that this may be improved, for instance, I think you can use the Torch Staff 2 times instead of 3 with a few tweaks, but that is just theory by now.
How to do the Torch Staff Glitch:
* Use the torch staff in a spot where you know an enemy unit will land.
* Wait for the enemy unit to land there (the enemy can even attack when landing and still works).
* You have to reset the game just before it grays out.
* Resume your game and if done right, you will be in Enemy Phase.
So, to do this you will need:
* Merlinus needs to be deployed.
* Pent with a Torch Staff (from Ch18) and Bolting (from Ch25).
* Louise needs to be in the map (to support Pent to kill Ursula).
* Ninian with Filla’s Might (from Ch22).
* A unit that can't counter from 2 spaces.
This is the turn by turn commentary:
Turn 1: Pent uses the Torch Staff, in the Enemy Phase, a Knight moved into the Torch Staff Tile that triggers the glitch, moved Ursula one space northeast, and moved the southeast Bishop to trade with a thieft to full his inventory and then moved him north. Jaffar kills the archer.
Turn 2: Pent uses the Torch Staff in a different spot, and moved a unit (in this case Marcus) southeast to be used later. Made the enemy Paladin hits Jaffar and Jaffar misses him twice (can't crit Jaffar), another Knight moved into the second Torch Staff Tile then moved some units arround so Jaffar won't reach them and moved a Mercenary one tile south that will trigger the Torch Staff Glitch the next turn, moved Ursula all the way to the norteast and moved the thieft north, the second thieft appears on the west. Jaffar kills the Knight.
Turn 3: Pent used the Torch Staff for the last time and moved Marcus to the west. The enemy Paladin hits Jaffar and is killed back and another Knight near kills Jaffar, a Mercenary lands on the second Torch Staff Tile, moved the second thieft to the north and made some enemy units trade with him to full his inventory, moved Ursula all the way to the northeast to kill Nino with her Bolting and moved the east thieft to the north to open the door.
Turn 4: Moved Louise one tile west so Pent will recieve her Support Bonus, Ninian dances for Pent with Filla's Might, Pent crits and kills Ursula, in the Enemy Phase a mage move to attack Marcus, landing in the third Torch Staff Tile, moved the west thieft north and the east thieft to open the chest with the Rescue Staff and sent it to Merlinus and made an enemy to the northeast drop the Door Key.
Turn 5: Made Pent get the Rescue Staff from Merlinus and use it to Rescue Zephiel so Hector rescues him, moved Marcus out of the reach of the mage since it is not needed and an enemy holding a Door Key opens the west door with the chests.
Turn 6: Moved Marcus to the west again to use the glitch and moved the west thieft to pick the Boots from the chest and sent it to Merlinus and made a Knight near rescue the thieft so he won't move.
Turn 7: Moved Marcus and waits the chapter to end.
