Summary
- "Pacifist" Main Objective
- Lowest "Touch" and "Hits" arbitrary Sub-Objective
- Abuses Programming Errors
- Uses Game Reset Sequence
- Emulator used:
BizHawk (2.5.1 interim)
- RealTime:15:05.15 GameTime:13:56(last input) Frames:54309 Re-records:57250
Introduction
This run feats finishing the game without killing any monsters, or trick the game into thinking that.
It use the save bug with maria in order to unlock relics for alucard, as a bonus you also obtain 200 mana, making the run smooth.
The sub-objective to make the lowest "touch" and "hits" (see explanation below) does reduce overall speed, but makes the interaction with monsters as low as possible.
Explanation
Hits and Touchs
- Touch are interactions with monsters hitbox, without damaging them, one way to tell is that the monster name will appear on the bottom right of the screen when you "touch" it.
- Hits are attacks interactions with monsters, it will in 99% cases result in damage on the monster, sometime monsters are invulnerable on some parts (stone plant), or like golden skulls just immune to any damage on the whole hitbox.
In this run, to achieve the lowest touch and hits possible, im using the mist, or just avoid the monsters, overall the run would be slightly faster (seconds) without that restriction.
You may consider hitting the vase, pushing the switch in entrance/keep, or all the candles broken as interaction too, but im defining them (arbitraly) as element of the scenery and this run aim rather at no interaction with monsters.
The only touch is with the darkwing bat boss, the 2 hits are made on dracula (9999dmg luck underflow bug, requires 2 duplicator, so its an extra 500k$ to get that you could save from no such restriction).
Character choice
I've tested the pacifist idea with all characters, maria been the only suitable one to accomplish true pacifist.
- Richter will not work simply because he only have 10 MP, the sword brother spell requires 30 MP and let you get a million $ very fast, the alternative is to collect for hours the 25$ bags until you have duplicator.
- Alucard scenario is a lot more interresting, because it allow for "live" swap of characters to gather the relics, such a run will be display here later, unfortunatly, its not possible to complete it without killing at least one boss, it is by definition inferior because of that.
SRAM Usage
It is necessary to use "replay" mode to get the duplicator, as its required to skip shaft at the end (with many heart refresh), you must use dirty sram.
The verif movie is placed inside the bk2 directly, its called CV-NitM-unlock-replay.bk2 (advance to frame 47407 to generate the sram)
Flaws, Glitches'n'Routes
- Karasuman skip is very easy, you only have to morph into wolf on the first frame of input after the loading, note that darkwingbat gate doesnt start before you move into the room, and I couldnt find any way to glitch myself out aside whats presented here (half blood).
- You cannot see it but the damage (from one of the shuriken hits) on dracula is 9999 and its the maximum, to obtain this you need to have a negative luck value, in this run alucard got 10, equiping a duplicator means -10, so you need 2 duplicators to make this work, dracula got 10000hp so the second hit kills him regardless whats the dmg from it.
- Ive tested to go by medusa, she does hit for 100 under poison with the sword (attack, not touch), but good luck getting half blood with it, looked impossible to me, all her others attacks arent strong enought.
- Im buying 2 flame shurikens, but only use one (ooops), so you can reduce shop time by a whopping 12 frames, also buying leather shield instead iron saves some 7000$.
- The wolf in reverse castle is purely to show off, its probably slower than just go directly with bat, note that the spike dont hurt the wolf somehow (!?!).
- Ive found that there is a good ratio of bat and wolf in the movie overall and im happy with that, despite not been the fastest.
- The bat squeeze at the end is also slower as it wasnt aligned correctly, but the squeeze in outerwall was definitly faster than crossing the door, it is again a case of me trying to show off bugs rather than going stricly for speed.
- The bestiary showing dracula from prologue is something that unlock in any case scenario, even if you dont do the prologue.
- Choosing the other save point in entrance isnt totally arbitrary; it mean you dont have to deal with the skeleton "guarding" the upside savepoint
- Joseph cloak / pink color cape are another "artistic" choice of mine, they arent required.
- The name input ARUKADO and PACIFIST are not necessary of course.
- Having 69HP by the end of the run is totally accidental, you take 1dmg from poison and 130 from the boss, 131 total dmg on 200hp.
- The rerecord count is inacurate, im reusing the any% to make the sram, it is actually ~ 15k.
PSX vs Saturn
The psx pacifist run does use "revenge" tech to trick the game into thinking you didnt defeat a monster, and of course cannot obtain all relics like in this run, and feature different routing.
I dont think cross obsoletion should happen, simply because the run paramaters are far too different, instead I think if a psx run can manage to lower the number of (revenge)kills then it should be obsolete with that.
I may attempt that later but no promise on wether its possible or not, I just dont know.
