So, reviving an old thread to add some information just in case someone might be interested in picking up a TAS for this awesome game in the future.
I'm currently picking up this game as a speedrun and I'm in the progress of creating a reasonable route for a single segment run.
Thanks to the information here in this thread posted I've figured out a few extensions to the Stepcounter stuff, I've found an interesting (but probably pointless) glitch from the youtube to make your main character an unkillable zombie and I've also found something new but probably also useless, that you can run away from boss battles.
Stepcounter & Stepcounter extensions
As it was already mentioned here, certain actions increase the stepcounter, which can be useful to push it past 255. Surprisingly, almost anything that requires you to push the "action" button will increase the counter by 1, even if it doesn't do anything. Pressing "action" on switches that don't react anymore because they are pressed, reading signs from the side, breaking down walls, stepping on switches, etc.
How does that help? If you use a Holy Bottle just before such an action, you will guarantee a overflowed stepcounter, resulting in absolutely no encounter in that room anymore, and the next room will start at 255 steps.
Even before you have Holy Bottles it can be useful, plus it can extend the longevity of individual bottles, giving more availability to run in dungeons and reach inherently 0-step rooms.
Mini-Tutorial I made for potential realtime speedrunners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LVq6idRvOw
In this example I 'read' a sign from the sign, avoiding the textbox and increasing the counter as fast as I can mash the A-button. (I assume a TAS could increase the stepcounter by 30 times per second).
Later on in that dungeon I spam A in front of a statue to extend the Holy Bottle I received from the golem to last until I reach the 0-stepcounter room (Timing it so I avoid both, a probable encounter before and a certain encounter after picking up the red gem) and then also entering the main hall with just a little Holy Bottle left, which will set the stepcounter to 255, regardless whether it'll run out 2 steps in.
Avoiding overworld encounters
On the overworld you can avoid encounters by walking into terrain that pushes you to a side, just as the stepcounter would reach 0. It's as simple as that.
In the realtime speedrun I'll try to route some points where I'll use a Holy Bottle in a specific place and take a very specific route, but a TAS would be able to take complete advantage of unbottled areas and probably completely avoid having to use Holy Bottles on the overworld.
From what I can tell, unfortunately it doesn't work in dungeons.
Running from boss battles
If you equip the +50% flee-speed accessory you can run from boss battles. It takes around ~1.5 minutes and is susceptible to being interrupted. What happens after differs from boss to boss.
Example for running from Gnome where I discovered this in my casual playthrough:
http://www.twitch.tv/yagamoth/v/17566310
I tried it on many other boss encounters, with varying results. Usually I was just able to roam in the bossroom a little, rarely ever able to do much. Sometimes potentially skip/ignore a boss encounter, but it seems to be never really worth it, as it takes quite the setup to survive and a long time to run away compared to just beating the bosses.
In general the triggers to enter boss battles are not deactivated until the bosses are beaten. So if you try to walk through them, the bossfight simply starts a 2nd time. Funnily enough, it usually spawns a multitude of the character and boss sprites.. You could potentially overload and crash the game doing this. Although at some point it seems to simply stop loading sprites.
The most promising boss-flee was on the Midgard-Fields battle, where you fight a dragon at the end. He is pretty easy to run away from in terms of setting it up, and - most importantly - you can actually enter Dhaos' castle early and even defeat him. In theory you'd skip the scene in the castle where you'd lose Gungnir and have the airbattle. The problem however is twofold:
1) You don't get Indignation, which is a ridiculously effective spell against Dhaos and Thor enemies. May not be as much of a problem for a TAS. But...
2) The "can't leave town" trigger in Midgard and the "battlefield" event on the fields are never cleared unless you beat the boss and play out the events. Since you have to cross the fields to get to the unicorn forest, you won't be able to reach there.. At least I haven't figured out how outside of simply going to kill the fieldboss.
Two flee examples:
- In the pegasus airfight you simply start the next battle in the set
- In the coliseum you just straight up lose
Zombie glitch
Very simple: If you get killed by an enemy and petrified at the same time, you can remove the petrification outside of combat and Cress(Cless) will be alive with 0 HP. He can not be killed at all and functions like a fully alive character, no downsides. (Petrification and Paralyzation still count as loss condition).
One would think this would be useful of a non-TAS speedrun, but unfortunately currently I have found no application for it. None of the bosses after Demitel are threatening enough to be an issue with the availability of spamming spells with Arche and Klarth(Clause). Setting it up with a save + reset costs me about ~1min assuming I'm already in the area. Of course a TAS would be faster, but....
Problems with that are:
- Any levelup on Cress will 'heal' you above 0 HP, removing the Zombie status (Even if you are already at 9999 HP through HP+ items). So generally it's only useful for one boss battle
- There are many, many little healing cutscenes that remove your zombie status
- Environmental damage like Odins tower will not work to set up Zombie (not sure if it kills if you are already a Zombie)
- There are very few enemies that petrify
Minor
- Using an hourglass/Chronoglass to get behind NeoDhaos is super simple, and will completely crush him as he doesn't do anything to anyone behind him.
- I managed to open the menu just before entering loading-triggers on the overworld, and save. When loading that savefile it would simply immediately load the zone after spawning briefly on the overworld. The way to do is is weird: You save BEFORE stepping on the tile and then simply stepping on the tile holding X. If you don't save before, it won't open the menu before loading the zone (no idea why that works).
So... Most of all, thanks a ton to Vykan12 for your run comments and insightful commentary on your testrun. This gave me a lot of base to work with. It's unfortunate that the run doesn't "look" exciting enough to TAS it, but to me it's a ton of fun to route :)