Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Seed farming:
Only the last enemy killed can drop an item. Thus, in a mixed-enemy fight, kill the seed-dropping enemy last.
Strength Seed: Fierce Bear (1/32 chance)
Near Jipang on the mainland, find the shrine. There are 5 horizontal tiles south of the shrine that border the ocean and the only enemies that will appear are Fierce Bears and King Froggores. Note that an Inn is useful in the shrine.
Agility Seed: Avenger Raven (1/8 chance)
Fight near Muor. This location is also good for Metal Slimes which is useful for leveling certain party combinations. Incidentally, Metal Slimes drop agility seeds as well, with a 1/16 chance. You can buy poison moth powder to confuse the slimes.
Acorns of Life: Kong (1/32 chance)
Fight outside of Samanao, use the Inn right inside the town as needed. Make sure you kill the Kong last, as they often call Elysium Birds for help.
Two ways to farm.
1. Grind away while leveling. Get happy when you see the occasional drop.
2. Manipulate the drop.
How to manipulate:
In short, you have to change how the fight ends to try and get the drop to happen.
Example of manipulation with a solo character and one enemy remaining.
Savestate
Fight and kill enemy (no drop)
reload, parry, then kill enemy (no drop)
reload, use herb, then kill enemy (no drop)
reload, use poison moth powder, kill enemy (Kong has a treasure chest)
With spell users, many combinations are available to try. If nothing works, do a Parry, get a new savestate, and start again.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I've been playing this game a lot lately, doing some limited party concept runs. I'll post a quick bit here in case anyone is interested.
So far, I have won the game with:
Solo Hero (no other character has any EXP, only merchant joined for new town quest)
Solo Sage (started as a fighter, all other chars have zero EXP, dead hero along for the ride)
Solo Fighter (yes, this was tough, but it worked)
Duo of Soldier and Merchant
Duo of Pilgrim and Wizard
Trio of Merchants
Currently working on (by far the hardest), a trio with Merchant, Goof-off, Goof-off
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I was able to re-create a situation I mentioned earlier in discussions about this game.
Please see the recent WIP list. I have uploaded a movie in which Zoma protects himself in the first round, thus not doing his horrible blizzard breath + snowstorm attack.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Yes vote. The boss fight and intentional death in 2-4 are hilarious to me.
A question: Has a detailed analysis been done to determine whether a third arrow upgrade (acquired in 3-1) would save time? I realize this would really only be helpful on Medusa, which already has a shorter battle now. But how much time would it take to get this, and how much time would it save on the boss?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I've been thinking about somewhat known/popular games that haven't been TASed yet. I keep coming back to NES - Slalom and PSX - Twisted Metal 2. Is there any interest in doing these games?
For Slalom, it could get repetitive, even though the game is short. I was thinking start on Mt. Nasty (the hardest mountain), do all 8 races, then the game takes you to the top 2 races of the other 2 mountains, and then loops back to the top 2 races of Mt. Nasty again. You could get a game over here.
Thus, there would be 12 completed races and 1 race where you get a game over. The game over race could do something humorous where you crash and time-out just inches from the finish.
But within the races, you could go for shortest time, highest score, craziest crashes, close finish, etc. Thus, it may be more of a playaround to improve entertainment and variety rather than just straight up fastest time in all races.
^^ would something like that get accepted? ^^
As for Twisted Metal 2, I have my doubts that I am anywhere skilled enough to TAS that game, but I hope someone will someday, as I think it would be wonderfully entertaining to watch.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Doesn't start from reset. Doesn't play full game. Uses hacked game. I'm pretty sure all of those things are generally against the stated rules of the site.
I'm not even sure if 100% coin could be a good goal in a regular playthrough since coins reappear in each level reentry.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Fun Fact: You can actually do a wall clip in the room where you fight the final boss. You can position yourself at the height of the helicopter, but it appears that arrows and the machine gun can't damage the helicopter (they don't even hit it). It appears the boss is designed to only take damage from grenades.
You can also jump off the right side of that screen, but you soft lock yourself there.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Re: the discussion about taking damage.
In almost every case, I'm actually not sure taking damage can save time. On most enemies, I can avoid or kill them with no delay. On some enemies this is unavoidable, so there may be a 2 - 8 frame slowdown to time a jump slash or dodge the enemy. However, taking damage results in a knockback which would put you further behind than 10 frames of distance.
The direction of the knockback is determined by what way Rambo is facing, and it takes 8 frames (from a run) to turn him around. So you'd have to turn him around to get the knockback the right way, and then use more frames to turn him back around to get going the right direction again.
I think the only times taking damage would save time would be with the bouncing ball enemies that pause occasionally to be vulnerable and killed. But as an artistic choice, I think it would look weird to take no damage the whole movie except for two or three places near the end.
The previous movie (which had a stated goal of no damage) was accepted, so I assumed that was an OK precedent to go on. However, I completely understand if this current run would be obsoleted someday by a "takes damage to save time" run if it is shown that taking damage can result in more than a 3-4 seconds of time reduced.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I have an emulator question and hope someone can answer it. While making my run, I went back and rewatched multiple times and I wanted to fast-forward certain sections (such as the time spent as Co).
The emulator gives the option to fast forward up to 6400%, but while using this, it never seems to go faster than just 300 or 400%. Additional speeding up didn't change emulator speed. Can anyone tell me why?
That warp brings him back to the very beginning of the game. This isn't useful since the characters will do their beginning of the game dialogue until you rescue the POW. And when you rescue the POW, you're already just half a screen away from the helicopter to take you home anyway.
I don't know how or where that could work in other places, or if you could be warped to other places (not just the start of the game). I can mess around a bit, but I don't think anything will be found.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
During the Shredder fight:
If you place the floating shuriken a little lower, Shredder falls a bit and then hits it. However, if he takes his final hit on the shuriken while falling, he falls at an angle into the ground and explodes, effectively. This shortens his death animation. However, I'm not sure on the net difference in frames since he'll have to go a bit further for each shuriken hit.
The original video I made which is posted on the TMNT resource page shows this.
Edit: I just realized that the shorter death animation won't make a difference in the last frame input.... but would only (possibly) shorten the total video length.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
You'll have to edit the TMNT resource page since the floating shuriken glitch is done by someone other than Mike, and it is used as a last-input timesaver.
(yes vote)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Dang.... toward the end, (level 48) even looks difficult for a TAS-racer to win them! I'm wondering if they put level 48 in there as the "kill screen" for this game, thinking no one would beat it.
Yes vote - I thought it was very entertaining, and I like the all items all first place goal.
But I do have a question - why did you not use your bombs on level 48 to blow up the cars when they got behind you?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Great run. I have a question though..
In the very first grinding scene, why fight werewolves? They take two hits and skeletons just take one hit.
Is there a way to grind with skeletons, or some combination of skeletons and werewolves?
-------- now that I think about it though, I suppose any time savings or heart gains may not be useful due to the forced waiting of the day/night cycle.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Has anyone ever tried just killing Jaws on level 1?
In other words, don't use time getting the transceiver, level 2, level 3, or the sub. Skip the bonus shell scene.
Just fight Jaws (perhaps 3 times) immediately and skip the other stuff.
Is this even possible? If so, has it been tested for time?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Thanks for the shoutout regarding my WIP from many years ago!!
See the YouTube encode. At 6:38, the blue-overall guy comes out, you kick him, and throw him off the cliff. However, you put in an extra knee to the head that seems unnecessary.... Since he falls off, can you skip the knee to the head? The knee to the head doesn't give any points that count toward earning the elbow punch.
Also, in the final room, you elbow punch the 4th wave of guys (the two right before machine gun guy). After the elbow punch, is it faster to floor punch (once each?) to kill them than to let them get up and kicked down again?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
You've clearly done stuff with this game that's way above my head. Maybe you can take 30 minutes off of the non-item glitch run now. I didn't quite understand all of your submission text, but many things became clear just by watching the run.
Naming a slot ypp somehow gave you a bewildered metal babble with a level 1 pilgrim ready to crit??!?! That's pretty spectacular. Great thinking saving with Luisa instead of the King.
I had two questions though (sorry if they're explained in your submission text novel).
1. Is there any way you could have gotten the Killer Bee fight faster? By rough calculation, I reached and completed my fight 10 seconds faster (timed after exiting Kanave at night). Since you've destroyed every other aspect of the RNG in the game, I was wondering if you could have done that segment faster. I do realize that 10 seconds isn't much in a 40 minute movie...
2. Once you were at the end of the boss rush, how did you get 5 herbs in a row to get 240+ damage on Zoma? I know it's all manipulation, but how did you manage that randomness at the end, in the fight, without having to heal about 50 times before the fight to get favorable RNG?
Fun Fact: I wish I had an emulator recording of this, but I once got Zoma to "stand guard" during the first round of the fight instead of Breath + Snowstorm. If this can be replicated, it'd be very useful.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
I'd like to extend on what mklip2001 said. Is it possible to NOT take damage during the Pirate Ship boss? I would rather see a fight that is 90 frames longer with no damage - then you could add the tag "takes no damage" to make the video even better, IMHO.
Still voted yes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
As the author of the previous (most likely now to be obsoleted video), I'm happy to say a few things here.
When I submitted my run, it was rejected due to bad game choice, and only brought back after the big site overhaul a couple years ago. I'm glad to see that my original run was very well done in terms of standards and that most of the time improvement came from a trick I didn't know about in level 1.
I'm more impressed with the higher score than the 1.5 seconds saved. Did you watch my video to try and find spots of missed targets?
My one concern is at the end of level 4. Is the weird jump and pause the procedure for removing the lag frame? I don't think it's worth causing the music to go out at the end of the game. I watched the encode here at work, but I think losing a frame to hear the ending music would be worth it.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
Spoiler:
Fighting Magus Sisters.
Bahamut appears. WTF.
I saw the (similar) AGDQ version of this. You've taken it many steps further. Good job.
Question - will this work exactly the same in the US version? I know that you wouldn't have Cecil's dark wave ability, but will all other glitches work?
.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(253)
Joined: 7/30/2006
Posts: 207
Location: Alefgard, USA
NFITC1 wrote:
Radiant wrote:
I enjoyed watching this run, but I don't think this can claim to be an "all items" run if it skips the big shield.
Voting "No" for this.
I can forgive the not getting the white sword and blue ring (I also don't recall seeing you pick up the first boomerang, but you may have and just never used it) even the potions in favor of keeping the old woman's letter, but to actively ignore the big shield on a number of occasions just doesn't seem right for a "all items" run.
The blue ring, white sword, and short-range boomerang automatically go away when the upgrades are found. I'm OK with skipping them.
However, I agree with NFITC1 about the large shield.
This TAS could easily be fixed to get large shield since the author stops at a shop before the last dungeon. He could buy the large shield instead of the bait.
Personally, that's what I would like to see done. If hex editing can't fix that, only the final dungeon would need to be re-TASed.