A 274 frame improvement over the existing run using an entirely new experience route.

It's finally done! This was easily the hardest TAS I have worked on, and I am happy to finally have it on the workbench. Despite being only a small improvement in frame count over Phil's run, this TAS is completely different. I used a new experience route where I lost frames early on to gain enough experience for the powerful elbow attack to use earlier in level 4, saving enough frames overall to make it an improvement.

It took me many restarts and failed attempts before I settled upon this route. Dave_dfwm's wips were also scrapped since I couldn't get enough experience later on to make the early savings meaningful.

Overall I am very pleased with this run, despite being under 9 minutes long it challenged me every step of the way until everything came together at the very end. I think the strategy used here is optimal overall, although it can probably be done slightly better, if RNG and enemy behaviour is carefully reverse engineered and analyzed.

Special thanks to Dave_dfwm for time saving suggestions and previous WIPs.

Samsara: Judging.

Samsara: File replaced with a 105-frame improvement.

Samsara: Down to 14, now. Accepting as an improvement to the published run.

fsvgm777: Processing.