Ok, reached a good spot to give a preview. I'm up to about 3 and a half minutes, proceeding slowly but surely in making the master run. Compared to my last test I'm about 45 seconds faster at this point. I've also already done all my shopping for the game, so I won't have to hit any more stores.
I hunt the warthogs much faster when building up to level 4 by abusing the spawning mechanics. Conveniently, it seems "the counter" is at memory location $0008. This counts down on each non-lag frame and controls when enemies spawn. By keeping my eye on this while playing, I figured out when each enemy spawns in relation to the others and planned the pattern I used. Basically, I need to make sure I'm off the screen when it comes time for the enemy to spawn, giving me about 4 sec to make a pass through. Because the left enemy (middle of the three) spawns first, it's close going left, but I have time left over going to the right. However, there are still some mysteries as far as exactly where you need to be to make some of the enemies spawn. It seems that if you are too close or too far the spawn won't happen. One of the warthogs (leftmost of the three I hunt) is a little shy, but he seems to come out when I go down to the bridge.
This level of attention to the spawning really paid off, I do this area over 20 sec faster. In some hunting areas I'm sure there's even more to gain. If every levelup works out this well, it may be possible to break 40 minutes! Next up is the swamp where I'll definitely be getting a big improvement.
http://home.comcast.net/~f_amoroso/Crystalis-TheAxeManv0.6.fcm
