.hack//GU Vol. 1 Rebirth (Testing/Planning)

2008-07-09 12:19:07 am

Rawr!

ZED, I'm curious as to how you manage to get your Avatar battle times so low. I've tried to replicate what you do but...gah, a lot of it seems luck dependent, and that sucks for a speed run.

Also, what's your fastest Anna time?

Master ZED

2008-07-10 08:56:57 pm

Quote from Slayer_0:

ZED, I'm curious as to how you manage to get your Avatar battle times so low. I've tried to replicate what you do but...gah, a lot of it seems luck dependent, and that sucks for a speed run.

Also, what's your fastest Anna time?

Some of it is luck dependent, but the avatars are mostly predictable. Once you know what to do, there shouldn't be but a few second variance at most in your times. The only problem with using the simulator for practice is Macha, as its pattern is a little different in the actual fight (the most prevalent difference being that Bolt of Love comes much sooner, and as a result, can't be avoided).

As for Anna, I'm not sure what I did with my videos of Anna, Gate Keeper, and Grunwald, so I can't tell you. I could always make another if you want to see how I handle it.

Slayer_0

Edit history:

Slayer_0: 2008-07-11 08:42:22 pm

2008-07-11 03:34:50 pm

Rawr!

That'd be good, I'd like to see if how I do it is the fastest way. Might use my digital camera to take a video real fast since I'm still looking around for DVD recorders.

EDIT: Here's my strategy, shot with digital camera so quality is horrible. Woo!
http://www.mediafire.com/?wjmn0j1geo1
Volume's kinda low, but whatever, this seems to be faster than berserking it.

Master ZED

2008-07-12 03:36:16 am

I couldn't remember my strategy at all (I just went berserker on my second playthrough), so I had to come up with a new one. It seems to work for now:

Rattlingjoint

2009-03-25 06:56:30 pm

Forgive my Bumping but I've picked up this run atm. I'm currently at 1:44:XX, up to the job extension part and already qualified for the tournament; Thing is I hit this part around 1:20:XX, so the last 24ish minutes of the run have been dedicated to pure leveling. Why? Because to get the Job extension you have be level 20 and I got to this part at lvl 6 lol. @ 1:44:XX I'm currently lvl 14. Meaning its taken me thus far 3ish minutes to gain a level. The means I'm getting these levels however are as optimized as I can get them. The Moon Rabbit trick does appear often in the 24ish minutes but I cant abuse it to go from 6-20. I use other ways of leveling faster then just doing normal field/dungeon runs.

On that my fear is hitting 20 means I'd probably be putting in 40ish+ minutes of leveling smack dab in the middle of the run. I've tried to make it as entertaining and speedy as possible.

My "Goal" if you wanted to call it that was under 3 hours but I think under 3:30:XX might be more realistic idk yet.

Forgive my Bumping but I've picked up this run atm. I'm currently at 1:44:XX, up to the job extension part and already qualified for the tournament; Thing is I hit this part around 1:20:XX, so the last 24ish minutes of the run have been dedicated to pure leveling. Why? Because to get the Job extension you have be level 20 and I got to this part at lvl 6 lol. @ 1:44:XX I'm currently lvl 14. Meaning its taken me thus far 3ish minutes to gain a level. The means I'm getting these levels however are as optimized as I can get them. The Moon Rabbit trick does appear often in the 24ish minutes but I cant abuse it to go from 6-20. I use other ways of leveling faster then just doing normal field/dungeon runs.

On that my fear is hitting 20 means I'd probably be putting in 40ish+ minutes of leveling smack dab in the middle of the run. I've tried to make it as entertaining and speedy as possible.

My "Goal" if you wanted to call it that was under 3 hours but I think under 3:30:XX might be more realistic idk yet.

Rattlingjoint

2009-03-26 02:48:12 am

Just hit 20 now; Game time clocks in at 2:10:XX not too bad and I even made it interesting in the later levels Tongue

sergeman

2013-06-17 03:08:04 pm

Just bumping this thread to see if anyone is still working on it as I'm interested in picking it up.

Champloo

2013-06-18 02:03:01 am

This game and the rest of the series are on my bucket list to run. The fastest route would revolve around grinding out levelups asap to get Haseo to the level needed to beat all the enemies. Getting a lot of items to grind out the final battle would probably be best, and the arena fights are something that might be a problem, if underleveled.

sergeman

2013-06-18 05:15:55 pm

Yeah everything seems to be mainly based on how quickly you can level up to 50 or so. Doing the arena battles underleveled seems like a bit of a headache especially since I would like for it to be a single segment run.

Also in reference to the rest of the series, I saw that Master ZED had a speed run of Vol. 3 from back in 2009 on Youtube. Haven't watched it yet but their might be some good strategies there.

Rattlingjoint

2013-06-20 03:10:45 pm

Glad to see theres still some interest since this series gets little to no love for some reason. Its actually a very straightforward run sans the later arena battles. When I stopped I had just beaten Alkaid at lvl 21 and sort of burned out on how much of a headache being 14 lvls under leveled were. If I had to recommend something it would be getting to at least lvl 30 before taking on endgame.

sergeman

2013-06-21 09:14:59 am

My main concern with being so underleveled is the avatar battles.

sergeman

2013-06-21 09:16:04 am

My main concern with being so underleveled is the avatar battles.

Rattlingjoint

2013-06-21 01:34:16 pm

levels don't effect avatar battles. Those are pretty static throughout. Skeith will do the same damage whether your lvl 50 or 21.

sergeman

2013-06-21 04:17:34 pm

Ok that's good to know. Do you know if the free SP heal glitch only works in the arena or does it work in the field and dungeons as well?

sergeman

2013-06-23 04:00:42 pm

Nevermind I figured it out. I was able to finish the game with Haseo at level 38, but I'm going to see if I can go lower. It's helpful that Pi and Kuhn start at level 41.

Rattlingjoint

2013-06-25 04:37:47 pm

thats basically your Azure Kite battle as you know with Pi and Kuhn doing the bulk. Alkaid and Kuhn fights are the biggest hurdles; 38s a good level theoretically I think a bunch of us came up with lvl 30 as a comfortable level but it didnt factor in the time lost in longer arena fights vs fastest way of leveling.

sergeman

2013-06-26 11:37:42 am

OK so level 30 should be doable huh? Was there ever a consensus on a good way to level? I know there's moon rabbit leveling but that's only effective when your party is a level ending in 0, 2, 4, or 8. Unless you come up with some fancy math to use Gaspard and Piros to manipulate it as well. Also does equipment matter much in terms of attack strength and defense or is it mostly level?

sergeman

2013-07-06 12:57:57 am

So I think level 35 should be a good compromise. Partly because I'm thinking to do it as single segment and partly because at this point I'm still mediocre at arena battles.

MegaMasterX

Edit history:

MegaMasterX: 2016-10-07 08:56:16 am

2016-10-05 06:34:03 am

N1GP Tournament Organizer

Bringing this thread back. I've recently started very seriously routing this game from the ground up and am still very much in the beginning phases. I've been dropping my notes in a OneNote document for ease of access. Anyone have any notes or contact with runners like Master ZED?

sergeman

2016-10-11 12:09:19 pm

Quote from MegaMasterX:

Bringing this thread back. I've recently started very seriously routing this game from the ground up and am still very much in the beginning phases. I've been dropping my notes in a OneNote document for ease of access. Anyone have any notes or contact with runners like Master ZED?

I have some notes that I made for a New Game route, but I don't know of any other runners. Not sure if Master ZED ever completed a run or if so it's not recorded.

Hachrt

Edit history:

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:58:21 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:56:01 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:37:42 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:35:52 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:35:15 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:34:59 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:33:39 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:32:00 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:29:58 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:28:31 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:25:46 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:24:44 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:24:03 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:22:47 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:17:04 am

Hachrt: 2017-04-17 04:14:06 am

2017-04-17 04:11:57 am

Ys, Rockman Dash and .hack// mostly

I've been doing a lot with this game recently. I'm already in touch with MegaMasterX and sergeman.
Currently my only good run has been my second NG+ run timed at 3:09:07 found below.
For that run I still have a lot of criticisms, but I only did the run as a staging point for testing lategame things.

I'll talk about the NG+ route for a little bit, then move onto general New Game stuff.

---

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/135961243

That is infact the fastest possible way to do the Tournament Preliminaries that I have found for NG+. I tried survival battle, but that wound up being 5 minutes slower.
Base 10WP fights turn into 15WP fights via bonus WP if you kill two players.
They take 3 seconds + load time.
Base 30WP fights take like, 1:20+ and you're unlikely to get enough bonus WP to make it worth it.

I did a couple things out of order - like when I made some of my purchases and gathering keywords.
I probably shouldn't have bought the Twinblade Weapon Upgrade.
I messed up the second Atoli area a little bit and wasted a little bit of time.
Fumbled the Moon Rabbit routing I set for myself just before I did the run. Also, level 40 is too high so leveling as much as I did is wrong.
My Tarvos fight is awful and something I need to practice in simulator.
I bought 2 Body Shell when I only needed 1 (probably none are necessary, but it's significant for the Team Raven fight at least).
I died to Endrance once because I was being reckless (read: really dumb).
As a result of my poor money planning I didn't buy enough consumable spells for the Kite fight.
I didn't look into if buying new equipment for Pi or Kuhn was worth it.
Buying an Accessory to boost Haseo's elemental score may have also been worth it.
It's possible I didn't use the permanent buffs on haseo either come to think of it.
I didn't have a magic attack blood or a magic or physical defense seal drop for me either, but those would have helped too if I had them.

80-90% of the damage formula may come from levels, but that still leaves a lot to work with.

And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

I may do one more NG+ run, but I really don't want to focus on that category. I think just by hammering the mistakes out of that route you can maybe get sub 3 hours.

---

There's a lot more stuff I want to go over for New Game and the overall route, but since explaining everything would be a gigantic wall of text, I'll try to be brief.

---

For new game, getting to level 3 before the Pi&Kuhn area allows you to use Sleipnir.
25 Chims, then the King Chim is enough for all the required content in the game. If Dungeons wind up being fast for grinding (not likely) you might need more.
Taking 2-3 fights before kicking Sleipnir, then 4 after kicking Sleipnir + the boss gets you to level 6. Level 6 is pretty ideal for tournament preliminaries.

Skipping encounters to get Symbol Fragments in Atoli's areas is very easy - the method is shown in the NG+ video I linked.
Atoli's next area also skips encounters to gain symbol fragments, the steam bike makes the strategy employed somewhat better.

The next dungeon area only requires 4 smoke screens if you use them right.
There's one room with two enemies and a chim door that takes a minor amount of positioning.
Just enter the encounter and then be as close as possible to the chim door before using smoke screen.

Before Preliminaries, level 6 is also ideal for Fate Worms - which pretty much let us buy anything we want throughout the run.

Δ Weathy Black Pure Bred (Area found by MegaMasterX) is exceptional for kicking them.
Zone in.
Hop on Bike.
Accelerate.
Don't touch any other buttons.
Perfect every time.

After getting the money we desire, purchasing the level 4 weapon and Alchemizing it to +5 is probably worth it. It makes a much bigger difference to skill usage than normal attacks.

After the tutorial Arena Fight, the preliminaries only take about 9-10 minutes.
Here was a video I made during early stages of testing:

I'm not entirely sure it's worth it to fish for specific fights, but the ideal fights are ordered thus:
93WP 93WP 122WP 122WP (Gold Rank) 54WP 54WP (Platinum) 93WP 54WP
And with 35WP from the tutorial fight alongside bonus WP from score in the above fights you reach the required ~750WP. Another example method is:
122WP 122WP 122WP (Gold Rank) 54WP 54WP 54WP 54WP (Platinum) 93WP 30WP (54WP 54WP should work instead, with bonus WP )
That's one more fight, but fishing for specific fights wastes a lot of time as well.

Each fight takes 23 seconds or less assuming you avoid Hennako's 93WP party
Hennako's party is weak, but the fact that she's level 13 and a Wave Master make her extremely tanky against the strategy I employ - my fastest time for her is around 2:30.
That said, the strategy of "Let Atoli kill them" can be thwarted by Silabus. He's cooperative until Gold Rank - take him off Rage after that or his attack skill will knock enemies away from atoli's spell sometimes.

Atoli does tremendous damage with Vak Don, Silabus's isn't shabby either for the fights before Gold Rank (then he gives up casting it). I purchase Mind Scale for everyone with Fate Worm money.
Zan Rom is not good enough. I imagine Rue Kruz isn't either. Gan Bolg may have some merit instead.

It is now at this point we must begin leveling.

Getting Piros helps a lot.
Mostly we want to be abusing Lucky Animals, especially Sleipnir, as much as possible until level 20.
You get the level 14 weapon from an Arena Award, so switch to it when you reach that level.
I think using Atoli and Piros is how I went about it for the most part.

Antares's area, which mimics the later Job Extension area, is fairly ideal for going from 20 to 22 I think.
Taking Atoli and Silibus to this area will catch Silibus up in levels as well.
After that everything gets much more unclear.

I would like to save the Job Extension +1 level for an important level, but maybe just using it to get to 23 is good enough for the Bordeaux fight?
I'm having a little trouble visualizing what I want to do for this area of the game.
I don't know if it's better to B rank an area to get more keywords before Bordeaux, or just to fight her underleveled.

After the Bordeaux fight we unlock some more keywords for leveling.
Sergeman and I think that it's probably best to B rank an area at that point to unlock even higher leveling areas and do the rest of the leveling all in one shot.
It's probable that it's worth one interruption at level 32 to go fight Matsu for his sword.

Finish grinding to whatever level is correct and now all that's left, basically, is a boss rush.
Basically nothing should be different at this point between NG+ and New Game.

I think the run will come out to 5 to 5 1/2 hours with appropriate keywords for grinding. Low 6 hour run at absolute worst.

I've been doing a lot with this game recently.  I'm already in touch with MegaMasterX and sergeman.
Currently my only good run has been my second NG+ run timed at 3:09:07 found below.
For that run I still have a lot of criticisms, but I only did the run as a staging point for testing lategame things.

I'll talk about the NG+ route for a little bit, then move onto general New Game stuff.

---

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/135961243

That is infact the fastest possible way to do the Tournament Preliminaries that I have found for NG+.  I tried survival battle, but that wound up being 5 minutes slower.
Base 10WP fights turn into 15WP fights via bonus WP if you kill two players.
They take 3 seconds + load time.
Base 30WP fights take like, 1:20+ and you're unlikely to get enough bonus WP to make it worth it.

I did a couple things out of order - like when I made some of my purchases and gathering keywords.
I probably shouldn't have bought the Twinblade Weapon Upgrade.
I messed up the second Atoli area a little bit and wasted a little bit of time.
Fumbled the Moon Rabbit routing I set for myself just before I did the run.  Also, level 40 is too high so leveling as much as I did is wrong.
My Tarvos fight is awful and something I need to practice in simulator.  
I bought 2 Body Shell when I only needed 1 (probably none are necessary, but it's significant for the Team Raven fight at least). 
I died to Endrance once because I was being reckless (read: really dumb).  
As a result of my poor money planning I didn't buy enough consumable spells for the Kite fight.  
I didn't look into if buying new equipment for Pi or Kuhn was worth it.  
Buying an Accessory to boost Haseo's elemental score may have also been worth it.
It's possible I didn't use the permanent buffs on haseo either come to think of it.
I didn't have a magic attack blood or a magic or physical defense seal drop for me either, but those would have helped too if I had them.

80-90% of the damage formula may come from levels, but that still leaves a lot to work with.

And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

I may do one more NG+ run, but I really don't want to focus on that category.  I think just by hammering the mistakes out of that route you can maybe get sub 3 hours.

---

There's a lot more stuff I want to go over for New Game and the overall route, but since explaining everything would be a gigantic wall of text, I'll try to be brief.

---

For new game, getting to level 3 before the Pi&Kuhn area allows you to use Sleipnir.
25 Chims, then the King Chim is enough for all the required content in the game.  If Dungeons wind up being fast for grinding (not likely) you might need more.
Taking 2-3 fights before kicking Sleipnir, then 4 after kicking Sleipnir + the boss gets you to level 6. Level 6 is pretty ideal for tournament preliminaries.

Skipping encounters to get Symbol Fragments in Atoli's areas is very easy - the method is shown in the NG+ video I linked.
Atoli's next area also skips encounters to gain symbol fragments, the steam bike makes the strategy employed somewhat better.

The next dungeon area only requires 4 smoke screens if you use them right.
There's one room with two enemies and a chim door that takes a minor amount of positioning.
Just enter the encounter and then be as close as possible to the chim door before using smoke screen.

Before Preliminaries, level 6 is also ideal for Fate Worms - which pretty much let us buy anything we want throughout the run.

Δ Weathy Black Pure Bred (Area found by MegaMasterX) is exceptional for kicking them.
Zone in.
Hop on Bike.
Accelerate.
Don't touch any other buttons.
Perfect every time.

After getting the money we desire, purchasing the level 4 weapon and Alchemizing it to +5 is probably worth it.  It makes a much bigger difference to skill usage than normal attacks.

After the tutorial Arena Fight, the preliminaries only take about 9-10 minutes.
Here was a video I made during early stages of testing:
https://youtu.be/_9Z4pByBSIU

I'm not entirely sure it's worth it to fish for specific fights, but the ideal fights are ordered thus:
93WP 93WP 122WP 122WP (Gold Rank) 54WP 54WP (Platinum) 93WP 54WP
And with 35WP from the tutorial fight alongside bonus WP from score in the above fights you reach the required ~750WP. Another example method is:
122WP 122WP 122WP (Gold Rank) 54WP 54WP 54WP 54WP (Platinum) 93WP 30WP (54WP 54WP should work instead, with bonus WP )
That's one more fight, but fishing for specific fights wastes a lot of time as well.

Each fight takes 23 seconds or less assuming you avoid Hennako's 93WP party
Hennako's party is weak, but the fact that she's level 13 and a Wave Master make her extremely tanky against the strategy I employ - my fastest time for her is around 2:30.
That said, the strategy of "Let Atoli kill them" can be thwarted by Silabus.  He's cooperative until Gold Rank - take him off Rage after that or his attack skill will knock enemies away from atoli's spell sometimes.

Atoli does tremendous damage with Vak Don, Silabus's isn't shabby either for the fights before Gold Rank (then he gives up casting it).  I purchase Mind Scale for everyone with Fate Worm money.
Zan Rom is not good enough.  I imagine Rue Kruz isn't either.  Gan Bolg may have some merit instead.

It is now at this point we must begin leveling.

Getting Piros helps a lot.
Mostly we want to be abusing Lucky Animals, especially Sleipnir, as much as possible until level 20.
You get the level 14 weapon from an Arena Award, so switch to it when you reach that level.
I think using Atoli and Piros is how I went about it for the most part.

Antares's area, which mimics the later Job Extension area, is fairly ideal for going from 20 to 22 I think.
Taking Atoli and Silibus to this area will catch Silibus up in levels as well.
After that everything gets much more unclear.

I would like to save the Job Extension +1 level for an important level, but maybe just using it to get to 23 is good enough for the Bordeaux fight?
I'm having a little trouble visualizing what I want to do for this area of the game.
I don't know if it's better to B rank an area to get more keywords before Bordeaux, or just to fight her underleveled.

After the Bordeaux fight we unlock some more keywords for leveling.
Sergeman and I think that it's probably best to B rank an area at that point to unlock even higher leveling areas and do the rest of the leveling all in one shot.
It's probable that it's worth one interruption at level 32 to go fight Matsu for his sword.

Finish grinding to whatever level is correct and now all that's left, basically, is a boss rush.
Basically nothing should be different at this point between NG+ and New Game.

I think the run will come out to 5 to 5 1/2 hours with appropriate keywords for grinding.  Low 6 hour run at absolute worst.

Rattlingjoint

2018-01-24 07:59:46 am

Late to the party but glad theres interest in a rebirth run still. Its been about 9 years since Ive touched Rebirth speedrunning but I think its a crime that there isnt a Newgame+ run yet.

When I was routing my run it made it to Alkaid before I hit a wall against Alkaid. To build on Hachrts route, its pretty much a lucky animal run. The runs straight forward until the arena qualifiers. Its possible to do the qualis and optimal I found with only 2 fights at level 6. Picking two of the highest level fights rewarded enough WP to qualify since your so underleveled. The trick was to use pretty much all hangekis and beast awakening. Fights against harvest cleric, shadow warlocks or steam gunners as captains are optimal since they can be easily dodged and countered.

From there is where the tricky part was, which was getting to lvl 20 for the job extension. Earlier posts use the moon rabbit trick, and it works pretty well as long as the word had the moon rabbit close to the port in. Not every level would spawn a rabbit, I used the damaging animal for higher level grinding. Basically youd port in, kick the animal, engage in a fight, let the animal do 40% of the monsters health, smokescreen out and reengage until its dead. Doing these two methods, leveling took 40 minutes to go from 7 to 20. 21 is fine for Bordeaux and you can beat Matsu at that level too. The next stage of the run would probably be get to level 30 and face the final 3 arena matches. Should only take 20 minutes or so.

I estimated the run would be sub four hours in total. (My unoptimized test run clocked 2:4X at the time of Alkaid. Using Last Recode, it would probably be much faster.

Late to the party but glad theres interest in a rebirth run still. Its been about 9 years since Ive touched Rebirth speedrunning but I think its a crime that there isnt a Newgame+ run yet.

When I was routing my run it made it to Alkaid before I hit a wall against Alkaid. To build on Hachrts route, its pretty much a lucky animal run. The runs straight forward until the arena qualifiers. Its possible to do the qualis and optimal I found with only 2 fights at level 6. Picking two of the highest level fights rewarded enough WP to qualify since your so underleveled. The trick was to use pretty much all hangekis and beast awakening. Fights against harvest cleric, shadow warlocks or steam gunners as captains are optimal since they can be easily dodged and countered.

From there is where the tricky part was, which was getting to lvl 20 for the job extension. Earlier posts use the moon rabbit trick, and it works pretty well as long as the word had the moon rabbit close to the port in. Not every level would spawn a rabbit, I used the damaging animal for higher level grinding. Basically youd port in, kick the animal, engage in a fight, let the animal do 40% of the monsters health, smokescreen out and reengage until its dead. Doing these two methods, leveling took 40 minutes to go from 7 to 20. 21 is fine for Bordeaux and you can beat Matsu at that level too. The next stage of the run would probably be get to level 30 and face the final 3 arena matches. Should only take 20 minutes or so.

I estimated the run would be sub four hours in total. (My unoptimized test run clocked 2:4X at the time of Alkaid. Using Last Recode, it would probably be much faster.