Dragon Warrior Run

2009-05-07 09:22:50 pm

Hello Everyone,

My first post here, but I've been checking out the site for a while now. I noticed that there was a lack of Dragon Warrior (Original NES) runs. By lack I mean none :P. Any particular reason for that? Other then the fact they tend to be pretty long games. Anyone know if anyone has made an attempt?

Was thinking about going for it as a first run. Maybe a single segment if it's possible.

Any feedback or suggestions is welcomed.

-Opie

Thread title:

ZenicReverie

2009-05-07 09:35:03 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

wow, could you pick a harder game for your first run? probably not

If you're serious about doing this, and I mean completely serious, then good luck to you. It'd be nice to see a Dragon Warrior (any) run. It will most likely be pretty long. Remember that you could abuse death to teleport back to the home castle. Watch the TAS if you haven't; although it won't be very helpful for an actual run, it may provide you with a path to follow at least. Do a test run and come back with a time along with your strategies if you'd like more help.

Also, use the search, there might another, older thread you should be using to discuss this.

OptimusPriNe

2009-05-07 09:44:19 pm

Thanks for the tips...I'll have to dig through here and try to find an older thread. We'll see how things go with a test run, figure out if it's doable. There is probably an FAQ with the answer to this question somewhere, but is there anything in particular that is used to record the runs? I'm sure you could do it with a VHS or something, but I'm not sure what the preferred method is.

-Opie

kareshi

2009-05-07 09:48:21 pm

If done decently, well, or perfectly it would still be boring. I think Dragon Warrior 1 would be a good TG world record, but not an interesting speedrun. There's not much to it, no sequence breaks, and lots of leveling up.

OptimusPriNe

2009-05-07 09:55:44 pm

Well I was thinking maybe Dragon Warrior 4. I don't know how many people would be familiar with that, but it's split into 5 chapters...don't know if they could be split into "levels" so they'd be individual speed runs for each chapter or something like that.

They can be boring, but I think the same can be said of most of the RPGs that I've seen run on here. Except DW is a bit more die hard RPG.

Was also thinking Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for Wii. A bit more action.

ZenicReverie

2009-05-07 10:25:00 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Not sure what you mean by splitting it up by chapter. If you're talking about segmenting, you can do that whenever you can save; however, if you mean an IL table, then that might not work depending on how the chapters are handled.

DW definitely requires a lot more grinding than other RPGs, especially since they don't have a lot of damage items that I remember. I agree with kareshi that if there was glitching or sequence breaks they would be must sees, but without them only those really into these games would enjoy it and know it's fast.

If you'd like to discuss what games would be good to run, I suggest asking in irc or starting a thread in the gaming discussion forum.

scaryice

Edit history:

scaryice: 2009-05-08 12:01:28 am

2009-05-07 11:48:25 pm

I would love to see any NES Dragon Warrior runs. But let's make something clear: you need to be very dedicated and patient to do one of these games. DW1 may be the best to start out with because it's so simple. But even then you would need to get a lot of luck which could lead to a lot of frustration.

OptimusPriNe

2009-05-08 02:57:39 pm

I'm well aware of the challenges Grin

Where is fun without frustration 8)

sunburstbasser

2009-05-08 06:19:51 pm

Silver Hawk!

Dragon Warrior 1 seems feasible, if difficult. As suggested, watch the TAS at tasvideos.org. You will likely NOT be able to replicate the entirety of the run, such as the RNG abuse. But you don't need to save any princess, and with a chart of some kind you won't need lights for dungeons. Just count how many steps you have to go!

The TAS uses death warping to return to the starting castle multiple times. Do it. It'll cut down on backtracking and you can save your game right there, IIRC. I would recommend doing a segmented run first, and once that is up adding a single-segment run.

Would the run be boring to watch? Arguably. Thats the nature of most RPGs. They are fun to play, but not so fun to watch (well, maybe Xenosaga). This should not be a factor in running the game.

Darkwing Duck

2009-05-08 11:32:45 pm

Highly Evolved

http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,5582.0.html

I'll be out of work for a little bit in the next couple months, so I could work on it, then.

As for the runs, the original really is kind of out since there's way too much luck manipulation to have it look at all speedy.

II is just ridiculously hard and has a similar issue to I, it's near impossible to beat low level.

III is the one I've worked on. Very much easier than the first two and shorter than IV.

IV is long, but doable. It wouldn't break into different chapters say like Mega Man 9 does with stages since you work all chapters independently of each other anyway and you save before the start of each, so you have all the time in the world to perfect a chapter.

Mapping out DW IV isn't that difficult, really. Ch. 1 can be completed sans Healie. Ch. 2 is fairly straightforward, get to Endor with just enough cash to be an Iron Claw. I don't know of any good level up areas, though, so it's hard to speed through. I think Ch. 3 would have some luck to speed through it, but not insane luck. Ch. 4 would just have you speed to get Odin and then try to beat Balzack as soon as you could.

Ch. 5 is just going through until you get Alena then level up at the Royal Crypt until you can speed through all requirements. It would be interesting what party set up you'd have. Maybe wait until getting Ragnar to level up but that would require beating Keeleon. Alena is a must for a speed run. Cristo is good for normal enemies as beat/defeat has generally solid success rates against normal enemies. Brey and Mara are mainly a wash and I'm not sure which one you'd use. Maybe it's a depend on the dungeon since you'd be leveling in a spot where every character earns XP. I would imagine dungeons with no boss, leaving the Hero behind so you have fewer menus would be ideal.

The OP can check out my DW III topic if he/she would like to discuss that particular game.

http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,5582.0.html

I'll be out of work for a little bit in the next couple months, so I could work on it, then.

As for the runs, the original really is kind of out since there's way too much luck manipulation to have it look at all speedy.

II is just ridiculously hard and has a similar issue to I, it's near impossible to beat low level.

III is the one I've worked on.  Very much easier than the first two and shorter than IV.

IV is long, but doable.  It wouldn't break into different chapters say like Mega Man 9 does with stages since you work all chapters independently of each other anyway and you save before the start of each, so you have all the time in the world to perfect a chapter.

Mapping out DW IV isn't that difficult, really.  Ch. 1 can be completed sans Healie.  Ch. 2 is fairly straightforward, get to Endor with just enough cash to be an Iron Claw.  I don't know of any good level up areas, though, so it's hard to speed through.  I think Ch. 3 would have some luck to speed through it, but not insane luck.  Ch. 4 would just have you speed to get Odin and then try to beat Balzack as soon as you could.

Ch. 5 is just going through until you get Alena then level up at the Royal Crypt until you can speed through all requirements.  It would be interesting what party set up you'd have.  Maybe wait until getting Ragnar to level up but that would require beating Keeleon.  Alena is a must for a speed run.  Cristo is good for normal enemies as beat/defeat has generally solid success rates against normal enemies.  Brey and Mara are mainly a wash and I'm not sure which one you'd use.  Maybe it's a depend on the dungeon since you'd be leveling in a spot where every character earns XP.  I would imagine dungeons with no boss, leaving the Hero behind so you have fewer menus would be ideal.

The OP can check out my DW III topic if he/she would like to discuss that particular game.

Humorisk

2009-05-09 07:25:38 am

There is a FAQ on the main page here that can answer all your recording questions if you decide to put in the work for this. I hope you have a lot of free time whichever game you choose.

I think a speedrun of the first Dragon Warrior, and perhaps the others too, would be the most monumentally boring thing in the world. The game is basically just one big level grind. It'd be like watching a speedrun of World of Warcraft or something. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd watch it without question since I'm a pathetic loser with no life. It'd just be a grand cure for insomnia is all.

I was wondering if the people working on Dragon Warrior 3 had abandoned it or not. That might possibly be the easiest, if I were to make an uneducated guess. Dragon Warrior 2 would just be pure masochism. Part 3 doesn't have all the instant deaths and it is fairly generous with the metal babbles and metal slimes. They are pretty easy to kill with a fighter's critical hits or the poison needle too. Part 4 might be about the same, but it is longer and seems less flexible. Meh.....you should just go with the second one for entertainment value alone.

Actually, in the remake of 1 and 2 for the SNES, doesn't the leveling go quicker? You could try that.

There is a FAQ on the main page here that can answer all your recording questions if you decide to put in the work for this.  I hope you have a lot of free time whichever game you choose.

I think a speedrun of the first Dragon Warrior, and perhaps the others too, would be the most monumentally boring thing in the world.  The game is basically just one big level grind.  It'd be like watching a speedrun of World of Warcraft or something.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd watch it without question since I'm a pathetic loser with no life.  It'd just be a grand cure for insomnia is all.

I was wondering if the people working on Dragon Warrior 3 had abandoned it or not.  That might possibly be the easiest, if I were to make an uneducated guess.  Dragon Warrior 2 would just be pure masochism.  Part 3 doesn't have all the instant deaths and it is fairly generous with the metal babbles and metal slimes.  They are pretty easy to kill with a fighter's critical hits or the poison needle too.  Part 4 might be about the same, but it is longer and seems less flexible.  Meh.....you should just go with the second one for entertainment value alone.

Actually, in the remake of 1 and 2 for the SNES, doesn't the leveling go quicker?  You could try that.

tycho102

2009-05-09 01:26:26 pm

Some people think they can outsmart me.

Quote from Humorisk:

The game is basically just one big level grind.

True. A speedrun would have to have some unholy number of segments in order to get critical hits at the very beginning. And I can't even fathom the number of attempts for each segment since you'd have to save each time.

The TAS was interesting because that is exactly what occured. Critical hits on everything. Didn't the guy (girl?) nail that Axeman for the armor at something like level 3 or 4? I observed that with seething disgust.

scaryice

2009-05-09 02:51:36 pm

Quote from Humorisk:

Actually, in the remake of 1 and 2 for the SNES, doesn't the leveling go quicker? You could try that.

That's no fun.

Darkwing Duck

2009-05-09 05:18:40 pm

Highly Evolved

Quote from Humorisk:

I was wondering if the people working on Dragon Warrior 3 had abandoned it or not. That might possibly be the easiest, if I were to make an uneducated guess. Dragon Warrior 2 would just be pure masochism. Part 3 doesn't have all the instant deaths and it is fairly generous with the metal babbles and metal slimes. They are pretty easy to kill with a fighter's critical hits or the poison needle too. Part 4 might be about the same, but it is longer and seems less flexible. Meh.....you should just go with the second one for entertainment value alone.

Not abandoned, just long term hiatus.

If one could pull off a DW II run, that would be watchable just to see how it was done quickly. As for III, there are interesting moments. In a test run, I one round killed the Orochi at a low level. Surviving the Pyramid and Necrogond at low levels is also not the easiest thing in the world. I don't think the original would be much to watch, though.

OptimusPriNe

2009-05-10 11:29:23 am

Thanks for all the feedback guys, good stuff.

I'm currently looking into DW4 as the chapters make it a little easier to manage (at least in my opinion).

I'll check out the FAQ too, figured there was one, just to lazy to look Tongue

-Opie

Aitamen

2009-05-12 06:45:36 am

Bwahahaha... there WILL be domination!

I could see running DW/DQ1 w/ glitches (particularly hardware glitches, which aren't allowed here), but to see it done quickly otherwise would be quite amazing. I can't even come up with a time that sounds logical, as even my fastest completion topped 6 hours (and let me tell you, that was rediculous... I wish I could go to vegas with that kinda luck!)

If you pull this off... nay... if you even ATTEMPT this, I congratulate you in advance.

If you pull this off, I think I'll dine upon a hat.

Pornosaurus Rex

2009-05-18 04:09:06 am

Good luck, and grind away. I just can't seem to see a way to run that one without some serious grinding involved.

ShinerCCC

2009-06-03 06:45:16 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I think DW1 is inevitable grinding. The luck manipulation involves frame-perfect walking so that can't really be done on console. My suggestion: don't speedrun it. It will be pure luck. You'll either get crits to save time, or miss and get killed and lose more time.

DW4 would be great. Some actual planning involved there. An Individual Levels table wouldn't make much sense though, because your characters from chapters 1-4 get transfered to 5. It would only be valid for 1 through 4, because you could just bring over powerleveled characters from the first 4 chapters for your chapter 5 time.

I just lol'd, I realized you could dedicate many segments to grinding at the casino to get Metal Babble Shields for everybody

Emptyeye

2009-07-04 09:21:44 am

Talk to the Hand

Randomly, speedrunning the original Dragon Warrior strikes me as something you'd do "because it's there". Single-Segment in particular is one of those things where there's no way you're going to be able to randomly manipulate all the luck involved in the TAS, so yeah, you'd need to do some serious grinding.

Last night, I decided to start a new game of the NES version just to see what the early game was like. It took me slightly under an hour to get to level 6 with a Copper Sword, Dragon Scale, some Herbs, and not much else. This was mainly due to my fighting (And winning) a battle with a Skeleton near Kol, which was worth about twice as much experience as the next individual enemy I fought (Scorpions). Between Level 4 and the Copper Sword, you liberally use HURT on Ghosts and Magicians to survive those battles. My start-of-game plan was to buy a Club but no Armor at all, hoping to survive the entire first half of the game (Until Erdrick's Armor) naked. Even here, it's clear a lot of luck would be involved. Not of the manipulation variety, but even in this first hour, I got lucky to end a round of battle with 1HP a couple times.

In short, this is one of those things where being able to pull it off would simply be awe-inspiring, even if it's boring as hell to actually watch.

Randomly, speedrunning the original Dragon Warrior strikes me as something you'd do "because it's there". Single-Segment in particular is one of those things where there's no way you're going to be able to randomly manipulate all the luck involved in the TAS, so yeah, you'd need to do some serious grinding.

Last night, I decided to start a new game of the NES version just to see what the early game was like. It took me slightly under an hour to get to level 6 with a Copper Sword, Dragon Scale, some Herbs, and not much else. This was mainly due to my fighting (And winning) a battle with a Skeleton near Kol, which was worth about twice as much experience as the next individual enemy I fought (Scorpions). Between Level 4 and the Copper Sword, you liberally use HURT on Ghosts and Magicians to survive those battles. My start-of-game plan was to buy a Club but no Armor at all, hoping to survive the entire first half of the game (Until Erdrick's Armor) naked. Even here, it's clear a lot of luck would be involved. Not of the manipulation variety, but even in this first hour, I got lucky to end a round of battle with 1HP a couple times.

In short, this is one of those things where being able to pull it off would simply be awe-inspiring, even if it's boring as hell to actually watch.

Darkwing Duck

2009-07-04 12:21:14 pm

Highly Evolved

Which is why I ended up choosing III. I is grinding. II is ridiculously hard at max level. IV is longer (I believe).

In I, I can't think of any good places to grind. A good place would be high xp relative to Erdrick's level and quick healing. Some of the caves would work, since some enemies there give higher xp and are generally easier to kill.

ShinerCCC

2009-07-06 04:48:59 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I think the bridge in the west where Goldmans appear is the place to be. Money is more important early on.

Although I suppose you could just copy the TAS frame-perfectly and punch out the Axe Knight, then go from there

Emptyeye

2009-07-18 08:10:22 am

Talk to the Hand

Holy cow.

I knew the Game Boy (Color) re-release was rebalanced and all, but I didn't realize just how drastic the rebalancing was. The same hour that I took to get to Level 6 in the NES version got me to Level 9 (And change) in the Game Boy version, with a Steel (Broad) Sword, Leather Armor, Keys, a Dragon Scale, and a bunch of gold. There would still be a lot of grinding involved, mind, but a run on the Game Boy version actually looks reasonable, and it's not like we don't have runs on the site that are grind-heavy already (Phantasy Star, I'm looking at you).

kareshi

2009-07-18 08:19:18 am

Let's not try a single-segment DW1 in any case, all right?

Start!
Level level level level level! (hours)
Got Rainbow Drop finally!
Entering Dragonlord's Castle!
Rainbow Dragon appears!
Run - Blocked!
Run - Blocked!
Run - Blocked!
Dead!

tycho102

2009-07-18 10:52:45 am

Some people think they can outsmart me.

Quote from ShinerCCC:

I think the bridge in the west where Goldmans appear is the place to be. Money is more important early on.

Although I suppose you could just copy the TAS frame-perfectly and punch out the Axe Knight, then go from there

I always went east for goldmen. South of the town, in the mountains, about halfway toward the dungeon, staying on the north side of the bridge.

Emptyeye

2009-07-18 11:35:27 am

Talk to the Hand

Quote from kareshi:

Let's not try a single-segment DW1 in any case, all right?

If this was some reverse psychology ploy (Average number of segments in every run I've done for SDA to date: 1.0), it will probably wind up working, you bastard. Tongue

If not, well...I've done plenty of stupid things in my life to date; this would just be one more.

It should be noted that I wasn't going particularly quickly, nor was I trying for specific enemies in my grinding (Outside of "Generally hang out in the strongest area I can"). Once I get something in the region of 4K gold where I am now (Steel Armor [Full Plate] plus Iron [Large] Shield), I think I'll be good to start attempting actual quests (Getting the Silver Harp, for one).