EarthBound

2007-02-03 07:38:11 am

Quote:

I get 50n + 44 based on that information, so your example of 10 eggs would take just over 9 minutes.

Oops. You're definitely correct.

Anyways, what are your battle strategies like? When do you plan to avoid encounters or level-up?

I've made up a Works Spreadsheet (PM me with your email if you want a copy) with all of the bare essential encounters -- all those you cannot avoid or run from. Here's some things I found:

1) To have PSI Rockin' for Titanic Ant, you need a total of 602 extra experience points, which translates into about 18-22 Giant Step enemies (assuming you don't fight anything extra in Onett).

2) Even with Rockin' for Titanic Ant, Ness is still short 1597 points for PSI Paralysis for Mondo Mole. Everdred (when collecting the Pencil Eraser) and three Mole Playing Roughs would do it. Alternatively, Ness could go after Mondo Mole on his own, fighting a few fights along the way. It's not like Paula will be any help against the mole, anyways.

3) Even with Paralysis for Mondo Mole, and tackling the fifth and sixth sanctuaries before Scaraba, Ness is still 41606 short of Flash beta for Kracken (this is assuming you never let other allies "die" to boost Ness' XP-gain). Of course, I doubt you will be avoiding every non-essential encounter -- a few green-swirl victories after a sanctuary boss would make for easy gains, as well as the Fobbies in Belch's Base.

Still, I'm wondering if you are really willing to try your luck so much. I can't remember where I saw this, but, apparently, if Flash beta hits, it has a 12.5% chance of a OHKO. According to Starman.net, Kracken is 50% resistant to Flash, so you only have 1:16 odds of OHKOing it. I hope you don't go insane from the boring ship cutscene.

[quote]I get 50n + 44 based on that information, so your example of 10 eggs would take just over 9 minutes.[/quote]
Oops.  You're definitely correct.

Anyways, what are your battle strategies like?  When do you plan to avoid encounters or level-up?

I've made up a Works Spreadsheet (PM me with your email if you want a copy) with all of the bare essential encounters -- all those you cannot avoid or run from.  Here's some things I found:

1) To have PSI Rockin' for Titanic Ant, you need a total of 602 extra experience points, which translates into about 18-22 Giant Step enemies (assuming you don't fight anything extra in Onett).

2) Even with Rockin' for Titanic Ant, Ness is still short 1597 points for PSI Paralysis for Mondo Mole.  Everdred (when collecting the Pencil Eraser) and three Mole Playing Roughs would do it.  Alternatively, Ness could go after Mondo Mole on his own, fighting a few fights along the way.  It's not like Paula will be any help against the mole, anyways.

3) Even with Paralysis for Mondo Mole, and tackling the fifth and sixth sanctuaries before Scaraba, Ness is still 41606 short of Flash beta for Kracken (this is assuming you never let other allies "die" to boost Ness' XP-gain).  Of course, I doubt you will be avoiding every non-essential encounter -- a few green-swirl victories after a sanctuary boss would make for easy gains, as well as the Fobbies in Belch's Base.

Still, I'm wondering if you are really willing to try your luck so much.  I can't remember where I saw this, but, apparently, if Flash beta hits, it has a 12.5% chance of a OHKO.  According to Starman.net, Kracken is 50% resistant to Flash, so you only have 1:16 odds of OHKOing it.  I hope you don't go insane from the boring ship cutscene.

Amazing Ampharos

2007-02-03 11:04:01 pm

For Flash Beta, the plan was to abuse Criminal Caterpillar. That gives so much EXP...

Paula really needs to be there for the mole since her PSI needs to develop. Her freeze is one of your most potent, spammable attacks after all.

Mickey_Mage

Edit history:

Mickey_Mage: 2007-02-04 03:48:35 am

2007-02-04 12:26:59 am

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

1) Ness's special is essential in beating Titantic Ant so, we will have to do the best we can to get battles with just slugs, or more slugs than anything else.

2) If it helps any, fighting Blue Cultists before Carpainter can assure us enough experience to not have to fight much in the cave, and still get paralysis. Remember, we are still leveling up Paula so, while she is getting levels, we will still be able to get enough for paralysis for Ness in the process. Mondo mole is practically impossible to beat without paralysis, especially at Ness's level.

Yes, I know that some fighting is still essential in this run, but more fighting earlier on is better than much later in the game. We can get more experience from monsters (criminal caterpillar will be a huge help) especially the ones that are easy to beat for large groups.

3) Like Ampharos said and we have discussed for awhile, it is better to fight criminal caterpillars to help us with the experience we need to beat Kracken while skipping the 6th sanctuary. If it turns out in the end to be a bad idea to skip Thunder and Storm, then the 5th and 6th sanctuaries will be completed in order and we will definately obtain Flash Beta by Kracken. Three criminal caterpillars will give us so much experience, not much fighting will be needed for awhile. Just little easy battles here and there that give great experience.

- Even though it is a small chance to OHKO Kracken, since it is at the very beginning of the segment, it is better to exploit it and save time, rather than making the battle hard on our people and having to heal in Scaraba (unless we have to anyway).

No, I won't go insane from the music in the boat on the way to Scaraba :P, I love that music. Grin

You do have a point there about fighting some "green" battles after beating a Sanctuary. That would definately help with experience that will be needed.

Edit: It will be tougher to take a different approach to this than evil_ninja did, I know, but how many mistakes he made, and how many unneccesary battles were fought, those can be eliminated to get better results in the end. That's the plan anyway. :-/

1) Ness's special is essential in beating Titantic Ant so, we will have to do the best we can to get battles with just slugs, or more slugs than anything else.

2) If it helps any, fighting Blue Cultists before Carpainter can assure us enough experience to not have to fight much in the cave, and still get paralysis. Remember, we are still leveling up Paula so, while she is getting levels, we will still be able to get enough for paralysis for Ness in the process. Mondo mole is practically impossible to beat without paralysis, especially at Ness's level.

Yes, I know that some fighting is still essential in this run, but more fighting earlier on is better than much later in the game. We can get more experience from monsters (criminal caterpillar will be a huge help) especially the ones that are easy to beat for large groups.

3) Like Ampharos said and we have discussed for awhile, it is better to fight criminal caterpillars to help us with the experience we need to beat Kracken while skipping the 6th sanctuary. If it turns out in the end to be a bad idea to skip Thunder and Storm, then the 5th and 6th sanctuaries will be completed in order and we will definately obtain Flash Beta by Kracken. Three criminal caterpillars will give us so much experience, not much fighting will be needed for awhile. Just little easy battles here and there that give great experience.

- Even though it is a small chance to OHKO Kracken, since it is at the very beginning of the segment, it is better to exploit it and save time, rather than making the battle hard on our people and having to heal in Scaraba (unless we have to anyway).

No, I won't go insane from the music in the boat on the way to Scaraba :P, I love that music.  ;D

You do have a point there about fighting some "green" battles after beating a Sanctuary. That would definately help with experience that will be needed.

Edit: It will be tougher to take a different approach to this than evil_ninja did, I know, but how many mistakes he made, and how many unneccesary battles were fought, those can be eliminated to get better results in the end. That's the plan anyway.  :-/

Lemon_Dr

2007-02-10 06:55:49 am

Lemon Dr likes Apples oddly enough

How much longer until SDA will have a Speed Run up for this game?

laughing_gas

2007-02-10 07:00:40 am

Existence as you know it is over

Be patient, you can't just rush through an RPG like this (metaphorically speaking)

Lemon_Dr

2007-02-10 09:30:31 pm

Lemon Dr likes Apples oddly enough

So why did they reject Ninjas speed run?(I read through it, couldn't find why), I have it downloaded my computer, and watched about 1 hour and 30 minutes of it, and so far it seems pretty decent. Plan on finishing watching it by tomorrow.

Mickey_Mage

Edit history:

Mickey_Mage: 2007-02-11 07:38:52 pm

2007-02-11 07:29:36 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Going farther into it, you will see some pretty big and a lot of small mistakes that could have easily been fixed, but were not. Even an hour and a half into the game, I saw a lot of things that should not have happened. Just read the posts me and Ampharos wrote.

Granted, we might not be able to chop too much time off, maybe to 5:15, but we don't know until we get a better route. There were some segments I couldn't get myself to watch they were so bad. Trust me, if you play a game long enough and you see horrible mistakes like this, you wonder why they were never fixed to begin with.

Also, sorry I have been neglecting the "new" route for the past week, I have been so busy with school I haven't had the time. I will try to start working on it a little each day.

Chunky

2007-02-11 10:47:29 pm

What page is the run on?

sarou

2007-02-11 11:05:15 pm

one-armed bandit

http://nate.quandra.org/eb-r.mp4

Chunky

2007-02-12 01:02:00 am

Ah, thanks.

Floogal

2007-02-13 04:40:49 am

I've got two questions that, while technically are speedrun-related, probably won't be helpful during a run:

1) Is it mandatory for Ness to learn PSI Teleport alpha?

Does the game let you skip this, or will the story not progress later on? Checking the TAS, it would be about 15/20 seconds slower to bus back to Fourside after the Monkey Caves instead of learning from the monkey and then teleporting. The only other place you might use Teleport when Poo isn't with you would be getting through the swamp, but I still don't see skipping this as being advantageous.

2) Is it mandatory to collect and use the Hawk's Eye? If it is, what is the barrier that prevents you from continuing?

I'm guessing that since the TAS used it, it is mandatory. Also, collecting and using it takes all of five seconds. Still, I'm curious.

Mickey_Mage

Edit history:

Mickey_Mage: 2007-02-13 05:22:23 pm

2007-02-13 05:19:05 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

1). I think you can skip teleport, but there is no point since you already have to go down in the monkey cave to get the Trout flavored icecream machine for the maid. Once you lost Poo, you would be at a huge disadvantage without it, too. There are other places you need to teleport to before even getting Poo I think.

2). I am sure the TAS probably tested Deep Darkness without the hawkeye, but they couldn't use teleport bashes without being able to see well enough. The eye really isn't all that far out of the way in the Pyramid anyway... It would be a lot faster to be able to see and use teleport to get through Deep Darkness rather than being completely blind. Skipping the Hawkeye would save seconds in the Pyramid but lose precious seconds in DD. There might be a barrier that blocks you in the darkness, but I have never tested this out.

I am sure the developers made it so you have to follow all of the major storyline to beat this game. The only thing I have found that you can skip, and the TAS uses this too, is talking to Pokey in Monotoli's building. Other than that, nothing major can be skipped because items are usually needed to complete tasks to advance in the game. Sanctuaries can be done in a different order only because of teleport and because you come back to some places more than once so, doing Sanctuaries later can be beneficial at times (which is what we are testing at the moment).

1). I think you can skip teleport, but there is no point since you already have to go down in the monkey cave to get the Trout flavored icecream machine for the maid. Once you lost Poo, you would be at a huge disadvantage without it, too. There are other places you need to teleport to before even getting Poo I think.

2). I am sure the TAS probably tested Deep Darkness without the hawkeye, but they couldn't use teleport bashes without being able to see well enough. The eye really isn't all that far out of the way in the Pyramid anyway... It would be a lot faster to be able to see and use teleport to get through Deep Darkness rather than being completely blind. Skipping the Hawkeye would save seconds in the Pyramid but lose precious seconds in DD. There might be a barrier that blocks you in the darkness, but I have never tested this out.

I am sure the developers made it so you have to follow all of the major storyline to beat this game. The only thing I have found that you can skip, and the TAS uses this too, is talking to Pokey in Monotoli's building. Other than that, nothing major can be skipped because items are usually needed to complete tasks to advance in the game. Sanctuaries can be done in a different order only because of teleport and because you come back to some places more than once so, doing Sanctuaries later can be beneficial at times (which is what we are testing at the moment).

Dragorn

Edit history:

Dragorn: 2007-02-13 06:21:23 pm

2007-02-13 06:20:55 pm

I thought it was just a surprise party!

Quote:

There might be a barrier that blocks you in the darkness, but I have never tested this out.

There is such a barrier; IIRC, it's just south of the Snorkel-ATM.

Mickey_Mage

2007-02-13 07:50:25 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Makes sense :P. Thanks for that Dragorn.

Floogal

2007-02-13 11:31:04 pm

Thanks for answering my question.

Is it simply an invisible wall, or does a message come up (e.g. "You can't see enough to go on.")?

Nitrodon

2007-02-14 12:07:55 am

There's an invisible wall shortly after you reach the first patch of dry land after the snorkel ATM. It is simply an invisible wall, without any text or other event.

Mickey_Mage

2007-02-14 02:13:15 am

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Now that I think about it, I believe I did run into that problem about 8 years ago or so when I forgot to get the eye and had to go back because of that wall there.

Lemon_Dr

2007-02-15 02:49:23 am

Lemon Dr likes Apples oddly enough

Man I remember that Hawk Eye, the first time I played the game I wondered why the Swamp was so dark.

Floogal

2007-02-15 06:30:29 am

Thanks for the answers. I didn't want to restart a new game just to see something trivial (although, after the success of my Paula-only game, I'm starting to consider a Jeff-only game...).

And now for something completely different...

Are you actually going to try to Teleport through the Lost Underworld? I seem to recall that the TAS developers discovered a memory bug that crashed their game while trying to do that (something about getting too many enemies loaded). Since you're playing segmented, I'm assuming that the memory gets reset after a save/restart, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Mickey_Mage

2007-02-15 07:20:14 am

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Yea, I plan on using Teleport at Deep Darkness as much as possible, but if it does become a problem and erases the memory as you said, through a bug that the TAS found, then Teleport crashes will be used just in the Lost Underworld, as that does not have many enemies in one spot at a time.

This might have just been a problem on the emulator, not the console game. Thank you for mentioning this, though, because now it would be good to test out on a console to make sure it won't screw up the file. If this bug does come into effect, it will probably erase the entire file; restarting or shutting the console off will not solve it.

I can test this out when I go home this weekend, unless someone has a saved file near Deep Darkness on their own game.

Nitrodon

2007-02-15 10:22:49 am

Quote:

Yea, I plan on using Teleport at Deep Darkness as much as possible, but if it does become a problem and erases the memory as you said, through a bug that the TAS found, then Teleport crashes will be used just in the Lost Underworld, as that does not have many enemies in one spot at a time.

The TAS had problems with this bug in the Lost Underworld, and not in Deep Darkness. This is likely due to the number of sprites in the underground Tenda village.

The bug occurs when there are too many sprites in memory, and thus the pointer to sprite 0 is overwritten. Hence, the memory used by the old sprite remains allocated to that sprite, which is never deleted since the game forgot about it. When a sprite tries to allocate memory to itself and there isn't enough memory available, the game freezes.

If you save and reset the game, this section of memory returns to normal, so there's no need to worry about the game crashing in the final battle as it did in the TAS (forcing us to restart from the Lost Underworld segment).

[quote]Yea, I plan on using Teleport at Deep Darkness as much as possible, but if it does become a problem and erases the memory as you said, through a bug that the TAS found, then Teleport crashes will be used just in the Lost Underworld, as that does not have many enemies in one spot at a time. [/quote]

The TAS had problems with this bug in the Lost Underworld, and not in Deep Darkness.  This is likely due to the number of sprites in the underground Tenda village.

The bug occurs when there are too many sprites in memory, and thus the pointer to sprite 0 is overwritten.  Hence, the memory used by the old sprite remains allocated to that sprite, which is never deleted since the game forgot about it.  When a sprite tries to allocate memory to itself and there isn't enough memory available, the game freezes.

If you save and reset the game, this section of memory returns to normal, so there's no need to worry about the game crashing in the final battle as it did in the TAS (forcing us to restart from the Lost Underworld segment).

Mickey_Mage

Edit history:

Mickey_Mage: 2007-02-15 04:51:43 pm

2007-02-15 04:50:42 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Ok, and sorry about that mixup of mine. I did read Lost Underworld, but thought I read Deep Darkness for some reason. That's what I get for reading and posting while being tired, as I did this at around 2 in the morning... :-/

I still need to test this to see if it will work differently on a console rather than an emulator.

Amazing Ampharos

2007-02-15 10:42:16 pm

If you copy your file, it should be fine. Just don't do anything brash with just one working file.

Lemon_Dr

Edit history:

Lemon_Dr: 2007-02-18 05:33:03 am

2007-02-17 04:30:10 am

Lemon Dr likes Apples oddly enough

Ah yes the teleporting thing, I remember trying to do that but I wasn't very good at it. Takes practice and you need to memorize exactly where to use it.

Mickey_Mage

2007-02-18 12:19:36 am

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

It is not so much memorizing as it is timing, I think. I'll watch the TAS before I do it, though.

I do not have a saved file anywhere close to Lost Underworld right now, but I will try to get there during the week at school (I still have a damn research paper to write, though). I'll let you guys know when I do it, whether the game screws up or not.