FFXII - New Run Complete!

2012-04-01 10:32:10 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Essentia; I was thinking about possibly skipping the luck manipulation of the Golden Amulet's if I have the money to buy them when I get there. It would save about 30 seconds which isn't much but it would also save me some luck manipulation. My only concern is that if I spend 8k more on items I might not have enough to buy all the potions and whatnot that I need by the end. Do you think that will be an issue?

Does anyone know where a good place along my route to get a Holy Mote would be? I need one for Pandemonium.

Also I'll ask again does anyone know anything about the Japanese RTA runner of this game? Is there a video somewhere I can see? Does anyone know what his route is like or how it might differ from mine?

Deedlit

2012-04-02 01:42:26 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Perhaps you could manipulate 1 Golden Amulet and buy the other two for 9k.

As for the holy mote, I dunno - there is chest in Salikawood that you might get while collecting Moogles.

I just remembered, there is a report at Ultima Garden from a guy who did an RTA in which he killed the Undying in 6:37. In fact this time includes 51 seconds from power on to New Game, so it's actually a 6:36 single-segment speed run! You can read the report here:

http://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/ff12rta64636.html

It's in Japanese, but you can run it through a translator. For some reason he does Dustia in two parts, one before Mimic Queen and one after. The first is ten minutes and the second is 23 minutes. He does two jelly runs totalling 34 minutes.

Essentia

2012-04-02 01:46:08 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Buying the golden amulets might cause problems - money always seems to be an issue in speedruns. I'd suggest sticking to manipulating them from chests.

In my test run I got a holy mote from Cerobi Steppe, but there's probably a better one that's less out of the way. I think the best thing to do would be to look up holy mote at ff12maps.com and see which one would work the best.

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-04-02 07:13:16 am

2012-04-02 06:55:20 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Deedlit, thank you!That's probably what I'm looking for. I'll check it out in a bit. I suppose he could be doing Dustia in two parts to have to make less runs to the store for PD's. If you picked up all the chests on your way you could get a decent stash of PD's after the Mimic Queen. Also it would be safer with 3 party members as you would risk game over less and as long as you don't have other members in the party they don't get exp. The lower death risk would be pretty important to a SS run.

Essentia, does it have to be a holy mote? I'm sure I could find a mote of some type on my path without issue. Does Holy have a long animation or something? Why does that work and not something else?

Essentia

2012-04-02 08:04:43 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Yeah, the reason a holy mote works is because it has such a long animation. It's been so long since I've played this game that I don't remember what each spell looks like, but anything that has a long enough animation should work just as well as holy.

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-04-02 08:45:52 am

Youkai: 2012-04-02 08:45:15 am

2012-04-02 08:38:40 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Oh heck. I already have a Holy Mote in my run plan lol. Nevermind on asking for a location. There are two chests on the way from Fomalhaut farming to Balfonhiem I can try and pull it from.

Also that site is fantastic Deedlit. It gives me splits I can use to track my progress Smiley

EDIT: Do you think it's worth a save to get the Windslicer Shot? If I save after Diamond Armlet I can manipulate a Windslicer Shot on the way to Fomalhaut farming; assuming I have the patience for it. Really I guess the question is can you kill Pandemonium before Perfect Defense without Windslicer shot?

Essentia

2012-04-02 08:57:30 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Whether or not you can kill him before Perfect Defense will depend partly on what level your party members are, as well as a few other things (swiftness, etc.). Windslicer shot makes it easier to do, since he's weak to it.

Youkai

2012-04-06 12:29:21 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

I'm pretty sure Traveler is not worth it for Mandragoras especially considering how easy they are with Fomalhaut. I used an emulator and quicksaves to test it and I still had a hard time getting the step count into the 990+ range which it has to be to be any kind of useful. Plus unless I happen to luck within 100 or so steps of the perfect number it would take longer to fix my steps than it would to just kill them with the guns.

Youkai

2012-04-15 08:21:18 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

So I'm thinking about cutting out a Jelly segment and replacing it with a Mirrorknight segment. I would do the Mirrorknight segment at the save before Rafflesia so I wouldn't have to go out of my way at all to get to it and I will have Embroidered Tipett by then so that will be more like 300 exp/second. Also by then I'll have Fomalhaut's and on my test 2 or 3 attacks killed them so they died pretty quick.

I did a test last night, factoring in the time it takes to reset each fight:
--Jellies = 110 exp/second
--Mirrorknights = 170 exp/second

I plan on doing a chain 100 on Mirrorknights so that will cost me 100 LP but I'm hoping to get a couple extra levels out of it. So here's the question: am I better off with 100LP or with a couple extra levels? Because of the Fomalhaut's any STR bonus I get from the levels is moot but I would get some more HP, DEF, and for Ashe MP out of it. I don't think 100 more LP will get me to a HP bonus I couldn't get to without it so I guess it makes sense to do the EXP segment instead of a Jelly segment.

I remember from my test run that the second Cid battle was insane hard. I'd like to make that one not as painful if I can.

So I'm thinking about cutting out a Jelly segment and replacing it with a Mirrorknight segment. I would do the Mirrorknight segment at the save before Rafflesia so I wouldn't have to go out of my way at all to get to it and I will have Embroidered Tipett by then so that will be more like 300 exp/second. Also by then I'll have Fomalhaut's and on my test 2 or 3 attacks killed them so they died pretty quick.

I did a test last night, factoring in the time it takes to reset each fight:
--Jellies = 110 exp/second
--Mirrorknights = 170 exp/second

I plan on doing a chain 100 on Mirrorknights so that will cost me 100 LP but I'm hoping to get a couple extra levels out of it. So here's the question: am I better off with 100LP or with a couple extra levels? Because of the Fomalhaut's any STR bonus I get from the levels is moot but I would get some more HP, DEF, and for Ashe MP out of it. I don't think 100 more LP will get me to a HP bonus I couldn't get to without it so I guess it makes sense to do the EXP segment instead of a Jelly segment.

I remember from my test run that the second Cid battle was insane hard. I'd like to make that one not as painful if I can.

Deedlit

2012-04-16 02:26:02 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I imagine it would cost you more than 100 LP since I'm pretty sure you can kill more than 100 Jellies in the time it takes you to kill 100 Mirrorknights. I would probably favor killing 100 Jellies and saving a bit of time versus killing 100 Mirrorknights and taking more time. But, perhaps even better would be to leave out the segment altogether. If you have enough LP to get the Fomalhauts and all the HP augments, I'm not sure that grinding for more LP or levels will save you more time on bosses than the time it takes you to grind. Okay, some of the boss fights will be excruciating, but the goal is minimum time, not minimum pain. Smiley

Youkai

2012-04-16 08:58:37 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

True Deedlit. I would actually be trading a 120 Jelly segment (18 minutes) for a 100 Mirrorknight segment (24 minutes in my test, I hope to make it closer to 20) so it would cost me 140 LP. I don't even have close to enough LP to get all the HP augments. If I did I would definitely leave it out but even if I did a 120 Jelly segment I wouldn't be getting the HP+500 segment and the HP+200 would be questionable (assuming my math is correct). If I cut out the segment all together I am almost certain I wouldn't get the HP+200 augment. I was planning on doing one more segment so really the question is can the level grinding save me 2-4 minutes for the rest of the game.

I guess when I get to Rafflesia I'll play through to Cid and see if he kicks my ass or not.

haydinnio

2012-04-30 01:01:11 pm

I don't really have anything to contribute here, I've only completed this game once but I've enjoyed the 83 hour save file that I have (not including resets to get decent items of course), and I just want to say... best of luck on completing this run! I have been waiting for someone to do this for a long time, and I will definitely watch it when it is inevitably brought out by someone ^^ full support Smiley

Youkai

2012-04-30 08:12:56 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Thanks man. I'm making decent progress. Hopefully when I'm done it will be a worthy addition to SDA.

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-05-30 03:39:13 pm

Youkai: 2012-05-30 03:37:28 pm

2012-05-30 03:22:56 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Arg. So I ran into an issue. Cid is a bastard. I'm under leveled and under licenced and between Cid and the Rooks I don't stand a chance. It turns out that only one rook can be killed at a time (at least for the first one) and when the first one goes down the other three are regenerated. I was trying to wipe them all out at once with 5 Inferno chains but no dice.

The only other idea I have with even a chance in hell is one quickening chain of 10 or so on a rook to kill it outright then 2 or three more inferno chains to damage the rest to as close to dead as possible. That would take a stupid amount of luck and would make the battle really long though. Long enough that I'm wondering if it's not worth going back and just doing the jelly chaining segment I cut out to get some more augment licensces. With 73k HP chaining Cid with quickenings to kill him is not an option.

Another jelly chaining segment would be about 15 minutes long. At this point I think I could recover most of that in just the Cid fight if I did manage to find some damn way to complete it. I really don't want to have to re-do the chest manipulation segments again though :/ Anybody have any bright ideas on a way to beat Cid when severely under leveled?

EDIT: Also I just did a test and it seems that Battle Lore doesn't affect Gun damage. Can anyone confirm that?
EDIT2: It seems Battle Lore increases your STR and that's not used in the Gun calculation so I mis-spent some LP earlier. I wonder how far back I'm going to have to go to fix that :/

Arg. So I ran into an issue. Cid is a bastard. I'm under leveled and under licenced and between Cid and the Rooks I don't stand a chance. It turns out that only one rook can be killed at a time (at least for the first one) and when the first one goes down the other three are regenerated. I was trying to wipe them all out at once with 5 Inferno chains but no dice.

The only other idea I have with even a chance in hell is one quickening chain of 10 or so on a rook to kill it outright then 2 or three more inferno chains to damage the rest to as close to dead as possible. That would take a stupid amount of luck and would make the battle really long though. Long enough that I'm wondering if it's not worth going back and just doing the jelly chaining segment I cut out to get some more augment licensces. With 73k HP chaining Cid with quickenings to kill him is not an option.

Another jelly chaining segment would be about 15 minutes long. At this point I think I could recover most of that in just the Cid fight if I did manage to find some damn way to complete it. I really don't want to have to re-do the chest manipulation segments again though :/ Anybody have any bright ideas on a way to beat Cid when severely under leveled?

EDIT: Also I just did a test and it seems that Battle Lore doesn't affect Gun damage. Can anyone confirm that?
EDIT2: It seems Battle Lore increases your STR and that's not used in the Gun calculation so I mis-spent some LP earlier. I wonder how far back I'm going to have to go to fix that :/

Youkai

2012-06-04 01:54:17 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Looks like I need to do another practice run. I just found a video of a JPN RTA'er that beat the game at level 24/26 for his main party. It seems he is using a combination of Lure/Infuse/Spellbreaker/Reflect/AOE Magic to do his boss fights.

Basically he has a tank which he Lure's and then he uses Charge (I'm guessing) to wipe out his MP then Infuse at 1HP to knock the spell casters down into critical so Spellbreaker (doubles magic when HP critical) activates. Everyone get's reflected and then the AOE magic starts.

Based on how he had the party members arranged I'm guessing Lure works more effectively if the lure'd character is between the enemy and other party members because they casters stayed at 10HP the whole fight and never died once.

CrystalBeauty

2012-06-05 05:21:37 am

Roses of May

Youkai, you mind linking me the video, I'm just starting on 12, and going for SS/RTA.
The Ultima Garden report is difficult to understand -_-

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-06-05 07:56:40 am

2012-06-05 07:56:06 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

This is the video page Yoshifan linked to: http://com.nicovideo.jp/video/co456159 you will need a Nico account to view it. I would just watch the top one (final boss fight) to get the idea. The basic answer is that you Decoy a tank and then abuse Reflect+AOE and the Spellbreaker ability. I should be streaming tonight if you have more questions and hopefully in a week or two I can get some videos up on youtube.

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-06-06 01:07:29 pm

2012-06-06 10:30:25 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Ok so here is a playlist for my current work in progress. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA9DB1B3B13498CA0&feature=view_all

I was only able to salvage the first two segments from my old strategy. The current strategy I'm working with is one that I think is how the RTA runners do their runs which is faster than the strategy I was using. I have hour two recorded as well so that should be on the playlist later today or tomorrow.

With the new strategy I'm 6 minutes ahead of the split for Garuda on the 6:37:xx RTA. I'm calling it the 6:37 because that's when the split for the final boss dying is; according to the RTA runners it's a 6:46:xx. You can see the split's here: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/ff12rta64636.html&ei=z6F5T7SeEY_YiALf6ZmpDg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/ff12rta64636.html%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3D7vh%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D914%26prmd%3Dimvns

EDIT: Hour two is uploaded now.

Ok so here is a playlist for my current work in progress. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA9DB1B3B13498CA0&feature=view_all

I was only able to salvage the first two segments from my old strategy. The current strategy I'm working with is one that I think is how the RTA runners do their runs which is faster than the strategy I was using. I have hour two recorded as well so that should be on the playlist later today or tomorrow.

With the new strategy I'm 6 minutes ahead of the split for Garuda on the 6:37:xx RTA. I'm calling it the 6:37 because that's when the split for the final boss dying is; according to the RTA runners it's a 6:46:xx. You can see the split's here: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/ff12rta64636.html&ei=z6F5T7SeEY_YiALf6ZmpDg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/ff12rta64636.html%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3D7vh%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D914%26prmd%3Dimvns

EDIT: Hour two is uploaded now.

0xwas

2012-06-07 05:12:43 am

I found 6:19 by same player.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?anno=2&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ja&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/diary.html&usg=ALkJrhhMnSESaEwWBtO26GPwtYrCjNbTpA

he achieved in ３月１６日（金） (3/16). I know nothing about this game so no translation. sorry.

dexter

2012-06-07 06:55:32 am

I really would like to see a new FF12 run with an improved route.
However, your menu juggling seems pretty slow compared to Essentia's test run. You basically waste seconds every time you are in the menu or shopping and over the course of the run this easily adds up to minutes.

Youkai

2012-06-07 05:23:26 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Here is a link for a translated page 0xwas: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/diary.html&ei=7TbRT5KjOuPS2gWJv82XDw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CFcQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.geocities.jp/eguchi_54/diary.html%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D914%26prmd%3Dimvns

I see the one you are talking about; halfway down the page.

Where in particular are you talking about dexter? If it's in the middle of a long segment there's only so much I can do. Saving in this game costs 20 seconds in unplayable time so if my choice is save and lose 20 seconds or waste a couple seconds in a menu I'll take the menu hit. I do try and make sure my menuing at the beginning of segments has as little slop as possible in it.

I'm curious what you consider bad menuing. Do you have a specific example?

Tiberius

2012-06-07 06:26:47 pm

Make it so.

Essentia is well known for being extremely good at menu navigation as well, just to keep that in mind.

Youkai

Edit history:

Youkai: 2012-06-08 02:07:46 pm

Youkai: 2012-06-08 10:09:10 am

Youkai: 2012-06-08 10:08:24 am

2012-06-08 10:06:33 am

Don't know what to speedrun :(

JH1000 or fenixkane if you are watching this thread I wanted to follow up on something that came up in chat and get your feedback.

I was thinking about the Golden Amulet's last night and I realized that I do need to get them even though we were talking about not doing it. In my test run after jelly farming I collected 700 LP through the end of the game. I may have done some extra killing in my test run but I don't think it was much so even if it's only 600 if I have amulet's equipped I get another 600 LP. There are enough bosses, and the bosses give so much LP, that you end up getting a lot by the end of the game. So even if my first jelly farming segment is just to get me the LP to get to Golden amulet it's worth it due to the LP I get AFTER jelly farming. Also even if I waste ALL the LP I get from the first round on getting the amulet's and I have them for the second round I'll net out the same LP to spend on stuff. I think it's a no-brainer that for a segmented run I need to get the amulet's. Especially since I can get 2 for free. Anybody disagree?

EDIT: I noticed on the 3 minute Tiamat video he has a Cypress pole so I tested that. Giving it to Basch would double his attacks from 200-250 to 450-500 but it costs a minute and a half detour in Rabanastre to get so it's not worth it. Also the only way to make spellbreaker stick in that fight is to kill off Larsa and there is no way to beat it without Larsa. So Ashe is going to have to get Charge and Basch will tank. Also I did a test just now and I had the cypress pole which helped a little but I did beat Tiamat; so it is possible with my current characters.

JH1000 or fenixkane if you are watching this thread I wanted to follow up on something that came up in chat and get your feedback.

I was thinking about the Golden Amulet's last night and I realized that I do need to get them even though we were talking about not doing it. In my test run after jelly farming I collected 700 LP through the end of the game. I may have done some extra killing in my test run but I don't think it was much so even if it's only 600 if I have amulet's equipped I get another 600 LP. There are enough bosses, and the bosses give so much LP, that you end up getting a lot by the end of the game. So even if my first jelly farming segment is just to get me the LP to get to Golden amulet it's worth it due to the LP I get AFTER jelly farming. Also even if I waste ALL the LP I get from the first round on getting the amulet's and I have them for the second round I'll net out the same LP to spend on stuff. I think it's a no-brainer that for a segmented run I need to get the amulet's. Especially since I can get 2 for free. Anybody disagree?

EDIT: I noticed on the 3 minute Tiamat video he has a Cypress pole so I tested that. Giving it to Basch would double his attacks from 200-250 to 450-500 but it costs a minute and a half detour in Rabanastre to get so it's not worth it. Also the only way to make spellbreaker stick in that fight is to kill off Larsa and there is no way to beat it without Larsa. So Ashe is going to have to get Charge and Basch will tank. Also I did a test just now and I had the cypress pole which helped a little but I did beat Tiamat; so it is possible with my current characters.

Salem

2012-06-09 05:16:06 pm

I would say the amulets are a requirement. You can get all three for free with a 20 second detour from the same chest for third one. (grab the first one the way to Gihara or however you spell it, the second taking the shortcut to Eryute village, then the third just before entering the mines.) Between all three grabs it adds about 35 seconds to the run but saves you trouble and I would argue time later on since you can buy better armor/more x-pots/ etc to speed things up late game this is especially noticeable in the tyrant fight. There is an old thread with some valuable information in this forum if you feel like digging.

It's great to see someone tackling this monster. I really look forward to watching a finished run. Good luck man! thumbsup

P.S. In one of your videos you were wondering how the RTA guys kept the aggro on one target while another was critical. I don't know if you were given the answer to this yet, but it's a combination of the Decoy and Balance spells. Decoy keeps the aggro on one target while balance on a critical guy is some of the best damage you can do at those levels. I hope this helps.

I would say the amulets are a requirement.  You can get all three for free with a 20 second detour from the same chest for third one.  (grab the first one the way to Gihara or however you spell it, the second taking the shortcut to Eryute village, then the third just before entering the mines.)  Between all three grabs it adds about 35 seconds to the run but saves you trouble and I would argue time later on since you can buy better armor/more x-pots/ etc to speed things up late game this is especially noticeable in the tyrant fight.  There is an old thread with some valuable information in this forum if you feel like digging.

It's great to see someone tackling this monster.  I really look forward to watching a finished run.  Good luck man! :thumbsup:

P.S. In one of your videos you were wondering how the RTA guys kept the aggro on one target while another was critical.  I don't know if you were given the answer to this yet, but it's a combination of the Decoy and Balance spells.  Decoy keeps the aggro on one target while balance on a critical guy is some of the best damage you can do at those levels.   I hope this helps.

Youkai

2012-06-09 06:14:24 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

I hadn't thought about balance. I'll have to look into that but most of the damage is due to being critical and activating spellberaker which really ups your magic attack and then reflecting AOE spells off of your party. The problem with balance is my caster total HP is going to be relatively low for most of the run so I don't know that there is a place where that would do better damage than the 3 reflected AOE spells.

Also getting the amulet from that chest is a 12% chance. I'm not that hard up for money that I'm going to do a 12% draw after a couple minutes of chocoboing. I'll draw two from the chest and buy the third.

The one I was wondering about how he kept aggro was Belias, that's before Decoy but I still saw a video where he had two people in critical and did the fight. I was able to do it with one critical person and a little luck/AI manipulation.