Final Fantasy Legend Single-segment

Edit history:

mikwuyma: 2008-03-12 09:20:12 am

2008-02-22 10:49:06 am

I am looking into a Final Fantasy Legend speedrun these days. I haven't seen any interest on it and I don't really have any serious strategies yet so I'll post what I've done so far and see if anyone can help me.

It is important to note that hard-resetting a GBA (or Game Boy Player?) will "set your fate in stone". The GBA doesn't have a seeded random number generator; it has a list of numbers to use for the RNG and with every hard reset it will go back to the start of that list. So starting a run from the beginning will start out the same way every time...

- Starting strat: pick a female mutant. Sell Saber, buy book of Ice, good armour, some rapiers and potions I think. Agility-based weapons are a lot cheaper and grinding for strength will just take longer
- Kill Pfrog, then Kingsword. Maybe you can take him out first with a sleep book? Buy a hammer on the way home, your mutant might learn Power.
- Kill Gen-Bu with Power/Hammer combo if you have it, or Mirror/Rapier combo, or just blast him with magic about 6 times.
- When you get to World 2, recruit a female Human. Concentrate on armour and an SMG for her.
- Beat Sei-Ryu with a Grenade and Ice book, or Power hammer.
- DON'T FORGET THOSE XPOTIONS FROM THE DOLPHIN STATUES
- By the time you get to World 3 you should have some decent money but I'd recommend Dragon Armour to keep bad things from hitting you. No money for Flare books, unfortunately. Any spare cash should go towards stats for the human, you'll be finding tons of treasure soon. Byak-Ko is always a pushover.
- DON'T FORGET THE SAW. Hey, does anyone know exactly how it works? I've reached 255 agility and it still misses all the time. I hear it's glitched, your strength needs to be lower than the enemy's defense or something? You can even one-shot the final boss with it. I am hoping to rely on it in this run. I've also read in an FAQ on GameFAQs that a one-monster run that abuses the meat tables to reach a Warrior with a Saw has a mild chance of beating the game...maybe do that with four monsters? Nah, it would take forever to get all the right meats.
- By the time you get to World 4 you will have toooons of cash. Get more stats for the human, get the electronics you need, blow up Su-Zaku, etc. Your mutant will probably be fully mana-oriented now too. Elec books are consistently the best because few enemies are resistant to elec. Sei-Ryu and anybody with O-All are the big ones.
- Necessary items for end game...probably just Cure books for the mutant so you can keep the human alive for massive damage dealing? Nuke bomb? Flare books? Glass sword? Xclbr?
- I find a Sun sword helps to save a lot of time on the undead rematch bosses, but again, if I have a Saw I can just buy Arcanes for it in the endgame and rely on it alone IF I KNEW HOW IT WORKED ;_;

I haven't even done a test run all the way to completion, it's a little discouraging since if you save and turn the game off that RNG will be different and suddenly you're not practicing a "real run" any more. But I bet with the right strats you could beat the game in about 2.5 hours. Anybody tried it?

Thread title:

I am looking into a Final Fantasy Legend speedrun these days. I haven't seen any interest on it and I don't really have any serious strategies yet so I'll post what I've done so far and see if anyone can help me.

It is important to note that hard-resetting a GBA (or Game Boy Player?) will "set your fate in stone". The GBA doesn't have a seeded random number generator; it has a list of numbers to use for the RNG and with every hard reset it will go back to the start of that list. So starting a run from the beginning will start out the same way every time...

- Starting strat: pick a female mutant. Sell Saber, buy book of Ice, good armour, some rapiers and potions I think. Agility-based weapons are a lot cheaper and grinding for strength will just take longer
- Kill Pfrog, then Kingsword. Maybe you can take him out first with a sleep book? Buy a hammer on the way home, your mutant might learn Power.
- Kill Gen-Bu with Power/Hammer combo if you have it, or Mirror/Rapier combo, or just blast him with magic about 6 times.
- When you get to World 2, recruit a female Human. Concentrate on armour and an SMG for her.
- Beat Sei-Ryu with a Grenade and Ice book, or Power hammer.
- DON'T FORGET THOSE XPOTIONS FROM THE DOLPHIN STATUES
- By the time you get to World 3 you should have some decent money but I'd recommend Dragon Armour to keep bad things from hitting you. No money for Flare books, unfortunately. Any spare cash should go towards stats for the human, you'll be finding tons of treasure soon. Byak-Ko is always a pushover.
- DON'T FORGET THE SAW. Hey, does anyone know exactly how it works? I've reached 255 agility and it still misses all the time. I hear it's glitched, your strength needs to be lower than the enemy's defense or something? You can even one-shot the final boss with it. I am hoping to rely on it in this run. I've also read in an FAQ on GameFAQs that a one-monster run that abuses the meat tables to reach a Warrior with a Saw has a mild chance of beating the game...maybe do that with four monsters? Nah, it would take forever to get all the right meats.
- By the time you get to World 4 you will have toooons of cash. Get more stats for the human, get the electronics you need, blow up Su-Zaku, etc. Your mutant will probably be fully mana-oriented now too. Elec books are consistently the best because few enemies are resistant to elec. Sei-Ryu and anybody with O-All are the big ones.
- Necessary items for end game...probably just Cure books for the mutant so you can keep the human alive for massive damage dealing? Nuke bomb? Flare books? Glass sword? Xclbr?
- I find a Sun sword helps to save a lot of time on the undead rematch bosses, but again, if I have a Saw I can just buy Arcanes for it in the endgame and rely on it alone IF I KNEW HOW IT WORKED ;_;

I haven't even done a test run all the way to completion, it's a little discouraging since if you save and turn the game off that RNG will be different and suddenly you're not practicing a "real run" any more. But I bet with the right strats you could beat the game in about 2.5 hours. Anybody tried it?

Lucid Faia

Edit history:

Lucid Faia: 2008-02-22 06:55:05 pm

2008-02-22 06:54:58 pm

Yeah, I said it.

I love FFL. This sounds like a cool project to try if I ever get really bored one day.

Marty81

2008-02-24 05:41:58 am

One interesting thing to note is that the list of numbers to use for the RNG is different on the GBA, the original GB, and the game boy player. I know because I used to use it to manipulate stat gains and drops in Final Fantasy Legend 2.

ZeeJustin

2008-02-25 09:06:31 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

For FF IV on GBA, the random number generator is easily exploitable. It probably works the same way for FF Legend.

I was trying to farm the alarms that spawned mech dragons for exp gain in my speed run, and never encountered it.

All the sudden I noticed I encountered the same battle 15 times in a row upon restarting. I added a two second pause when I restarted the game, and all the sudden it was a different encounter.

It turned out the amount of time spent on the save select screen would determine what fight I would encounter next. There would be a different one roughly ever 3/4s of a second.

Based on your post, I would assume it works the same way for FF Legends. Give it a try. It works great if you are trying to do the same encounter over and over until you get the perfect result (a drop or meat or something).

Shiner

2008-02-25 11:29:12 am

I'm too lazy to register right now, but I should edit my post to indicate that my intention is to do a SINGLE SEGMENT RUN. A segmented run of FFL wouldn't look like much of anything...wouldn't it be in 229 segments of saving and reloading and stuff? Single segment would look a lot more impressive anyway because a lot of combat decisions would have to be made on the fly.

The Revenge sword: keep it to hopefully retaliate on a 6Heads vs. Ashura, or sell it for quick stats?

Regular fights: run, or fight to get stats and money? Bosses alone don't generate all that much cash, particularily in World 4, which has tons of encounters and lots of fights. One fight gives you something like 4000 GP so that's a lot of Agility potions right there. (which in turn makes it easier to run away on the way to Ashura, which is probably a good idea. endgame shop doesn't have anything critical to a speedrun if you already have a working Saw)

Given how stagnant this thread is (this board isn't that slow, is it?), I guess everyone is waiting for me to do something solid. One of these days I'll make a test run and put it on YouTube or something. "How to beat Final Fantasy Legend in 3 hours"...sounds good...but I just wish I knew how the Saw worked!

I'm too lazy to register right now, but I should edit my post to indicate that my intention is to do a SINGLE SEGMENT RUN. A segmented run of FFL wouldn't look like much of anything...wouldn't it be in 229 segments of saving and reloading and stuff? Single segment would look a lot more impressive anyway because a lot of combat decisions would have to be made on the fly.

The Revenge sword: keep it to hopefully retaliate on a 6Heads vs. Ashura, or sell it for quick stats?

Regular fights: run, or fight to get stats and money? Bosses alone don't generate all that much cash, particularily in World 4, which has tons of encounters and lots of fights. One fight gives you something like 4000 GP so that's a lot of Agility potions right there. (which in turn makes it easier to run away on the way to Ashura, which is probably a good idea. endgame shop doesn't have anything critical to a speedrun if you already have a working Saw)

Given how stagnant this thread is (this board isn't that slow, is it?), I guess everyone is waiting for me to do something solid. One of these days I'll make a test run and put it on YouTube or something. "How to beat Final Fantasy Legend in 3 hours"...sounds good...but I just wish I knew how the Saw worked!

Shiner

2008-02-25 02:51:55 pm

Small update on the Saw:

Just started up my GBA to check where I last saved. My Mutant and Human both have Saws on them and are one step away from the final boss. The human has 4 strength and 248 agility (I checked with a Ninja gauntlet). No defensive gear so that means 0 defense. 0 mana, obviously.

The mutant has 30 defense (15 natural), 44 str, 45 agi, and 56 mana. Guess what? The human never connects with the saw, and the mutant does! ARRRGH!

I seem to remember never connecting with the Saw on all the bosses so I had my mutant kill all the undead bosses with a Sun sword, sometimes invoking Power first. Despite a few soft resets, this happened every time, so maybe I'm wrong about the RNG?

Here's what happens every time:

Human uses saw, misses
Mutant uses saw, misses
Creator does nothing

Human uses saw, misses
Creator does nothing
Mutant uses saw, WIN

This also happened after equipping my human with some armour so I guess the RNG has maximum influence on this stuff, nevermind adding more Defense.

Until the mystery of the Saw is solved, I guess I'll have one character make Saw attempts while the other does regular damage. I suppose this role will get reversed between Su-Zaku and Creator.

Also of particular note is this website:
(hmm, can't post links, so google for "relic ffl tower")
This guys has analysed pretty much every single mote of this game. Fascinating stuff.

Small update on the Saw:

Just started up my GBA to check where I last saved. My Mutant and Human both have Saws on them and are one step away from the final boss. The human has 4 strength and 248 agility (I checked with a Ninja gauntlet). No defensive gear so that means 0 defense. 0 mana, obviously.

The mutant has 30 defense (15 natural), 44 str, 45 agi, and 56 mana. Guess what? The human never connects with the saw, and the mutant does! ARRRGH!

I seem to remember never connecting with the Saw on all the bosses so I had my mutant kill all the undead bosses with a Sun sword, sometimes invoking Power first. Despite a few soft resets, this happened every time, so maybe I'm wrong about the RNG?

Here's what happens every time:

Human uses saw, misses
Mutant uses saw, misses
Creator does nothing

Human uses saw, misses
Creator does nothing
Mutant uses saw, WIN

This also happened after equipping my human with some armour so I guess the RNG has maximum influence on this stuff, nevermind adding more Defense.

Until the mystery of the Saw is solved, I guess I'll have one character make Saw attempts while the other does regular damage. I suppose this role will get reversed between Su-Zaku and Creator.

Also of particular note is this website:
(hmm, can't post links, so google for "relic ffl tower")
This guys has analysed pretty much every single mote of this game. Fascinating stuff.

mikwuyma

2008-02-25 04:57:51 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

This following post will be off-topic, sorry.

Shiner, are you the same Shiner who does audio commentary for games such as Gradius Galaxies? I remember you mentioning something about how you liked FF Legends (I lurked on vortiginous). If you are the same Shiner, then nice to see you on the site Smiley

Enhasa

2008-02-26 03:20:17 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Are you fucking kidding me? I didn't pay attention to the username when I clicked on this earlier.

I must confess, I have a mancrush on Shiner. His audio commentary is better than sex and topped only by Dr. Ian and Rob who are banned in 48 states.

If this is the Shiner we know and love, I was going to post some stuff about your Faxanadu run on super-play forums but I was too lazy to. Lips Sealed

lol, I still have the text file, I could post it even though most of it doesn't even make sense to me or even you anymore.

Also I heard something about a Grandia 1 run with commentary but I forgot to ask anyone about that.

If this is in fact a different Shiner, I apologize for embarrassing all of us. Sad

Shiner

2008-03-12 09:16:34 am

Oops. Yeah, I'm that Shiner, only somewhat reformed. Are you sure you don't mean Dr_Ian and Chris? I don't think rj ever did any commentary.

I really wish I had registered before posting so I could edit the topic title to say that I am interested in making a single segment run. Saving and reloading 50,000 time isn't all impressive in a game where you could very easily die in a single random fight. Hmm...in a segmented run, maybe you could do the speculated solo monster game where you change into a Warrior and Saw your way through every boss?

So I worked on a practice run today and didn't get very far due to restarts and forgetting my route. Right now my save game is poised to climb up to World 3 but damn I forgot how hard that part was. Guess I'll post my current route in here so I don't forget it:

WORLD 1 - BASE LEVEL
- Pick Mutant F named "CCC". I don't think your name affects your fate...does it?
- Set message speed to 1, unequip saber, sell Saber
- Buy Gold armour, Gold gloves, Book of Ice, and 3 Rapiers. Choose Ice because it deals extra damage to Lizards. (or at least it should, I don't think it does)
- Equip a rapier and the other junk in this order:
5. Rapier
6. Ice book
7. Gold gloves
8. Gold armour (I mean come on guys this saves just a little bit of time)
- Start walking to P-Frog's cave. Fight the lizard. Fight the zombie just this once (if you see it), you'll need the stats. Fight Goblins, Asigarus and Albatrosses obviously, they don't take very long.
- Fight the guards until you see a pack of 3 Lizards. If you get 2 or more, blast them with Ice. This builds up some money and stats.
- Blast P-Frog with Ice. If he bites you too much you could die >_>
- Go to the closet and take both potions, leave the Bronze shield behind. It's only 25 G or something.
- Talk to King Armour, equip it
- Stop by Hero town and sell your Strong potion. Buy a Hammer. If your GBA's RNG is fresh, you should have learned Power. (oops I should be practicing on my Game Boy Player). If you haven't learned it, don't buy it, you'll be buying a Battle sword later anyway in case you learn Power later.
- Don't fight Redbulls on the way to Kingsword. Blast all Karatekas with Ice.
- Hit King Sword with your THUNDER HAMMER, straight outta Gauntlet Legends etc
- Equip King Sword. This will be on par with your rapier strike anyway even with your lower strength. Plus you will probably get criticals against Lizards and the like...King sword is a fire/ice/thunder weapon all in one?
- Kill Shield Steward without even stopping to recharge your Powers. I was learning Flame by the time I fought his guards, sweet deal.
- Your HP should probably be about 150 by now, which is barely enough to beat Gen-Bu. Heal up and win with either Power hammer or Ice. There is also a chance you know Mirror, that can work with Rapier but I would still prefer the consistency of magic.
- Buy Gold armour and an Elec book before using the black sphere to climb up. Elec is the book you want to get for the rest of the game because no enemy is immune to it (except for Sei-Ryu, and the obvious things with O-All) and you should deal extra damage to aquatic enemies. Equip your Hammer even if you don't know Power.

TOWER NONSENSE 1
- Don't stop to look for any chests. The only one you'll find is the Colt and it doesn't sell very well and isn't very useful (actually maybe it is, it isn't dependent on stats for damage and can boost agility? or is that FFL2?)
- Don't stop in fake-Paradise or Purgatory.
- Feel free to use the well at Level 6 (?) though. Man that's nice. Saves about 160 gold too, right?
- By the time you reach the top you will probably have ripped out all the pages on your Ice book, so you'll be using that Elec book.

WORLD 2 - NOT A KEVIN COSTNER MOVIE
- Get to first Island Town.
- Recruit a female human named "WGE" (actually I could probably enter ND faster)
- Go buy an SMG, a Battle Sword and a Gold helm. Spend the rest on HP200s and Agility potions.
- Equip WGE with your remaining Rapiers, Gold gear, and the SMG. Equip CCC with Battle Sword.
- The route through the cave is go all the way right, up one intersection, all the way right, straight up. In the next cave go right, up, left, up, all the way right, all the way up. The rock in the top left is the boat. (I've done this from memory so much but this is probably wrong anyway)
- Sail to Airseed island. Grab it and head for whirlpool. Run from werewolves (most overpowered low level enemy in any RPG ever), magicians (waste of time), pirates (waste of money), Big Eyes (almost a waste fof time)...that basically only leaves geckoes =(
- Get to Fish town. Buy all the agility potions you can afford, maybe some regular potions, maybe some eyedrops too. You'll need them in Sei-Ryu's penthouse.
- Trudge your way underwater to Sei-Ryu's penthouse, grab the blue key, pray you don't get raped by Rhinos or Werewolves. Don't talk to any octopi, they'll curb stomp you and leave you blind.
- Rush upstairs to the treasure room. A save+soft reset may be necessary to get past guards quickly (or is this cheating?) As soon as you touch the chest with Silver armour, equip it on WGE. As soon as you touch the chest with the Grenade in it, equip it on WGE. As soon as you touch the chest with the Cure book in it, have CCC use it gratuitously. But don't equip it for combat use, stick to Power hammer/Elec book. Reverse party order here and put WGE in front.
- Get up to the last level. Blast all cacti with magic + SMG, save your nades for now.
- It is possible that by this point, CCC will have decided Power is useless and will have leaved something else. If that is the case, replace your elec book with the cure book. Regardless, however, have WGE toss grenades at Sei-Ryu constantly, and hope that you don't get Strict'D to death. Man, what a cheap tactic. It's tempting to recruit two monsters or something just to soak up damage and stricts but telling them what to do in every fight and thinking about them constantly would just slow me down. Plus the trials and tribulations of when to eat meat, when to revive them, etc...
- Talk to Sei-Ryu's orb and it will instantly teleport you to your boat. Cool, huh?
- Sail to Ryu-O's island, talk to him, leave, unequip battle sword, talk to him again, use Red or Blue orb, trash Airseed, trash Bluekey, use Blue Sphere, re-equip Battle Sword (or sell it, perhaps?)
- Go back to first Island town, sell Gold armour, buy Needle (in case of Medusa gaze), stay at inn if you need CCC's abilities refilled (otherwise use the spring in the tower), buy another Elec book, buy Agility potions until you're broke. If you didn't get eyedrops before, you might want them now because Clams on the way up can blind you, and if they don't then eventually Su-Zaku will. Yes, he WILL. George Zimmer, guarantee, etc

TOWER NONSENSE 2
- In my test runs, WGE's 213 HP is still higher than CCC's ;_;
- Stop in the river place on the way up and get your three free packets of Xpotions! These help a LOT
- WGE should do about 88 damage with a rapier. CCC is your typical frail mutant that sticks around for nuking stacks of enemies.
- Try to do lots of fighting on the way up here, but be careful. Medusas can Stone (or Ston) someone. The Atomcrab/Medusa/Catwoman fight is actually easy to run away from but it can be dangerous otherwise. Eagles do 88 damage themselves. So do Ravens. DON'T FIGHT CLAMS HOLY SHIT. Nothing like getting hit by 8Legs for 255 damage.
- This is how far I got today, but here's what my sketchy experience with this game tells me to do...

*continued in next post*

Oops. Yeah, I'm that Shiner, only somewhat reformed. Are you sure you don't mean Dr_Ian and Chris? I don't think rj ever did any commentary.

I really wish I had registered before posting so I could edit the topic title to say that I am interested in making a single segment run. Saving and reloading 50,000 time isn't all impressive in a game where you could very easily die in a single random fight. Hmm...in a segmented run, maybe you could do the speculated solo monster game where you change into a Warrior and Saw your way through every boss?

So I worked on a practice run today and didn't get very far due to restarts and forgetting my route. Right now my save game is poised to climb up to World 3 but damn I forgot how hard that part was.  Guess I'll post my current route in here so I don't forget it:

WORLD 1 - BASE LEVEL
- Pick Mutant F named "CCC". I don't think your name affects your fate...does it?
- Set message speed to 1, unequip saber, sell Saber
- Buy Gold armour, Gold gloves, Book of Ice, and 3 Rapiers. Choose Ice because it deals extra damage to Lizards. (or at least it should, I don't think it does)
- Equip a rapier and the other junk in this order:
5. Rapier
6. Ice book
7. Gold gloves
8. Gold armour (I mean come on guys this saves just a little bit of time)
- Start walking to P-Frog's cave. Fight the lizard. Fight the zombie just this once (if you see it), you'll need the stats. Fight Goblins, Asigarus and Albatrosses obviously, they don't take very long.
- Fight the guards until you see a pack of 3 Lizards. If you get 2 or more, blast them with Ice. This builds up some money and stats.
- Blast P-Frog with Ice. If he bites you too much you could die >_>
- Go to the closet and take both potions, leave the Bronze shield behind. It's only 25 G or something.
- Talk to King Armour, equip it
- Stop by Hero town and sell your Strong potion. Buy a Hammer. If your GBA's RNG is fresh, you should have learned Power. (oops I should be practicing on my Game Boy Player). If you haven't learned it, don't buy it, you'll be buying a Battle sword later anyway in case you learn Power later.
- Don't fight Redbulls on the way to Kingsword. Blast all Karatekas with Ice.
- Hit King Sword with your THUNDER HAMMER, straight outta Gauntlet Legends etc
- Equip King Sword. This will be on par with your rapier strike anyway even with your lower strength. Plus you will probably get criticals against Lizards and the like...King sword is a fire/ice/thunder weapon all in one?
- Kill Shield Steward without even stopping to recharge your Powers. I was learning Flame by the time I fought his guards, sweet deal.
- Your HP should probably be about 150 by now, which is barely enough to beat Gen-Bu. Heal up and win with either Power hammer or Ice. There is also a chance you know Mirror, that can work with Rapier but I would still prefer the consistency of magic.
- Buy Gold armour and an Elec book before using the black sphere to climb up. Elec is the book you want to get for the rest of the game because no enemy is immune to it (except for Sei-Ryu, and the obvious things with O-All) and you should deal extra damage to aquatic enemies. Equip your Hammer even if you don't know Power.

TOWER NONSENSE 1
- Don't stop to look for any chests. The only one you'll find is the Colt and it doesn't sell very well and isn't very useful (actually maybe it is, it isn't dependent on stats for damage and can boost agility? or is that FFL2?)
- Don't stop in fake-Paradise or Purgatory.
- Feel free to use the well at Level 6 (?) though. Man that's nice. Saves about 160 gold too, right?
- By the time you reach the top you will probably have ripped out all the pages on your Ice book, so you'll be using that Elec book.

WORLD 2 - NOT A KEVIN COSTNER MOVIE
- Get to first Island Town.
- Recruit a female human named "WGE" (actually I could probably enter ND faster)
- Go buy an SMG, a Battle Sword and a Gold helm. Spend the rest on HP200s and Agility potions.
- Equip WGE with your remaining Rapiers, Gold gear, and the SMG. Equip CCC with Battle Sword.
- The route through the cave is go all the way right, up one intersection, all the way right, straight up. In the next cave go right, up, left, up, all the way right, all the way up. The rock in the top left is the boat. (I've done this from memory so much but this is probably wrong anyway)
- Sail to Airseed island. Grab it and head for whirlpool. Run from werewolves (most overpowered low level enemy in any RPG ever), magicians (waste of time), pirates (waste of money), Big Eyes (almost a waste fof time)...that basically only leaves geckoes =(
- Get to Fish town.  Buy all the agility potions you can afford, maybe some regular potions, maybe some eyedrops too. You'll need them in Sei-Ryu's penthouse.
- Trudge your way underwater to Sei-Ryu's penthouse, grab the blue key, pray you don't get raped by Rhinos or Werewolves. Don't talk to any octopi, they'll curb stomp you and leave you blind.
- Rush upstairs to the treasure room. A save+soft reset may be necessary to get past guards quickly (or is this cheating?) As soon as you touch the chest with Silver armour, equip it on WGE. As soon as you touch the chest with the Grenade in it, equip it on WGE. As soon as you touch the chest with the Cure book in it, have CCC use it gratuitously. But don't equip it for combat use, stick to Power hammer/Elec book. Reverse party order here and put WGE in front.
- Get up to the last level. Blast all cacti with magic + SMG, save your nades for now.
- It is possible that by this point, CCC will have decided Power is useless and will have leaved something else. If that is the case, replace your elec book with the cure book. Regardless, however, have WGE toss grenades at Sei-Ryu constantly, and hope that you don't get Strict'D to death. Man, what a cheap tactic. It's tempting to recruit two monsters or something just to soak up damage and stricts but telling them what to do in every fight and thinking about them constantly would just slow me down. Plus the trials and tribulations of when to eat meat, when to revive them, etc...
- Talk to Sei-Ryu's orb and it will instantly teleport you to your boat. Cool, huh?
- Sail to Ryu-O's island, talk to him, leave, unequip battle sword, talk to him again, use Red or Blue orb, trash Airseed, trash Bluekey, use Blue Sphere, re-equip Battle Sword (or sell it, perhaps?)
- Go back to first Island town, sell Gold armour, buy Needle (in case of Medusa gaze), stay at inn if you need CCC's abilities refilled (otherwise use the spring in the tower), buy another Elec book, buy Agility potions until you're broke. If you didn't get eyedrops before, you might want them now because Clams on the way up can blind you, and if they don't then eventually Su-Zaku will. Yes, he WILL. George Zimmer, guarantee, etc

TOWER NONSENSE 2
- In my test runs, WGE's 213 HP is still higher than CCC's ;_;
- Stop in the river place on the way up and get your three free packets of Xpotions! These help a LOT
- WGE should do about 88 damage with a rapier. CCC is your typical frail mutant that sticks around for nuking stacks of enemies.
- Try to do lots of fighting on the way up here, but be careful. Medusas can Stone (or Ston) someone. The Atomcrab/Medusa/Catwoman fight is actually easy to run away from but it can be dangerous otherwise. Eagles do 88 damage themselves. So do Ravens. DON'T FIGHT CLAMS HOLY SHIT. Nothing like getting hit by 8Legs for 255 damage.
- This is how far I got today, but here's what my sketchy experience with this game tells me to do...

*continued in next post*

Shiner

2008-03-12 09:20:15 am

- Pick up Musket for cash (or use it, if guns turn out to be good after all)? Pick up P-Knife for actual usage on CCC? Or is her agility too low? Hmmm.

WORLD 3 - BYAK-KO COULD BE A GOOD MEGAMAN BOSS
- Buy two Dragon armours! Sell whatever you can to make this a reality! Elemental damage hurts a lot and this stuff will protect you for the rest of the game.
- Any spare cash goes toward books or stat potions. Books are actually the most economical weapon by this point in the game. 20 pages of good damage to a whole stack with 100% accuracy for 500 gold is damn good.
- Talk to bar dudes, blah blah, fly, get to jail. Unfortunately I am too strapped for cash to do anything cool in the secret town. Extra flare books would be sweeeeeet. I should do a Mutant/3 monsters run of this game someday just so I can be rich enough to afford that. Wait no, monsters would only make me poor with all the constant healing. Unless they were all slimes somehow.
- Take Revenge sword, if anything because it sells well. I think it's too chaotic of a weapon to be used effectively in a speed run. There's no guarantee Ashura would use 6Arms just to own himself; he could Flare everybody to death instead.
- Do the whole song and dance to get the Jailkey. Drink leftover Xpotions to make room for the good stuff. There is a Death book in there somewhere which is actually quite handy for ending skirmishes quickly and profitably. I think this is also where you score the Ninja gauntlets, handy gear for WGE at first, maybe for CCC later.
- Fly out, sell Elixirs and old gauntlets, buy tons of potions (this might be your last chance to buy Cure books?), fight Byak-Ko. He should be a complete wuss. World 3 is a major turning point in the game because suddenly 300 gold is nothing to do you, so you can buy tons of potions. I would consider reaching 400 HP for WGE as well, it will make the next climb easier.

TOWER NONSENSE 3
- OMFG GET THE SAW OMFG. Equip it on WGE for now, even though it probably won't work.
- don't bother with Vampic Sword, P-Sword and Elixirs?
- Save the thirsty octopi/loot the castle? There's good stuff in there too, even if Ogres are dangerous.

WORLD 4 - STEAMPUNK IS OVERRATED
- Run from Su-Zaku, even though using the Saw on him is hilarious.
- Kill Antlions with Elec and Grenades (oh right, buying more, etc)
- Get to town, buy a Saw for CCC, buy a Balkan for WGE.
- Talk Captain "So-Cho" Falcon
- Drive bike to Library anyway just for the Stone book. Talk to a north wall on the second floor and it will take you there for free without fighting any monsters.
- Drive to Akiba anyway. Everybody knows where it is. Grab all treasure chests. Drool everywhere upon equipping the Catcraw. It does about 350 damage to anything at this point, I think.
- Drive to ...can't remember what the other town is called. Get your Board. Crank up WGE's stats some more (Agility is better than HP600, at this point). Get more Elec books if needed LOLOLOL. I guess keeping that Battle sword is useless after all...
- Talk to Captain Falcon again, go to Power Plant, kill Evil Eye with whatever your strongest stuff is, don't fight Dinosaurs, equip Captain Falcon's Helmet on CCC, pray you're able to kill WarMech. If he Nukes you, time to start over from Sei-Ryu's penthouse, LOL
- Refill at the unscatched Inn. Grab only the Hyper cannon from Skyscraper...wait, I think there's an Elixir in there somewhere too. Either way, just try to get through it as fast as possible, it's a rather long and brutal dungeon for a speedrun. That Cure book is probably almost done by now.
- Kill Su-Zaku with conventional weaponry. Last time I did a full run of this game my Saws didn't work...GRRRRRR. He should go down after a few Catcraw hits anyway.
- Get WGE's HP up to 600 before you leave. Silly Square forgot to notice that HP200s are much cheaper for this purpose but who wants to buy 200 of those? This is a speedrun!

TOWER NONSENSE 4
- ARRRRRRGH HATE THIS PART. Run from pretty much everything, Jellies especially. Well, P-Soldiers aren't so bad. Skip the Magnum (it appears in this section right?)
- Grab the Flare book for sure. Nuke bomb probably isn't necessary. Since I'm not making time to level up strength intentionally, Xcalbr and the Glass sword are probably skippable. (Although it's worth pointing out that CCC's strength made it to something like 35 at the end of my last full run due to all that Power swording, but that was pretty much a regular playthrough, done casually over several days...I probably won't be able to keep Power that long in the real thing)
- I have no idea how to kill Ashura. Saws probably won't work. Maybe I need some strength after all? For a conventional kill, have CCC heal or Flare while Catcraw ownage takes place.
- ooups yuo fel <:
(XD I love that "YOU fail at English!" script)

WORLD 5 - WTF IS THIS SHIT WTF
- Buy a Sun sword for CCC. Just do it. Also buy an Arcane or two for last minute fixes on Saws.
- I considered recruiting two more humans and giving them Power armour just for some quick effectiveness but I might not have enough gold, plus making all the menu decisions would take too long in every fight.
- Kill undead bosses by flailing in the air with Sun sword and Saw. Last time I tried this, the Sun sword worked every time even though WGE had 253 agility. That should be accurate enough to hit, right? Is there a difference between the Saw getting a "miss!" and "No damage!"
- I can't remember Gen-Bu2's prize. Don't equip Arthur armour. Give the nameless shoe to whoever has room for it (probably CCC). Don't equip the Masmune.
- "You can't kill me! I am a god!" *VREHHHHHHHP*
If you take too long you'll just get Flare'd to death =(

Actually this is probably more like 4 hours. ;_; I should probably drop a lot of the treasure gathering stuff.

ARGH THIS IS SO LONG NO ONE WILL READ IT NOW

I've been refreshing this topic so long, deciding not to post until I had something to contribute, but I think I held back a little too long...
oh wait, I just noticed I posted the short version of this in the first post >_>

- Pick up Musket for cash (or use it, if guns turn out to be good after all)? Pick up P-Knife for actual usage on CCC? Or is her agility too low? Hmmm.

WORLD 3 - BYAK-KO COULD BE A GOOD MEGAMAN BOSS
- Buy two Dragon armours! Sell whatever you can to make this a reality! Elemental damage hurts a lot and this stuff will protect you for the rest of the game.
- Any spare cash goes toward books or stat potions. Books are actually the most economical weapon by this point in the game. 20 pages of good damage to a whole stack with 100% accuracy for 500 gold is damn good.
- Talk to bar dudes, blah blah, fly, get to jail. Unfortunately I am too strapped for cash to do anything cool in the secret town. Extra flare books would be sweeeeeet. I should do a Mutant/3 monsters run of this game someday just so I can be rich enough to afford that. Wait no, monsters would only make me poor with all the constant healing. Unless they were all slimes somehow.
- Take Revenge sword, if anything because it sells well. I think it's too chaotic of a weapon to be used effectively in a speed run. There's no guarantee Ashura would use 6Arms just to own himself; he could Flare everybody to death instead.
- Do the whole song and dance to get the Jailkey. Drink leftover Xpotions to make room for the good stuff. There is a Death book in there somewhere which is actually quite handy for ending skirmishes quickly and profitably. I think this is also where you score the Ninja gauntlets, handy gear for WGE at first, maybe for CCC later.
- Fly out, sell Elixirs and old gauntlets, buy tons of potions (this might be your last chance to buy Cure books?), fight Byak-Ko. He should be a complete wuss. World 3 is a major turning point in the game because suddenly 300 gold is nothing to do you, so you can buy tons of potions. I would consider reaching 400 HP for WGE as well, it will make the next climb easier.

TOWER NONSENSE 3
- OMFG GET THE SAW OMFG. Equip it on WGE for now, even though it probably won't work.
- don't bother with Vampic Sword, P-Sword and Elixirs?
- Save the thirsty octopi/loot the castle? There's good stuff in there too, even if Ogres are dangerous.

WORLD 4 - STEAMPUNK IS OVERRATED
- Run from Su-Zaku, even though using the Saw on him is hilarious.
- Kill Antlions with Elec and Grenades (oh right, buying more, etc)
- Get to town, buy a Saw for CCC, buy a Balkan for WGE.
- Talk Captain "So-Cho" Falcon
- Drive bike to Library anyway just for the Stone book. Talk to a north wall on the second floor and it will take you there for free without fighting any monsters.
- Drive to Akiba anyway. Everybody knows where it is. Grab all treasure chests. Drool everywhere upon equipping the Catcraw. It does about 350 damage to anything at this point, I think.
- Drive to ...can't remember what the other town is called. Get your Board. Crank up WGE's stats some more (Agility is better than HP600, at this point). Get more Elec books if needed LOLOLOL. I guess keeping that Battle sword is useless after all...
- Talk to Captain Falcon again, go to Power Plant, kill Evil Eye with whatever your strongest stuff is, don't fight Dinosaurs, equip Captain Falcon's Helmet on CCC, pray you're able to kill WarMech. If he Nukes you, time to start over from Sei-Ryu's penthouse, LOL
- Refill at the unscatched Inn. Grab only the Hyper cannon from Skyscraper...wait, I think there's an Elixir in there somewhere too. Either way, just try to get through it as fast as possible, it's a rather long and brutal dungeon for a speedrun. That Cure book is probably almost done by now.
- Kill Su-Zaku with conventional weaponry. Last time I did a full run of this game my Saws didn't work...GRRRRRR. He should go down after a few Catcraw hits anyway.
- Get WGE's HP up to 600 before you leave. Silly Square forgot to notice that HP200s are much cheaper for this purpose but who wants to buy 200 of those? This is a speedrun!

TOWER NONSENSE 4
- ARRRRRRGH HATE THIS PART. Run from pretty much everything, Jellies especially. Well, P-Soldiers aren't so bad. Skip the Magnum (it appears in this section right?)
- Grab the Flare book for sure. Nuke bomb probably isn't necessary. Since I'm not making time to level up strength intentionally, Xcalbr and the Glass sword are probably skippable. (Although it's worth pointing out that CCC's strength made it to something like 35 at the end of my last full run due to all that Power swording, but that was pretty much a regular playthrough, done casually over several days...I probably won't be able to keep Power that long in the real thing)
- I have no idea how to kill Ashura. Saws probably won't work. Maybe I need some strength after all? For a conventional kill, have CCC heal or Flare while Catcraw ownage takes place.
- ooups yuo fel <:
(XD I love that "YOU fail at English!" script)

WORLD 5 - WTF IS THIS SHIT WTF
- Buy a Sun sword for CCC. Just do it. Also buy an Arcane or two for last minute fixes on Saws.
- I considered recruiting two more humans and giving them Power armour just for some quick effectiveness but I might not have enough gold, plus making all the menu decisions would take too long in every fight.
- Kill undead bosses by flailing in the air with Sun sword and Saw. Last time I tried this, the Sun sword worked every time even though WGE had 253 agility. That should be accurate enough to hit, right? Is there a difference between the Saw getting a "miss!" and "No damage!"
- I can't remember Gen-Bu2's prize. Don't equip Arthur armour. Give the nameless shoe to whoever has room for it (probably CCC). Don't equip the Masmune.  
- "You can't kill me! I am a god!" *VREHHHHHHHP*
If you take too long you'll just get Flare'd to death =(

Actually this is probably more like 4 hours. ;_; I should probably drop a lot of the treasure gathering stuff.

ARGH THIS IS SO LONG NO ONE WILL READ IT NOW

I've been refreshing this topic so long, deciding not to post until I had something to contribute, but I think I held back a little too long...
oh wait, I just noticed I posted the short version of this in the first post >_>

Enhasa

2008-03-13 12:25:20 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Too bad I don't actually remember anything about this game and I can't contribute like the bum I am. So I'm only addressing this sidetopic since I can't PM you.

Quote:

Oops. Yeah, I'm that Shiner, only somewhat reformed. Are you sure you don't mean Dr_Ian and Chris? I don't think rj ever did any commentary.

Reformed how? Hopefully not in a way that prevents audio commentary for this run.

I meant the Rob from shmups, not rjpage. I think he is listed as Rob at super-play and has some Mars Matrix vids. I would link you some youtube to give you an example, but he took down all his youtube vids.

What is up with Grandia commentary BTW? Do you have this? I would like to watch this if in fact it is not an urban legend.

Shiner

2008-03-13 04:09:05 am

Could that Rob be MrMonkeyMan, I wonder? Didn't he play a lot of Mars Matrix? Wait, that was Bangai-Oh.

I will still most likely do commentary even though I think I'm lousy at it, especially compared to those guys who do commentary as they play through various Super Mario World ROM hacks.

Oops, forgot to address the part about Grandia. I have never played or owned Grandia. Maybe you misheard me talking about Gunbird or Giga Wing, neither of which I really wish to delve into. My shmup days are mostly done although I still want to get a Type 1 no-death Loop 1 on Gradius V and beat the Chapter 5 record on Ikaruga...

Enhasa

2008-03-13 07:57:29 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

No, MrMonkeyMan is a self-admitted Treasure fanboy (who has the Alien Soldier runs up on this site actually) and his name is Tyler Needham. This Rob likes to hate on Treasure if anything and is a Psikyo fanboy who lives in Alaska. Both people are certainly better shmuppers than I am though. Tongue

There are a lot of shmups people with vids on super-play, so it's probably just someone you don't know.

I actually saved one of his youtube reviews BTW. I don't like video reviews but Rob's are great.

About Grandia, I'm pretty sure someone said something about someone doing a long run with commentary, so I guess that's somebody else, my bad. What have you personally done besides the Gradius Galaxies and Faxanadu? I don't remember. I guess some text commentary for NES Gradius and such back on sdkess's site.

jam287

2008-03-22 10:50:24 am

This run would be nice to watch, although it's my least favorite of the 3 FFL games.

Marty81

2008-03-25 03:52:48 am

Quote:

This run would be nice to watch, although it's my least favorite of the 3 FFL games.

That's basically how I feel about this one. I only beat FFL1 once or twice, but this run would be fun to watch.

Shiner

2008-06-24 08:10:38 pm

I have moved the discussion to here because you guys don't know what I'm talking about. >_>

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=563273&topic=43869120

Also your captcha is absolutely insanely hard but I got lucky this time

ShinerCCC

2008-09-01 04:45:51 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Okay I beat this game while in a car but I was improvising so my time was damn slow. But I can definitely beat this game in less than 2 hours.

The GameFAQs thread is a bloated mess of me talking to myself but there is good stuff in there that should prove the worthiness of this run.

But I'm just wondering...will I be able to get any verifiers when this is finished? And am I allowed to direct-capture this run to a PC (use a video splitter to play on a TV while the other half goes to capture card), or am I forced into using a DVD recorder?

Enhasa

2008-09-01 05:37:31 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

We have runs of Chameleon Twist and Quest 64 so all games are worthy, lol.

Yes, verifiers are basically guaranteed for a game like this. The usual rough litmus test is go to gamefaqs and see if there is even one review for a game.

Capturing to your PC is great, no problem. We officially recommend DVD recorder because it's supposedly harder for some random dumb kid to mess that up (although this is up for debate lol, DVD recorders kinda suck). When you capture it yourself, you should post samples in the tech support forum since Nate is a real stickler on video quality. You can self-encode, use this program Nate wrote called anrichan to encode for you, or just torrent us the raw video.

Carcinogen

2008-09-02 12:31:34 pm

Random dumb kid would more likely fuck up a DVD recorder.

My dad's girlfriend got confused about how to work the TV in the living room (I'd set up a temporary recording set-up), and yanked out one of my DVDs while she was hooking and unhooking crap. Apparently she didn't want to get 'confused', because we were using the DVD recorder as a TV tuner. I hadn't recorded there for a week, and my dad's housekeeper piled it up in a stack of CDs and DVDs. It took me hours to find it. Nice of them to not ask me how to use the damn thing. =\

ShinerCCC

2008-09-03 03:26:59 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Okay there's like a bazillion reviews on GameFAQs but I was hoping I could get a name for certain or something. Whatever, we'll be okay.

Also shut the fuck up about Quest 64, I fucking love that game, at one point I was thinking about single-segmenting that beast, more cursing etc

Enhasa

2008-09-03 07:17:24 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

We try to keep the verifiers anonymous (best would be double blind but obviously most of the time we can't keep the runner anonymous, lol) because we don't want them to feel any pressure that might result from the runner knowing they verified. They can be honest and reject something without the runner hating them 4LIFE.

Sorry about Quest 64, I know we have a bunch of better candidates for crap game, but it's become a stock answer over the years since people know what it is (who haven't even played it, like Superman 64), and nobody remembers what Chameleon Twist is, haha. I mean, I think FF7 for example is shittier, but if I used it as an example, people would be all like WUT are you talking about?? Quest 64 is just considered bad like FFMQ or Evermore so in terms of an example, perception is more important than reality.

Lone_Kilted_Ninja

2008-09-05 10:22:12 pm

Anything you can do I can do halfass

Quote from Marty81:

One interesting thing to note is that the list of numbers to use for the RNG is different on the GBA, the original GB, and the game boy player. I know because I used to use it to manipulate stat gains and drops in Final Fantasy Legend 2.

This will get at ZeeJustin's point as well...

Every game uses its own RNG- the early consoles didn't have any nice friendly rand() builtin. The RNGs are usually based on static tables, which is why exploits are possible. As a bit of trivia, the GameBoy FFs are, iirc, based not off the Final Fantasy series but rather the Romancing Saga series, save for Adventure, which is rightly a Seiken Densetsu title, so of games for other consoles, you'd be more likely to have RNG similarities with Saga games (presumably by the same developers) than Final Fantasies, but you'd actually have the best luck looking at other classic GB RNGs since they're trying to work in the same memory and CPU constraints. The fact that the RNG is different on GB/GBA/Player is curious indeed, since the CPU allegedly behaves identically on each, ruling out code functional differences. The best guess I can make is that the RNG uses a seed index pulled from either an uninitialized register/memory location (a place that hasn't been assigned a value, and consequently contains "random" startup data usually influenced by crosstalk and residual charge from the surrounding hardware and interconnect), or else from an "undefined" location or opcode (something that in formal system documentation is stated to not give a meaningful value, but which again will contain some pattern of voltages based on surrounding wiring and system architecture). Or they stumbled upon the one small area of memory that was later reserved to hold whatever flag lets games tell if they're on a GB, GBC or GBA.

The fact that saving 'locks in' the RNG makes me almost certain that it is table-based, not feeding purely off garbage memory, even if the table index source has different values depending on the system.

[quote="Marty81"]
One interesting thing to note is that the list of numbers to use for the RNG is different on the GBA, the original GB, and the game boy player. I know because I used to use it to manipulate stat gains and drops in Final Fantasy Legend 2.
[/quote]
This will get at ZeeJustin's point as well...

Every game uses its own RNG- the early consoles didn't have any nice friendly rand() builtin.  The RNGs are usually based on static tables, which is why exploits are possible.  As a bit of trivia, the GameBoy FFs are, iirc, based not off the Final Fantasy series but rather the Romancing Saga series, save for Adventure, which is rightly a Seiken Densetsu title, so of games for other consoles, you'd be more likely to have RNG similarities with Saga games (presumably by the same developers) than Final Fantasies, but you'd actually have the best luck looking at other classic GB RNGs since they're trying to work in the same memory and CPU constraints.  The fact that the RNG is different on GB/GBA/Player is curious indeed, since the CPU allegedly behaves identically on each, ruling out code functional differences.  The best guess I can make is that the RNG uses a seed index pulled from either an uninitialized register/memory location (a place that hasn't been assigned a value, and consequently contains "random" startup data usually influenced by crosstalk and residual charge from the surrounding hardware and interconnect), or else from an "undefined" location or opcode (something that in formal system documentation is stated to not give a meaningful value, but which again will contain some pattern of voltages based on surrounding wiring and system architecture).  Or they stumbled upon the one small area of memory that was later reserved to hold whatever flag lets games tell if they're on a GB, GBC or GBA.

The fact that saving 'locks in' the RNG makes me almost certain that it is table-based, not feeding purely off garbage memory, even if the table index source has different values depending on the system.

ShinerCCC

2008-09-10 02:28:27 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Okay I suck at hardware too much to understand all of that when I'm tired at 1:30 AM, but I will say that if you hard reset the game, or start with a fresh power-on, you will see exactly the same things. Combat will be exactly the same and your meat drops will start the same way (see the GameFAQs thread for me talking about a "meat counter") and your potions will heal for the same amount. But save the game and do a soft reset and EVERYTHING is completely different.

You know how you can press a direction, or a direction plus the A button while turning the game on, and you'll get a different set of 4 colours? Each alternate coloured "universe" has a different outcome. This is very interesting but unfortunately the default green and blue one is the one I'm using because the start is just too wicked. I can consistently get through the first world in just 11 minutes, where as Brightstar stumbled around like a toddler for 27 minutes or something and didn't even beat the first real boss.

Also, the Game Boy Player is exactly the same as my regular GBA, I tested this

Okay I suck at hardware too much to understand all of that when I'm tired at 1:30 AM, but I will say that if you hard reset the game, or start with a fresh power-on, you will see exactly the same things. Combat will be exactly the same and your meat drops will start the same way (see the GameFAQs thread for me talking about a "meat counter") and your potions will heal for the same amount. But save the game and do a soft reset and EVERYTHING is completely different.

You know how you can press a direction, or a direction plus the A button while turning the game on, and you'll get a different set of 4 colours? Each alternate coloured "universe" has a different outcome. This is very interesting but unfortunately the default green and blue one is the one I'm using because the start is just too wicked. I can consistently get through the first world in just 11 minutes, where as Brightstar stumbled around like a toddler for 27 minutes or something and didn't even beat the first real boss.

Also, the Game Boy Player is exactly the same as my regular GBA, I tested this

ShinerCCC

2008-12-28 02:33:37 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Now I know none of you guys seem to care about this game, or understand its inner workings, but tonight I completed a test run in 88 minutes. Details in the GameFAQs thread:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=563273&topic=43869120

If Mike or Enhasa show up in this thread, I should inform you guys that my capture card progress is pretty lousy. I found audio splitter cables but nothing that will give me two videos (one to the TV and one to the card). Also my new laptop was reformatted but I didn't seem to get any drivers so it has no internet or sound, and has pitiful graphics at the moment. Need to fix that. But anyway I could capture S-Video and play composite for this game because it's on the Gamecube's Gameboy Player, just need to borrow that cable from my friend for that. But capturing Retrocon/NES is going to require cables that I'm not even sure exist at all ;_;
So it may be a while until we see this game or Faxanadu...

getter77

2008-12-28 08:58:23 am

100% runs=great to watch

I care! 8) ( I also somehow missed this topic all the way through Shocked

)

Can't help with your mastery though, so I bid your fair fortune on getting this captured and up on the main page.