Final Fantasy X

2009-01-13 08:16:45 pm

There's a word for that

I can see why you needed Power Break, that miss on Ifrit after Darkness wore off was very lucky... Still, maybe you could just run with it and pretend it worked properly anyway Tongue

The fight really looks to involve a lot of luck as-is, and trying to get Tidus hit would cut the odds of success by another 2/3, which really doesn't sound worth it... I don't think anybody will deny that this fight is good, it's just a matter of how extra-good you want to make it.

Essentia

2009-01-14 09:48:59 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Okay, I decided to keep the Chocobo Eater battle. I think Tidus should still be able to get his overdrive before Extractor, since the enemies in Djose and the Moonflow can do quite a bit of damage, and he might need the extra MP anyway for Gui if I change my strategy (see below).

However, now I'm on Gui, and I don't know if I'll ever get it. I've tried over 100 times to get self-destruct to critical, and it never has. The thing is, I haven't found anything on the internet that says self-destruct can go critical; I wouldn't have even known about it if Gaverion hadn't mentioned it. I saw it happen on my test run (the first time I tried it out on Gui, actually), so I know it can happen, but it seems that the chances are really low. A critical self-destruct saves about a minute, but I'm tempted to go on without it.

hillza

2009-01-14 10:17:44 am

Quote from Essentia:

However, now I'm on Gui, and I don't know if I'll ever get it. I've tried over 100 times to get self-destruct to critical, and it never has. The thing is, I haven't found anything on the internet that says self-destruct can go critical; I wouldn't have even known about it if Gaverion hadn't mentioned it. I saw it happen on my test run (the first time I tried it out on Gui, actually), so I know it can happen, but it seems that the chances are really low. A critical self-destruct saves about a minute, but I'm tempted to go on without it.

I think maybe a few more tries for it i mean what if you end up being 59 seconds slower than ultima garden when you could have saved one minute there lol.

Essentia

2009-01-14 11:36:17 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Well, I tried a few more times, but I'm sad to say that I've given up on that strategy. The good news, though, is that I just beat Gui and I'm 2 minutes ahead of the Ultima Garden run! I really don't know how that happened, but it's okay with me. Smiley

(Also, I was able to make sure that Gui hit Tidus, to make up for the Chocobo Eater battle.)

hillza

2009-01-14 11:55:32 am

Quote from Essentia:

Well, I tried a few more times, but I'm sad to say that I've given up on that strategy. The good news, though, is that I just beat Gui and I'm 2 minutes ahead of the Ultima Garden run! I really don't know how that happened, but it's okay with me. Smiley

(Also, I was able to make sure that Gui hit Tidus, to make up for the Chocobo Eater battle.)

Holy crap nice job, are you gonna post this on youtube?

Essentia

2009-01-14 11:58:41 am

Everything's better with Magitek

Quote from hillza:

Holy crap nice job, are you gonna post this on youtube?

Yeah, I can post it on Youtube, but I'm gonna wait a few days since I just barely put a video up yesterday. Wink

Sum2k3

2009-01-14 12:21:18 pm

wow...
you surely can get sub 10:30, i bet!
and gratz on beating ultima garden's time, hopefully you can hold it Smiley

Renokye

2009-01-14 08:37:11 pm

Touhou anyone? :D

This sounds so epicly awesome! You can do it! We know you can! Cheesy

I find it amazing that people can think so critically about video games like this when they really set their minds to it. Thinking up multiple strategies and figuring out the equations the games use to calculate damage and experience. Awesome! XP

Essentia

2009-01-17 10:00:15 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

Update. I am now at the Lake Macalania travel agency, with a time of 5:41. For these last few segments, my time was right with Ultima Garden's, but this latest segment got me a minute or two ahead again. I guess my fast Spherimorph strategy paid off. Smiley

P.S. If you've been paying attention to my sig, you might have noticed that the number of segments went up from 50 to 52. I added two extra saves: one at Moonflow North (after Extractor) and one at the Thunder Plains travel agency. Both of these were to help with getting better luck on encounters.

metallicaband

2009-01-18 11:32:01 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Seems like you're doing really great so far, keep it up !

Ver Greeneyes

2009-01-19 06:35:35 am

Looking forward to seeing more of this, keep up the good work!

Kzambro

2009-01-19 01:27:56 pm

Sup!

I saw your fight agains Chocobo eater on your Youtube page.

Very nice work there!

Hope to see more soon.

-Kz

Essentia

Edit history:

Essentia: 2009-01-19 03:56:46 pm

2009-01-19 02:38:50 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

I've now uploaded the boss battles for Gui, Extractor, Spherimorph, and Crawler (all in one video). Read the video description for comments on each battle.

As for the run, I just got the perfect battle against Seymour; literally, each one of Seymour's attacks had to hit a specific person. I was originally going to save after the Macalania cloister of trials, but I was so nervous from getting a perfect battle that I was afraid I'd mess the trials up. So I'm now at the save point just after Seymour with a time of 6:01, but I can't compare that with my test run or the Ultima Garden run since neither one saved there.

Edit: Now I'm at the Macalania Crevasse (just before Wendigo), and somehow I'm now 6 minutes ahead of the Ultima Garden run. They must have spent some time in Macalania leveling or stealing or something, but I'm not sure why.

hillza

2009-01-20 09:46:46 am

Quote from Essentia:

Edit: Now I'm at the Macalania Crevasse (just before Wendigo), and somehow I'm now 6 minutes ahead of the Ultima Garden run. They must have spent some time in Macalania leveling or stealing or something, but I'm not sure why.

Holy crap nice one!!!!

Anon

2009-01-20 10:00:09 am

Fucking awesome stuff, man. I love what I've seen so far and can't wait for the final thing to be released.

KADFC

2009-01-20 05:59:04 pm

Hmmm, seems this has become way more active after I wasn't here. Many reasons for not caring anymore:
1) I've done the speed run 3 or 4 times and each time, I beat my old record. There was the frustration of the Ultima time and there were no answers. No english speaking person could beat it. Blitzy and Kuro7 said they could, but after a year, still no word from either sides. I could beat my record again... but there were no new compeition/knowledge, so that didn't give me any motivation
2) SDA wanted something under 10 hours. Impossible for FFX, unless I sharked it to skip cutscenes.
3) SDA wanted the formats LQ, MQ, and HQ. I don't have a DVD-Recorder, nor did I plan to get one. If I was to encode myself, for all formats... that's motivation downer, especially for 11 hours. I would be wasting more time encoding then playing.

Thus, what other reason can I give myself to do it again? None. However, since Essentia decided to send me the video of her FFX speed run, that sparked my interest.

First off I want to say, no matter what your final time is, I plan to beat it by at least 15 minutes. Secondly, you really should give up on the NA version. The International version is where the speed is at, but hey, it's your call. I can already tell 4 boss battles will go by a lot faster, in which case, it's cheap. Weapon elementals won't matter because I'll be abusing items like mad. Lastly, me actually recording this again? 20% chance. Take too much time and might not be posted. SDA still have that 10 hour cap right?

So basically, I've printed out everything that I have missed and I decided to read it on the way back from school. I'll comment and question when I see needed. I won't quote any comments. That'll make this really large...

1) The International version runs at the same speed as the NA version. I tested it and so did 2 others. The time of CGs might be different, but I'm pretty sure that only applies to the PAL version.

2) About my "drunken staggering", I thought it was imposisble to fix. When I see those parts, I tried holding the opposite direction the next time in hopes of it being fixed. Tried it twice, didn't find it possible. Unless it is fixable?

3) "The biggest problem isn't encountering a Ghost? It's killing it" Both of these aren't hard to do. I did my own test run of this. Basically, go inside and get into 4 battles. If I didn't encounter a Ghost in those 4, reset. If I did, I can easily defeat it with Trio. With First Strike I can easily flee. Pretty sure I did this after the Ronso battle. At any rate, I killed about 20 Ghosts in 2 or 3 hours worth of time. Didn't get 1 single No Encounter, I didn't care who it was for, just getting it. Out of those 20 or so battles, only got 4 weapons. I gave up. Pure luck I guess.

4) I'm glad you caught a few of my flaws:
a) HP/MP/Magic/Strengh Sphere not used. That's because the whole concept, this was my first time testing it. Didn't know if I needed more or less because the Evrae strategy wasn't tested at all. I got the strategy Kuro, but still not too confident. Plus, Natus' strategy was my only assumption. Also never tested. More couldn't hurt right?
b) Items Stolen. Major Flaw. I lost my notes of what items to steal, but I counted on my guessimation.

5) Hmm, never knew about that Farplane thing and I never bothered testing it out. I thought it was the same no matter what.

6) Good to see that you optimized where I didn't. However, I'm interested of what your sphere grid looks like for Yuna. I can only dream of a faster Seymour/Anima battle.

7) For the Issaru's battle, what was Yuna's stats and what extra stat spheres did you use on her? Surprirsed on the amount saved on Bahamut battle.

8) Gaverion... if you are who I think you are... aren't you the spammer on gamefaqs? The one that created like 50 account then got banned for each one of them?

9) Slice and Dice with Chocobo Wing. From what I see, they are essential to the battle. Casting Hastega won't work. As long as you're using these two, both are needed. That's because of an item's speed tick. Using a spell will further delay then using an item. You need to go faster then BFA, or he'll kill you. Fury can kill BFA, but that's only if the other 2 were knocked up when you're using it. But since they are so random, it's close to impossible for all hits to hit the same target 8 times. Also, this is based on luck as well. If half of them hit unwanted targets... game over, reset and try again.

10) Another thing, have you found a different BFA strategy? My strategy was only forced out because during my first run, when I reached BFA... I couldn't beat him. A speed run in which you can't beat the last boss... sad right? I didn't prepare for this because I thought I was god after getting Trio items. So in the process, I read a few NSG guides to enlighten me and this was what I came up with. An act of frustration/hope if you will. Without Slice and Dice, I claim it to be impossible. All the vets on gamefaqs also didn't think of anything new.

11) About the number of turns BFA gets, it's all about ticks. Even the slighest difference could change of how all the turns are given. Heck, for all of my runs because I keep on forgetting (and wanted to test with the sphere grid), the turns taken are way different. I also had one in which Yuna's turn came first as well.

12) This part struck my odd... "This is because I have No Encounter through Zanarkand, so I didn't steal a Candle of Life." But then later on, you said that you were testing to see if you can get a No Encounter from CotSF and if it didn't go well, you'd give up. See what I'm getting at? And also, I have to assume you learned Doom in the Ronso battle, charged him up, and never used him until the Yu Yevon battle.

13) About the Ultima guy's last save and him actually defeating the last boss, I would have to agree. On GF I posted about this saying this is only the final save, so what? That's not where the game ends. I jumped to the conclusion that he didn't defeat BFA and someone pointed out all Ultima times are legit. Then I said "All time attacks are calculated when the final boss is defeated. So for FFX, running to the last save means I beat the game?" No response. My final conclusion is that he didn't beat BFA because he didn't have Slice and Dice, thus he called it a day. I've seen no further evidence proving that he indeed win, nor his final time in doing so.

14) For the Spherimorph in one turn... nice. I never knew 1 Burning Soul was enough. The Crawler battle was nice as well. That must've taken a LOT of luck.

Well, that's all I got for now. Need to do HW and read... a lot of stuff.

Hmmm, seems this has become way more active after I wasn't here. Many reasons for not caring anymore:
1) I've done the speed run 3 or 4 times and each time, I beat my old record. There was the frustration of the Ultima time and there were no answers. No english speaking person could beat it. Blitzy and Kuro7 said they could, but after a year, still no word from either sides. I could beat my record again... but there were no new compeition/knowledge, so that didn't give me any motivation
2) SDA wanted something under 10 hours. Impossible for FFX, unless I sharked it to skip cutscenes.
3) SDA wanted the formats LQ, MQ, and HQ. I don't have a DVD-Recorder, nor did I plan to get one. If I was to encode myself, for all formats... that's motivation downer, especially for 11 hours. I would be wasting more time encoding then playing.

Thus, what other reason can I give myself to do it again? None. However, since Essentia decided to send me the video of her FFX speed run, that sparked my interest.

First off I want to say, no matter what your final time is, I plan to beat it by at least 15 minutes. Secondly, you really should give up on the NA version. The International version is where the speed is at, but hey, it's your call. I can already tell 4 boss battles will go by a lot faster, in which case, it's cheap. Weapon elementals won't matter because I'll be abusing items like mad. Lastly, me actually recording this again? 20% chance. Take too much time and might not be posted. SDA still have that 10 hour cap right?

So basically, I've printed out everything that I have missed and I decided to read it on the way back from school. I'll comment and question when I see needed. I won't quote any comments. That'll make this really large...

1) The International version runs at the same speed as the NA version. I tested it and so did 2 others. The time of CGs might be different, but I'm pretty sure that only applies to the PAL version.

2) About my "drunken staggering", I thought it was imposisble to fix. When I see those parts, I tried holding the opposite direction the next time in hopes of it being fixed. Tried it twice, didn't find it possible. Unless it is fixable?

3) "The biggest problem isn't encountering a Ghost? It's killing it" Both of these aren't hard to do. I did my own test run of this. Basically, go inside and get into 4 battles. If I didn't encounter a Ghost in those 4, reset. If I did, I can easily defeat it with Trio. With First Strike I can easily flee. Pretty sure I did this after the Ronso battle. At any rate, I killed about 20 Ghosts in 2 or 3 hours worth of time. Didn't get 1 single No Encounter, I didn't care who it was for, just getting it. Out of those 20 or so battles, only got 4 weapons. I gave up. Pure luck I guess.

4) I'm glad you caught a few of my flaws:
a) HP/MP/Magic/Strengh Sphere not used. That's because the whole concept, this was my first time testing it. Didn't know if I needed more or less because the Evrae strategy wasn't tested at all. I got the strategy Kuro, but still not too confident. Plus, Natus' strategy was my only assumption. Also never tested. More couldn't hurt right?
b) Items Stolen. Major Flaw. I lost my notes of what items to steal, but I counted on my guessimation.

5) Hmm, never knew about that Farplane thing and I never bothered testing it out. I thought it was the same no matter what.

6) Good to see that you optimized where I didn't. However, I'm interested of what your sphere grid looks like for Yuna. I can only dream of a faster Seymour/Anima battle.

7) For the Issaru's battle, what was Yuna's stats and what extra stat spheres did you use on her? Surprirsed on the amount saved on Bahamut battle.

8) Gaverion... if you are who I think you are... aren't you the spammer on gamefaqs? The one that created like 50 account then got banned for each one of them?

9) Slice and Dice with Chocobo Wing. From what I see, they are essential to the battle. Casting Hastega won't work. As long as you're using these two, both are needed. That's because of an item's speed tick. Using a spell will further delay then using an item. You need to go faster then BFA, or he'll kill you. Fury can kill BFA, but that's only if the other 2 were knocked up when you're using it. But since they are so random, it's close to impossible for all hits to hit the same target 8 times. Also, this is based on luck as well. If half of them hit unwanted targets... game over, reset and try again.

10) Another thing, have you found a different BFA strategy? My strategy was only forced out because during my first run, when I reached BFA... I couldn't beat him. A speed run in which you can't beat the last boss... sad right? I didn't prepare for this because I thought I was god after getting Trio items. So in the process, I read a few NSG guides to enlighten me and this was what I came up with. An act of frustration/hope if you will. Without Slice and Dice, I claim it to be impossible. All the vets on gamefaqs also didn't think of anything new.

11) About the number of turns BFA gets, it's all about ticks. Even the slighest difference could change of how all the turns are given. Heck, for all of my runs because I keep on forgetting (and wanted to test with the sphere grid), the turns taken are way different. I also had one in which Yuna's turn came first as well.

12) This part struck my odd... "This is because I have No Encounter through Zanarkand, so I didn't steal a Candle of Life." But then later on, you said that you were testing to see if you can get a No Encounter from CotSF and if it didn't go well, you'd give up. See what I'm getting at? And also, I have to assume you learned Doom in the Ronso battle, charged him up, and never used him until the Yu Yevon battle.

13) About the Ultima guy's last save and him actually defeating the last boss, I would have to agree. On GF I posted about this saying this is only the final save, so what? That's not where the game ends. I jumped to the conclusion that he didn't defeat BFA and someone pointed out all Ultima times are legit. Then I said "All time attacks are calculated when the final boss is defeated. So for FFX, running to the last save means I beat the game?" No response. My final conclusion is that he didn't beat BFA because he didn't have Slice and Dice, thus he called it a day. I've seen no further evidence proving that he indeed win, nor his final time in doing so.

14) For the Spherimorph in one turn... nice. I never knew 1 Burning Soul was enough. The Crawler battle was nice as well. That must've taken a LOT of luck.

Well, that's all I got for now. Need to do HW and read... a lot of stuff.

Essentia

Edit history:

Essentia: 2009-01-20 07:59:51 pm

2009-01-20 06:48:11 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

Hey, good to see you back, KADFC. Smiley

Quote from KADFC:

First off I want to say, no matter what your final time is, I plan to beat it by at least 15 minutes. Secondly, you really should give up on the NA version. The International version is where the speed is at, but hey, it's your call. I can already tell 4 boss battles will go by a lot faster, in which case, it's cheap. Weapon elementals won't matter because I'll be abusing items like mad. Lastly, me actually recording this again? 20% chance. Take too much time and might not be posted. SDA still have that 10 hour cap right?

If you can beat my run, that'd be awesome. I've actually thought of a couple improvements to my run, sadly after it was too late to implement them. They'll be in my run comments when this is posted on SDA, but let me know if you're interested in them.

I'm running the NA version because it's the only version I have, and I'm not going to bother importing a game just to run it. NA and International runs would be separate categories on SDA, anyway. Also, I talked to Mike here at SDA, and he said he would accept a FFX run, even if it's longer than 10 hours, because it's such a popular game. (Before I started working on my run, he even said he would accept your run if you wanted to try submitting it again.) So far I've saved 23 minutes over my 11:12 run, so I'll definitely get below 11 hours.

Quote:

2) About my "drunken staggering", I thought it was imposisble to fix. When I see those parts, I tried holding the opposite direction the next time in hopes of it being fixed. Tried it twice, didn't find it possible. Unless it is fixable?

I've found that the staggering seems to happen when you're holding the stick before the screen appears. What I do to deal with those parts is wait until the screen appears, and then hold the analog stick the direction I want to go.

Quote:

3) "The biggest problem isn't encountering a Ghost? It's killing it" Both of these aren't hard to do. I did my own test run of this. Basically, go inside and get into 4 battles. If I didn't encounter a Ghost in those 4, reset. If I did, I can easily defeat it with Trio. With First Strike I can easily flee. Pretty sure I did this after the Ronso battle. At any rate, I killed about 20 Ghosts in 2 or 3 hours worth of time. Didn't get 1 single No Encounter, I didn't care who it was for, just getting it. Out of those 20 or so battles, only got 4 weapons. I gave up. Pure luck I guess.

Yeah, that quote was from before I figured out that using Trio on a Ghost would be the best. I've gotten No Encounters twice in test runs, so I'm definitely going for it. I'm going to try to encounter a Ghost in just one battle, but we'll see how it goes when I get there.

Quote:

4) I'm glad you caught a few of my flaws:
a) HP/MP/Magic/Strengh Sphere not used. That's because the whole concept, this was my first time testing it. Didn't know if I needed more or less because the Evrae strategy wasn't tested at all. I got the strategy Kuro, but still not too confident. Plus, Natus' strategy was my only assumption. Also never tested. More couldn't hurt right?
b) Items Stolen. Major Flaw. I lost my notes of what items to steal, but I counted on my guessimation.

Those spheres sure help a lot, especially the magic spheres on Yuna. I give the HP sphere to Kimahri so he can do more damage with self-destruct, which does 3 x HP damage. I cut down a lot of the items stolen; I only steal 2 petrify grenades throughout Thunder Plains and Macalania Woods.

Quote:

6) Good to see that you optimized where I didn't. However, I'm interested of what your sphere grid looks like for Yuna. I can only dream of a faster Seymour/Anima battle.

For Seymour/Anima, I gave Yuna two magic spheres (picked up in Luca and Djose destruction treasure), and she also has her first two magic nodes and the first agility node activated. I'll upload this battle soon so you can see it.

Quote:

7) For the Issaru's battle, what was Yuna's stats and what extra stat spheres did you use on her? Surprirsed on the amount saved on Bahamut battle.

Yuna's stats are (only listing the ones that I changed):
1475 HP
9 strength
40 magic
18 agility

The only extra stat spheres I gave her were the two magic spheres that I mentioned previously.

Quote:

10) Another thing, have you found a different BFA strategy? My strategy was only forced out because during my first run, when I reached BFA... I couldn't beat him. A speed run in which you can't beat the last boss... sad right? I didn't prepare for this because I thought I was god after getting Trio items. So in the process, I read a few NSG guides to enlighten me and this was what I came up with. An act of frustration/hope if you will. Without Slice and Dice, I claim it to be impossible. All the vets on gamefaqs also didn't think of anything new.

I haven't found a different strategy for BFA. The only thing I've changed from yours is that I grand summon Shiva instead of Valefor because she has a shorter overdrive animation. I just got the chocobo wing today, actually, on my first trip through Bikanel.

Quote:

11) About the number of turns BFA gets, it's all about ticks. Even the slighest difference could change of how all the turns are given. Heck, for all of my runs because I keep on forgetting (and wanted to test with the sphere grid), the turns taken are way different. I also had one in which Yuna's turn came first as well.

I've had this happen too, where the turns are different every time. I think Yuna always gets the first turn, though, because I've boosted her agility so much.

Quote:

12) This part struck my odd... "This is because I have No Encounter through Zanarkand, so I didn't steal a Candle of Life." But then later on, you said that you were testing to see if you can get a No Encounter from CotSF and if it didn't go well, you'd give up. See what I'm getting at? And also, I have to assume you learned Doom in the Ronso battle, charged him up, and never used him until the Yu Yevon battle.

When I said I'd give up on getting No Encounters, I was talking about the test run that I was working on at that time. I'm planning to get No Encounters in my SDA run, no matter what. And yes, I learned Doom from the Ronso battle.

Quote:

13) About the Ultima guy's last save and him actually defeating the last boss, I would have to agree. On GF I posted about this saying this is only the final save, so what? That's not where the game ends. I jumped to the conclusion that he didn't defeat BFA and someone pointed out all Ultima times are legit. Then I said "All time attacks are calculated when the final boss is defeated. So for FFX, running to the last save means I beat the game?" No response. My final conclusion is that he didn't beat BFA because he didn't have Slice and Dice, thus he called it a day. I've seen no further evidence proving that he indeed win, nor his final time in doing so.

Yes, I'm pretty sure the Ultima Garden guy didn't beat the final boss. However, on my run I'm currently just before Evrae, and I'm actually 8 minutes ahead of his run. I didn't have a hope of beating his time when I first started, but now I think it just might be possible.

Quote:

14) For the Spherimorph in one turn... nice. I never knew 1 Burning Soul was enough. The Crawler battle was nice as well. That must've taken a LOT of luck.

It took quite a few tries, yes. Wink

Hey, good to see you back, KADFC. :)

[quote="KADFC"]
First off I want to say, no matter what your final time is, I plan to beat it by at least 15 minutes. Secondly, you really should give up on the NA version. The International version is where the speed is at, but hey, it's your call. I can already tell 4 boss battles will go by a lot faster, in which case, it's cheap. Weapon elementals won't matter because I'll be abusing items like mad. Lastly, me actually recording this again? 20% chance. Take too much time and might not be posted. SDA still have that 10 hour cap right?
[/quote]

If you can beat my run, that'd be awesome.  I've actually thought of a couple improvements to my run, sadly after it was too late to implement them.  They'll be in my run comments when this is posted on SDA, but let me know if you're interested in them.

I'm running the NA version because it's the only version I have, and I'm not going to bother importing a game just to run it.  NA and International runs would be separate categories on SDA, anyway.  Also, I talked to Mike here at SDA, and he said he would accept a FFX run, even if it's longer than 10 hours, because it's such a popular game.  (Before I started working on my run, he even said he would accept your run if you wanted to try submitting it again.)  So far I've saved 23 minutes over my 11:12 run, so I'll definitely get below 11 hours.

[quote]2) About my "drunken staggering", I thought it was imposisble to fix. When I see those parts, I tried holding the opposite direction the next time in hopes of it being fixed. Tried it twice, didn't find it possible. Unless it is fixable?[/quote]

I've found that the staggering seems to happen when you're holding the stick before the screen appears.  What I do to deal with those parts is wait until the screen appears, and then hold the analog stick the direction I want to go.

[quote]3) "The biggest problem isn't encountering a Ghost? It's killing it" Both of these aren't hard to do. I did my own test run of this. Basically, go inside and get into 4 battles. If I didn't encounter a Ghost in those 4, reset. If I did, I can easily defeat it with Trio. With First Strike I can easily flee. Pretty sure I did this after the Ronso battle. At any rate, I killed about 20 Ghosts in 2 or 3 hours worth of time. Didn't get 1 single No Encounter, I didn't care who it was for, just getting it. Out of those 20 or so battles, only got 4 weapons. I gave up. Pure luck I guess.[/quote]

Yeah, that quote was from before I figured out that using Trio on a Ghost would be the best.  I've gotten No Encounters twice in test runs, so I'm definitely going for it.  I'm going to try to encounter a Ghost in just one battle, but we'll see how it goes when I get there.

[quote]4) I'm glad you caught a few of my flaws:
a) HP/MP/Magic/Strengh Sphere not used. That's because the whole concept, this was my first time testing it. Didn't know if I needed more or less because the Evrae strategy wasn't tested at all. I got the strategy Kuro, but still not too confident. Plus, Natus' strategy was my only assumption. Also never tested. More couldn't hurt right?
b) Items Stolen. Major Flaw. I lost my notes of what items to steal, but I counted on my guessimation.[/quote]

Those spheres sure help a lot, especially the magic spheres on Yuna.  I give the HP sphere to Kimahri so he can do more damage with self-destruct, which does 3 x HP damage.  I cut down a lot of the items stolen; I only steal 2 petrify grenades throughout Thunder Plains and Macalania Woods.

[quote]6) Good to see that you optimized where I didn't. However, I'm interested of what your sphere grid looks like for Yuna. I can only dream of a faster Seymour/Anima battle.[/quote]

For Seymour/Anima, I gave Yuna two magic spheres (picked up in Luca and Djose destruction treasure), and she also has her first two magic nodes and the first agility node activated.  I'll upload this battle soon so you can see it.

[quote]7) For the Issaru's battle, what was Yuna's stats and what extra stat spheres did you use on her? Surprirsed on the amount saved on Bahamut battle.[/quote]

Yuna's stats are (only listing the ones that I changed):
1475 HP
9 strength
40 magic
18 agility

The only extra stat spheres I gave her were the two magic spheres that I mentioned previously.

[quote]10) Another thing, have you found a different BFA strategy? My strategy was only forced out because during my first run, when I reached BFA... I couldn't beat him. A speed run in which you can't beat the last boss... sad right? I didn't prepare for this because I thought I was god after getting Trio items. So in the process, I read a few NSG guides to enlighten me and this was what I came up with. An act of frustration/hope if you will. Without Slice and Dice, I claim it to be impossible. All the vets on gamefaqs also didn't think of anything new.[/quote]

I haven't found a different strategy for BFA.  The only thing I've changed from yours is that I grand summon Shiva instead of Valefor because she has a shorter overdrive animation.  I just got the chocobo wing today, actually, on my first trip through Bikanel.

[quote]11) About the number of turns BFA gets, it's all about ticks. Even the slighest difference could change of how all the turns are given. Heck, for all of my runs because I keep on forgetting (and wanted to test with the sphere grid), the turns taken are way different. I also had one in which Yuna's turn came first as well.[/quote]

I've had this happen too, where the turns are different every time.  I think Yuna always gets the first turn, though, because I've boosted her agility so much.

[quote]12) This part struck my odd... "This is because I have No Encounter through Zanarkand, so I didn't steal a Candle of Life." But then later on, you said that you were testing to see if you can get a No Encounter from CotSF and if it didn't go well, you'd give up. See what I'm getting at? And also, I have to assume you learned Doom in the Ronso battle, charged him up, and never used him until the Yu Yevon battle.[/quote]

When I said I'd give up on getting No Encounters, I was talking about the test run that I was working on at that time.  I'm planning to get No Encounters in my SDA run, no matter what.  And yes, I learned Doom from the Ronso battle.

[quote]13) About the Ultima guy's last save and him actually defeating the last boss, I would have to agree. On GF I posted about this saying this is only the final save, so what? That's not where the game ends. I jumped to the conclusion that he didn't defeat BFA and someone pointed out all Ultima times are legit. Then I said "All time attacks are calculated when the final boss is defeated. So for FFX, running to the last save means I beat the game?" No response. My final conclusion is that he didn't beat BFA because he didn't have Slice and Dice, thus he called it a day. I've seen no further evidence proving that he indeed win, nor his final time in doing so.[/quote]

Yes, I'm pretty sure the Ultima Garden guy didn't beat the final boss.  However, on my run I'm currently just before Evrae, and I'm actually 8 minutes ahead of his run.  I didn't have a hope of beating his time when I first started, but now I think it just might be possible.

[quote]14) For the Spherimorph in one turn... nice. I never knew 1 Burning Soul was enough. The Crawler battle was nice as well. That must've taken a LOT of luck.[/quote]

It took quite a few tries, yes. ;)

Gaverion

2009-01-21 01:29:17 am

KADFC: You must have mistaken me for someone else, I am on Gamefaq's now and then but certainly am not a troll. I have 3 vids if you want to take a look Grin

Essentia your flying through this run, can't wait till your done!

Essentia

2009-01-22 02:44:29 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

Well, I'm now at the dreaded "No Encounters" segment (with a time of 8:03). Wish me luck, 'cause I'm definitely gonna need it.

Note: I'll probably upload some more boss videos when I get tired of retrying this segment; lately I've been focusing more on the run itself than encoding videos.

metallicaband

2009-01-22 04:08:26 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote from Essentia:

Well, I'm now at the dreaded "No Encounters" segment (with a time of 8:03). Wish me luck, 'cause I'm definitely gonna need it.

Note: I'll probably upload some more boss videos when I get tired of retrying this segment; lately I've been focusing more on the run itself than encoding videos.

Good luck !! I'm amazed at your progress rate and I really hope that things would go your way in this difficult/luck based segment. I didn't watch any youtube videos of the run yet, hoping to see the whole thing in HQ, hope you'll finish it soon !

Essentia

2009-01-22 04:55:15 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

Oh my gosh, I GOT IT!!!! Here I was thinking it might take days or even weeks, and it actually took only 48 tries! Nothing's gonna stop me now! Cheesy

Edit: I'm talking about No Encounters armor, if anyone's confused by the page break. Wink

metallicaband

2009-01-22 05:02:23 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote from Essentia:

Oh my gosh, I GOT IT!!!! Here I was thinking it might take days or even weeks, and it actually took only 48 tries! Nothing's gonna stop me now! Cheesy

Edit: I'm talking about No Encounters armor, if anyone's confused by the page break. Wink

Awesome !! luck was really on your side there !

I remember you telling me earlier that this part and GUI would be one of the hardest segments, so how difficult are the upcoming segments ? (how hard is BFA btw?)

Essentia

2009-01-22 05:13:11 pm

Everything's better with Magitek

None of the bosses that are left are really hard, since I have Trio now. The hardest boss(es) will be Sin's fins, since each time I need him to ram the airship at least once so Rikku can get an overdrive, but if he rams the airship more than twice, I die. BFA really isn't too hard; I just need a little luck so that neither Pagoda starts moving again before Lulu can use her overdrive, which happens maybe half the time.

The hardest parts will be getting the specific encounters that I need now (for stealing, bribing, and filling overdrives) in various places; since I have No Encounters, I want the first battle to be the one that I need, and then I'll use No Encounters after that. The hardest will probably be the first part of Mt. Gagazet, since there I'll need two specific battles right in a row.

Edit: Oh, and memorizing the Zanarkand cloister of trials will take some work. Wink

Imrik

2009-01-22 07:44:19 pm

Really looking forward to this run, and with the progress so far it looks like we don't have to wait long till it's finished. Keep up the good work!

Mickey_Mage

2009-01-22 10:23:33 pm

Glitching EB 1 flying man at a time

Yeah, very good work with this so far. From the little previews you've shown us, this run will look amazing in the end. Can't wait to see the finished product. Smiley