Just starting a Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun speed run

Edit history:

Arp Gren: 2013-12-10 03:49:39 pm

2013-12-10 03:48:55 pm

Hey SDA! Long time fan of the marathons (as well as a donator). I have been working on the planning phase of speed running the Sega Genesis game, Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. I am coming forward with the info I have for my speed run now, because of how unknown the game is. Even if someone beats me to the punch, I was for sure instrumental in the defeat of one of my favorite games. I have made a Youtube video about a lot of the information and the main strat to be used for speed running.

For those who can't be bothered to watch, fear not I will explain the main strat.
Anyone who has played this game know it takes part mostly in the dungeon first person view. It just so happens that a party of all thieves that are hidden are very consistently overpowered in the first person dungeon mode. The TAS of this game uses lightning rod spam using save states so it doesn't break. Save for the only scripted fight in the TAS, the all thieves party is in every way superior to the lightning rod spamming.

Anyone who has played this game, or now does, please feel free to drop by and share your thoughts and strats. I have a very extensive amount of experience and knowledge of this game. Anyone with questions can feel free to ask me.

Thread title:

Hey SDA! Long time fan of the marathons (as well as a donator). I have been working on the planning phase of speed running the Sega Genesis game, Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. I am coming forward with the info I have for my speed run now, because of how unknown the game is. Even if someone beats me to the punch, I was for sure instrumental in the defeat of one of my favorite games. I have made a Youtube video about a lot of the information and the main strat to be used for speed running.

http://youtu.be/xybySf-mUIc

For those who can't be bothered to watch, fear not I will explain the main strat.
Anyone who has played this game know it takes part mostly in the dungeon first person view. It just so happens that a party of all thieves that are hidden are very consistently overpowered in the first person dungeon mode. The TAS of this game uses lightning rod spam using save states so it doesn't break. Save for the only scripted fight in the TAS, the all thieves party is in every way superior to the lightning rod spamming.

Anyone who has played this game, or now does, please feel free to drop by and share your thoughts and strats. I have a very extensive amount of experience and knowledge of this game. Anyone with questions can feel free to ask me.

Arp Gren

2013-12-10 06:20:05 pm

Okay just to add a few things. Traps in the Azcan temple, and even death, do not remove hidden state. Resting does however as does attacking in the over world. A bit of grinding has made the single scripted fight in the Azcan jungle fairly easy and I was wearing no armor. The TAS was in fact accurate in that the entrance to the lizard man swamp is the trigger needed to proceed in the game. There for the only over world fight that needs to be done is the one in front of the Azcan temple.

One last note. Never wear armor with the all thief party. The reason for this is to allow maximum movement in over world combat to allow quick fleeing. This shouldn't effect the underworld dungeons that much as most attacks are avoidable.

RatFunk

2013-12-11 08:24:30 pm

Interest shown proceed to win

Gosbong

2014-01-09 06:39:47 pm

I dont know anything about speed running this or any other game for that matter. However you are playing one of my all time favorite games take care and good luck.

Northern

2014-02-04 09:24:16 am

Hi Arp,

I saw this post and it made me curious as D&D WoES is one of my favorite Genesis games.

I tried doing a run with a single thief to see how it would work and yeah, hidden status just wrecks everything in the dungeons.

My run ended once I hit the Azcan temple fight though since on the over map a single thief just couldn't cut it. I was also surprised since I thought with only a
single character that I would be getting tons of experience, but even with some grinding of high value enemies I was still only like level 6 when I reached the jungle.

Arp Gren

2014-02-06 11:44:33 am

I usually grind on the fire giant until level 7, going to level 8 is only about 30 seconds more. Buying the +1 leather might also help fix this single problem in the run.

Arp Gren

2014-07-07 12:50:02 am

Dear lord am I stupid. The overworld fight that is mandatory despawns if you run away from it. So walk up to the temple until you see the bottom Azcan spawn, immediately go back down so he doesn't trap you in. This will initiate the fight as you are now within a turn of the Azcan's movement (this is the default initiation of all overworld map encounters), then simply move to the left until you can flee and they are now despawned. That was 1 million times easier than I had imagined. I kept trying to fight them to no avail. The Azcans have bows, however need to be in melee range to use them. Quite odd. So I attempted kiting them. It worked sorta but simply took too long. With this new strat it is possible with some lucky rng to come close to the TAS time if not better. Since this encounter is skipped it I would say 10 seconds less than the tas does the fight and the time you save in the temple not using the lightning rod, it's looking like a pretty close to TAS time once it's all mapped out.

ars4326

2014-08-07 07:06:59 pm

How's it going, Arp Gren?

I'm a runner over at tasvideos and made an updated TAS of WOTES a couple of months back. I made use of the Thief 'Hidden' ability glitch, and also gave you credit for it in the submission:

WOTES TAS in 23:02

I cancelled it due to finding too many obvious improvements. However, I wanted to tell you that the Azcan Temple fight can be SKIPPED ENTIRELY in real-time by simply SAVING and re-LOADING as soon as the Azcans appear, while you are scaling the Temple steps (this was one of the main reasons I cancelled my submission). Upon re-loading, they will disappear and will not spawn again. This should save you at least 30 seconds from your original strategy.

Hope to see the run done soon!

Quadstriker

2014-08-12 02:19:28 pm

Glad to see work is still being done on this.

ars4326

2014-09-08 12:22:10 pm

Anyone know if Arp Gren is still planning on doing a run?

Anyhow, I finished my updated TAS and got it published at tasvideos! Final time was 22:15.

Frame-dependent stuff aside, the overworld route is completely optimized and is more than capable of being pulled off in real-time. I changed the route in the very beginning to kill the other party members off faster (I went straight to the Beastman Caves instead of detouring to the Oltec Cavern). However, an RTA run would likely still want to retain the original strat due to the obtaining of the +2 Sword and +1 Bow. The Sword's 20+ damage potential, in particular, would make mince meat out of anything that comes in the Thief's path! This would definitely compensate for the lack of TAS exclusive luck manipulation.

Also, as I mentioned before, the Azcan overworld fight can be skipped by simply saving and re-loading the game once you see the warriors appear and surround you at the pyramid. No need for anything fancy Cheesy

Finally, there's a faster route in the Elven City over Jesus Fan's run. Instead of zig-zagging to the northeast, simply take the first right upon entering and shoot down the hallway, taking out the Drow chain of command in the process.

Best of luck to anyone who attempts this run!

Anyone know if Arp Gren is still planning on doing a run?

Anyhow, I finished my updated TAS and got it published at tasvideos!  Final time was 22:15.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T7VckBx6rQ
Frame-dependent stuff aside, the overworld route is completely optimized and is more than capable of being pulled off in real-time.  I changed the route in the very beginning to kill the other party members off faster (I went straight to the Beastman Caves instead of detouring to the Oltec Cavern).  However, an RTA run would likely still want to retain the original strat due to the obtaining of the +2 Sword and +1 Bow.  The Sword's 20+ damage potential, in particular, would make mince meat out of anything that comes in the Thief's path!  This would definitely compensate for the lack of TAS exclusive luck manipulation.

Also, as I mentioned before, the Azcan overworld fight can be skipped by simply saving and re-loading the game once you see the warriors appear and surround you at the pyramid.  No need for anything fancy :D  Finally, there's a faster route in the Elven City over Jesus Fan's run.  Instead of zig-zagging to the northeast, simply take the first right upon entering and shoot down the hallway, taking out the Drow chain of command in the process.

Best of luck to anyone who attempts this run!