Legacy of the Wizard (NES)

2015-12-10 05:57:24 pm

Pudding%

The issue with Mayna vs. Archwinger is due to her only being able to have 2 shots on screen at a time. Though her power is higher, less shots would actually connect due to him spawning more bullets immediately. Lyll gets away with this due to being able to have 3 on screen at a time.
That's not to say it's impossible to kill Archwinger with Mayna, it's just riskier.

There's also the fact that, as you mentioned, you'd need to stay at an inn an extra time in Pochi's area to equip the Power Knuckle after suiciding against the Mimic. Unless you wanted to attempt Archwinger without it.
Add in that Pochi's area is done 2nd to acquire the 50 Gold on the way so we can purchase the Key Wand on the way into Xemn's area. Doing Pochi's area 3rd would mean buying it on the way in to Mayna's area, which would require an additional Inn trip to equip that.
...plus the manipulation going in to Xemn's area only works with the Power Knuckle, and I'd have no idea how to get it to work going in to Pochi's area with Mayna since her bounce is much lower than Lyll's and her attacks do more damage by default. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would all have to be redone which is a painstaking process. Especially for a route that would lose at least 20ish seconds from 2 extra trips to an Inn (plus the extra 20 gold that would have to be farmed)

The issue with Mayna vs. Archwinger is due to her only being able to have 2 shots on screen at a time. Though her power is higher, less shots would actually connect due to him spawning more bullets immediately. Lyll gets away with this due to being able to have 3 on screen at a time.
That's not to say it's impossible to kill Archwinger with Mayna, it's just riskier.

There's also the fact that, as you mentioned, you'd need to stay at an inn an extra time in Pochi's area to equip the Power Knuckle after suiciding against the Mimic. Unless you wanted to attempt Archwinger without it.
Add in that Pochi's area is done 2nd to acquire the 50 Gold on the way so we can purchase the Key Wand on the way into Xemn's area. Doing Pochi's area 3rd would mean buying it on the way in to Mayna's area, which would require an additional Inn trip to equip that.
...plus the manipulation going in to Xemn's area only works with the Power Knuckle, and I'd have no idea how to get it to work going in to Pochi's area with Mayna since her bounce is much lower than Lyll's and her attacks do more damage by default. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would all have to be redone which is a painstaking process. Especially for a route that would lose at least 20ish seconds from 2 extra trips to an Inn (plus the extra 20 gold that would have to be farmed)

MrStarbird

2015-12-13 07:51:53 am

Leader of Starbirdia!

Yeah, those are all good points. Your method currently is the best I've seen and I cannot come up with a better alternative. Though technically if anybody can get either good scroll luck or scroll manipulation, you could possibly even take the safer route by using Pochi to get the first crown and Power Knuckle, thus allowing quicker monster kills with Lyll, meaning more possibility for scroll drops. Whether that would overall be faster remains to be seen, but it does keep you from having to get an Elixir in Lyll's dungeon (not a huge deal due to routing, but saves a few seconds on treasure pickup tone), wasting time on a death/refill sequence, and the slight possibility of a double tap from the mimic after you've revived, though I suppose that can be negated by the time saved using Lyll in Pochi's area and using the Mattock to get to through the level faster.

Dragondarch

2015-12-13 11:25:05 pm

Pudding%

The issue with doing Pochi's area first with Pochi is 2 things:
1) The shortcut that only characters able to move blocks can take.
2) Keys. Since we haven't picked up a Chest Key, Pochi won't have enough Keys to finish the area. Doing Pochi's area first was the first route that was used for speedruns, and on the screen with the Chest Gold we had to intentionally drop our Keys to 0 or 1 and kill a bunch of enemies off without picking any up to have enough to finish with. This is a pretty huge time loss, especially since farming keys in this manner prevents scroll drops.

MrStarbird

2015-12-14 09:48:28 am

Leader of Starbirdia!

Is that also the reason for grabbing the Money Bag in the entrance part of the dungeon first as well? To optimize the odds of scroll luck? I have a vague idea of the drop rates so long as your Health, Magic, and Keys aren't into "critical" zones, but does having max gold (or over a certain threshold) also contribute to better odds of scroll dropping?

Also, is it more optimal in Lyll's area to get the speed scroll from the chest then come around to get the Wings, the Keys, and buy the Mattock before going back up or to go down from the entrance to grab the keys, Mattock, Wings, and then come to the speed scroll on your way to the crown?

Dragondarch

Edit history:

Dragondarch: 2015-12-17 12:17:44 pm

2015-12-17 12:11:41 pm

Pudding%

The money bag at the entrance is needed to buy the Mattock (old Xemn route it was used for Key Wand, and Pochi's money bag was used for Wings in Mayna's area), plus the current manipulation is set up around detouring for that.

Getting the chest scroll in Lyll's area first is faster, since we'd need to manipulate 1 or 2 more scrolls to have enough to last all the way to the chest scroll after getting the Mattock/Chest Key/Wings.

Having max gold doesn't affect the chances of scrolls dropping at all. Game basically checks like this:

If < 20 Life, drop Bread.
If >= 20 Life and < 30 Magic, drop Magic.
If >= 20 Life and >= 30 Magic and < 2 Keys, drop Key.
If >= 20 Life and >= 30 Magic and >= 2 Keys, check which value is lower out of Life, Magic, and Gold.
At this point, Scrolls can drop, along with Rings and Poison. The game uses the RNG to determine whether it will drop Scroll/Ring/Poison or Life/Magic/Gold (Don't know the odds of each group). If Scroll/Ring/Poison is chosen if picks one of the 3 (don't know the exact odds of each item).

The money bag at the entrance is needed to buy the Mattock (old Xemn route it was used for Key Wand, and Pochi's money bag was used for Wings in Mayna's area), plus the current manipulation is set up around detouring for that.

Getting the chest scroll in Lyll's area first is faster, since we'd need to manipulate 1 or 2 more scrolls to have enough to last all the way to the chest scroll after getting the Mattock/Chest Key/Wings.

Having max gold doesn't affect the chances of scrolls dropping at all. Game basically checks like this:

If < 20 Life, drop Bread.
If >= 20 Life and < 30 Magic, drop Magic.
If >= 20 Life and >= 30 Magic and < 2 Keys, drop Key.
If >= 20 Life and >= 30 Magic and >= 2 Keys, check which value is lower out of Life, Magic, and Gold.
At this point, Scrolls can drop, along with Rings and Poison. The game uses the RNG to determine whether it will drop Scroll/Ring/Poison or Life/Magic/Gold (Don't know the odds of each group). If Scroll/Ring/Poison is chosen if picks one of the 3 (don't know the exact odds of each item).

MrStarbird

2016-01-02 08:17:49 am

Leader of Starbirdia!

Interesting. I'll keep these in mind.