Legend of Legaia

2015-01-19 06:39:31 pm

IMO there's clear merit, ala the math/no-math categories of FF Tactics and other things.

And yes its' wise to have earth jewels for the fight - and jewels are so useful you should have them anyhow haha.

Drifting Skies

2015-01-19 06:51:04 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

I wasn't aware that there was already precedent for having a distinction along those lines.

I didn't think to buy jewels for that fight, since it's been awhile since I've worked on speedrunning of this game (before the Juggernaut Room glitch was discovered, for sure) and forgot how nasty the Kemaro fight is at really low levels, because it's not even particularly challenging at normal levels of 18-20, unlike Xain, who very much is a threat at any reasonable level, especially given that Jewels don't work on him.

Did you ever manage to finish a run of the game? I did a couple years back in the 10:30 range, but that was really unoptimized in the second half of the game and just all-around unpolished. I'd like to give this game the proper run that it deserves.

Deathtome

Edit history:

Deathtome: 2015-01-21 01:52:02 pm

2015-01-21 01:44:19 pm

Drifting Skies, I hope you finish a segmented run. Would be fun to watch for sure! I know it's possible to get a nice time in a segmented run. Especially considering you don't have to farm before Xain and have perfect control over RNG.

I think that using a Point Card in a segmented run is okay afterall. I know how badly it scales, and it's probably only beneficial in very few boss battles. Afterall, you get Juggernaut quite early. However, not using Point Card on Cort 1 would be a mistake. Cort 1 is one of the slowest bosses in the game because of the Mystic Shield. You will still be able to throw Point Card(s) on Cort 2 but isn't really needed if you are using my strategy for Final Cort. I saved up on Power Elixirs and Wonder Elixirs to give them all to Vahn along with a Fury Boost. Smiley

He is dealing 12 000 damage each turn. So even without a Point Card he would go down very quick.

I have to admit I am really impressed if you got 10:30 without Juggernaut. I guess Kemaro is such a strong damage output anyhow. I usually don't get him in my run unless I accidentally capture him before Van Saryu.

Anyhow mates, I wish you both the best of luck. I hope you are still going strong Garik with this game! Don't give up guys! I want to see any segmented runs of this game.

Drifting Skies, I hope you finish a segmented run. Would be fun to watch for sure! I know it's possible to get a nice time in a segmented run. Especially considering you don't have to farm before Xain and have perfect control over RNG.

I think that using a Point Card in a segmented run is okay afterall. I know how badly it scales, and it's probably only beneficial in very few boss battles. Afterall, you get Juggernaut quite early. However, not using Point Card on Cort 1 would be a mistake. Cort 1 is one of the slowest bosses in the game because of the Mystic Shield. You will still be able to throw Point Card(s) on Cort 2 but isn't really needed if you are using my strategy for Final Cort. I saved up on Power Elixirs and Wonder Elixirs to give them all to Vahn along with a Fury Boost. :) He is dealing 12 000 damage each turn. So even without a Point Card he would go down very quick.

I have to admit I am really impressed if you got 10:30 without Juggernaut. I guess Kemaro is such a strong damage output anyhow. I usually don't get him in my run unless I accidentally capture him before Van Saryu.

Anyhow mates, I wish you both the best of luck. I hope you are still going strong Garik with this game! Don't give up guys! I want to see any segmented runs of this game.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-21 02:45:41 pm

2015-01-21 02:34:26 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

Right now, I'm just doing a good-faith practice run to get a time down, since I don't have either streaming equipment or a capture card / DVD recorder to actually record and post a segmented run of the game. I don't think it's possible to make use of ESM before Gaza 1, since the segmented run actually fights bosses at such a low level that you actually don't have the MP capacity on Vahn with a Magic Ring and Spirit Talisman until level 15-16. (You can get a Spirit Jewel with the slot machines in Vidna to reduce ESM's casting cost down to 192, which means it should be usable for every fight in Sebucus. Essentially, the trick is that you can reel-time the slots, but I think it's frame perfect, and even I only have about a 25-30% success rate with hitting a 3x Bonus Game.)

In a segmented run, you basically run from every single random battle after Caruban. The exceptions are getting Vera and Nighto in West Voz, getting Theeder for Gala in Zeto's Dungeon (best strategy for Songi 1 in Segmented is to use Theeder twice and pray), and getting Orb and Spoon for healing.

I do agree from the old run that Cort 1 is really slow since he only takes half damage from Magic until Mystic Shield is broken, so it seems reasonable to get 20,000 points for breaking the Shield in two turns; after that, he takes normal damage from everything, so it's not necessary to finish the job that way.

The problem with Cort 2 is that you just don't have the staying power at level 25 that you would at 28 or so. Those extra 300 HP are a huge deal, and I don't think it's worth farming outside of Juggernaut to get up two or three levels, meaning it seems like you really want to finish the fight very fast; you can't survive Doomsday, and there's a chance Final Crisis will KO Noa even when under Spirit and at full HP.

I watched some of your run; did you get the Miracle Water by visiting Zalan after defeating Dohati? It takes about 1:35 (I timed it) extra, but a Miracle Water would seem to be really helpful in the upcoming boss battles.

Also, I think it's probably not correct to get the Phoenix right before Xain - it becomes a far more useful Magic Water if you wait to get it until after the fight. Did you make sure to pick up the Miracle Water in Underground Octam? You can only get it after Xain, by checking the Future Hari pedestal twice. Watching that part of the run, it looks like you missed it.

I would have also purposely gotten a 0/3 correct on Noa's Quiz in Drake Castle - doing so gets you a Wisdom Water, which is pretty useless, but it sells for 1000 G, which would help get you toward some useful Defender Chains or toward Deep Sea Jewels for Zeto.

There's the screenshot of the ending stats from that pre-Juggernaut Room skip run. There's easily an hour to be saved on the second half of the run and two more from the ESM glitch.

Right now, I'm just doing a good-faith practice run to get a time down, since I don't have either streaming equipment or a capture card / DVD recorder to actually record and post a segmented run of the game.  I don't think it's possible to make use of ESM before Gaza 1, since the segmented run actually fights bosses at such a low level that you actually don't have the MP capacity on Vahn with a Magic Ring and Spirit Talisman until level 15-16. (You can get a Spirit Jewel with the slot machines in Vidna to reduce ESM's casting cost down to 192, which means it should be usable for every fight in Sebucus.  Essentially, the trick is that you can reel-time the slots, but I think it's frame perfect, and even I only have about a 25-30% success rate with hitting a 3x Bonus Game.)

In a segmented run, you basically run from every single random battle after Caruban.  The exceptions are getting Vera and Nighto in West Voz, getting Theeder for Gala in Zeto's Dungeon (best strategy for Songi 1 in Segmented is to use Theeder twice and pray), and getting Orb and Spoon for healing.

I do agree from the old run that Cort 1 is really slow since he only takes half damage from Magic until Mystic Shield is broken, so it seems reasonable to get 20,000 points for breaking the Shield in two turns; after that, he takes normal damage from everything, so it's not necessary to finish the job that way.

The problem with Cort 2 is that you just don't have the staying power at level 25 that you would at 28 or so.  Those extra 300 HP are a huge deal, and I don't think it's worth farming outside of Juggernaut to get up two or three levels, meaning it seems like you really want to finish the fight very fast; you can't survive Doomsday, and there's a chance Final Crisis will KO Noa even when under Spirit and at full HP.

I watched some of your run; did you get the Miracle Water by visiting Zalan after defeating Dohati?  It takes about 1:35 (I timed it) extra, but a Miracle Water would seem to be really helpful in the upcoming boss battles.

Also, I think it's probably not correct to get the Phoenix right before Xain - it becomes a far more useful Magic Water if you wait to get it until after the fight.  Did you make sure to pick up the Miracle Water in Underground Octam?  You can only get it after Xain, by checking the Future Hari pedestal twice.  Watching that part of the run, it looks like you missed it.

I would have also purposely gotten a 0/3 correct on Noa's Quiz in Drake Castle - doing so gets you a Wisdom Water, which is pretty useless, but it sells for 1000 G, which would help get you toward some useful Defender Chains or toward Deep Sea Jewels for Zeto.

There's the screenshot of the ending stats from that pre-Juggernaut Room skip run.  There's easily an hour to be saved on the second half of the run and two more from the ESM glitch.

Attachment:

Legaia - 10-36-51.jpg

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-23 03:28:19 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-23 03:23:57 pm

2015-01-21 10:30:35 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

Wanted to post a quick progress note on the run so far, as well as some useful information for routing purposes.

First off, as far as my run is concerned: I defeated Dohati, cleared Sebucus, and made it to the Karisto World Map at around 4:02:30. A little higher than I would like, but there's a net of 7-8 minutes to be saved with a Point-Card based clear of Songi 2 (I probably save 10 minutes in the fight, but lose 3 due to needing to hit two more jackpots and another round of phoenix buying.), and there's probably up to 5 minutes or so of optimizations elsewhere for a serious playthrough that I'm not going to worry about for this run.

With that said, there's some information that I neglected to post earlier. Attached is an Excel Spreadsheet that has all of the base stat gains for each character. The way level-ups in this game work, there is a fixed gain that you will always get, and a random bonus to each stat on top of it (Think Mario & Luigi RPG series, except you get that bonus reel for each stat, and there's no chance to time the reels or otherwise manipulate the results outside of tool-assistance.) The randomness is set such that for HP, there is a bonus randomly chosen between 0-8, and for all other stats, it's 0-2.

As such, it is possible to actually chart out exactly what every possible level up could look like, and I have done just that. What is relevant for this run is that max MP can vary as much as 28 points between the best and the worst luck for level-up gains, and this happens to be crucial for the purpose of getting ESM online as soon as possible, because that's by far the highest damage output we have access to for the second half of the game. At Level 14, for instance, Vahn's Max MP can vary from 112 - 138, and Gala's from 143 - 169. This matters because it's necessary to have 175 Max MP to use ESM (with a Magic Ring, this becomes 192, which is the cost of ESM under a Spirit Jewel).

Since it's not realistic to maximize all stat gains, it's probably best to focus on one or two to try to optimize for each character.

Vahn really needs MP, since he has the strongest Kemaro and I think he's the best user of ESM. After that, he probably just wants HP for survivability.

Noa should focus on getting AGL, then ATK, in order to get her to use Miracle Arts as quickly as possible. It may be best to actually rely on Hurricane Kick because of the faster animation. Something that needs to be tested, in any case, but it's still crucial to get that AGL up. Also, War Soul + Noa = tons of damage. Get it in Vidna as it will save plenty of time on later bosses; you can sell the one on Dohati's Castle.

Gala's stats aren't as important since he will be mostly healing (rationale is that he has decent MP already, he's slow as molasses [both as far as speed and AGL are concerned], and he makes the best use of the Speed Chain since Noa and Vahn often have a decent chance going before enemies anyway.)

Also, Wisdom Water is useless and should be sold whenever possible - a 4 INT increase means your spells will do, on average, 4 more damage. Not 4% more, just an actual 4 damage. It also doesn't affect healing either - only the Seru's level does that.

EDIT: At the entrance to Nivora Ravine at 5:15:45. Curse Uru Mais and the 18 minutes of unskippable dialogue and cutscenes with all of my hate. Given what I know now about using the Point Card on Songi 2, as well as some minor optimizations throughout (as well as manipulating Vahn's MP so he can use ESM earlier), a good time to shoot for going into Nivora would be right around 5:00 - 5:02. If Koru falls around the 5:35 mark, then Zora should fall by 5:50 and Cort 1 should be dead by 7:00 This puts a good run time right around the 8:10 mark, which is unfortunately a bit longer than I would have liked.

Wanted to post a quick progress note on the run so far, as well as some useful information for routing purposes.

First off, as far as my run is concerned: I defeated Dohati, cleared Sebucus, and made it to the Karisto World Map at around 4:02:30.  A little higher than I would like, but there's a net of 7-8 minutes to be saved with a Point-Card based clear of Songi 2 (I probably save 10 minutes in the fight, but lose 3 due to needing to hit two more jackpots and another round of phoenix buying.), and there's probably up to 5 minutes or so of optimizations elsewhere for a serious playthrough that I'm not going to worry about for this run.

With that said, there's some information that I neglected to post earlier.  Attached is an Excel Spreadsheet that has all of the base stat gains for each character.  The way level-ups in this game work, there is a fixed gain that you will always get, and a random bonus to each stat on top of it (Think Mario & Luigi RPG series, except you get that bonus reel for each stat, and there's no chance to time the reels or otherwise manipulate the results outside of tool-assistance.)  The randomness is set such that for HP, there is a bonus randomly chosen between 0-8, and for all other stats, it's 0-2.

As such, it is possible to actually chart out exactly what every possible level up could look like, and I have done just that.  What is relevant for this run is that max MP can vary as much as 28 points between the best and the worst luck for level-up gains, and this happens to be crucial for the purpose of getting ESM online as soon as possible, because that's by far the highest damage output we have access to for the second half of the game. At Level 14, for instance, Vahn's Max MP can vary from 112 - 138, and Gala's from 143 - 169. This matters because it's necessary to have 175 Max MP to use ESM (with a Magic Ring, this becomes 192, which is the cost of ESM under a Spirit Jewel).

Since it's not realistic to maximize all stat gains, it's probably best to focus on one or two to try to optimize for each character.

Vahn really needs MP, since he has the strongest Kemaro and I think he's the best user of ESM. After that, he probably just wants HP for survivability.

Noa should focus on getting AGL, then ATK, in order to get her to use Miracle Arts as quickly as possible.  It may be best to actually rely on Hurricane Kick because of the faster animation.  Something that needs to be tested, in any case, but it's still crucial to get that AGL up.  Also, War Soul + Noa = tons of damage.  Get it in Vidna as it will save plenty of time on later bosses; you can sell the one on Dohati's Castle.

Gala's stats aren't as important since he will be mostly healing (rationale is that he has decent MP already, he's slow as molasses [both as far as speed and AGL are concerned], and he makes the best use of the Speed Chain since Noa and Vahn often have a decent chance going before enemies anyway.)

Also, Wisdom Water is useless and should be sold whenever possible - a 4 INT increase means your spells will do, on average, 4 more damage.  Not 4% more, just an actual 4 damage.  It also doesn't affect healing either - only the Seru's level does that.

EDIT: At the entrance to Nivora Ravine at 5:15:45.  Curse Uru Mais and the 18 minutes of unskippable dialogue and cutscenes with all of my hate.  Given what I know now about using the Point Card on Songi 2, as well as some minor optimizations throughout (as well as manipulating Vahn's MP so he can use ESM earlier), a good time to shoot for going into Nivora would be right around 5:00 - 5:02.  If Koru falls around the 5:35 mark, then Zora should fall by 5:50 and Cort 1 should be dead by 7:00  This puts a good run time right around the 8:10 mark, which is unfortunately a bit longer than I would have liked.

Attachment:

Legaia - Stat Gains.xlsx

exileut

2015-01-25 06:43:53 am

The only way to really work on an 8+ hour TAS is automated scripting. Similar to DarkKobold's FF8 run; random encounters and battles are ran through a brute force script to find the optimal outcome. I believe dialog skipping was also done this way, which means every skip could theoretically be 1 frame late. The menu and player movement and minigames would all be done by hand. Still a huge undertaking. I offered to help DarkKobold with FF8 v2 to clean up movement and some scripted things, by hand. I didn't realize how large of a project it was. I am not sure how similar the two games are, but battles were easy to script in FF8 with only 255 RNG outcomes and a button press to cycle them sequentially. Scripts could be written to automate random encounter avoidance. I never found out how to affect battle outcomes easily.
I guess my point is: FF8 had many aspects scripted and I still was completely overwhelmed by the length.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-25 10:28:53 am

2015-01-25 09:52:05 am

steak Steak STEAK!!!

This doesn't surprise me in the least.

I think I saw on your test TAS that even just getting to Caruban involved some 500,000 rerecords, and while I don't know everything about TAS'es, I am aware that rerecord count is at least a rough proxy of the amount of work involved - I wouldn't be surprised if the total number was ten times that for the whole game.

Right now, I'm at the Absolute Fortress at 7:18; there's a good 25-30 minutes that can be saved in an actual attempt (at least 15 minutes of it is "free" since that resulted from poor routing/strategy), so I think that an optimized run can start fighting Jette at 7:00, Cort at 7:15, Songi 2 at 7:40, and Cort 2 at 8:10, for a runtime of 8:20-25. I'm just remembering replaying the game exactly how much nasty unskippable dialogue there is - I remember that there's a ton of it, but not how long some of those scenes are.

I managed to save 7 minutes just on the Delilas Family. I think this is a pretty good strategy, so I'll go ahead and post what I did. It is also really safe, so I'd recommend it in Single Segment as well, as long as you have Kemaro - you can get that in Sol basement if you didn't get it in Ratayu. You need the best weapons and armor from Sol, which I won't post out in detail. The accessory setup is:

Vahn: Burning Jewel / Life Grail / Magic Grail
Noa: Madlight Jewel / Defender Chain / War Soul
Gala: Earth Jewel / Speed Chain (Third accessory doesn't really matter, but Speed Chain is crucial.)

Gala's fight:
Turn 1: Lightning Storm (should do about 600, but it needs to do at least 280-300)
Turn 2: Kemaro: This should do 1760 or so. Importantly, the first two turns, you need to do at least 2,001 damage:
Turn 3: Point Card. You need the Speed Chain here, because the Megaton Press will absolutely kill Gala on the counterstrike.

Noa:
This is the long fight, since she has no good Magic spell and we can't afford to use the Point Card here. Madlight Jewel and Defender Chain help her survive, while War Soul powers her up. I prefer to use Frost Breath -> Tempest Break here, as it's fairly quick in the animation and the damage output is high. Use Healing Fruits to heal instead of magic, because Seru summon animations are really long. That's general advice throughout the run - I avoid summoning Seru unless it's critical that I do so, because using a Healing Fruit takes about 5 seconds and summoning Spoon takes nearly 30.

Vahn:
Use Kemaro on turns 1 and 2, then Spirit on 3. Repeat as needed; he should need 5 hits to go down, since Vahn's Kemaro will do 2100 - 2400. It's faster to use Point Card on Che because Che has an extra 2000 HP and Gala's Kemaro is about 500 damage weaker due to elemental affinity. (I won't go into the nuances, but Vahn uses Kemaro at 95% power and Gala does so at 80% when compared to the power of their respective primary elements.)

This doesn't surprise me in the least.

I think I saw on your test TAS that even just getting to Caruban involved some 500,000 rerecords, and while I don't know everything about TAS'es, I am aware that rerecord count is at least a rough proxy of the amount of work involved - I wouldn't be surprised if the total number was ten times that for the whole game.

Right now, I'm at the Absolute Fortress at 7:18; there's a good 25-30 minutes that can be saved in an actual attempt (at least 15 minutes of it is "free" since that resulted from poor routing/strategy), so I think that an optimized run can start fighting Jette at 7:00, Cort at 7:15, Songi 2 at 7:40, and Cort 2 at 8:10, for a runtime of 8:20-25.  I'm just remembering replaying the game exactly how much nasty unskippable dialogue there is - I remember that there's a ton of it, but not how long some of those scenes are.

I managed to save 7 minutes just on the Delilas Family.  I think this is a pretty good strategy, so I'll go ahead and post what I did.  It is also really safe, so I'd recommend it in Single Segment as well, as long as you have Kemaro - you can get that in Sol basement if you didn't get it in Ratayu. You need the best weapons and armor from Sol, which I won't post out in detail.  The accessory setup is:

Vahn: Burning Jewel / Life Grail / Magic Grail
Noa: Madlight Jewel / Defender Chain / War Soul
Gala: Earth Jewel / Speed Chain (Third accessory doesn't really matter, but Speed Chain is crucial.)

Gala's fight:
Turn 1: Lightning Storm (should do about 600, but it needs to do at least 280-300)
Turn 2: Kemaro: This should do 1760 or so. Importantly, the first two turns, you need to do at least 2,001 damage:
Turn 3: Point Card.  You need the Speed Chain here, because the Megaton Press will absolutely kill Gala on the counterstrike.

Noa:
This is the long fight, since she has no good Magic spell and we can't afford to use the Point Card here.  Madlight Jewel and Defender Chain help her survive, while War Soul powers her up.  I prefer to use Frost Breath -> Tempest Break here, as it's fairly quick in the animation and the damage output is high.  Use Healing Fruits to heal instead of magic, because Seru summon animations are really long.  That's general advice throughout the run - I avoid summoning Seru unless it's critical that I do so, because using a Healing Fruit takes about 5 seconds and summoning Spoon takes nearly 30.

Vahn:
Use Kemaro on turns 1 and 2, then Spirit on 3.  Repeat as needed; he should need 5 hits to go down, since Vahn's Kemaro will do 2100 - 2400.  It's faster to use Point Card on Che because Che has an extra 2000 HP and Gala's Kemaro is about 500 damage weaker due to elemental affinity. (I won't go into the nuances, but Vahn uses Kemaro at 95% power and Gala does so at 80% when compared to the power of their respective primary elements.)

Drifting Skies

2015-01-26 05:46:39 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

I did some more optimizations of Karisto Kingdom, and I was able to knock the 7:18:50 time to Jette's Fortress down to 7:07:06, with another minute to minute-and-a-half of optimizations / luck manipulation in Rogue's Tower.

I generally have had success piling Miracle Waters on Noa as much as possible during the run to maximize her physical damage output due to the boost to ATK and AGL; I believe this is optimal. As long as you use it frequently on the Rogue's Tower minibosses (the Carubans and Berserkers), you should have Vahn's ESM up to level 4 after the Rogue fight.

For Rogue's Tower, I use the following boss strategies:

Berserker 2: 2x ESM (Noa uses Healing Fruit, Vahn uses ESM, Gala uses a Magic Fruit on Vahn)
Caruban 2: 1x ESM (as above)

Berserker 3: 3x ESM (as above); this fight is a bit risky since Berserker 3 can OHKO a party member. I'd recommend bringing some Earth Jewels along for Single Segment.
Caruban 3: ESM (Vahn) + Kemaro (Gala) + Tempest Break (Noa). His AI seems to really like to block physical attacks for some reason, rather like Mushura. We don't exactly understand how/why it is triggered, but enemies can enter a state we refer to as "critical block", which allows them to block all attacks; his AI script apparently likes to trigger Critical Block more often than other fights.

Rogue is optimally a 7-turn fight, assuming ESM is at a high enough level. Rogue has 28,200 HP, and you need about 24,000 of that to come from ESM's. You can get away with a bit less, but it's unwise to push it too much, in the event that Rogue blocks.

Turn 1:
Noa: Tempest Break
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit (on Vahn)

Turn 2:
All Characters Spirit (Rogue Attacks)

Turn 3:
Noa: Healing Fruit
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit

Turns 4, 5, and 6 follow the above (Spirit, Attack, Spirit)

Turn 7
Noa: I prefer to use her Miracle Art here; she needs about 190 AGL to use it. Frost Breath -> Tempest Break is the alternative, though this is a considerably lower damage output.
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Kemaro (It's not impossible for this not to be necessary, since the above ESM can finish Rogue, though it's not 100% to do so.)

I did some more optimizations of Karisto Kingdom, and I was able to knock the 7:18:50 time to Jette's Fortress down to 7:07:06, with another minute to minute-and-a-half of optimizations / luck manipulation in Rogue's Tower.

I generally have had success piling Miracle Waters on Noa as much as possible during the run to maximize her physical damage output due to the boost to ATK and AGL; I believe this is optimal.  As long as you use it frequently on the Rogue's Tower minibosses (the Carubans and Berserkers), you should have Vahn's ESM up to level 4 after the Rogue fight.

For Rogue's Tower, I use the following boss strategies:

Berserker 2: 2x ESM (Noa uses Healing Fruit, Vahn uses ESM, Gala uses a Magic Fruit on Vahn)
Caruban 2: 1x ESM (as above)

Berserker 3: 3x ESM (as above); this fight is a bit risky since Berserker 3 can OHKO a party member.  I'd recommend bringing some Earth Jewels along for Single Segment.
Caruban 3: ESM (Vahn) + Kemaro (Gala) + Tempest Break (Noa). His AI seems to really like to block physical attacks for some reason, rather like Mushura.  We don't exactly understand how/why it is triggered, but enemies can enter a state we refer to as "critical block", which allows them to block all attacks; his AI script apparently likes to trigger Critical Block more often than other fights.

Rogue is optimally a 7-turn fight, assuming ESM is at a high enough level.  Rogue has 28,200 HP, and you need about 24,000 of that to come from ESM's.  You can get away with a bit less, but it's unwise to push it too much, in the event that Rogue blocks.

Turn 1:
Noa: Tempest Break
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit (on Vahn)

Turn 2:
All Characters Spirit (Rogue Attacks)

Turn 3:
Noa: Healing Fruit
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit

Turns 4, 5, and 6 follow the above (Spirit, Attack, Spirit)

Turn 7
Noa: I prefer to use her Miracle Art here; she needs about 190 AGL to use it.  Frost Breath -> Tempest Break is the alternative, though this is a considerably lower damage output.
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Kemaro (It's not impossible for this not to be necessary, since the above ESM can finish Rogue, though it's not 100% to do so.)

Deathtome

Edit history:

Deathtome: 2015-01-26 06:32:40 pm

2015-01-26 06:29:09 pm

Thanks Drifting Skies for some ideas and strats! I didn't have any videos or guides for speedrunning so I was basically routing it alone. I don't know exactly everything about the game. So I will pick up that extra Miracle Water in Octam Underground! I'm sure it will help me. Smiley

Also, I will sell the Magic Waters (the ones that raises INT).

I guess there is a huge difference in money consumption when we compare Single Segment and Segmented. You need less healing items, worse equipment, money from Slots, manipulated drops from bosses and so on. I don't know if I can speed up my Delilas fight too much. Getting Kemaro would waste a lot of time to be honest (unless I get it during the run).

The reason I use Orb as a healing source sometimes is due to my lack of gold to purchase healing items. I will work very hard on making my SS route more clean in the future. Afterall, I only did 3 complete runs. Smiley

Even if I don't reply too often, I am often reading the thread. I like when the Legaia threads are active! I appreciate all the ideas/tips/strategies that you post! I'm sure you have far more knowledge about the game than I do.

I guess I would need help to efficiently put stats on my characters. In my future runs I will play slots early and get the Spirit Jewel to decrease the mana cost to 192. So which level do you think Vahn needs to be in order to use it (+ all the MP Waters/Miracle Waters from chests before Gaza 1). I want to give everything to Vahn so that he's fast/strong and always before Gala (natively) so that Gala can give him Magic Fruit after a ESM. Smiley

Also, I have pre-calculated all fights in my run to know exactly what I need to do to avoid overkilling with ESM. Wink

If you happen to see something that could be improved upon from my videos, just let me know. I always appreciate it!

EDIT:

I know you posted some stat gaining file, but I don't have MS Excel. Is there another way to post it online, perhaps?

Thanks Drifting Skies for some ideas and strats! I didn't have any videos or guides for speedrunning so I was basically routing it alone. I don't know exactly everything about the game. So I will pick up that extra Miracle Water in Octam Underground! I'm sure it will help me. :) Also, I will sell the Magic Waters (the ones that raises INT).

I guess there is a huge difference in money consumption when we compare Single Segment and Segmented. You need less healing items, worse equipment, money from Slots, manipulated drops from bosses and so on. I don't know if I can speed up my Delilas fight too much. Getting Kemaro would waste a lot of time to be honest (unless I get it during the run).

The reason I use Orb as a healing source sometimes is due to my lack of gold to purchase healing items. I will work very hard on making my SS route more clean in the future. Afterall, I only did 3 complete runs. :) Even if I don't reply too often, I am often reading the thread. I like when the Legaia threads are active! I appreciate all the ideas/tips/strategies that you post! I'm sure you have far more knowledge about the game than I do.

I guess I would need help to efficiently put stats on my characters. In my future runs I will play slots early and get the Spirit Jewel to decrease the mana cost to 192. So which level do you think Vahn needs to be in order to use it (+ all the MP Waters/Miracle Waters from chests before Gaza 1). I want to give everything to Vahn so that he's fast/strong and always before Gala (natively) so that Gala can give him Magic Fruit after a ESM. :)

Also, I have pre-calculated all fights in my run to know exactly what I need to do to avoid overkilling with ESM. ;)

If you happen to see something that could be improved upon from my videos, just let me know. I always appreciate it!

EDIT:

I know you posted some stat gaining file, but I don't have MS Excel. Is there another way to post it online, perhaps?

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-26 09:57:36 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-26 09:11:00 pm

2015-01-26 07:33:05 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

Required reading: http://www.legendoflegaia.net/legend_of_legaia/items/checklist.html : List of every item that counts toward the 260/260 treasures in the game. Obviously, some of them will be skipped during the run because it's not optimal to get them. I do end up getting some of the high-priced accessories later in the game because I can sell them to build up the Point Card.

http://www.legendoflegaia.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=66 A lot of stuff in this forum is worth reading, since I've been working with someone who can read the game's source code. Some of that stuff doesn't matter for Speedrun purposes (the Honey info, or how to extract the game's dialogue as examples), but there's a lot of information about enemy stats, how turn order is decided (as long as Vahn has a speed stat at least 50% above Gala's, Vahn will always act before Gala, 100% of the time. There's your answer to how much speed he needs, though as long as it's 40% above or so, the chance that Gala will act before him are going to be minimal.)

Make sure not to sell the Magic Waters (those raise MP, which is critical); the Wisdom Water is the one you want to dump.
I pretty much put all my waters on Noa, except that Vahn gets Speed Waters and Magic Waters. I use Vahn as the ESM caster because he is faster than Gala, though it's also not unreasonable to get the Slowness Chain - this costs about 30 seconds as a backup strategy. To get the Slowness Chain, you take the Spring Salts from the Vidna Engine Room and give them to the Mayor of Octam. This would allow you to use Gala as the ESM caster and have Vahn throw fruits at him afterwards.

I get a couple of pieces of armor in Drake Kingdom, then I get all the armor in Underground Octam and again in Sol, and that's all the armor I get for the whole game. I will be getting the Ra-Seru body armor / leg armor / weapons, but the headgear costs too much time since you have to go diving through Juggernaut's... body fluids to get them, and that takes a lot of time.

As for Vahn's MP, as long as you are at level 19 and have put three Magic Waters on him, you should be fine for using ESM with a Spirit Jewel. His MP can vary from 156 to 192, which is from 180 to 216 with 3 Magic Waters and no other stat boosters (there's one in the Ancient Water Cave in the barrels near the Old Witch's counter, one in Underground Octam in the barrels just north of where the Mayor stands, and one in the Fire Path if you wait to get the chest containing the Phoenix until after Xain. There's a fourth you can get in one of the Sage's Treasure Chests, but it's optimal to wait until after Gaza 1 to get that one.

Here's the same table in plain-text format, though it's a bit harder to read. In short, the way stat gaining works when you gain a level is that you get a base stat bonus, plus a random number from 0-2 (0-8 for HP). The table lists the base stat gain, along with the minimum and maximum values for that stat at each level (assuming all 0's or all 2's, respectively). It does not take into consideration any stat+ waters you may use on that character.

Some of the other fights:

Zora goes down in 4 turns using ESM (and a couple of Tempest Breaks from Noa). I would recommend holding on to the Wonder Amulets in Sol and Mt. Dhini until after the Zora fight, since a petrified character can be a run killer, and that would really suck in SS, since this is 3/4ths of the way through the run. You can totally sell them afterwards since there's no boss later in the run that can inflict status ailments other than Faint/Dead.

Escapes in this game compare your party's average speed to the enemy party's average speed, so the Speed Ring from Jeremi can help you escape battles more easily. I'd put it on Noa because that increases the chances that you'll get to escape before any enemy takes an action. However, interestingly enough, the more damaged your party is (and the less damaged the enemy party is), the greater your odds of escape become. There's definitely a balancing act between risk of escape and risk of death.

Buy the Golden Compass in the Ancient Water Cave; it increases the chance of a surprise attack to 1/2 from a baseline 1/16. Surprise attacks are ideal since they guarantee a turn 1 escape will happen. Silver Compass helps avoid ambushes, but it reduces the ambush chance from 1/16 to 1/64, which doesn't have as much of an absolute benefit.

Cort 1: Note that Guilty Cross is non-elemental. Mystic Circle and ESM (he can cast it too) are Dark Element, despite your ESM being non-elemental. Point Card helps the first 25,000 damage go quickly, since he takes half damage from any magic spell until Mystic Shield goes down. Oh, and because it's relevant, Speed Chain won't let you go before Cort puts up Mystic Shield.

The way Turn Order is determined is as follows: Each turn, the game assigns a speed order value equal to SPD + rand(1,..., SPD/2) and uses that value to determine who goes first; the second turn accounts for the random noise. Speed Chain adds 4,096 to that value. However, Mystic Circle is hard-coded to a speed value of 35,000, so there's no way to go before it.

Unfortunately, due to animation time and the like, even with a really clean Cort 1 fight, I wasn't able to save (after Juggernaut appears) until the 7:45 mark. Given the mistakes and other slight optimizations in menuing, coin harvesting, etc., I don't see this part of the run finishing before the 7:30 mark, which means that Cort 2 probably doesn't fall until 8:15-8:20.

I am thinking the best that's realistically possible for this run is around 8:0x:xx; sub-8 may be possible with the most extreme of optimizations. I think that the game clock on the credits screen ticks until you talk to Village Elder and leave Rim Elm after the final boss, but for our purposes, timing should probably end with the final hit on Cort 2, since there's just unskippable dialogue and an interactive epilogue (think like Earthbound, but you can only stay within Rim Elm) at that point, which isn't really interesting to optimize over.

Required reading: http://www.legendoflegaia.net/legend_of_legaia/items/checklist.html : List of every item that counts toward the 260/260 treasures in the game.  Obviously, some of them will be skipped during the run because it's not optimal to get them.  I do end up getting some of the high-priced accessories later in the game because I can sell them to build up the Point Card.

http://www.legendoflegaia.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=66  A lot of stuff in this forum is worth reading, since I've been working with someone who can read the game's source code.  Some of that stuff doesn't matter for Speedrun purposes (the Honey info, or how to extract the game's dialogue as examples), but there's a lot of information about enemy stats, how turn order is decided (as long as Vahn has a speed stat at least 50% above Gala's, Vahn will always act before Gala, 100% of the time.  There's your answer to how much speed he needs, though as long as it's 40% above or so, the chance that Gala will act before him are going to be minimal.)

Make sure not to sell the Magic Waters (those raise MP, which is critical); the Wisdom Water is the one you want to dump.
I pretty much put all my waters on Noa, except that Vahn gets Speed Waters and Magic Waters.  I use Vahn as the ESM caster because he is faster than Gala, though it's also not unreasonable to get the Slowness Chain - this costs about 30 seconds as a backup strategy.  To get the Slowness Chain, you take the Spring Salts from the Vidna Engine Room and give them to the Mayor of Octam.  This would allow you to use Gala as the ESM caster and have Vahn throw fruits at him afterwards.

I get a couple of pieces of armor in Drake Kingdom, then I get all the armor in Underground Octam and again in Sol, and that's all the armor I get for the whole game.  I will be getting the Ra-Seru body armor / leg armor / weapons, but the headgear costs too much time since you have to go diving through Juggernaut's... body fluids to get them, and that takes a lot of time.

As for Vahn's MP, as long as you are at level 19 and have put three Magic Waters on him, you should be fine for using ESM with a Spirit Jewel.  His MP can vary from 156 to 192, which is from 180 to 216 with 3 Magic Waters and no other stat boosters (there's one in the Ancient Water Cave in the barrels near the Old Witch's counter, one in Underground Octam in the barrels just north of where the Mayor stands, and one in the Fire Path if you wait to get the chest containing the Phoenix until after Xain.  There's a fourth you can get in one of the Sage's Treasure Chests, but it's optimal to wait until after Gaza 1 to get that one.

Here's the same table in plain-text format, though it's a bit harder to read.  In short, the way stat gaining works when you gain a level is that you get a base stat bonus, plus a random number from 0-2 (0-8 for HP).  The table lists the base stat gain, along with the minimum and maximum values for that stat at each level (assuming all 0's or all 2's, respectively).  It does not take into consideration any stat+ waters you may use on that character.

Some of the other fights:

Zora goes down in 4 turns using ESM (and a couple of Tempest Breaks from Noa).  I would recommend holding on to the Wonder Amulets in Sol and Mt. Dhini until after the Zora fight, since a petrified character can be a run killer, and that would really suck in SS, since this is 3/4ths of the way through the run.  You can totally sell them afterwards since there's no boss later in the run that can inflict status ailments other than Faint/Dead.

Escapes in this game compare your party's average speed to the enemy party's average speed, so the Speed Ring from Jeremi can help you escape battles more easily.  I'd put it on Noa because that increases the chances that you'll get to escape before any enemy takes an action. However, interestingly enough, the more damaged your party is (and the less damaged the enemy party is), the greater your odds of escape become.  There's definitely a balancing act between risk of escape and risk of death.

Buy the Golden Compass in the Ancient Water Cave; it increases the chance of a surprise attack to 1/2 from a baseline 1/16. Surprise attacks are ideal since they guarantee a turn 1 escape will happen.  Silver Compass helps avoid ambushes, but it reduces the ambush chance from 1/16 to 1/64, which doesn't have as much of an absolute benefit.

Cort 1: Note that Guilty Cross is non-elemental. Mystic Circle and ESM (he can cast it too) are Dark Element, despite your ESM being non-elemental.  Point Card helps the first 25,000 damage go quickly, since he takes half damage from any magic spell until Mystic Shield goes down.  Oh, and because it's relevant, Speed Chain won't let you go before Cort puts up Mystic Shield.

The way Turn Order is determined is as follows: Each turn, the game assigns a speed order value equal to SPD + rand(1,..., SPD/2) and uses that value to determine who goes first; the second turn accounts for the random noise.  Speed Chain adds 4,096 to that value.  However, Mystic Circle is hard-coded to a speed value of 35,000, so there's no way to go before it.

Unfortunately, due to animation time and the like, even with a really clean Cort 1 fight, I wasn't able to save (after Juggernaut appears) until the 7:45 mark.  Given the mistakes and other slight optimizations in menuing, coin harvesting, etc., I don't see this part of the run finishing before the 7:30 mark, which means that Cort 2 probably doesn't fall until 8:15-8:20.

I am thinking the best that's realistically possible for this run is around 8:0x:xx; sub-8 may be possible with the most extreme of optimizations.  I think that the game clock on the credits screen ticks until you talk to Village Elder and leave Rim Elm after the final boss, but for our purposes, timing should probably end with the final hit on Cort 2, since there's just unskippable dialogue and an interactive epilogue (think like Earthbound, but you can only stay within Rim Elm) at that point, which isn't really interesting to optimize over.

Attachment:

Legaia - Stat Gains.txt

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 11:04:48 am

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 11:02:34 am

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 10:54:59 am

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 12:41:43 am

2015-01-27 12:41:06 am

steak Steak STEAK!!!

There is a certain excitement to the end of a run, even if it's only practice and no one but me will ever see the finished product; Cort 2 battle. You need at least 40,000 Points, but it's safer with about 45,500.

The strategy is really unsafe, and it's not feasible unless you are doing Segmented. Basically, we're going to rush the boss with ESM and the Point Card, and attempt to finish him off before he kills us. He's actually quite slow, and there's a reasonable chance that even Gala outspeeds him. Cort 2 has a SPD of only 119, for reference, so he's likely to attack last, though it's a rare chance that he can outspeed Vahn.

Turns 1-4:
Noa: Point Card
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit (on Vahn).

Turn 5:
Hope Vahn survives long enough to get off ESM. Hoping and Praying is appreciated here. If you get 45,000 (probably need closer to 45,500 to be safe) points instead of 40,000, Noa can finish Cort 2 with the Point Card. His HP, true to 16-bit reminiscing, is 65,535. I guess they only allotted sixteen bits to HP in this game. (Fun fact, not relevant to speedrunning: Cort 2 has more HP than the secret boss Lapis, which has only 64,800 HP. Lapis's ATK, AGL, and SPD stats are, of course, far higher.)

But we can't survive his attacks, Skies! I am aware of this; it's not a flaw in the run, but the strategy carries a large risk, which is why it's not suitable except in a segmented run.

There are three Lost Grails that we need to pick up; they cost a total of about 20 seconds to get all three, and they will save your backside and make this strategy possible. One is in Conkram, one at the end of the Absolute Fortress, and there's a third one in Juggernaut in the room with the Rim Elm Villagers. There are actually an infinite number that we could get; they are a 1% drop (31% with Bronze Book) from Slippery L2 and L3, and there's one that you could randomly get - it's a 38% drop from Van Saryu. There's also one available in the Sol Muscle Dome for 8000 coins, but that's not feasible for a speedrun.

The problem is that at level 25, it's a pretty low chance to survive Final Crisis, even with Spirit, and we don't have a turn to drink Elixirs.

Accessory setup is:

Vahn:
Lost Grail / Evil Talisman / Spirit Jewel

Noa:
Lost Grail / Life Armband / ? (I'd put the 4th Lost Grail here, otherwise you could try a Defender Chain and try to get lucky.)

Gala:
Lost Grail / Mei's Pendant / Defender Chain

Now, we just hope and pray that Cort will spread his attacks out over the party so that we can survive long enough to finish the job. Unfortunately, there's a roughly 5 minute cutscene before the battle starts from the final save point. Fortunately, the battle is won or lost in five turns, so there's no worry about losing at the end of a 20 minute fight on top of that. Everything comes down to Cort's AI script and the RNG of the game. There's a nonzero chance the strategy will work, but it's not much higher than that. Still, it's by far the fastest way to beat Cort 2, so, in true speedrun fashion, that's what we have to do.

On top of that, there's also a small chance that Gala might act before Vahn, meaning Vahn won't be able to use ESM the following turn. It's only a 3% chance each turn, but it's one more thing that can mess up the battle.

My goal is to keep brute-forcing toward a favorable final segment in the next day or two; expect a screenshot of the final time and I'll be prepared to try to ask questions about what needs to be done toward a run of appropriate technical quality, routing, etc. I may try to get some equipment to upload to YouTube, but I'm not so sure I want to spend the hundreds of bucks and such to try to capture and encode to SDA's A/V standards.

So: Final battle strategy proven possible, although not nearly as smoothly as I would have liked.

Battle goes as such:

Turn 1: Cort KO's Vahn
Turn 2: Cort attacks Noa, but she blocks one of the four hits, letting her survive at 230 HP.
Turn 3: Cort KO's Gala

Now, if he uses Ultra Charge on Turn 4, I win with virtual certainty as Vahn has a greater than 99% chance of moving before Cort 2, allowing Noa to use the Point Card for 900 damage on turn 5 and Vahn to ESM for the kill, but instead.

Turn 4: Cort uses Doomsday!
This is really bad, except that Noa actually survived the attack on turn 2, so her Life Grail brings her back. Still, the chances of winning are virtually zero, but I figure if I'm going to die, let's go out swinging. Cort has about 5,300 HP left, so the chances of winning are basically nil at this point.

Turn 5:
Noa uses Tempest Break, Cort uses Ultra Charge.

Now, Cort has about 3,400 HP left after this attack.

Turn 6:
Noa Spirits, Cort uses Final Crisis, which knocks Noa down to critical health.

Turn 7:
Noa uses her Miracle Art, dealing 3,010 damage and leaving Cort with 415 health. This is really bad, since Noa's not surviving anything in this state; she's at critical health, and there's a snowball's chance in hell she blocks all of Cort's physicals, except...

Cort uses Ultra Charge!

Turn 8:
At critical HP, with no Lost Grail, no other party members, and no AP to use Arts, Noa literally punches Cort to death with physical attacks for about 700 damage. In retrospect, using the Point Card here would have been faster, but I don't really care at this point.

So, game's over, I guess... And the final time is...

....

....

....

Wait for it...

8:39:18

This is probably around 8:33:xx to the final hit on Cort 2, since after this, there's still the Ra-Seru dialogue after the battle, then the Juggernaut being destroyed, then there's dialogue with Dr. Usha in Rim Elm, and so forth. Still, it is two hours faster than the 2013 practice run I did, so at least we know that an in-game time of around 8:20 is going to be close to the best I'm going to be able to do for this run under the strategies and optimizations I am aware of and can perform.

All those who said sub-20 and sub-10 were impossible, eat my shorts!

Out of 149 battles, I escaped from 100 of them. Actually never used Spoon even once in the run, so yeah, that's a thing that saves a couple minutes. Still need Orb for Songi 2 / Saryu / Dohati, though.

And there it is: As far to my knowledge, this is probably the WR, but only because I'm the only one who bothers to run such a long and obscure game.

There is a certain excitement to the end of a run, even if it's only practice and no one but me will ever see the finished product; Cort 2 battle. You need at least 40,000 Points, but it's safer with about 45,500.

The strategy is really unsafe, and it's not feasible unless you are doing Segmented.  Basically, we're going to rush the boss with ESM and the Point Card, and attempt to finish him off before he kills us.  He's actually quite slow, and there's a reasonable chance that even Gala outspeeds him. Cort 2 has a SPD of only 119, for reference, so he's likely to attack last, though it's a rare chance that he can outspeed Vahn.

Turns 1-4:
Noa: Point Card
Vahn: ESM
Gala: Magic Fruit (on Vahn).

Turn 5:
Hope Vahn survives long enough to get off ESM.  Hoping and Praying is appreciated here.  If you get 45,000 (probably need closer to 45,500 to be safe) points instead of 40,000, Noa can finish Cort 2 with the Point Card.  His HP, true to 16-bit reminiscing, is 65,535.  I guess they only allotted sixteen bits to HP in this game. (Fun fact, not relevant to speedrunning: Cort 2 has more HP than the secret boss Lapis, which has only 64,800 HP.  Lapis's ATK, AGL, and SPD stats are, of course, far higher.)

But we can't survive his attacks, Skies!  I am aware of this; it's not a flaw in the run, but the strategy carries a large risk, which is why it's not suitable except in a segmented run.

There are three Lost Grails that we need to pick up; they cost a total of about 20 seconds to get all three, and they will save your backside and make this strategy possible.  One is in Conkram, one at the end of the Absolute Fortress, and there's a third one in Juggernaut in the room with the Rim Elm Villagers.  There are actually an infinite number that we could get; they are a 1% drop (31% with Bronze Book) from Slippery L2 and L3, and there's one that you could randomly get - it's a 38% drop from Van Saryu.  There's also one available in the Sol Muscle Dome for 8000 coins, but that's not feasible for a speedrun.

The problem is that at level 25, it's a pretty low chance to survive Final Crisis, even with Spirit, and we don't have a turn to drink Elixirs.

Accessory setup is:

Vahn:
Lost Grail / Evil Talisman / Spirit Jewel

Noa:
Lost Grail / Life Armband / ? (I'd put the 4th Lost Grail here, otherwise you could try a Defender Chain and try to get lucky.)

Gala:
Lost Grail / Mei's Pendant / Defender Chain

Now, we just hope and pray that Cort will spread his attacks out over the party so that we can survive long enough to finish the job.  Unfortunately, there's a roughly 5 minute cutscene before the battle starts from the final save point.  Fortunately, the battle is won or lost in five turns, so there's no worry about losing at the end of a 20 minute fight on top of that.  Everything comes down to Cort's AI script and the RNG of the game.  There's a nonzero chance the strategy will work, but it's not much higher than that.  Still, it's by far the fastest way to beat Cort 2, so, in true speedrun fashion, that's what we have to do.

On top of that, there's also a small chance that Gala might act before Vahn, meaning Vahn won't be able to use ESM the following turn.  It's only a 3% chance each turn, but it's one more thing that can mess up the battle.

My goal is to keep brute-forcing toward a favorable final segment in the next day or two; expect a screenshot of the final time and I'll be prepared to try to ask questions about what needs to be done toward a run of appropriate technical quality, routing, etc.  I may try to get some equipment to upload to YouTube, but I'm not so sure I want to spend the hundreds of bucks and such to try to capture and encode to SDA's A/V standards.

So: Final battle strategy proven possible, although not nearly as smoothly as I would have liked.

Battle goes as such:

Turn 1: Cort KO's Vahn
Turn 2: Cort attacks Noa, but she blocks one of the four hits, letting her survive at 230 HP.
Turn 3: Cort KO's Gala

Now, if he uses Ultra Charge on Turn 4, I win with virtual certainty as Vahn has a greater than 99% chance of moving before Cort 2, allowing Noa to use the Point Card for 900 damage on turn 5 and Vahn to ESM for the kill, but instead.

Turn 4:  Cort uses Doomsday!
This is really bad, except that Noa actually survived the attack on turn 2, so her Life Grail brings her back.  Still, the chances of winning are virtually zero, but I figure if I'm going to die, let's go out swinging.  Cort has about 5,300 HP left, so the chances of winning are basically nil at this point.

Turn 5:
Noa uses Tempest Break, Cort uses Ultra Charge.

Now, Cort has about 3,400 HP left after this attack.

Turn 6:
Noa Spirits, Cort uses Final Crisis, which knocks Noa down to critical health.

Turn 7:
Noa uses her Miracle Art, dealing 3,010 damage and leaving Cort with 415 health.  This is really bad, since Noa's not surviving anything in this state; she's at critical health, and there's a snowball's chance in hell she blocks all of Cort's physicals, except...

Cort uses Ultra Charge!

Turn 8:
At critical HP, with no Lost Grail, no other party members, and no AP to use Arts, Noa literally punches Cort to death with physical attacks for about 700 damage.  In retrospect, using the Point Card here would have been faster, but I don't really care at this point.

So, game's over, I guess...  And the final time is...

....

Wait for it...

[spoiler]8:39:18

This is probably around 8:33:xx to the final hit on Cort 2, since after this, there's still the Ra-Seru dialogue after the battle, then the Juggernaut being destroyed, then there's dialogue with Dr. Usha in Rim Elm, and so forth.  Still, it is two hours faster than the 2013 practice run I did, so at least we know that an in-game time of around 8:20 is going to be close to the best I'm going to be able to do for this run under the strategies and optimizations I am aware of and can perform.

All those who said sub-20 and sub-10 were impossible, eat my shorts!

Out of 149 battles, I escaped from 100 of them.  Actually never used Spoon even once in the run, so yeah, that's a thing that saves a couple minutes.  Still need Orb for Songi 2 / Saryu / Dohati, though.

And there it is:  As far to my knowledge, this is probably the WR, but only because I'm the only one who bothers to run such a long and obscure game.

[/spoiler]

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 11:58:30 am

2015-01-27 11:42:59 am

steak Steak STEAK!!!

As promised:

Screenshot is attached.

Mistakes and Improvements for the actual run:

* Use the Point Card on Songi 2: That's an atrociously slow battle fought normally; the time saved in Orb animations, Songi's attacks, your attacks, etc. is enormous. It does require another round of buying with the Point Card to do this, which means I'll have to make another trip to the Item Shop in Underground Octam and a couple of other places. Still, that battle is slower'n molasses, and having to only have to get 2,889 damage done the hard way instead of 12,888 is a big time saver. This probably cuts about 7:30 out of the run, net of time spent gathering extra coins (this fight is that slow)

* Better Slot Machine Optimization: There were a couple of times where I had to get a few thousand more coins and redeem them to get the Point Card beefed up a bit. Knowing how many coins I need will cut down on this and save some time. Estimated time saving: 2 minutes. Could probably save another minute or two

* Manipulate Vahn's MP better. Being able to use ESM earlier will save time on Gi Delilas for sure, and probably also on Gaza 1 as well. There's probably 2:30 to be saved here; maybe a bit more if I can get ESM up to level 4 for Songi 3 and Cort 2. Probably saves 3 minutes.

* Cort 2 battle: Yeah, the fact that I had to jump through those hoops doesn't bode well. That probably saves 2:30 right there.

* Berserker Battle: Manipulate a T1 Nighto Kill instead of a T2 one as I allowed myself in practice. Saves about 40 seconds.

* Viguro Battle: The God Battle (both Viguros die to Nighto on T1) is a 1/256 chance, and would save 3 minutes, maybe 3:30 over a 1 kill on T1 which I took in this run.

* Better item selling / routing: Knowing how many Healing Fruits / Magic Fruits / Healing Berries I need means I can better route my money toward the Point Card. There's also a little time to be gained from a better understanding of which items to pick up and skip. If I can save a trip to a shop or two, there's a minute or two skipped.

* I lost a few seconds in Noaru Valley / Absolute Fortress (and probably some other places) due to poor movement patterns. Probably 1 minute to be gained here.

* I can skip all the Wonder Elixirs I picked up during the run; I finished the game without them, and I'm not convinced they would ever save time anywhere. They don't sell for a whole ton of cash (only 3,000 G). The three I got were minimal time costs (the one in Sol is required since it's in a Sage Treasure Chest), but at least it's known that I can sell them.

* Random battle manipulation: I was pretty good about this, but there's probably a minute to be saved here.
* Boss manipulation: I did lose a little time in Rogue's Tower, for one. Probably can save some time elsewhere.

So, I think there's about 20-25 minutes of time that could be saved with more manipulation and better luck. I don't see sub-8 as possible, but sub-8:20 game-time is definitely inside the realm of possibilities, and 8:15 would be near the optimum for a run without Tool-Assistance. Do remember that the in-game time isn't quite accurate (it times through about 7 minutes of cutscenes after Cort 2 is dead, it starts timing on the title screen (it's about 1:05 before you gain control of Vahn), and it doesn't time in the Muscle Dome when you are getting the Chicken King. It would also be appropriate to cut out a little time in manual timing while you are choosing which save file to use, since there's loading time and file selection time which isn't appropriate to consider as actual time.

So, that, as they say, is that. Now to find out how I want to record the actual run, having gotten practice in and knowing how I can save more time going forward.

And, from the first page (8 long years ago):

Quote from speed132:

It's impossible to make a sub 20 hour speed run!

I started playing the game again, just to see the secret spells like juggernaut and the secret boss lapis.

Using cheats and knowing all routes, I made it 14:23:52.

I don't even know it it's possible to make it sub 30, because:

-too much conversation
-need some time to level up

Thats all.

Guess I didn't get the memo. Then again, they probably thought it was impossible to make a sub-3 minute A Link to the Past run back in 1998.

As promised:

Screenshot is attached.

Mistakes and Improvements for the actual run:

* Use the Point Card on Songi 2: That's an atrociously slow battle fought normally; the time saved in Orb animations, Songi's attacks, your attacks, etc. is enormous.  It does require another round of buying with the Point Card to do this, which means I'll have to make another trip to the Item Shop in Underground Octam and a couple of other places.  Still, that battle is slower'n molasses, and having to only have to get 2,889 damage done the hard way instead of 12,888 is a big time saver.  This probably cuts about 7:30 out of the run, net of time spent gathering extra coins (this fight is that slow)

* Better Slot Machine Optimization: There were a couple of times where I had to get a few thousand more coins and redeem them to get the Point Card beefed up a bit.  Knowing how many coins I need will cut down on this and save some time.  Estimated time saving: 2 minutes.  Could probably save another minute or two

* Manipulate Vahn's MP better.  Being able to use ESM earlier will save time on Gi Delilas for sure, and probably also on Gaza 1 as well.  There's probably 2:30 to be saved here; maybe a bit more if I can get ESM up to level 4 for Songi 3 and Cort 2.  Probably saves 3 minutes.

* Cort 2 battle: Yeah, the fact that I had to jump through those hoops doesn't bode well.  That probably saves 2:30 right there.

* Berserker Battle: Manipulate a T1 Nighto Kill instead of a T2 one as I allowed myself in practice.  Saves about 40 seconds.

* Viguro Battle: The God Battle (both Viguros die to Nighto on T1) is a 1/256 chance, and would save 3 minutes, maybe 3:30 over a 1 kill on T1 which I took in this run.

* Better item selling / routing: Knowing how many Healing Fruits / Magic Fruits / Healing Berries I need means I can better route my money toward the Point Card.  There's also a little time to be gained from a better understanding of which items to pick up and skip.  If I can save a trip to a shop or two, there's a minute or two skipped.

* I lost a few seconds in Noaru Valley / Absolute Fortress (and probably some other places) due to poor movement patterns.  Probably 1 minute to be gained here.

* I can skip all the Wonder Elixirs I picked up during the run; I finished the game without them, and I'm not convinced they would ever save time anywhere.  They don't sell for a whole ton of cash (only 3,000 G).  The three I got were minimal time costs (the one in Sol is required since it's in a Sage Treasure Chest), but at least it's known that I can sell them.

* Random battle manipulation: I was pretty good about this, but there's probably a minute to be saved here.
* Boss manipulation: I did lose a little time in Rogue's Tower, for one.  Probably can save some time elsewhere.

So, I think there's about 20-25 minutes of time that could be saved with more manipulation and better luck.  I don't see sub-8 as possible, but sub-8:20 game-time is definitely inside the realm of possibilities, and 8:15 would be near the optimum for a run without Tool-Assistance.  Do remember that the in-game time isn't quite accurate (it times through about 7 minutes of cutscenes after Cort 2 is dead, it starts timing on the title screen (it's about 1:05 before you gain control of Vahn), and it doesn't time in the Muscle Dome when you are getting the Chicken King.  It would also be appropriate to cut out a little time in manual timing while you are choosing which save file to use, since there's loading time and file selection time which isn't appropriate to consider as actual time.

So, that, as they say, is that.  Now to find out how I want to record the actual run, having gotten practice in and knowing how I can save more time going forward.

And, from the first page (8 long years ago):

[quote="speed132"]It's [b]impossible[/b] to make a sub 20 hour speed run!

I started playing the game again, just to see the secret spells like juggernaut and the secret boss lapis.

Using cheats and knowing all routes, I made it 14:23:52.

I don't even know it it's possible to make it sub 30, because:

-too much conversation 
-need some time to level up

Thats all.[/quote]

Guess I didn't get the memo.  Then again, they probably thought it was impossible to make a sub-3 minute A Link to the Past run back in 1998.

Attachment:

Legaia - 8-39-18.jpg

Reiska

Edit history:

Reiska: 2015-01-27 04:03:41 pm

2015-01-27 04:03:26 pm

Awesome time!

I've heard various reports claim that the Japanese version of the game is easier. Wonder how much time it'd save?

garik16

2015-01-27 04:04:50 pm

Nicely done. I didn't dream of sub 8 when i started my run, although I wasn't using point card or slots as much - going to submit?

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 10:42:56 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-27 05:14:27 pm

2015-01-27 05:09:39 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

I don't have any recording of this, since I am somewhat technologically inept and don't have a capture card, DVD recorder, etc. that would allow me to capture A/V footage of the game, so unfortunately, the answer for the time being is no. I am going to look into possibly getting some equipment to try to be able to upload my actual run (this is a glorified practice run up until now) to YouTube, but I'm not willing at this point to drop $300-$400 on all the tools (high-quality capture card, DVD recorder, component-cable splitter, multiple DVD-RW's, 10TB+ hard drive) to encode to SDA's A/V quality standards, and then wait another 6-12 months for it to go through verification and possibly have to worry about it getting obsoleted and wiped from SDA. So, I'd say that the likelihood that I will ever submit a run of this game to SDA is virtually zero, while the chance of it making it to YouTube at some point are considerably higher.

Regarding the Japanese version:
http://www.legendoflegaia.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=38111#p38111

Apparently, most enemies have higher ATK / UDF/LDF and slightly improved INT in the English version, though without a copy of the JPN version of the game, we're really not sure how the manipulations might differ in the Japanese version.

Right now, from the verification side if anyone were to submit a run, I'd be looking for a game time in the 8:25 range; there'd be some room for improvement (probably to 8:15 or so), but it would be of the very tedious sort.

Here are the keys to the run:

* Ebony Jewels. Half damage from all the bosses in the second half of the game is a godsend. Jewels single-handedly make it possible to beat the game at less than level 35 or so, as there's no way you'll survive ESM, Songi's attacks, or Cort 2 without them (taking into consideration that you can't waste Lost Grails / Point Card on the previous bosses).

* Point Card / Slot Machine: It's the fastest way to deal damage. However, there's a lot of prep work involved, so I avoid using the Point Card more than necessary, lest it waste time.

* Evil Talisman: I like having the ability to deal 5k damage a turn. I also like having access to 50% random battles. Spirit Jewel gets an honorable mention for getting the cost of ESM to 192, so I can follow up with a Magic Fruit and use it every turn. First Spirit Jewel is a one-time prize from the Vidna Slots, and there's another one in Nivora Ravine.

* Chicken King: 100% escape probability means I never have to worry about RNG luck in battle escapes for the second half of the run.

* Speed Chain: You get this by winning the Dance Competition, then by talking to the Disco King. Alternately, you can score 400 or more in the Practice Mode, but winning the competition is faster and gets you an extra 10,000 G, which isn't a ton, but it helps. Combined with the Chicken King, you can instantly escape every random encounter, 100%, without the enemy ever getting an attack (and wasting several seconds in animation time). Thanks to this, optimal segmentation actually gets a lot longer post-Sol. I think I had something like 40 segments pre-Sol, and only 16 or 17 after. As in, Songi 2 all the way to the final save point was a single segment, since the benefit to saving one random encounter is slightly less than the cost of time in saving.

* Gold / Silver Compass: Ambushes are the enemy of a speedrun, and surprise attacks are your best friend. Sadly, even in segmented, it's probably too much to manipulate the 5% drop from the Viguro fight (a double Nighto kill is a 1/256 chance, and with the drop rate, it becomes closer to 1/4000. Someone not me can try for that.) I recommend getting them in the Water Cave; you can get them in Hunter's Spring after clearing Drake Castle, but you won't have the money for them and they aren't worth it at that point.

* Lost Grails: No way in hell I was beating the Final Boss without them

* Nighto Spell. We don't use it after the second hour of the game, but it's critical for the Berserker and Viguro fights.

* Costly Accessories in Treasure Chests: Thanks for powering up my Point Card! I would have had to spend more time at the slots without you guys!

* The developers & publishers: For making a great underrated classic.

* Readers like you. For giving me the motivation to run this game and the satisfaction for a job well done.

Now, onward to 8:20!

I don't have any recording of this, since I am somewhat technologically inept and don't have a capture card, DVD recorder, etc. that would allow me to capture A/V footage of the game, so unfortunately, the answer for the time being is no.  I am going to look into possibly getting some equipment to try to be able to upload my actual run (this is a glorified practice run up until now) to YouTube, but I'm not willing at this point to drop $300-$400 on all the tools (high-quality capture card, DVD recorder, component-cable splitter, multiple DVD-RW's, 10TB+ hard drive) to encode to SDA's A/V quality standards, and then wait another 6-12 months for it to go through verification and possibly have to worry about it getting obsoleted and wiped from SDA.  So, I'd say that the likelihood that I will ever submit a run of this game to SDA is virtually zero, while the chance of it making it to YouTube at some point are considerably higher.

Regarding the Japanese version:
http://www.legendoflegaia.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=38111#p38111

Apparently, most enemies have higher ATK / UDF/LDF and slightly improved INT in the English version, though without a copy of the JPN version of the game, we're really not sure how the manipulations might differ in the Japanese version.

Right now, from the verification side if anyone were to submit a run, I'd be looking for a game time in the 8:25 range; there'd be some room for improvement (probably to 8:15 or so), but it would be of the very tedious sort.

Here are the keys to the run:

* Ebony Jewels.  Half damage from all the bosses in the second half of the game is a godsend.  Jewels single-handedly make it possible to beat the game at less than level 35 or so, as there's no way you'll survive ESM, Songi's attacks, or Cort 2 without them (taking into consideration that you can't waste Lost Grails / Point Card on the previous bosses).

* Point Card / Slot Machine: It's the fastest way to deal damage.  However, there's a lot of prep work involved, so I avoid using the Point Card more than necessary, lest it waste time.

* Evil Talisman: I like having the ability to deal 5k damage a turn.  I also like having access to 50% random battles.  Spirit Jewel gets an honorable mention for getting the cost of ESM to 192, so I can follow up with a Magic Fruit and use it every turn. First Spirit Jewel is a one-time prize from the Vidna Slots, and there's another one in Nivora Ravine.

* Chicken King: 100% escape probability means I never have to worry about RNG luck in battle escapes for the second half of the run.

* Speed Chain: You get this by winning the Dance Competition, then by talking to the Disco King.  Alternately, you can score 400 or more in the Practice Mode, but winning the competition is faster and gets you an extra 10,000 G, which isn't a ton, but it helps.  Combined with the Chicken King, you can instantly escape every random encounter, 100%, without the enemy ever getting an attack (and wasting several seconds in animation time).  Thanks to this, optimal segmentation actually gets a lot longer post-Sol.  I think I had something like 40 segments pre-Sol, and only 16 or 17 after.  As in, Songi 2 all the way to the final save point was a single segment, since the benefit to saving one random encounter is slightly less than the cost of time in saving.

* Gold / Silver Compass: Ambushes are the enemy of a speedrun, and surprise attacks are your best friend.  Sadly, even in segmented, it's probably too much to manipulate the 5% drop from the Viguro fight (a double Nighto kill is a 1/256 chance, and with the drop rate, it becomes closer to 1/4000.  Someone not me can try for that.)  I recommend getting them in the Water Cave; you can get them in Hunter's Spring after clearing Drake Castle, but you won't have the money for them and they aren't worth it at that point.

* Lost Grails: No way in hell I was beating the Final Boss without them

* Nighto Spell.  We don't use it after the second hour of the game, but it's critical for the Berserker and Viguro fights.

* Costly Accessories in Treasure Chests: Thanks for powering up my Point Card!  I would have had to spend more time at the slots without you guys!

* The developers & publishers: For making a great underrated classic.

* Readers like you.  For giving me the motivation to run this game and the satisfaction for a job well done.

Now, onward to 8:20!

exileut

2015-01-29 05:02:11 pm

I was watching some videos and thought a little more about the TAS. I am not saying I will do anything near a full run, but planning interests me. Is there anyway to get a full list of how much total the pointcard would be? A checklist of required items even with perfect rng and probably optimal opponent turns? level requirements and things like that. I can't find any of my old tas stuff sadly.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-29 06:09:42 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-29 06:03:01 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-29 05:48:38 pm

2015-01-29 05:44:18 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for as far as planning information is concerned.

I know that for the segmented run I did, I did not fight any random battles after the Caruban fight, except to get Nighto, Vera, Orb, and Spoon (and the last one isn't necessary for Segmented, let alone TAS). So, your minimum levels are only what you need to get through the game normally. You absolutely must get Jewels, in particular the Ebony Jewels from Underground Octam; they will save your rear end in so many ways that it's not funny. A lot of what a TAS can do are guarantee running with 100% probability and have perfect slot machine "luck".

For TAS purposes, you never need to really pick up any treasure chests for the purposes of selling the contents for cash (there are some crucial items, such as the 3x Lost Grail and some other notable items) because you can guarantee bonus games on the slot machines every time and always get 1,000 coins on the bonus game (you can time the reels, but it's frame-perfect and therefore not fully consistent without frame advance.) The bosses after Zeto have:

Berserker: 5,000 HP (You can re-record to get a Nighto kill here)
Xain: 9,511 HP
Songi 2: 12,888 HP
Saryu: 13,245 HP
Dohati: 17,200 HP
Gaza 1: 12,000
Gaza 2: 15,000
Che: 12,000
Lu: 9,500
Gi: 10,000
Zora: 22,422
Rogue: 28,200
Jette: 34,567
Cort 1: 50,000
Songi 3: 48,000
Cort 2: 65,535

However, you also have to take into consideration that the game requires that you hit for 9,999 if the Point Card has at least that many points, as well as the fact that you'll be able to deal auxiliary damage from other sources, most notably Kemaro and ESM.

I'm willing to provide any of my strategies, anything I think could be manipulated given sufficient luck / re-record forcing / RNG manipulation, any accessory setups I use that I think are worthwhile to use, what could be sold, and the like. Just let me know what you'd like me to provide and I'll do as much as I can to give you some ideas. I think a TAS could break 7:30, if only because it you can take even riskier strategies and it becomes feasible to do a lot more point card abuse.

By the way, does anyone have recommendations / advice if I were going to try to record / stream my segment attempts? I've looked at the Knowledge Base on SDA, but it's assuming a baseline of technical knowledge that I simply don't have, and I haven't several hundred dollars to buy the high-end equipment necessary to produce to SDA's A/V standards, so this would be really for personal satisfaction and to provide a video tutorial for anyone who would be up to an SDA-quality recording of the game.

EDIT: I have a couple more hours left to watch, but I have been going through the run Deathtome posted for the single-segment back in November and making some comments and places where I think the run can be improved in either safety or time (or both). Biggest flaw in the run that I can tell is no Speed Chain; I didn't even know it was possible to speedrun the game without it. Some other places where time could be saved as well; I could pretty easily see the run going down another hour, and I might try Single Segment at some point; I think sub-11:30 isn't impossible to foresee in Single Segment, possibly even close to 11 hours.

I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for as far as planning information is concerned.

I know that for the segmented run I did, I did not fight any random battles after the Caruban fight, except to get Nighto, Vera, Orb, and Spoon (and the last one isn't necessary for Segmented, let alone TAS).  So, your minimum levels are only what you need to get through the game normally.  You absolutely must get Jewels, in particular the Ebony Jewels from Underground Octam; they will save your rear end in so many ways that it's not funny.  A lot of what a TAS can do are guarantee running with 100% probability and have perfect slot machine "luck".

For TAS purposes, you never need to really pick up any treasure chests for the purposes of selling the contents for cash (there are some crucial items, such as the 3x Lost Grail and some other notable items) because you can guarantee bonus games on the slot machines every time and always get 1,000 coins on the bonus game (you can time the reels, but it's frame-perfect and therefore not fully consistent without frame advance.)  The bosses after Zeto have:

Berserker: 5,000 HP (You can re-record to get a Nighto kill here)
Xain: 9,511 HP
Songi 2: 12,888 HP
Saryu: 13,245 HP
Dohati: 17,200 HP
Gaza 1: 12,000
Gaza 2: 15,000
Che: 12,000
Lu: 9,500
Gi: 10,000
Zora: 22,422
Rogue: 28,200
Jette: 34,567
Cort 1: 50,000
Songi 3: 48,000
Cort 2: 65,535

However, you also have to take into consideration that the game requires that you hit for 9,999 if the Point Card has at least that many points, as well as the fact that you'll be able to deal auxiliary damage from other sources, most notably Kemaro and ESM.

I'm willing to provide any of my strategies, anything I think could be manipulated given sufficient luck / re-record forcing / RNG manipulation, any accessory setups I use that I think are worthwhile to use, what could be sold, and the like.  Just let me know what you'd like me to provide and I'll do as much as I can to give you some ideas.  I think a TAS could break 7:30, if only because it you can take even riskier strategies and it becomes feasible to do a lot more point card abuse.

By the way, does anyone have recommendations / advice if I were going to try to record / stream my segment attempts?  I've looked at the Knowledge Base on SDA, but it's assuming a baseline of technical knowledge that I simply don't have, and I haven't several hundred dollars to buy the high-end equipment necessary to produce to SDA's A/V standards, so this would be really for personal satisfaction and to provide a video tutorial for anyone who would be up to an SDA-quality recording of the game.

EDIT: I have a couple more hours left to watch, but I have been going through the run Deathtome posted for the single-segment back in November and making some comments and places where I think the run can be improved in either safety or time (or both).  Biggest flaw in the run that I can tell is no Speed Chain; I didn't even know it was possible to speedrun the game without it.  Some other places where time could be saved as well; I could pretty easily see the run going down another hour, and I might try Single Segment at some point; I think sub-11:30 isn't impossible to foresee in Single Segment, possibly even close to 11 hours.

exileut

2015-01-29 06:44:46 pm

Put your cellphone on a mount and just record the screen? Not submittable, but good for everyone else to watch.

Drifting Skies

2015-01-29 06:52:29 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

I don't think I'm going to be able to store / record anywhere near 8 and a half hours of video footage on the phone I currently have; I'd like to be able to get a good-quality recording going for streaming purposes, but not necessarily something that's going to be able to record lossless HD footage over long periods of time, because I currently lack time/money at the moment. Anyway, that's not the purpose of the thread, so shifting back the discussion elsewhere...

I need to take some time to actually write down my route in my head for the segmented route, so I can post it for feedback and to see what needs to be changed going forward. Right now, I think there's a solid 25 minutes of time to be saved, so I do think 8:20 is reasonable for a next attempt, possibly going close to the 8:10 mark with insane luck and optimization, but I just don't think it's going to be much better than that without tool-assistance. I have to go teach economics to undergraduates now, and I will be back at some point this evening to get the route at least started.

I don't think I'm going to be able to store / record anywhere near 8 and a half hours of video footage on the phone I currently have; I'd like to be able to get a good-quality recording going for streaming purposes, but not necessarily something that's going to be able to record lossless HD footage over long periods of time, because I currently lack time/money at the moment.  Anyway, that's not the purpose of the thread, so shifting back the discussion elsewhere...

I need to take some time to actually write down my route in my head for the segmented route, so I can post it for feedback and to see what needs to be changed going forward.  Right now, I think there's a solid 25 minutes of time to be saved, so I do think 8:20 is reasonable for a next attempt, possibly going close to the 8:10 mark with insane luck and optimization, but I just don't think it's going to be much better than that without tool-assistance.  I have to go teach economics to undergraduates now, and I will be back at some point this evening to get the route at least started.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-29 10:39:29 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-29 10:32:18 pm

2015-01-29 10:16:02 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

Anyway, while I don't have any A/V footage, I finally got the God Segment 1, so I can finally stop playing the first 15 minutes of the game:

Segment 1:

- Set name to 'Vahn' (Default option)
- Talk to Village Elder
- Options: Battle Select Attack -> Command, Field Move -> Run

- Talk to Mei, choose "Is Something Wrong" to avoid four extra text boxes.
- Go to Vahn's house, Mei cutscene
- Talk to Tetsu, choose "I want to practice with you"
Input command as ">" (Hit X to initiate the attack without filling up the bar fully)
Use item
Spirit
Input command as "^ V ^"
Mash start to end the "That's enough for today" text box.

More Cutscenes. Choose "Alright, please look after her"

Talk to Val, say "Yes" to sleep. Say "Yes" to his request to check the Wall.
Talk to Village Elder.

Run from the Gimard battle.
Acquire Meta

Fight visible Gimard at the top-left of the Genesis Tree enclave. Gimard must be absorbed (55% chance)
- 3 rounds; input command "> > >" (Ra-Seru arm)

Visit Mei. Choose "The Mist is Here", followed by "Let's go to my house"
Leave Vahn's house, fight visible Gimards at bottom-right, then top-right. Use Burning attack to kill them
Vahn to L2, Gimard to L2. Vahn's MP must be 28 (33% chance; no checking until end of segment)
Go to Village Elder's house; pick up Magic Leaf in cupboard, talk to Village Elder to gather townsfolk at Genesis Tree.
Dialogue button mashing / cutscenes...

Leave Rim Elm, Mei stops you; acquire Hunter's Clothes / Mei's Pendant
Leave Rim Elm, immediately return. Acquire Point Card in dresser, then buy Warrior Boots for Vahn. (+7 LDF/ATK, but also +4 SPD, which will help escape and turn-order odds in Drake Castle. I feel that this is absolutely worth the few seconds spent here.)
Leave Rim Elm, travel ~9 seconds to set up for a 1-battle to Drake Castle. Open menu, equip "Best Equipment" + Mei's Pendant. 28 MP confirmed. (Sadly, he didn't get great HP (217, out of 216-224) or INT, but he got the best AGL draw and average speed, which is nice.)
Save Game: Time: 16:28. (I botched up the movement in the items shop a bit, TAS time could maybe be 16:18 or so following this route due to an extra Tail Fire animation on the last Gimard fight). All things considered, this is an incredible time and required upwards of 35-40 resets to get something this good. Best time I have ever gotten by at least 10-15 seconds.

Drake Castle enemies have the following stats:
Gimard
HP: 99/99 MP: 20/20
ATK: 28(28) SPD: 22(22)
UDF: 24(24) INT: 18(18)
LDF: 30(30) AGL: 60(60)
Element: Fire Exp: 42 G: 18

Skeleton
HP: 99/99 MP: 13/13
ATK: 30(30) SPD: 38(38)
UDF: 48(48) INT: 14(14)
LDF: 40(40) AGL: 99(99)
Element: Dark Exp: 59 G: 22

Drake Ghost
HP: 130/130 MP: 40/40
ATK: 48(48) SPD: 24(24)
UDF: 40(40) INT: 27(27)
LDF: 52(52) AGL: 90(90)
Element: Dark Exp: 65 G: 25

Notably, Vahn's speed of 26 means that outspeeding skeletons is very rare (26-39 turn order vs. skeleton's 38-57), but he has a good chance of acting before either the Gimard or the Drake Ghost (something like 55-60% of moving before them). This means that optimally, I want to take out skeletons first, since in expectation, I have fewer enemy attack animations to worry about.

Anyway, while I don't have any A/V footage, I finally got the God Segment 1, so I can finally stop playing the first 15 minutes of the game:

Segment 1:

- Set name to 'Vahn' (Default option)
- Talk to Village Elder
- Options: Battle Select Attack -> Command, Field Move -> Run

- Talk to Mei, choose "Is Something Wrong" to avoid four extra text boxes.
- Go to Vahn's house, Mei cutscene
- Talk to Tetsu, choose "I want to practice with you"
Input command as ">" (Hit X to initiate the attack without filling up the bar fully)
Use item
Spirit
Input command as "^ V ^"
Mash start to end the "That's enough for today" text box.

More Cutscenes. Choose "Alright, please look after her"

Talk to Val, say "Yes" to sleep.  Say "Yes" to his request to check the Wall.
Talk to Village Elder.

Run from the Gimard battle.
Acquire Meta

Fight visible Gimard at the top-left of the Genesis Tree enclave. Gimard must be absorbed (55% chance)
- 3 rounds; input command "> > >" (Ra-Seru arm)

Visit Mei. Choose "The Mist is Here", followed by "Let's go to my house"
Leave Vahn's house, fight visible Gimards at bottom-right, then top-right.  Use Burning attack to kill them
Vahn to L2, Gimard to L2. Vahn's MP must be 28 (33% chance; no checking until end of segment)
Go to Village Elder's house; pick up Magic Leaf in cupboard, talk to Village Elder to gather townsfolk at Genesis Tree.
Dialogue button mashing / cutscenes...

Leave Rim Elm, Mei stops you; acquire Hunter's Clothes / Mei's Pendant
Leave Rim Elm, immediately return.  Acquire Point Card in dresser, then buy Warrior Boots for Vahn. (+7 LDF/ATK, but also +4 SPD, which will help escape and turn-order odds in Drake Castle.  I feel that this is absolutely worth the few seconds spent here.)
Leave Rim Elm, travel ~9 seconds to set up for a 1-battle to Drake Castle.  Open menu, equip "Best Equipment" + Mei's Pendant. 28 MP confirmed. (Sadly, he didn't get great HP (217, out of 216-224) or INT, but he got the best AGL draw and average speed, which is nice.)
Save Game: Time: 16:28. (I botched up the movement in the items shop a bit, TAS time could maybe be 16:18 or so following this route due to an extra Tail Fire animation on the last Gimard fight).  All things considered, this is an incredible time and required upwards of 35-40 resets to get something this good.  Best time I have ever gotten by at least 10-15 seconds.

Drake Castle enemies have the following stats:
Gimard
HP: 99/99 MP: 20/20
ATK: 28(28) SPD: 22(22)
UDF: 24(24) INT: 18(18)
LDF: 30(30) AGL: 60(60)
Element: Fire Exp: 42 G: 18

Skeleton
HP: 99/99 MP: 13/13
ATK: 30(30) SPD: 38(38)
UDF: 48(48) INT: 14(14)
LDF: 40(40) AGL: 99(99)
Element: Dark Exp: 59 G: 22

Drake Ghost
HP: 130/130 MP: 40/40
ATK: 48(48) SPD: 24(24)
UDF: 40(40) INT: 27(27)
LDF: 52(52) AGL: 90(90)
Element: Dark Exp: 65 G: 25

Notably, Vahn's speed of 26 means that outspeeding skeletons is very rare (26-39 turn order vs. skeleton's 38-57), but he has a good chance of acting before either the Gimard or the Drake Ghost (something like 55-60% of moving before them).  This means that optimally, I want to take out skeletons first, since in expectation, I have fewer enemy attack animations to worry about.

exileut

2015-01-30 12:50:50 pm

More information is always good. My old test TAS gets to the castle.
I had no idea for a route but I learned about the game mechanics somewhat. It looks like power-on to 2nd world map took 14:24. The differences being 3 Gimard fights, Gimard magic absorption, Magic Leaf, Warrior Boots.
I want to test your route on bizhawk. I lost the old random encounter script, all ram addresses, and still don't know the RNG location or pointers for attack manipulation.
The test won't be as fast as it can be, but I guess no speedrun is.

Is 1 random encounter to the castle possible on console?

exileut

2015-01-30 01:05:04 pm

It looks like I get 2 random encounters in the castle. I'm attacked a total of 4 times. Is it necessary to fight the enemies here? I only tested for the earliest possible frame to a successful escape. I didn't think about waiting longer to have a successful escape and only get attacked once. The Warrior Boots might help with this. I know Caruban can be beaten in 3 rounds with a rank 9 Gimard, Lv1 Vahn, Lv4 Noa. But it seemed impossible with no magic.
I am getting ahead of myself, but really need to get a battle script together...

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-30 01:41:27 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-30 01:34:31 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-30 01:33:41 pm

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-30 01:12:42 pm

2015-01-30 01:11:29 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

1 Random Battle to the Castle is possible assuming that you travel about 8-9 seconds, save the game, then load the file after manipulating for max counter to Random Battle, followed by another solid draw after running from the first battle.

It may be possible to manipulate to a 2 turn Gimard fight on TAS. I frequently see 16's and 17's for damage, so it may be possible to do something like 17/17/15 and 17/16/17 to get 99 damage on the Gimard in two turns, but it's really unlikely, and I'm not fully aware of how the RNG works, but if it's possible to pull enough 17's out and not have the Gimard block, that would save a few seconds.

It would probably take less time to train Vahn to L3-4 and get a level 5 Gimard than train Gimard to L9. That way, you have 36 MP (44 with L4) to work with, which guarantees you three Gimards.

2 encounters in the castle is optimal. Best to run from one of them (double Gimard is easiest to escape from) and fight the other to boost Gimard level and get some EXP (Drake Ghost + Skeleton fights give the most EXP). You can definitely beat Caruban at L4 for both characters, with L4 Gimard. This is what I do in my segmented run (the 8:40 run I mentioned a few posts up). I believe this is the fastest method; TAS can probably manipulate this to a 3 round fight. Vahn 3 / Noa 4 is probably a bit faster for TAS purposes, but I'm not 100% that this is doable; I know 4/4 is very realistic.)

There's a couple of files I'm attaching. The first is a .txt file with some of my annotations and comments about Deathtome's rum from a few months ago back on page 9 of the thread that he posted. The second is a detailed checklist of my route through the end of the Caruban fight along with some notes of what I think a TAS might be able to manipulate.

Watching your TAS now and talking to Tetsu before going home and talking to Mei is slower. You have to do both to advance the plot (that triggers the hunters to come home), but it's a shorter route to do it in reverse order, I think. I'd be curious to time it, since you'd avoid a loading screen leaving Vahn's house. I figured for sure Mei first was faster, but now I don't know...

You'd need the Treasure Chest in the Drake Castle courtyard so you can Door of Light off Mt. Rikuroa after beating Caruban.

1 Random Battle to the Castle is possible assuming that you travel about 8-9 seconds, save the game, then load the file after manipulating for max counter to Random Battle, followed by another solid draw after running from the first battle.

It may be possible to manipulate to a 2 turn Gimard fight on TAS.  I frequently see 16's and 17's for damage, so it may be possible to do something like 17/17/15 and 17/16/17 to get 99 damage on the Gimard in two turns, but it's really unlikely, and I'm not fully aware of how the RNG works, but if it's possible to pull enough 17's out and not have the Gimard block, that would save a few seconds.

It would probably take less time to train Vahn to L3-4 and get a level 5 Gimard than train Gimard to L9.  That way, you have 36 MP (44 with L4) to work with, which guarantees you three Gimards.

2 encounters in the castle is optimal.  Best to run from one of them (double Gimard is easiest to escape from) and fight the other to boost Gimard level and get some EXP (Drake Ghost + Skeleton fights give the most EXP).  You can definitely beat Caruban at L4 for both characters, with L4 Gimard.  This is what I do in my segmented run (the 8:40 run I mentioned a few posts up).  I believe this is the fastest method; TAS can probably manipulate this to a 3 round fight.  Vahn 3 / Noa 4 is probably a bit faster for TAS purposes, but I'm not 100% that this is doable; I know 4/4 is very realistic.)

There's a couple of files I'm attaching.  The first is a .txt file with some of my annotations and comments about Deathtome's rum from a few months ago back on page 9 of the thread that he posted.  The second is a detailed checklist of my route through the end of the Caruban fight along with some notes of what I think a TAS might be able to manipulate.

Watching your TAS now and talking to Tetsu before going home and talking to Mei is slower.  You have to do both to advance the plot (that triggers the hunters to come home), but it's a shorter route to do it in reverse order, I think.  I'd be curious to time it, since you'd avoid a loading screen leaving Vahn's house.  I figured for sure Mei first was faster, but now I don't know...

You'd need the Treasure Chest in the Drake Castle courtyard so you can Door of Light off Mt. Rikuroa after beating Caruban.

Attachments:

Legaia 12-22 Single Segment Notes.txt

Legaia Speedrun - Segmentation Route to Caruban.docx

exileut

Edit history:

exileut: 2015-01-30 02:08:20 pm

2015-01-30 01:53:51 pm

Thanks for the information. I found out about the door of light afterward, but I couldn't beat Caruban anyway. Going to Tetsu last makes sense. I am testing the timing now.

Edit: With super rough numbers, talking to mei first is 3 seconds faster. It takes longer to get to tetsu than mei from the start. It takes longer to run up the beach stairs to get to mei than jumping off the cliff down to tetsu.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-01-30 03:43:34 pm

2015-01-30 03:17:07 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

So, this is going to be all I'm going to be able to work on this second test run until probably Sunday sometime, but I got through the Drake Castle leveling sequence. Vahn is at Level 4 (807 EXP) with a level 5 Gimard spell at 27:07 in-game time. For reference, I was at the outskirts of the castle at 17:16, and Sleep Zone at 20:18 (with Fire Book I used), so you're probably looking at a minimum around six and a half minutes to level to 4, boost Gimard up a bit, and then leave the castle and save right before Mt. Rikuroa. L5 Gimard is better than the L4 I had in the previous run, which should set me up for a T3 kill of Caruban, since I can count on getting an extra 20-30 damage per cast with the one extra level. Also managed to get 43 MP going into the Caruban fight, which is 1 short of the maximum possible (44). All this to set up for Gaza three and a half hours later into the run.

I should still be able to find time to answer questions and post thoughts when I'm not working on dissertation research.

EDIT: I'd like to assume control of the original post. Do I just need to PM an admin to do this, or is there a special request thread for this sort of thing?

So, this is going to be all I'm going to be able to work on this second test run until probably Sunday sometime, but I got through the Drake Castle leveling sequence.  Vahn is at Level 4 (807 EXP) with a level 5 Gimard spell at 27:07 in-game time.  For reference, I was at the outskirts of the castle at 17:16, and Sleep Zone at 20:18 (with Fire Book I used), so you're probably looking at a minimum around six and a half minutes to level to 4, boost Gimard up a bit, and then leave the castle and save right before Mt. Rikuroa.  L5 Gimard is better than the L4 I had in the previous run, which should set me up for a T3 kill of Caruban, since I can count on getting an extra 20-30 damage per cast with the one extra level.  Also managed to get 43 MP going into the Caruban fight, which is 1 short of the maximum possible (44).  All this to set up for Gaza three and a half hours later into the run.

I should still be able to find time to answer questions and post thoughts when I'm not working on dissertation research.

EDIT: I'd like to assume control of the original post.  Do I just need to PM an admin to do this, or is there a special request thread for this sort of thing?