Secret of Mana

2015-04-27 01:49:03 pm

What's that gemma?

Oh wow, I misunderstood what Stinger was saying. Apparently, the find was that the Fire Mana Seed is actually present in the Fire Palace by default, but removed when you enter the "Talk about flames! End of the line!" room. By skipping that room (by going up the ramp with whatever method, 1p1c is likely to prefer just using gloves over pause buffering a level 7 or 8 attack repetitively while under fire from Robin Foots), the seed is still present, making the Ice Palace and Santa unnecessary.

Yagamoth

2015-04-27 02:23:51 pm

INTJ

I wonder whether you can actually get there with only 1 controller... on that note I feel like skipping leveling Salamando might be a thing now in case it is? Wink

Crow!

2015-04-27 03:18:47 pm

What's that gemma?

The reward for not leveling Salamando will go up by about a minute if the Frost Gigas fight is cut out.

It'll be a pain to get up that ramp, to be sure, but there are possibilities.

- A character can be knocked 3/4 up the ramp by a Robin Foot arrow, provided they don't get hit too hard or lit on fire, and providing that character is facing downward when hit.

- The Boy can get 3/4 up the ramp via the Sword charge attack. Getting sword experience onto another character is an option, though that would cost time. The Sword charge attack can also be used on any character by trading weapons, stunning, and swapping to them while they are sitting on a level 1 charge.

- A character who is up the ramp can be kept up the ramp via stuns (tell the Girl or Sprite to cast magic, throw any character a chocolate, etc).
--- The usual difficulty in getting up the ramp with 1 controller is that AI characters will run back down the ramp if not everyone has gotten up yet.

Some combination of those options should be enough to get up the ramp in a minute or two of attempts.

The reward for not leveling Salamando will go up by about a minute if the Frost Gigas fight is cut out.

It'll be a pain to get up that ramp, to be sure, but there are possibilities.

- A character can be knocked 3/4 up the ramp by a Robin Foot arrow, provided they don't get hit too hard or lit on fire, and providing that character is facing downward when hit.

- The Boy can get 3/4 up the ramp via the Sword charge attack.  Getting sword experience onto another character is an option, though that would cost time.  The Sword charge attack can also be used on any character by trading weapons, stunning, and swapping to them while they are sitting on a level 1 charge.

- A character who is up the ramp can be kept up the ramp via stuns (tell the Girl or Sprite to cast magic, throw any character a chocolate, etc).
--- The usual difficulty in getting up the ramp with 1 controller is that AI characters will run back down the ramp if not everyone has gotten up yet.

Some combination of those options should be enough to get up the ramp in a minute or two of attempts.

Yagamoth

2015-04-27 04:26:02 pm

INTJ

That sounds like a pain to set up for 1c oô..

Yagamoth

2015-04-29 02:53:10 am

INTJ

So, in my last two runs I did the following:
- I did not use spell lockdown on the Vampire at all
- I kept the strength armband on the Sprite when equipping in Kakkara

Those two things are linked together. Normally the Sprite can NOT hit the Vampire with a regular attack. However, leaving the strength armband equipped enables him to hit anyways. So my strategy is as follows:
- Charge up with the Boy as usual
- Hit the Vampire with the Sprite and position the Sprite to be eaten
- Execute 3 quick normal slashes to end the fight (Vampire fight apparently the 3rd hit on the normal slash always changes to a level 1 attack... Might have to find a different normal slash)

So... But the whole thing was unnecessary, because the Girl can hit the Vampire anyways for some reason, despite being lower level and having the fist weapon equipped. So that got me thinking - while we may have to equip Desert armor, maybe we can check for other equipment items along the way to have some useful special effects, when we don't really need all the armor?

=======================================

Also, going through a former topic again: Menu optimizations

The route up to the Fire Palace is now given, since we need to keep the knuckles on the Girl for the Fire Palace skip. However, after that we have the following assuming StingerPAs regular route:

- Ice country, Girl casts spell for Frost weapon
- Fire Palace, Sprite activates 2 orbs
- Sewers, Girl casts Balloon
- Sprite casts slowdown on Vampire
=== Menu Reset to weapons ===
- Grand Palace, Girl casts balloon
- Buffy, Sprite casts spell lockdown
- Dread Slime, Girl casts Wall
- In the end both cast Mana Magic

Here are my changes now:

- Ice country, Girl casts spell for Frost weapon
- Fire Palace, Sprite activates 2 orbs
- Sewers, Girl casts Balloon
=== Menu Reset to weapons ===
- Buffy, Sprite casts spell lockdown
- Dread Slime, Girl casts Wall
- In the end both cast Mana Magic

I removed the spellcasts at Vampire and the backwards grand palace, because I think neither are really required at this point.

Now for weapon management:
Considering that we can't swap weapons BEFORE the Fire Temple, we can't have the Girl get the Sword before she needs to cast Frost weapons. So she will simply stay on knuckles until the sewers at least for me (staying in the spells menu). Further, the Sprite will level up the Sword to level 1 after Mech Rider II, enabling him to execute the skip at Joch, so keeping the Sword on him until then...
-> OR, alternatively, equip the Whip on the Sprite to climb
-> Equip the Sword on the Boy to skip
-> Equip the axe on the Boy or Girl
-> Equip the Spear on the Boy and the Sword on the Girl after dopples

Kind of awkward. I think I'll simply learn the route with the Girl having the Whip permanently instead, but still use Slow Down for Buffy. So the Girl will climb the mountain for me.

(sorry for the long post)

TL;DR:
- General: Keep the Sword on the Sprite
- Lofty Mountains: Equip Whip on the Girl for the climb, leave the Sword on the Sprite for the skip and equip the Axe on the Sprite
- Equip Sword on Sprite for the watermelon
- Make Boy and Girl visible for the backwards grand palace
- Barrel the Girl instead of the Sprite for Hexas
(- Maybe cast cure water on herself while tanking Hexas)
- Cast slowdown with the Sprite on Buffy (Buffy is mostly freestyle and using healing items anyways..)

So, in my last two runs I did the following:
- I did not use spell lockdown on the Vampire at all
- I kept the strength armband on the Sprite when equipping in Kakkara

Those two things are linked together. Normally the Sprite can NOT hit the Vampire with a regular attack. However, leaving the strength armband equipped enables him to hit anyways. So my strategy is as follows:
- Charge up with the Boy as usual
- Hit the Vampire with the Sprite and position the Sprite to be eaten
- Execute 3 quick normal slashes to end the fight (Vampire fight apparently the 3rd hit on the normal slash always changes to a level 1 attack... Might have to find a different normal slash)

So... But the whole thing was unnecessary, because the Girl can hit the Vampire anyways for some reason, despite being lower level and having the fist weapon equipped. So that got me thinking - while we may have to equip Desert armor, maybe we can check for other equipment items along the way to have some useful special effects, when we don't really need all the armor?

=======================================

Also, going through a former topic again: Menu optimizations

The route up to the Fire Palace is now given, since we need to keep the knuckles on the Girl for the Fire Palace skip. However, after that we have the following assuming StingerPAs regular route:

[b]
[color="magenta"]- Ice country, Girl casts spell for Frost weapon[/color]
[color="green"]- Fire Palace, Sprite activates 2 orbs[/color]
[color="magenta"]- Sewers, Girl casts Balloon[/color]
[color="green"]- Sprite casts slowdown on Vampire[/color]
=== Menu Reset to weapons ===
[color="magenta"]- Grand Palace, Girl casts balloon[/color]
[color="green"]- Buffy, Sprite casts spell lockdown[/color]
[color="magenta"]- Dread Slime, Girl casts Wall[/color]
- In the end both cast Mana Magic
[/b]

Here are my changes now:

[b]
[color="magenta"]- Ice country, Girl casts spell for Frost weapon[/color]
[color="green"]- Fire Palace, Sprite activates 2 orbs[/color]
[color="magenta"]- Sewers, Girl casts Balloon[/color]
=== Menu Reset to weapons ===
[color="green"]- Buffy, Sprite casts spell lockdown[/color]
[color="magenta"]- Dread Slime, Girl casts Wall[/color]
- In the end both cast Mana Magic
[/b]

I removed the spellcasts at Vampire and the backwards grand palace, because I think neither are really required at this point.

Now for weapon management:
Considering that we can't swap weapons BEFORE the Fire Temple, we can't have the Girl get the Sword before she needs to cast Frost weapons. So she will simply stay on knuckles until the sewers at least for me (staying in the spells menu). Further, the Sprite will level up the Sword to level 1 after Mech Rider II, enabling him to execute the skip at Joch, so keeping the Sword on him until then...
-> OR, alternatively, equip the Whip on the Sprite to climb
-> Equip the Sword on the Boy to skip
-> Equip the axe on the Boy or Girl
-> Equip the Spear on the Boy and the Sword on the Girl after dopples

Kind of awkward. I think I'll simply learn the route with the Girl having the Whip permanently instead, but still use Slow Down for Buffy. So the Girl will climb the mountain for me.

(sorry for the long post)

[b]TL;DR:[/b]
- General: Keep the Sword on the Sprite
- Lofty Mountains: Equip Whip on the Girl for the climb, leave the Sword on the Sprite for the skip and equip the Axe on the Sprite
- Equip Sword on Sprite for the watermelon
- Make Boy and Girl visible for the backwards grand palace
- Barrel the Girl instead of the Sprite for Hexas
(- Maybe cast cure water on herself while tanking Hexas)
- Cast slowdown with the Sprite on Buffy (Buffy is mostly freestyle and using healing items anyways..)

Crow!

2015-04-29 08:57:46 am

What's that gemma?

Are you really willing to accept the dodge chance when trying to lock down bosses? A 35% or whatever it is at that point chance to let Vampire have extra chances to become invulnerable after every hit seems pretty bad to me.

Yagamoth

2015-04-29 12:03:53 pm

INTJ

Well, the main thing is - it's only 3 hits. And I can either use the Girl or the Sprite try and hit him with a regular attack to lock him down by letting them get eaten for another 10-15 seconds. That's usually enough to attempt 3 hits

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2015-05-02 05:31:05 pm

Crow!: 2015-05-02 05:30:15 pm

2015-05-02 05:27:30 pm

What's that gemma?

Okay, I can get up the Fire Palace ramp with one controller. It turns out that the AIs will aggro on enemies at the bottom of the ramp when you are on the top, so life is a little easier than I thought. The Robin Foots are really annoying, however. Here's my method:

I cast balloon as I enter the room, and I push one of the Robin Foots up toward the center. The Girl is set to level 1 charge, and once she is charged, I give her the sword, an item, swap to her, jump up the slope, equip the gloves, and finish the trek up. I then equip something unimportant (not the sword, not the gloves).

Next is the Sprite. If he manages to get to charge level 1 on the axe, then I hand him the sword and an item, then just before I swap to his control I have the Girl cast cure water on herself. The rest is like with the Girl. More often, however, the Sprite will get hit up the ramp before completing his charge. In this case, I wait for the Sprite to almost be out of hitstun, then I have the Girl cast cure water on herself and swap to the Sprite, who then must equip the glove, turn around, and punch his way up.

The Boy will probably now be stunlocked by the fire arrows. If not, do the usual pattern of charging, but swap to him at 90% charge, not when he's at level 1 (or else he will instantly snap to level 2 when you swap to him). Before swapping to the Boy, stun the Sprite with Chocolate and the Girl with a Cure Water self cast.

But so long as he is being hit, keep him healed with chocolates, and give him herbs when he is engulfed in flames, all while walking upward with the Sprite, and eventually his flaming body will fly up the ramp. I don't exactly know the timings on getting this to work, but it usually happens within 30 seconds.

There might also be opportunities to get the Sprite up the ramp this way, but it seems less consistent to rely on flame saber RNG for both AI characters.

Okay, I can get up the Fire Palace ramp with one controller.  It turns out that the AIs will aggro on enemies at the bottom of the ramp when you are on the top, so life is a little easier than I thought.  The Robin Foots are really annoying, however.  Here's my method:

I cast balloon as I enter the room, and I push one of the Robin Foots up toward the center.   The Girl is set to level 1 charge, and once she is charged, I give her the sword, an item, swap to her, jump up the slope, equip the gloves, and finish the trek up.  I then equip something unimportant (not the sword, not the gloves).

Next is the Sprite.  If he manages to get to charge level 1 on the axe, then I hand him the sword and an item, then just before I swap to his control I have the Girl cast cure water on herself.  The rest is like with the Girl.  More often, however, the Sprite will get hit up the ramp before completing his charge.  In this case, I wait for the Sprite to almost be out of hitstun, then I have the Girl cast cure water on herself and swap to the Sprite, who then must equip the glove, turn around, and punch his way up.

The Boy will probably now be stunlocked by the fire arrows.  If not, do the usual pattern of charging, but swap to him at 90% charge, not when he's at level 1 (or else he will instantly snap to level 2 when you swap to him).  Before swapping to the Boy, stun the Sprite with Chocolate and the Girl with a Cure Water self cast.

But so long as he is being hit, keep him healed with chocolates, and give him herbs when he is engulfed in flames, all while walking upward with the Sprite, and eventually his flaming body will fly up the ramp.  I don't exactly know the timings on getting this to work, but it usually happens within 30 seconds.

There might also be opportunities to get the Sprite up the ramp this way, but it seems less consistent to rely on flame saber RNG for both AI characters.

Yagamoth

2015-05-19 01:21:30 am

INTJ

Quick question: Where did we have the list of events and it's incrementing state/number?

I'm currently wondering, whether it's possible to skip the water palace cutscene (again) by simply repeating other events multiple times - like we can defeat the Dread Slime multiple times

StingerPA

2015-05-19 06:46:46 am

Regrs has it posted here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1930AfZklHp_VXNlPLac67S2DLQobetB7pjnjojZNzOg/edit#gid=0

Good luck finding it and breaking the game some more.

Crow!

2015-05-19 10:03:38 pm

What's that gemma?

Regrs's table there is rather incomplete in some areas. For instance, the out of order Pandora Ruins hinges on some stuff that isn't in there. It might be a good place to look for ideas, but if you're looking for details on how to actually abuse a particular event flag, you should probably do a search for the given event flag in somedit.

StingerPA

2015-05-30 08:51:18 pm

I was thinking about 1c kill routing for after tropicallo, and came up with this as a fairly optimal set of kills. There's some assumptions made here such as only getting 2 buzz bees after leaving gaia's navel instead of the possible 3, and the sprite being able to get both werewolf kills, but the gist of it is that the sprite needs 7 full kills and 8 half kills before spikey, and the boy needs the opposite, 8 full kills, and 7 half kills. Keeping track of just the boy's kills as to whether he's getting full or half kills should be enough, so that you know if the boy has 8 full kills entering the chairs, you'll know that the sprite should get the chair kills instead.

Crow!

2015-06-01 09:55:19 am

What's that gemma?

Killing buzz bees past the first with the Sprite is actually rather difficult. 2 Sprite attacks and 1 Boy attack is not sufficient, and you can't (quickly) go Boy, Boy Sprite against most bees. The first bee is an exception because you can hit it from the pond then wait for it to get back into the air as you go around the wall. Boy, Sprite, Boy+Sprite is probably doable, but the timing for that is really tight.

I think your list still basically works with the Boy taking that kill (and probably Werewolf kills too). The sprite being a little under level 1 when the axe upgrades is fine, especially now that weapon experience gained post-girl-getting-whip is better than experience before then.

StingerPA

2015-06-01 11:37:20 am

The boy, sprite, boy+sprite timing isn't too tight. As long as you're planning on doing it going in, it's very easy to do, and shouldn't be difficult to give the sprite that kill.

Yagamoth

2015-06-01 02:43:31 pm

INTJ

In a sense - Boy -> Sprite -> Boy +> Sprite is the fancy version of Boy -> Boy -> Sprite, since in both cases you have to wait for the Boy twice

Yagamoth

2015-06-02 01:42:04 am

INTJ

Quick question: What is now the current 1p1c route? Salamando not being levelled seemed to work out for Crow recently, since only the Lime Slime and Snow Dragon are left. Any other new tech aside from the awkward ramp climb in the Fire Palace?

Crow!

2015-06-02 09:34:49 am

What's that gemma?

Mech Rider 2 starts with ~300 damage worth of magic damage. While the spell animations are playing, I can bring the boy in range to start charging without risk of him dealing damage with the pre-charge swing.

Skipping Salamando levels changes 3 fights, and I guess I haven't documented any of those. I also haven't documented the Fire Palace ramp climb, because I'm still not really happy with my method.

For Lime Slime, both characters do the Weapon Charge Glitch. If none of my characters are under fire, the ideal combo is to have both characters charge, issue a target command for the Boy, then swap retain for 2 attacks from the Sprite. If the Boy is then ready with another charge, I swap retain 2 attacks there. Lime Slime is rarely that cooperative, though, so in practice I have to do a lot of improvising. The thing you want to avoid is having one character wait for a long time without overcharging because you're going for a swap retained double attack on the other character.

For Snap Dragon, I get him trapped in the far left hallway before setting up for WCG hits. The central arena has many more things that can go wrong. I assume that keeping control of the girl is important for preventing Snap Dragon from jumping out of the hallway, so I do not go for swap retained double hits.

For Snow Dragon, the top priority is to keep Lucid Barrier active at all times. Wing Beat will wreck the party, even with Neko's equipment. The next priority is to keep him locked down with the Sprite. Generally, I will use only the Boy, with swap-retained WCG hits. If Snow Dragon misbehaves, it's time to improvise.

Mech Rider 2 starts with ~300 damage worth of magic damage.  While the spell animations are playing, I can bring the boy in range to start charging without risk of him dealing damage with the pre-charge swing.

Skipping Salamando levels changes 3 fights, and I guess I haven't documented any of those.  I also haven't documented the Fire Palace ramp climb, because I'm still not really happy with my method.

For Lime Slime, both characters do the Weapon Charge Glitch.  If none of my characters are under fire, the ideal combo is to have both characters charge, issue a target command for the Boy, then swap retain for 2 attacks from the Sprite.  If the Boy is then ready with another charge, I swap retain 2 attacks there.  Lime Slime is rarely that cooperative, though, so in practice I have to do a lot of improvising.  The thing you want to avoid is having one character wait for a long time without overcharging because you're going for a swap retained double attack on the other character.

For Snap Dragon, I get him trapped in the far left hallway before setting up for WCG hits.  The central arena has many more things that can go wrong.  I assume that keeping control of the girl is important for preventing Snap Dragon from jumping out of the hallway, so I do not go for swap retained double hits.

For Snow Dragon, the top priority is to keep Lucid Barrier active at all times.  Wing Beat will wreck the party, even with Neko's equipment.  The next priority is to keep him locked down with the Sprite.  Generally, I will use only the Boy, with swap-retained WCG hits.  If Snow Dragon misbehaves, it's time to improvise.

Crow!

2015-06-05 03:55:17 pm

What's that gemma?

Yagamoth managed to softlock during the Mana Fortress in a case where he didn't expect to. I looked up why, and my findings are below.

TL;DR: save warping directly into the Dread Slime fight is bad.

-------

The event flag in question is 4e.
When inside the Thanatos / Dyluck / Dark Lich room:
- Thanatos appears if 4e is 4 or less.
- Dyluck appears if 4e is 5 or less.
- The boss Dark Lich appears if 4e is exactly 6.

Over the course of the Thanatos/Dyluck cutscene, 4e is increased 2 times. This means we need 4e to be exactly 4 (no more, no less) when you enter this room.

Prior to that cutscene, 4e is incremented:
- When you enter the Buffy fight.
- When you defeat Buffy. (Buffy appears if 4e is 0 or 1).
- When you enter the Dread Slime fight.
- When you defeat the Dread Slime. (Dread Slime appears if 4e is 3 or less)

What Yagamoth did was he entered the Dread Slime fight, resetting as he did so (to restock items). This meant that once he killed Dread Slime, 4e became odd, with no in-game way to make it even again.

If he attempted to fight Dread Slime a third time, he'd have been placed in the Dread Slime room with no Dread Slime to kill and would have softlocked there, whereas if he went ahead to Thanatos after fight number 2 (which is what he did), then Dark Lich wouldn't appear (whereas Dyluck is alive and well).

If you must savewarp during the Dread Slime fight (i.e. you get killed there, which shouldn't happen), the way to recover is to complete the fight, then savewarp again, then enter and fight the Dread Slime properly 2 more times.

Yagamoth managed to softlock during the Mana Fortress in a case where he didn't expect to.  I looked up why, and my findings are below.

TL;DR: save warping directly into the Dread Slime fight is bad.

-------

The event flag in question is 4e.
When inside the Thanatos / Dyluck / Dark Lich room:
- Thanatos appears if 4e is 4 or less.
- Dyluck appears if 4e is 5 or less.
- The boss Dark Lich appears if 4e is exactly 6.

Over the course of the Thanatos/Dyluck cutscene, 4e is increased 2 times.  This means we need 4e to be exactly 4 (no more, no less) when you enter this room.

Prior to that cutscene, 4e is incremented:
- When you enter the Buffy fight.
- When you defeat Buffy. (Buffy appears if 4e is 0 or 1).
- When you enter the Dread Slime fight.
- When you defeat the Dread Slime. (Dread Slime appears if 4e is 3 or less)

What Yagamoth did was he entered the Dread Slime fight, resetting as he did so (to restock items).  This meant that once he killed Dread Slime, 4e became odd, with no in-game way to make it even again.

If he attempted to fight Dread Slime a third time, he'd have been placed in the Dread Slime room with no Dread Slime to kill and would have softlocked there, whereas if he went ahead to Thanatos after fight number 2 (which is what he did), then Dark Lich wouldn't appear (whereas Dyluck is alive and well).

If you must savewarp during the Dread Slime fight (i.e. you get killed there, which shouldn't happen), the way to recover is to complete the fight, then savewarp again, then enter and fight the Dread Slime properly 2 more times.

Yagamoth

2015-06-05 05:20:22 pm

INTJ

Wow, thank you crow, that's interesting to know oô

Yagamoth

2015-06-12 04:53:41 pm

INTJ

General 1c question:

- Would it potentially be more efficient, to level up Magic 'along the way'? That's assuming, you can for example do a quick menu to cast on a Silk Tail without losing time. (Potentially even gaining weapon experience for the Sprite this way)
-> that would be instead of casting some "useless" spells on bosses that either don't deal any real damage or where a single overcharge attack would do the trick over ~1min of casting

Yagamoth

2015-06-14 11:41:55 am

INTJ

Something for a 1c run we just found:
- I savewarped into the Blue Spike fight in the gold tower on our regular 1p2c savewarp file. Result: Stairs to the next level were already present and i could continue to the Blue minorous o.0

Pretty sure that should be useful

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2015-06-15 12:34:57 pm

Crow!: 2015-06-15 12:32:32 pm

Crow!: 2015-06-15 12:31:12 pm

2015-06-15 12:28:35 pm

What's that gemma?

There currently aren't any "useless" spell casts in the 1c route, so that doesn't really add up. A more likely scenario is using physical attacks in place of all casts of a particular element until you've done the Wall Glitch, at which point your higher MP and the Midge Mallet let you level up that magic faster. Stinger had suggested doing this with Sylphid, but I decided the risk/reward ratio on that was pretty bad. Doing it with Gnome is also an option, but I suspect it would run into the same problem.

Regarding the gold tower find, that is unfortunately not useful unless killing Gorgon Bull 3 times is better than killing Blue Spike once and Gorgon Bull once.

What's going on here is the event flag which keeps track of your progress through the Gold Tower (flag 0x37) behaves strangely in the Blue Spike room if the flag is 0 - it's supposed to be 1 because you have the gold tower key, but so long as it's 0 the stairs and Blue Spike both appear.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in the Gorgon Bull room. The stairs there aren't both present and usable unless 0x37 has progressed to at least 7. Each time you defeat a boss, it increments 0x37 3 times to raise the stairway bit by bit.

So, if you savewarp into the Blue Spike fight, 0x37 is 4 behind where it's supposed to be. After the first Gorgon Bull kill, 0x37 will be 3, and you'll listen to victory music as you defeat Gorgon Bull a second time. After the second kill, the stairs will get 2/3 raised, and you'll have to navigate a very strange version of the room and listen to victory music as you defeat Gorgon Bull yet again. THEN you can recruit Lumina.

Below are my notes I made while figuring this out.

Mara key conversation: sets 0x37 to 1

map 116 - exterior
59e - event for gold tower door.
59d - locked! happens if 0x37 is 0.

map 117 - first floor
map 111 - spikey room
spikey shows up if 0x37 is 0 or 1.

5a0 - spikey walk-on trigger.
if 0x37 from 0 to 3, do event 0x704 (boss music)

5a1 - spikey room special event locations (4 tiles along bottom of the map)
if 0x37 from 0 to 3, do nothing
otherwise, go to map 117 (first floor)

5a2 - spikey killed event
boss kill subroutine; get boomerang
increment 0x37 (should now be 2)
Use doorway to re-enter spikey room
fan the party out
subroutine: 5a6 (raise stairs, incrementing 0x37 twice along the way)
0x37 should now be 4
play dungeon music
map 118 - second floor

map 119 - gorgon bull
boss appears if 0x37 is 4 or less

5a5 - gorgon bull killed event
boss kill subroutine; get bow orb
increment 0x37 (should now be 5)
use doorway to re-enter gorgon bull room
fan the party out
subroutine: 5a6 (raise stairs, incrementing 0x37 twice along the way)
0x37 should now be 7

There currently aren't any "useless" spell casts in the 1c route, so that doesn't really add up.  A more likely scenario is using physical attacks in place of all casts of a particular element until you've done the Wall Glitch, at which point your higher MP and the Midge Mallet let you level up that magic faster.  Stinger had suggested doing this with Sylphid, but I decided the risk/reward ratio on that was pretty bad.  Doing it with Gnome is also an option, but I suspect it would run into the same problem.

Regarding the gold tower find, that is unfortunately not useful unless killing Gorgon Bull 3 times is better than killing Blue Spike once and Gorgon Bull once.

What's going on here is the event flag which keeps track of your progress through the Gold Tower (flag 0x37) behaves strangely in the Blue Spike room if the flag is 0 - it's supposed to be 1 because you have the gold tower key, but so long as it's 0 the stairs and Blue Spike both appear.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in the Gorgon Bull room.  The stairs there aren't both present and usable unless 0x37 has progressed to at least 7.  Each time you defeat a boss, it increments 0x37 3 times to raise the stairway bit by bit.

So, if you savewarp into the Blue Spike fight, 0x37 is 4 behind where it's supposed to be.  After the first Gorgon Bull kill, 0x37 will be 3, and you'll listen to victory music as you defeat Gorgon Bull a second time.  After the second kill, the stairs will get 2/3 raised, and you'll have to navigate a very strange version of the room and listen to victory music as you defeat Gorgon Bull yet again.  THEN you can recruit Lumina.

Below are my notes I made while figuring this out.

[spoiler]
Mara key conversation: sets 0x37 to 1

map 116 - exterior
59e - event for gold tower door.
	59d - locked!  happens if 0x37 is 0.

map 117 - first floor
map 111 - spikey room
	spikey shows up if 0x37 is 0 or 1.

5a0 - spikey walk-on trigger.
	if 0x37 from 0 to 3, do event 0x704 (boss music)

5a1 - spikey room special event locations (4 tiles along bottom of the map)
	if 0x37 from 0 to 3, do nothing
	otherwise, go to map 117 (first floor)

5a2 - spikey killed event
	boss kill subroutine; get boomerang
	increment 0x37 (should now be 2)
	Use doorway to re-enter spikey room
	fan the party out
	subroutine: 5a6 (raise stairs, incrementing 0x37 twice along the way)
		0x37 should now be 4
	play dungeon music
map 118 - second floor

map 119 - gorgon bull
	boss appears if 0x37 is 4 or less
	
5a5 - gorgon bull killed event
	boss kill subroutine; get bow orb
	increment 0x37 (should now be 5)
	use doorway to re-enter gorgon bull room
	fan the party out
	subroutine: 5a6 (raise stairs, incrementing 0x37 twice along the way)
		0x37 should now be 7
[/spoiler]

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2015-06-15 06:29:19 pm

2015-06-15 03:46:35 pm

INTJ

Wow o.o

Thank you crow, that's quite unfortunate though

Edit: I wonder whether there are other places where a messed up trigger stuff would be useful. Like Palace of Darkness, maybe don't have to fight the Slime somehow?

Crow!

2015-06-16 12:37:39 am

What's that gemma?

For some reason I don't currently understand, savewarping doesn't work in the Palace of Darkness; you get placed inside walls rather than where you entered the room. I learned this while drilling the Wall Glitch, where I had to exit the palace before savewarping to get another try.

Yagamoth

2015-06-16 03:48:07 am

INTJ

That probably has something to do with those rooms that don't have a fixed "exit" place, and instead use a "return to" logic.. I was also wondering whether that could be useful somewhere - where it might place us at a different, useful location oô