Secret of Mana

2013-12-10 11:43:36 am

INTJ

I also run on console, but I test everything on Emulator since it's easier.. Although I'm still mystified by the pre-start soft-reset...

Thyias

2013-12-10 01:12:37 pm

Hey guys

how about a good SoM race on Thursday? VultuZ and me wanna go for it.. so maybe Yaga and Stinger you join us aswell? And of course everyone else is invited to join aswell ;). Will be a full game race (so any% 1p 2c) Would a start at 7pm (European Time). Or if we find another time which fits for everyone, feel free to offer a good time Smiley

StingerPA

2013-12-10 01:14:24 pm

Can't do it on Thursday, I've got a final at that time.

StingerPA

2013-12-13 11:11:21 pm

Ok, I did a run of 1 Controller, and learned quite a bit. First of all, I need to learn boss strategies. I had several bosses take forever simply because I hadn't done proper strats before (which meant magic wasn't leveled up enough). I also screwed up having the axe at level 2 at any point in the run. I was using 1p2c strats and the girl had the axe for way too long in the beginning. I also didn't really have any idea of where I would need to trash equipment, so my equipment management was rather screwed up for most of the run, and I accidentally used too many walnuts at one point, eliminating one of my walnut slots. If I were to do that again, I'd just keep the single slot of walnuts and trash a bit more often rather than set up the 2nd slot again through the blat glitch. Also, I didn't glitch enough money into the run to start, so that was another issue that needed to be taken care of. Basically, the entire run was a trainwreck, but that was to be expected of a first run.

http://www.twitch.tv/stingerpa/b/487175856

Ok, I did a run of 1 Controller, and learned quite a bit.  First of all, I need to learn boss strategies.  I had several bosses take forever simply because I hadn't done proper strats before (which meant magic wasn't leveled up enough).  I also screwed up having the axe at level 2 at any point in the run.  I was using 1p2c strats and the girl had the axe for way too long in the beginning.  I also didn't really have any idea of where I would need to trash equipment, so my equipment management was rather screwed up for most of the run, and I accidentally used too many walnuts at one point, eliminating one of my walnut slots.  If I were to do that again, I'd just keep the single slot of walnuts and trash a bit more often rather than set up the 2nd slot again through the blat glitch.  Also, I didn't glitch enough money into the run to start, so that was another issue that needed to be taken care of.  Basically, the entire run was a trainwreck, but that was to be expected of a first run.

http://www.twitch.tv/stingerpa/b/487175856

Thyias

2013-12-16 07:32:34 am

Hmm interesting run, didnt watch it fully but it seems really funny. Because if you are into the Speedrun strat for the 2p 2c category, its more challenging to do execution but i guess a TAS was made for that category in about 3:20 not?

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2013-12-17 10:01:08 pm

Crow!: 2013-12-17 09:54:37 pm

2013-12-17 09:39:24 pm

What's that gemma?

So my roomate and I watched that run and were very entertained. Here are some notes I made while watching:

The proper thing to do if the AI takes an unexpected hit as it is trying to target an overcharged attack is to swap to his control and hold B to subsequently line up the shot yourself; the AI will release prematurely every time otherwise.

Keep an eye on your item counts (I use pencil and paper and tally marks), and use the boy to restock mid-boss-fight if you have to. The boy dying with 2 cups of wishes in your inventory costs a lot of time to fix.

If you're only going to buy one type of curative, you might as well pick Chocolate. (Honey Drink's animation takes longer IIRC).

Upgrade the axe after Fire Gigas, not Kilroy. Get as much weapon experience from the flowers onto the sprite as possible.

Springbeak is weak against Gnome.

Boreal Face: use Barrel to distract his attacks.

Wall Glitch: watch my instructional video on the new wall glitch strat attached to this post: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/secret_of_mana_558.html
Also, I've found that getting the sprite up to 32 MP is best (you can check my HP amount when I finish to match). This is particularly important in my new Lumina using strategy, where the girl needs the MP to practice.

First part of Luna skip / climbing mountain whip pole skip: the AI needs to be on a diagonal with the enemy target in order to move around; if the AI is lined up with the target it will just attack once then lose interest.

Strategies for the Dread Slime need to be very exact; getting your allies in at all an imperfect geometry can make the fight take 3x longer than it should. If an AI is too far away from the Slime he might lose interest and stop attacking (necessitating leveling up Shade from scratch), while if they're too close they'll swing the overcharge at only ~300 damage.

Don't cast freeze on Thanatos while he's transparent; there's extra lag.

So my roomate and I watched that run and were very entertained.  Here are some notes I made while watching:

The proper thing to do if the AI takes an unexpected hit as it is trying to target an overcharged attack is to swap to his control and hold B to subsequently line up the shot yourself; the AI will release prematurely every time otherwise.

Keep an eye on your item counts (I use pencil and paper and tally marks), and use the boy to restock mid-boss-fight if you have to.  The boy dying with 2 cups of wishes in your inventory costs a lot of time to fix.

If you're only going to buy one type of curative, you might as well pick Chocolate.  (Honey Drink's animation takes longer IIRC).

Upgrade the axe after Fire Gigas, not Kilroy. Get as much weapon experience from the flowers onto the sprite as possible.

Springbeak is weak against Gnome.

Boreal Face: use Barrel to distract his attacks.

Wall Glitch: watch my instructional video on the new wall glitch strat attached to this post: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/secret_of_mana_558.html
Also, I've found that getting the sprite up to 32 MP is best (you can check my HP amount when I finish to match).  This is particularly important in my new Lumina using strategy, where the girl needs the MP to practice.

First part of Luna skip / climbing mountain whip pole skip: the AI needs to be on a diagonal with the enemy target in order to move around; if the AI is lined up with the target it will just attack once then lose interest.

Strategies for the Dread Slime need to be very exact; getting your allies in at all an imperfect geometry can make the fight take 3x longer than it should.  If an AI is too far away from the Slime he might lose interest and stop attacking (necessitating leveling up Shade from scratch), while if they're too close they'll swing the overcharge at only ~300 damage.

Don't cast freeze on Thanatos while he's transparent; there's extra lag.

StingerPA

2013-12-17 11:42:59 pm

Thanks for the tips. I'm really planning on getting after the category once AGDQ passes, but this run was extremely informative. I've started watching your run again, and I'm trying to take note of things like that. I generally used similar strategies to you from what I could remember, but there were several that I just BS'd my way through.

Here's one question. Let's say I could figure out a way to use overcharge to kill Spring Beak, but I still need magic to kill Thunder Gigas. Would that do me any good since I'd still need to level up Gnome later in the run? My initial thought is that it would be useless, and in fact would be slower because Gnome would still be at level 0 when you reach Thunder Gigas, plus you'd only be doing 1 damage for a good bit of the fight.

Also, what kind of route changes have you made since your run a couple months ago? Anything I should be aware of?

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2013-12-18 12:39:21 am

Crow!: 2013-12-18 12:34:04 am

Crow!: 2013-12-18 12:32:28 am

2013-12-18 12:30:03 am

What's that gemma?

Any advantage to WCG-ing Spring Beak would come exclusively from the fact that during that fight, you have less MP and so have to stop to Walnut more often when casting magic against him than against Thunder Gigas. It's probably not worth it, even if it were safe.

The big route change is that I use Lucent Beam versus Buffy and Thanatos. I sneak in Lucid Barrier casts while the Sprite is casting magic on the orbs in the Grand Palace and while he's casting magic on the Pureland bosses - swap to the girl and use Y to bring up the menu to avoid having to swap X item rings all the time. Usually the girl targets only herself, but when you can target the whole party without costing time, do so.

An important corollary of this is that I now use WCG against Hexas rather than Freeze; after Vampire, only enemies weak against Undine will have Freeze cast against them. Also, the boy is the one who gets killed for the Wall Glitch, rather than the girl, so that she has enough MP and wisdom. I've also toyed with the idea of using Lucent Beam to stitch together Thunderbolt casts, as that spell often doesn't stun lock the Dragon Worm, midge mallet or no.

A minor change is I do the Dark Palace before Joch's trial. While this does make the Shadow X fight slower (even with midge mallet, getting killed takes longer than if you hold off on equipping stuff), but it requires one less Flammie call, which as it turns out takes quite a bit of time. It's also less prone to disaster in the event that a Shapeshifter decides to spawn a Beast Zombie.

Any advantage to WCG-ing Spring Beak would come exclusively from the fact that during that fight, you have less MP and so have to stop to Walnut more often when casting magic against him than against Thunder Gigas.  It's probably not worth it, even if it were safe.

The big route change is that I use Lucent Beam versus Buffy and Thanatos.  I sneak in Lucid Barrier casts while the Sprite is casting magic on the orbs in the Grand Palace and while he's casting magic on the Pureland bosses - swap to the girl and use Y to bring up the menu to avoid having to swap X item rings all the time.  Usually the girl targets only herself, but when you can target the whole party without costing time, do so.

An important corollary of this is that I now use WCG against Hexas rather than Freeze; after Vampire, only enemies weak against Undine will have Freeze cast against them.  Also, the boy is the one who gets killed for the Wall Glitch, rather than the girl, so that she has enough MP and wisdom.  I've also toyed with the idea of using Lucent Beam to stitch together Thunderbolt casts, as that spell often doesn't stun lock the Dragon Worm, midge mallet or no.

A minor change is I do the Dark Palace before Joch's trial.  While this does make the Shadow X fight slower (even with midge mallet, getting killed takes longer than if you hold off on equipping stuff), but it requires one less Flammie call, which as it turns out takes quite a bit of time.  It's also less prone to disaster in the event that a Shapeshifter decides to spawn a Beast Zombie.

StingerPA

2013-12-24 10:49:19 am

Here's a collection of notes I made from comments in this thread and from Crow's record video. This should be a solid start to an FAQ of sorts on the 1 controller run, and let me know if there's anything I missed or should be added to the list.

http://pastebin.com/uZaxGW55

Yagamoth

2013-12-24 11:11:29 am

INTJ

I think, exp management should be considered for the wall glitch

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2013-12-28 09:32:09 am

Crow!: 2013-12-27 08:57:15 pm

Crow!: 2013-12-27 08:56:41 pm

2013-12-27 08:50:27 pm

What's that gemma?

Regarding Stinger's notes:

Equip the level 1 axe on the Sprite at the same time you equip basic armor onto him.

You will probably level up Freeze while killing the Pebblers. It takes 3x level 0 or 2x level 1 Freezes to kill a Pebbler. (Incidentally, this might mean that adding an extra freeze cast somewhere might come for "free", as it would directly save a spell cast vs the first Pebbler... not sure where to spend that Freeze, though)

The initial Freezes vs Mech Rider III are no longer necessary or helpful now that I'm not leveling up Freeze during the Hexas and Buffy fights; just WCG him. As a corollary, you'll need more Freeze casts on the Pureland bosses to max out damage.

Apart from the Haunted Forest, all equipment trashing is on a as-you-need-it basis, easily thrown off any pre-planned route by the wildly random nature of spell damage (or by needing to restock Cups of Wishes). Practice for and be prepared to equipment trash during all of the mid / late game boss fights where magic is used. At a minimum, be prepared to do it at these fights:
- Great Viper
- Frost Gigas
- Vampire (can be hard due to the shadows)
- Dragon Worm
- Thunder Gigas
- Buffy (you shouldn't have to do it at BOTH this fight and Thunder Gigas, but be prepared for either)

Bonus points for restocking more than one item at once via equipment trashing.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing. In the test run, you seemed to have no hesitation in trashing the useless equipment (i.e. Midge Robe) while those items were still equipped. Doing this is dangerous, as it invokes the equipment trashing glitch in some area of the memory that you didn't deliberately pick. The same concern applies when equipping new stuff (in your run, you needed to equipment trash at every shop, but as you get better this won't be the case.)

Regarding Yaga:

Experience management for the wall glitch (for example, arranging it so you can kill the girl at 35k experience to feed the boy who's at 30k experience, so that all future kills on the boy are worth 65k experience) unfortunately has a lot of problems associated with it, which have all become more pronounced as the rest of the run has been optimized. Here's a few:

First of all, the amount of time spent doing the wall glitch is much shorter now than it used to be. There isn't as much time to be saved by gaining more experience per instance of the wall glitch as there was before.

Getting a character to die during the likely candidate boss fights is either slow or dangerous or both. Wall Face and Vampire can't be counted on to cooperate, while Metal Mantis and Mech Rider II are now double-WCG fights, where losing any one character means losing half your DPS (if measured in game-time, anyway).

Killing the boy at 60k+ experience with magic is harder than killing him with 37k; he has to take two hits (one will likely be from the enemy) instead of just the spell cast. This was less of an issue in the old geometry, but costs time in the new setup (as the sprite has to set up very carefully before casting).

Regarding Stinger's notes:

Equip the level 1 axe on the Sprite at the same time you equip basic armor onto him.

You will probably level up Freeze while killing the Pebblers.  It takes 3x level 0 or 2x level 1 Freezes to kill a Pebbler.  (Incidentally, this might mean that adding an extra freeze cast somewhere might come for "free", as it would directly save a spell cast vs the first Pebbler... not sure where to spend that Freeze, though)

The initial Freezes vs Mech Rider III are no longer necessary or helpful now that I'm not leveling up Freeze during the Hexas and Buffy fights; just WCG him.  As a corollary, you'll need more Freeze casts on the Pureland bosses to max out damage.

Apart from the Haunted Forest, all equipment trashing is on a as-you-need-it basis, easily thrown off any pre-planned route by the wildly random nature of spell damage (or by needing to restock Cups of Wishes).  Practice for and be prepared to equipment trash during all of the mid / late game boss fights where magic is used.  At a minimum, be prepared to do it at these fights:
- Great Viper
- Frost Gigas
- Vampire (can be hard due to the shadows)
- Dragon Worm
- Thunder Gigas
- Buffy (you shouldn't have to do it at BOTH this fight and Thunder Gigas, but be prepared for either)

Bonus points for restocking more than one item at once via equipment trashing.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing.  In the test run, you seemed to have no hesitation in trashing the useless equipment (i.e. Midge Robe) while those items were still equipped.  Doing this is dangerous, as it invokes the equipment trashing glitch in some area of the memory that you didn't deliberately pick.  The same concern applies when equipping new stuff (in your run, you needed to equipment trash at every shop, but as you get better this won't be the case.)

Regarding Yaga:

Experience management for the wall glitch (for example, arranging it so you can kill the girl at 35k experience to feed the boy who's at 30k experience, so that all future kills on the boy are worth 65k experience) unfortunately has a lot of problems associated with it, which have all become more pronounced as the rest of the run has been optimized.  Here's a few:

First of all, the amount of time spent doing the wall glitch is much shorter now than it used to be.  There isn't as much time to be saved by gaining more experience per instance of the wall glitch as there was before.

Getting a character to die during the likely candidate boss fights is either slow or dangerous or both.  Wall Face and Vampire can't be counted on to cooperate, while Metal Mantis and Mech Rider II are now double-WCG fights, where losing any one character means losing half your DPS (if measured in game-time, anyway).

Killing the boy at 60k+ experience with magic is harder than killing him with 37k; he has to take two hits (one will likely be from the enemy) instead of just the spell cast. This was less of an issue in the old geometry, but costs time in the new setup (as the sprite has to set up very carefully before casting).

Yagamoth

2013-12-28 11:34:49 am

INTJ

During my backwards controller practice today I started with the Boy and overall I was a bit slower through the areas... Surprisingly, that could end up being faster, here's why:

- After leaving Potos Village I killed the Rabite, waited a bit around until I managed to find the "down" on the D-Pad and surprisingly it spawned both the Rabite and the Flower just a bit lower
- On the way back, same spot, I killed both the Flower and Rabite, waited around a bit and got to kill the Rabite in front of Potos Village as well. So those are quick and easy kills

Crow!

Edit history:

Crow!: 2013-12-29 09:47:50 am

2013-12-29 09:47:03 am

What's that gemma?

I think that monsters are considered as still being on the screen until the death animation has completed. That theory is consistent with my experience getting the Grand Palace Luna Orb skip's sword to spawn, in any case.

Is there a consistent way to get the flower that ambushes the narrow path on the left side of the potos field to despawn during the first trip to the Water Palace? That thing eats up a lot of time, especially if you get a stabbing animation from your sword and thereby miss it.

I completed a no-reset, de-rusting run yesterday, which came to about 10 minutes slower than my record run. It took me a few tries to execute the Wall Glitch properly, and I didn't execute the Lucid Barrier casts in the Grand Palace very well, but aside from that it does demonstrate the new strategies.

I note most of my embarassing errors during the run, but one that I didn't realize until later that night was that I'm supposed to give the Sprite his Gauntlet once the last Dragon is killed.

http://www.twitch.tv/iicrowii/c/3464103

I think that monsters are considered as still being on the screen until the death animation has completed.  That theory is consistent with my experience getting the Grand Palace Luna Orb skip's sword to spawn, in any case.

Is there a consistent way to get the flower that ambushes the narrow path on the left side of the potos field to despawn during the first trip to the Water Palace?  That thing eats up a lot of time, especially if you get a stabbing animation from your sword and thereby miss it.

I completed a no-reset, de-rusting run yesterday, which came to about 10 minutes slower than my record run.  It took me a few tries to execute the Wall Glitch properly, and I didn't execute the Lucid Barrier casts in the Grand Palace very well, but aside from that it does demonstrate the new strategies.

I note most of my embarassing errors during the run, but one that I didn't realize until later that night was that I'm supposed to give the Sprite his Gauntlet once the last Dragon is killed.

http://www.twitch.tv/iicrowii/c/3464103

Yagamoth

2013-12-29 12:39:37 pm

INTJ

Quote:

Is there a consistent way to get the flower that ambushes the narrow path on the left side of the potos field to despawn during the first trip to the Water Palace? That thing eats up a lot of time, especially if you get a stabbing animation from your sword and thereby miss it.

I have no consistent way as of now unfortunately... Stinger may be a able to assist in that a bit better

StingerPA

2013-12-30 09:04:29 am

Regarding that flower, I have an inconsistent method of doing it, but it works pretty often. What you do is after killing the rabite/flower after crossing the first bridge, you will move to the left above the tree, then move down-left below the 2nd bridge, and then cross the bridge while holding up-left. It's manipulating the diagonals to despawn the flower. If you watch this recording, go to 7:20 and you'll see the movements I do to despawn that flower. http://www.twitch.tv/stingerpa/b/482156178

Also regarding the wall glitch, how do you manipulate the target of the cast? I watched your recent run and you were talking about specific movements, but I have no idea what those are.

Crow!

2013-12-30 02:09:37 pm

What's that gemma?

I wrote a thorough post describing my method here:
https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/secret_of_mana_558.html#secret_of_mana_558

The short version is that you need a total X+Y distance from the original, walled target to be more than 240 pixels from all the targets that you don't want to be hit. There would be other valid geometries, but this was the most reliable / fastest to repeat one I could find in the Palace of Darkness.

Yagamoth

2013-12-31 02:23:09 pm

INTJ

Small new tec for the first ruins:

Remember that ugly sword in the 3rd room at the beginning? We know that the hitbox of the characters expands and deflates depending on frame of animation. To manipulate that Stinger tried to press against the wall at the just right time, which didn't work out too consistently. Turns out, the moonwalking is useful here: Simply select the Girl, hold B + R or B + L to keep facing the same direction regardless of direction of travel. This let's you simply walk past the sword as long as you never stop moving

StingerPA

2013-12-31 02:54:42 pm

I'm testing this out (on emulator), but I'm not so sure that it works. Looking at the hitbox viewer, the girl's hitbox keeps changing the same as it normally does when moving down. I'm getting hit every single time I try this.

I'm looking a bit further, and my hitbox manipulation is a little different from what I thought it actually was. It turns out that the reason I'm getting by the sword with that manipulation is because the sword is actually "waking up" later. This is what's allowing the girl to get far enough below the sword to avoid getting hit. Looking at this now it seems that my technique is a 5 frame window to release holding Right, and start holding Down.

Yagamoth

2013-12-31 03:06:30 pm

INTJ

Interesting. I have to admit, I only tried this 3 times now - so that's not statistically relevant for empiric study. I quite simply walk towards the wall, always only facing down.. You could check in the archive on how I move

Crow!

2014-01-15 05:46:58 pm

What's that gemma?

Good job on the AGDQ run, guys.

In other news, I now have a USB adapter for SNES controllers, so soon I'll be doing (and probably streaming) some room-by-room drilling of basic pathing and avoiding enemies, as I think that's the weakest part of my runs so far.

StingerPA

2014-01-15 06:20:08 pm

Thanks, the marathon run went way better than our practice runs to that point, so we were very happy with it. As a side note, we did some real runs afterwards, and got a 2:00:52, but the recording screwed up and there's no audio. Video looks fine though. I think we'll stream it sometime soon and do commentary, but I'll need to talk with Yaga after he gets home.

I'd agree with you on the area movement being your weakest part, but I think some of that has to do with the boy (and the sprite later in the game) constantly slashing at enemies because of having the charge level set. I did some testing, and it would cost about 5-6 seconds for us to put one of them back down to not charging anymore. I used some assumptions for the best case scenario here, such as the boy's menu already being on the menu ring, and already being on the ACT menu. It was about 150 frames to move from level 1 to level 0 charge, so I simply doubled that to get it including putting the charge back to level 1 to start charging in boss fights. Based on where some of the fights that do and do not use overcharges, I think we could disable this at some points in the game to improve general movement, and I also think it would help significantly in the early game where we are trying to level certain things up. Having the boy not doing his attacks at random would help speed things up considerably. I've been looking at areas where we wouldn't use overcharges for a while, and I've come up with some ideas.

First of all, I would disable the charge level on the boy after Tonpole because the boy doesn't need to use overcharge attacks for another 13 minutes or so on Kilroy. I think enough time can be gained through those areas to benefit from disabling the charge. After that, I'd disable charging after Jabberwocky until you reach Mech Rider I. This would help keep the boy's meter at 100% while killing silktails in the forest and keep you from having to just use the sprite and girl to kill them all. After this point, it becomes a bit more troublesome to disable the charging because you'll want to keep it for Boreal Face unless you can gain 6 seconds in the minute or so of moving around the ice country (which is actually possible, I think) and after Boreal Face you'll have 2 characters you'll be adjusting the charge level with. That doubles the total time cost to 12 seconds minimum with pretty good menus. I would still say that you could disable the charge levels after Boreal Face because it's a good 28 minutes before you need to use charge attacks on Metal Mantis, so there may be 12 seconds to be gained in this section with better movement from the AI not being dumb(er). Mech Rider II is the next overcharge boss, but that's such a short period between the 2 bosses that it probably wouldn't be worth it. Next, you have Blue Spike, and it's a good 19 minutes between Mech Rider II and Blue Spike. Between PoD movement and Joch's Trials, I could see time being gained here with disabling the charge attacks. After this, you have Aegagropilon, but that's only a few minutes with very little actual movement in monster areas, so it wouldn't be worth it to disable here. Then there's Hexas, and the Grand Palace could be considerably easier with out the AI attacking everything. Mech Rider III is next, that's a no brainer to keep it on. Then the next boss you use overcharges on is Dread Slime, and that's a whole 30 minutes or so between them. I could easily see 12 seconds being gained in the Pure Lands and Mana Fortress from having cooperative AI over those 30 seconds. Then you need overcharge for the Dark Lich and Mana Beast, so there's no reason to take it off after Dread Slime.

To summarize my thoughts on where to take charging off the Boy and Sprite:
After Tonpole
After Jabberwocky
After Boreal Face
After Mech Rider II
After Aegagropilon (maybe)
After Mech Rider III

Thanks, the marathon run went way better than our practice runs to that point, so we were very happy with it.  As a side note, we did some real runs afterwards, and got a 2:00:52, but the recording screwed up and there's no audio.  Video looks fine though.  I think we'll stream it sometime soon and do commentary, but I'll need to talk with Yaga after he gets home.

I'd agree with you on the area movement being your weakest part, but I think some of that has to do with the boy (and the sprite later in the game) constantly slashing at enemies because of having the charge level set.  I did some testing, and it would cost about 5-6 seconds for us to put one of them back down to not charging anymore.  I used some assumptions for the best case scenario here, such as the boy's menu already being on the menu ring, and already being on the ACT menu.  It was about 150 frames to move from level 1 to level 0 charge, so I simply doubled that to get it including putting the charge back to level 1 to start charging in boss fights.  Based on where some of the fights that do and do not use overcharges, I think we could disable this at some points in the game to improve general movement, and I also think it would help significantly in the early game where we are trying to level certain things up.  Having the boy not doing his attacks at random would help speed things up considerably.  I've been looking at areas where we wouldn't use overcharges for a while, and I've come up with some ideas.

First of all, I would disable the charge level on the boy after Tonpole because the boy doesn't need to use overcharge attacks for another 13 minutes or so on Kilroy.  I think enough time can be gained through those areas to benefit from disabling the charge.  After that, I'd disable charging after Jabberwocky until you reach Mech Rider I.  This would help keep the boy's meter at 100% while killing silktails in the forest and keep you from having to just use the sprite and girl to kill them all. After this point, it becomes a bit more troublesome to disable the charging because you'll want to keep it for Boreal Face unless you can gain 6 seconds in the minute or so of moving around the ice country (which is actually possible, I think) and after Boreal Face you'll have 2 characters you'll be adjusting the charge level with.  That doubles the total time cost to 12 seconds minimum with pretty good menus.  I would still say that you could disable the charge levels after Boreal Face because it's a good 28 minutes before you need to use charge attacks on Metal Mantis, so there may be 12 seconds to be gained in this section with better movement from the AI not being dumb(er).  Mech Rider II is the next overcharge boss, but that's such a short period between the 2 bosses that it probably wouldn't be worth it.  Next, you have Blue Spike, and it's a good 19 minutes between Mech Rider II and Blue Spike.  Between PoD movement and Joch's Trials, I could see time being gained here with disabling the charge attacks.  After this, you have Aegagropilon, but that's only a few minutes with very little actual movement in monster areas, so it wouldn't be worth it to disable here.  Then there's Hexas, and the Grand Palace could be considerably easier with out the AI attacking everything.  Mech Rider III is next, that's a no brainer to keep it on.  Then the next boss you use overcharges on is Dread Slime, and that's a whole 30 minutes or so between them.  I could easily see 12 seconds being gained in the Pure Lands and Mana Fortress from having cooperative AI over those 30 seconds.  Then you need overcharge for the Dark Lich and Mana Beast, so there's no reason to take it off after Dread Slime.

To summarize my thoughts on where to take charging off the Boy and Sprite:
After Tonpole
After Jabberwocky
After Boreal Face
After Mech Rider II
After Aegagropilon (maybe)
After Mech Rider III

Crow!

2014-01-15 07:33:33 pm

What's that gemma?

Interesting, when I do my drilling I'll see how much of a difference having the charging disabled makes. I think you forgot about the triple tonpole fight in Santa's castle, though.

StingerPA

2014-01-15 08:15:51 pm

You're right, I did forget about that one. That takes it down to about 25 minutes after the ice palace tonpoles until you need it for Metal Mantis, so that's still enough time to me that it'd be worth it.

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2014-01-16 04:37:56 am

Yagamoth: 2014-01-16 04:37:52 am

Yagamoth: 2014-01-16 04:37:51 am

Yagamoth: 2014-01-16 04:36:39 am

Yagamoth: 2014-01-16 02:44:38 am

2014-01-16 02:38:31 am

INTJ

I didnt get a notice that there are new messages... I ll probably add more later, but for now I dont
Like writing on a phone:
- switching off the Boys charge sounds good. I sughest if possible, that you simply give him the whip, this should save some time compared to messing with the settings... Maybe

On a sidenote for 1p2c -> maybe we can 1 cycle the mana beast with an AI overcharge? If yes, maybe figure out a way to level a 2nd weapon?

Edit: extension to the sidenote: forge the spear to level 2, level it up on the Girl, keep the Sword on the Boy and triple swap from there. Depending on Boss we wont lose any time due to starting with a sword. Just an idea...

Edit2: A bit more theorycrafting before I even know whether it would be even useful
--> 1p3c, double controlled Overcharge theory:

I created 2 weapon swap layouts:

Code:

Shared level 2 weapon (B)

Boy:    A1, B2
Sprite: C1, B2

A = Spear
B = Sword
C = ???

Boy     Girl    Sprite
A1      B       C1
B2   -  A       C1
A1*  -  B       C1
A1*     C   -   B2
A1*     B   -   C1*

============================
Shared weapon, level 1 and 2 on different character

Boy:    A1, B2
Sprite: B1, C2

A = Spear
B = Sword
C = ???

Boy     Girl    Sprite
A1      B       C1
B2   -  A       C1
B2      C   -   A2
B2      A   -   C1*
A1*  -  B       C1*

==> For this, to prevent weapon A1 to level up on the Boy, we probably have to swap
back to weapon B on the Boy after the cycle. As a result, the Boy would start charging
the weapon up to level 2 on the next boss

But that's just theory.. The basic idea is, that even if the Mana Beast alone wouldn't justify using 2 overcharges, having 2 available for various other bosses could be very useful, save time and remove or lower the impact of rng.

I didnt get a notice that there are new messages... I ll probably add more later, but for now I dont
Like writing on a phone:
- switching off the Boys charge sounds good. I sughest if possible, that you simply give him the whip, this should save some time compared to messing with the settings... Maybe

On a sidenote for 1p2c -> maybe we can 1 cycle the mana beast with an AI overcharge? If yes, maybe figure out a way to level a 2nd weapon?

Edit: extension to the sidenote: forge the spear to level 2,  level it up on the Girl, keep the Sword on the Boy and triple swap from there. Depending on Boss we wont lose any time due to starting with a sword. Just an idea...

Edit2: A bit more theorycrafting before I even know whether it would be even useful
--> 1p3c, double controlled Overcharge theory:

I created 2 weapon swap layouts:

[code]Shared level 2 weapon (B)

Boy:    A1, B2
Sprite: C1, B2

A = Spear
B = Sword
C = ???

Boy     Girl    Sprite
A1      B       C1
B2   -  A       C1
A1*  -  B       C1
A1*     C   -   B2
A1*     B   -   C1*

============================
Shared weapon, level 1 and 2 on different character

Boy:    A1, B2
Sprite: B1, C2

A = Spear
B = Sword
C = ???

Boy     Girl    Sprite
A1      B       C1
B2   -  A       C1
B2      C   -   A2
B2      A   -   C1*
A1*  -  B       C1*

==> For this, to prevent weapon A1 to level up on the Boy, we probably have to swap
back to weapon B on the Boy after the cycle. As a result, the Boy would start charging
the weapon up to level 2 on the next boss[/code]

But that's just theory.. The basic idea is, that even if the Mana Beast alone wouldn't justify using 2 overcharges, having 2 available for various other bosses could be very useful, save time and remove or lower the impact of rng.

StingerPA

2014-01-16 08:45:52 am

I checked whether swapping to the axe would be faster since it would change the sprite's charge level at the same time, but it ends up being about 8 seconds to swap everything around optimally for just the Boy, and then it increases to 12 seconds when you include the Sprite. It takes a lot longer than expected because of the weapon swap animation, so it would be best to just change the charge level manually, it seems.

Interesting idea on multiple charges. It would save about 1:20 to one cycle the Mana Beast, but we'd need to level weapons up somehow in the run. That could cost us the minute saved there.