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I found the light blade by changing the order that I pulled stuff out of the trader tent, so yeah, order matters. Also Light Blade confirmed!
Edit history:
MrStarbird: 2016-11-16 05:58:10 pm
MrStarbird: 2016-11-16 05:56:34 pm
MrStarbird: 2016-11-16 05:00:59 pm
Leader of Starbirdia!
That is really weird, but awesome that you can get the Light Blade early like that! Damn this glitch is confusing, but if you can get all your gear before even entering the Labyrinth Proper, then that should reduce the amount of grinding you need to do and thus save plenty of time.

I will plug away at it some more and see what I can come up with later.

UPDATE:

Okay, the only thing I have figured out is that there must be a certain character that activates the rest of the glitch. I decided to test it out by using the same letter for two loops (because the letters will loop and overwrite a previous letter in the name entry screen if you go far enough). So I tested out by entering a Z 128 times (including each of the characters names). The result? I get SEVEN Bronze Armors (which is exactly what I thought Z would equal) but NOTHING after 7. No matter if I pull them out or not, or whether I have Milo and Pyra in the party or not, that is all I got.

However, it soon occurred to me that much like when you have to craft something from Mythril or a Dark Block, if you exit and enter the town again, it should be done. Sure enough, more Bronze Armors.

An idea did occur to me though as well that I will soon test out. According to my list, the letter A should give a Bull Whip, but in NONE of our tests, we have not seen a single Bull Whip. So I am gonna try my last test using all A's instead. I almost think the letter A might be a trigger for something else, but we shall see.

UPDATE 2:

SIGH, this glitch is something else. At least I figured out the space counts as 00 on the hex chart which will net a Bronze Dagger, other than that, I am having a hard time replicating some of these things even when doing the exact same thing. I may have to take the time to play through the game without codes to see how well the glitch works, but man, I've never seen anything like this. Though I also figured that A will net a Bull Whip.
From what I have seen, what you said about exiting the town entirely and re-entering is the key to unlocking all the potential items. I just want to point out that you can leave Milo and Pyra's names blank. The only thing I can see that is left to do, is to discover which items can advance the hex counter, and which names are optimal for adding the items we need.
Okay so I went ahead and did one more run through to check on some stuff. Apparently what I have been saying and thinking about the character names mattering is false. I would just rather leave the hero's name as one character and the other two names blank anyway.

Until about 2 days ago I didn't realize that you could check multiple screens ahead in the trader tent.

So the only thing that I know how to reload and advance is the armor. You take the first screen of items that you see out of the trader tent and then exit the town. Once you come back in, his first screen will be filled with armor. The only two notable pieces of armor that I can get is the frost armor and the light robe. So still not a whole lot of help here, but I at least know that you can reload certain items depending on which items you pull out.

Still, every item that appears is directly related to the characters you input after Pyra's name. The order matters here too.
What is a man?
I'm a bit intrigued by this. I have, however, no previous experience with the game. So my question is:
1. I guess the name input is the first thing you do in the game?
2. How long time does it take for you to go from the name select to the "glitched" trader?
Okay, so you input your name when you choose a new file. You don't want to hit backspace at any time after the first 5 characters otherwise the game will freeze until you hit B until you get back to the first five characters. Other bad things can happen if you try and hit backspace at that point.

So, if you do it the legit way, it takes 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 to get to the glitched trader (if you know what you are doing). If you enter our game genie codes and at least know where to go outside of walking through walls, it's like a half hour. If you get good at walking through walls it's like 10-20 minutes total.
Edit history:
MrStarbird: 2016-12-13 09:31:45 am
Leader of Starbirdia!
so I decided to take a look at this again and test out a couple things. nothing really has been confirmed, but there is something of note.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to alter the stats of any of your characters by using the name glitch. I had theorized it might be possible, but after looking at the hex data, all of the character stats are placed in bytes before the place where the name is held. The same is true for trying to put items into a character's inventory early because again, all those bytes are before the name bytes.

Also, I noticed that two pieces of gear set a defense value to 0 (glass armor being one). I was curious to see if a defense underflow glitch was possible in the same way it is in Phantasy Star II; by setting the defense value to 0 then removing a piece of gear. Nope, defense doesn't underflow like that in this game. Also attempted to remove the curse and whatnot to see if it works similar to the Dark Sword glitch in Sword of Vermilion. again, a resounding nope.

So, I guess this isn't much to report at this time other than confirmations on what cannot happen. The values at the end of the name bytes seem to go on forever as 00 (which would explain a lot of Bronze Knives)... but what those values indicate remain to be seen.


UPDATE: Well, the values after the name goes on for about 2235 more bytes, so you could theoretically enter in over 2000 letters and still not get to the point where it would start to mess with the mechanics with the game. Those two bytes at the end from what I've tested are the x, y values for the Menu UI, so changing those to any value that the letters would give you would make the menu disappear completely from the screen. At least that is what I believe, but I don't think I see anybody entering in 2000 letters just to get to that point. Again, kinda useless information, but I will play around with it some more to see what I can come up with.
I'd like to see what happens if you go beyond 2235.
Leader of Starbirdia!
even if you could go beyond 2235, at that point you would start messing with the interface and glitching up the system. I changed the value of another couple of bytes afterwards and things really went funky at that point.

I just wish I knew what those 2 KB between Pyra's name and the UI bytes contained and what they meant. I theorize that it might have something to do with monster encounters, as I know when I went through the game to finish the trials legit, the Trader had items up the wazoo, especially items outside of what can be obtained with the Name Glitch, but when I used GG codes to avoid encounters, all I got were items from the Name Glitch. A bit of theory, but I will have to test it out at a later time.

In the meantime, the Name Glitch can still be used to get some very strong weapons and armor, and by adding some extra Ts at the end of the TTKGFD, you should get enough Light Robes to get over 100,000 Gold, well more than enough to fill the rest of your gear spaces for the remaining journey. It's just that first half of the game...
So I've been thinking a lot on the subject lately and I think it's about time for Shining in the Darkness to be in a big marathon such as a GDQ or RPGLB. So even though the run isn't finished because of the glitch, I am looking for a partner on what will be around an 11 hour run. I will go through the game over the next few days to try and work things out so I can do a tutorial on my channel this month. Anyone that is interested should say something. I plan on breaking the run into four segments and give us each two segments of the run to be responsible for during the marathon. I will likely submit the tutorial to SGDQ assuming I get a partner. Otherwise we will have to wait until AGDQ 2018.
Hey guys give me just a few days here, I think I may have this glitch figured out finally, at least enough to make it so I can get all the items I want. There's still likely going to be the trash bronze knives, but those won't matter if I have what I want.
Quote from MrStarbird:
The Doom Blade may be worth looking into as it has a chance to one-shot enemies.

Okay, I decided to look into the glitch a bit more to see what comes up. Using a few Game Genie codes so that I could finish the 4 trials easily (within 5-10 minutes total) so that I can unlock the Trader made the research faster.

So far, what I've discovered was that this is one of the most confusing glitches I have come across. What I did was after entering the main character's name, I would enter in Milo and Pyra's name, use a space, then go A through Z. My first set of items were:

Thorn Whip
Steel Whip
Hex Whip
Great Flail
Super Flail
Doom Blade
Wood Shield

In the hex value chart, those 7 items are continuous to each other, however, on the next page of items is when I started getting odd items, lots of bronze knives and lances, and a few other odds and ends, but the numbers they corresponded to were all over the place.

So for some reason I thought that only T through Z were recognized by the Trader, so I started over, entered the names, space, then added A through S, then A, B, C, D, E, F, G. The Trader STILL gave me the same items, in the same order.

Also, I tried using the Doom Blade against Dark Knight and Dark Sol, as well as various enemies. The normal enemies had approximately a 10% chance of landing a one shot kill, HOWEVER, no such thing happened against Dark Knight or Dark Sol.

I will update when I find out more, but so far I am not sure which value makes it so that the trader trigger the pick-ups.

UPDATE:
It would appear the glitch doesn't want to behave as well as I had hoped. The letters are not matching up at all to the hex values that I assumed they would. I put in after Pyra's name ABC and got just Thorn Whip and Steel Whip. I put in DEFG and got just Great Flail, Super Flail, and Doom Blade. I assumed that the last letter is getting dropped for some reason but that the hex chart was accurate and if Thorn Whip was A and Steel Whip was B, then the hex chart should continue right down.

So I tested it with 7 letters (CEFGJSS), hoping to get a Hex Whip, Super Flail, Doom Blade, Thunder Armor, Wood Shield, and Two Light Robes. I instead got a Great Flail, Super Flail, Doom Blade, Frost Armor, and 2 Leather Robes. Which was odd because that would correspond with a value one before each of them (confused yet?)

At least for starters, if you enter in this at the Name Select, you SHOULD get the best equipment the glitch can currently give, making the 2nd part of the game a bit easier (or you can get some stuff to sell for money, either way). Hex Whip is actually quite amazing on Pyra, even though it is cursed, and Super Flail is pretty sweet as well. Doom Blade could still get you through many random encounters, Thunder Armor is the Hero's best next to the Light Armor, and the Light Robes are good for reducing magic damage.

Enter at start: NAME_MILO_PYRA_DFGKTT

That should get you those items at the Trader. For some reason, the game is finicky after the 7th letter after Pyra's name. Also, sometimes you have to enter and exit the trader in order for him to show up with the items.

I will look more into it with time, but this should be a start.


MrStarbird you actually made a mistake on your counting for CEFGJSS. According to what I looked at, those were all the items you were supposed to get. You didn't mention getting a steel whip when you did this. Do you remember getting a Steel Whip or did it get cut off somehow and just not show up?
Guess what guys. I just got my first good record in Shining in the Darkness. The final time was around 8:06 or 8:07. I'll find out after I convert, compress, and upload what the actual time was, but there's more important things to talk about that I found in the last few days I've been playing the game.

To start out you'll want to remember exactly how to do this.

When I go to enter names I enter in A and 4 spaces for Marak, the next 10 spaces for Milo and Pyra's name are filled in with the blank spot that is just above the END button. After that you want to enter ATTTCFGK. Every letter but A can be entered in any order for this to work. By entering this you get 3 Light Robes (the third one is to sell), A Doom Blade, a Super Flail, A Steel Whip, and Thunder Armor. The best part about this glitch is that it doesn't overflow the Trader Tent so you don't have to worry about the glitch resetting your speed settings. These two things happening were what was causing the information overload on the console. So in other words you don't get locked out of your file because you performed the glitch. Yes my speedrun was on a console where it belongs.

So I should describe a little bit of the work that went into figuring this all out. First let me refer you back to this link again https://www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/586454-shining-in-the-darkness/faqs/14649

Now keep that in mind and we will get back to that shortly.

So I started entering in A, B, C, D, E, and F in a while ago when I was last working on the glitch. I would enter them in one at a time. So for instance, I would enter in A 52 times and I would get nothing but Bull whips and I didn't have a second screen to look at. I'd enter in B 52 times and the same thing would happen but this time I would get Thorn Whips. After each of the items got depleted from the tent, I'd start getting the Bronze Knives again, and then it would end me with the useless Dark Scimitar. I didn't check into it much at the time the I started playing it again to work on the glitch. This time I entered in F and G in the same manner and got Super Flails then Doom Blades.

So no matter how many times I entered in a letter, it never gave me the second through fourth screens that I got from entering the Alphabet forward and backwards (I still don't know what causes them). I actually spent a lot of time looking at the data that we have trying to figure out this glitch, but I realize now that no further work needs to be done on it since it works well on a console now. Sorry no light equipment.

But anyway, I started thinking after I got the Doom Blades, and this time it wasn't a dangerous thing. The Doom Blades were right after the Super Flails on the Hex Chart. I thought there's no way this is a coincidence so I wanted to try T as my next letter to see if my theory was right and see if I got Light Robes like I thought I would. Sure enough I got all the Light Robes. So basically yes, this does mean that the letters on the Name Input Screen do correspond with the Hex Chart and they do so in order. So A=Bull Whip which is Hex Value 25 and Z=Bronze Armor or Hex Value 3E. So knowing this you can fill in all the blank slots on your own.

So why did we not catch this before? Well the full answer is still beyond my grasp, but the basic answer that I do have is that there seem to be what I call Blackout Slots in the naming screen. The way I did this is I just figure out which items I was supposed to get from the name entry and didn't. Rather than bore you with which items I didn't get I'll just tell you which slots out of the first 26 are missing.

Slot 1
Slot 9
Slot 11
Slot 13
Slot 15
Slot 17
Slot 19
Slot 21
Slot 23
and Slot 25

If you are slightly confused by any of this the Slots above represent the # of spaces after you enter in the last letter of Pyra's name. Basically it seems these Slots are either eaten and don't access anything in the games memory, or some of them may be modifiers that determine what the non Blackout Slots would give you. This theory still needs testing, but as I said before, I won't be working on this glitch anymore.

So the fact that the trader tent would give you more than the items than what you would get by entering in one letter at a time to test the glitch, leads me to believe that this is an overflow glitch. I know I probably didn't explain that in a way that everyone could understand but the glitch is pretty complicated as it is. Another indicator that it is an overflow glitch is just the fact that there are more screens in which you can pull out items if you enter in the alphabet forwards and backwards twice. So basically if you are willing to look further into the glitch, you can still get multiples of every item you ever wanted in the game.

So I guess a good wrap up point to this would be that I'm no longer working on the glitch ever because even if anyone could figure out the other items I've been asking for, I'd still have get them on an emulator. To me it's important to run a game on a console rather than on an emulator. So I'm done with figuring out the glitch, but I'm going to run the game now for a while. I'm actually super stoked now that I can get a good time and play the game how I want.
Oh and I will link the video after I post it in case anyone was confused about any of this. I literally developed a couple of safe strats over night that saved well over 2 hours over the course of the run.
With a final time of  8:06:46.71 here is the run If your trying to view this in real time, give it like 4 more hours to fully upload to youtube.
Nostalgia Kills
I watched most of the run, I kind of zoned out a few times.  I think the main thing I noticed was that the menuing was a little wonky when you got the armor upgrades, sometimes did not seem able to find the outdated armor/robes to sell.  And pretty much every other chest from 2 hours to the end you stopped in front of to clear out leftover herbs/healer fruit from early part of the run that hung around for a long time because you lacked space.

The toadstool/grimfoal/Minotaur area is so important for getting experience, so I think the risk is still justified. It sucks that when it does go wrong, they take so many turns to kill you instead of just suddenly 2 awesome blows and you get back in.

Most of the enemies groups you fight/run away from make sense. But why kromeball? It only gives 500 compared to a safe groups in the same area that gives 360 and seemed like it had a good chance to get a KO even with 3 charathers.

In the mantoro/demi wight area leading to the first fountain- do you think it's worth getting a angel feather for this? I saw that you tried it once with two charathers,(because pyra having egress and not milo) but the second time you cut short with egress. I mean ideally egress is all the safe strats you need, but you know....

During the 3rd grind, how dangerous are the vipers? I noticed that you used magic during most of 2 viper formation when it seems like physical attacks would save animation time and come close to killing them before their first turn.

Enemies like lancerots require a slow to improve runaway chances and then still take an average of 3 turns to escape from, if they already take your time isn't just killing them better?

And uh, the run from the second blackbone fight to the arms of light fountain- Only keeping the one charather does not seem safe at all, even though it doubtlessly saved menuing time.

On the final boss were you unsure of Milo's speed stat? I noticed that Pyra still used Heal 3 on the rounds when Milo had to heal 4, which seemed like an attempt to make sure Milo could get it off even if the boss outspeeded him. Or was Pyra supposed to be slower than the boss?

But I've got to say that I enjoyed the run and could definely see it at RPGlimitbreak or something like cal fire relief ESA. Not sure about GDQ though due to its length though.
Well let's see if I can answer a few of your questions of why I did what I did in the run. If you still have questions after, I explained pretty much all of what I did and why I did it in my tutorial video which can also be found on youtube. Well the first thing would be that I always like to have my inventory full of healing items for just a little extra safety. If I opened up a chest without clearing out a healing item, it was because I forgot to use it (keep in mind it's an 8 hour run).

I have attempted to run away from the Kromeballs in higher levels, and for the most part it just doesn't work. You don't have enough speed to get away reliably and they can crit a party member to death in 2 turns. The only reason I will run is if I don't actually have the means to beat them otherwise.

As for the angel feather, yes I always believe it is worth having one in your inventory even if you don't use it. The only exception to this is when you get to the final fountain and can continuously heal your HP and MP.

The Vipers have an ability that can paralyze the entire party. So pretty much any time I run across a monster that can auto kill the entire party the safe strat is to use magic. Magic never misses, but attacks do. The Vipers are just way too accurate with being able to wipe out your entire party.

The Lancerots really aren't worth fighting in my opinion. Pretty much every enemy that shares that sprite has tremendous defense and has heavy crits. The only one that can really damage them is Marak and he's always slower than every other character or monster at this point. So if Marak misses (which he does quite often for no reason), you subject yourself to wasting more magic to heal your party than what is needed. Basically I'm going to tell you flat out, if you are using MP for anything but grinding or healing against normal enemies, you are always wasting it, and you won't be able to make it to your destination alive in a speedrun. If nothing else it's flat out faster to run from this battle. Keep in mind that running randomly negates a random number of enemies from being able to attack on that turn.

This one I explained in my tutorial, but the person to the farthest left in your party that is still alive, is considered your party leader. This affect running by a wide margin. Your chances to run increases with greater speed. It just so happens that Pyra gets both the highest Defense and Speed rolls on level up. So it's actually really really safe to keep the other two party members dead and just finish the dungeon with just Pyra. Tossing Pyra a shield or another piece of equipment that Milo had before he died, is usually more than enough to ensure her survival.

Because of the level that I fight Dark Sol at, it's random whether Milo will be able to attack (or heal in this case) before Dark Sol gets a turn, so it's just a little extra insurance. It's not terribly hard to beat him in level 41, but if you do what I do most of the time and fight him in about level 37, you can't make a single mistake. So yeah, basically if Milo wasn't faster than Dark Sol in most of those situations, there was a good chance he would die. Also Pyra doesn't really do damage to Dark Sol, so healing is about all she's good for in that fight.

Hopefully you've got a better view of my strategies now.
Leader of Starbirdia!
Congrats on getting a run in! I attempted this a while back but Cave of Truth just wrecked me. I'll take a closer look at your run and see if I can be of help further.
Leader of Starbirdia!
Quote from lightningluke81:
Quote from MrStarbird:
The Doom Blade may be worth looking into as it has a chance to one-shot enemies.

Okay, I decided to look into the glitch a bit more to see what comes up. Using a few Game Genie codes so that I could finish the 4 trials easily (within 5-10 minutes total) so that I can unlock the Trader made the research faster.

So far, what I've discovered was that this is one of the most confusing glitches I have come across. What I did was after entering the main character's name, I would enter in Milo and Pyra's name, use a space, then go A through Z. My first set of items were:

Thorn Whip
Steel Whip
Hex Whip
Great Flail
Super Flail
Doom Blade
Wood Shield

In the hex value chart, those 7 items are continuous to each other, however, on the next page of items is when I started getting odd items, lots of bronze knives and lances, and a few other odds and ends, but the numbers they corresponded to were all over the place.

So for some reason I thought that only T through Z were recognized by the Trader, so I started over, entered the names, space, then added A through S, then A, B, C, D, E, F, G. The Trader STILL gave me the same items, in the same order.

Also, I tried using the Doom Blade against Dark Knight and Dark Sol, as well as various enemies. The normal enemies had approximately a 10% chance of landing a one shot kill, HOWEVER, no such thing happened against Dark Knight or Dark Sol.

I will update when I find out more, but so far I am not sure which value makes it so that the trader trigger the pick-ups.

UPDATE:
It would appear the glitch doesn't want to behave as well as I had hoped. The letters are not matching up at all to the hex values that I assumed they would. I put in after Pyra's name ABC and got just Thorn Whip and Steel Whip. I put in DEFG and got just Great Flail, Super Flail, and Doom Blade. I assumed that the last letter is getting dropped for some reason but that the hex chart was accurate and if Thorn Whip was A and Steel Whip was B, then the hex chart should continue right down.

So I tested it with 7 letters (CEFGJSS), hoping to get a Hex Whip, Super Flail, Doom Blade, Thunder Armor, Wood Shield, and Two Light Robes. I instead got a Great Flail, Super Flail, Doom Blade, Frost Armor, and 2 Leather Robes. Which was odd because that would correspond with a value one before each of them (confused yet?)

At least for starters, if you enter in this at the Name Select, you SHOULD get the best equipment the glitch can currently give, making the 2nd part of the game a bit easier (or you can get some stuff to sell for money, either way). Hex Whip is actually quite amazing on Pyra, even though it is cursed, and Super Flail is pretty sweet as well. Doom Blade could still get you through many random encounters, Thunder Armor is the Hero's best next to the Light Armor, and the Light Robes are good for reducing magic damage.

Enter at start: NAME_MILO_PYRA_DFGKTT

That should get you those items at the Trader. For some reason, the game is finicky after the 7th letter after Pyra's name. Also, sometimes you have to enter and exit the trader in order for him to show up with the items.

I will look more into it with time, but this should be a start.


MrStarbird you actually made a mistake on your counting for CEFGJSS. According to what I looked at, those were all the items you were supposed to get. You didn't mention getting a steel whip when you did this. Do you remember getting a Steel Whip or did it get cut off somehow and just not show up?


Oh, I must have forgot to type it out. Yeah, got the Steel Whip during that test. Thanks for the good eyes.
I'm hoping you can get a good run of this as well. I've got this submitted to SGDQ as a segmented run, but I would have really preferred to have a partner on it. The only updates to the run you should be aware of is that Pyra will get the Light Sword instead of Marak for grinding purposes (obviously not for the Mortred and Dark Sol fights though). The reason being is that I found out that not only does the Light Sword cast bolt 3 (which hits all enemies), but it can never break because it's considered a story item.

The other thing that I've found is I've been using the herb water wrong recently. I think I knew this before, but it only reduces the breath or magic damage that you would take on the turn that you use it. I still think it's worth using because normally Dark Sol casts demon breath twice per turn which does about 140 damage to each character. Obviously half of that is easily manageable (even if you are only stuck with one healer).

Most of the problems you may have with the run could easily be erased by running from the right enemies, leveling up just a little more in certain areas, and making sure you have enough equipment to survive. If you don't get the thorn whip before you actually attempt to beat the 3rd trial, you will end up losing a whole lot of time (probably 30 minutes to an hour).
Leader of Starbirdia!
I didn't know that about the Light Sword. Never would have thought to use it :p

I may try to get a run in at some point. Sword of Vermilion still calls to me as well which I need to finish a run of. An 8 hour run is very long and I have never run a game that long... at least yet. I think Sub 8 is doable, perhaps even Sub 7 with enough practice. Hell, we all thought Shining Force II was always going to be a long run but now it is down to under 6 hours.

If only there were a discovery that would eliminate the amount of grinding...
Hello, lightningluke.

Nice run!  I only have one minor suggestion which would save you just a little bit of time, here and there:

If I remember correctly, Pyra gets the Peace spell (1 MP) at level 19.  This spell repels weaker enemy encounters for a certain period of time.  It appears that it would be most useful when you're backtracking between town and the 2nd floor (1st floor of the Labyrinth Proper).  That way, you could save a few seconds by avoiding those weaker encounters, going past Grim Wall and heading toward the teleporter. 

Hope you're well!
I am well, thank you. I'll tell you though I am done with speedrunning games but not with the community. I'll play a support role where I can. But don't worry about me, I'm well taken care of, and I'm finally happy where I'm at. You will see me around later, but right now I have a lot of work to do.
Hi guys I'm currently testing stuff out now as well I love this game so much I'm trying for wr soonish here  with the name glitch 🥰🥰 I did try some strategies  from u guys and find the wall u use the orb of truthnonnis just wrecking my team I may go back to my way of playing the game with the glitch see how that pays off for me
I looked at the name/trader glitch myself for a while after reading about it here recently, and figured it out! It soon became obvious I could easily get a lower time with new improvements, and (also because it's a childhood favorite of mine) I started learning/running this game as well.


So far I got it down to 4:21:04:
(I timed from speed select to castle fade out / last input to credits, mostly by preference but there's another reason as well, see below. This would be 4:20:16 on luke's timing)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494920273


I also got through the Trials in 3:01 (compared to 3:32 before), with some route changes:

- On the grind to level 7, I get the helm before the saber (still mostly 1 hit kills, much less healing needed)
- I grind gold for a sword and some armor before entering Strength, so most enemies do 1 damage until the later parts
- I don't save up or grind for the Thorn Whip, but instead spend the gold on more armor upgrades after each trip (up to bronze armor and madu when possible) and run away from more fights. The higher defense is well worth it, although I still needed to refill after False Idol
- I run away as much as I can through Wisdom, there's really no need to grind there (I made it through at level 17). Running away will always work within 4 tries (often 2 or 3) even at very low levels


So here's how the trader glitch works:

- Character names start at $173A in RAM (5 letters each + 1 unused), and you can enter up to 256 letters (write to $173A-1839)

- Trader items start next at $174A, with a list of item id's terminated by 7F or FF. 00-7E are items to be crafted/repaired, 80-FE are items ready for pickup (this is set for the first 7 items when you leave town), and the list is initialized to 8x 7F. Normally it's limited to 7 items, but overwriting the 8th byte will allow the list to expand until the next 7F/FF in RAM, and this is how you can get many items outside of the A-Z range

- Another trader-related list (not sure yet what it's for) comes next at $1752, and also gets values taken out when you pick up an item. This is why every second slot past 8 seemed to disappear if you get the items in order

- Then there's the message speed at $175A (Fast = 00, don't overwrite), and $175B-18FF is always 00 (a ton of bronze knives if you try to pick up everything, but not infinite)

- And now the fun part: $1900-1E9F is the explored maps (for View)! Each bit is a map tile (on/off), and each map is 32x30 (with the left/right sides). The map order is Floor 1-5, Wisdom B1-B2, (empty), Truth, Strength B1, Strength+Courage B2, Courage B1

- When you pick up an item, you actually get the first occurence of its item id (with or without the "ready" bit set) in the trader's list, not necessarily the selected slot. Then that slot and the 8th next one are taken out, and everything from there to the next 7F/FF gets shifted by 2 bytes


By taking/avoiding specific paths on the maps, you can setup the trader to have almost any item you want (within some restrictions due to map layouts). When you pick up an item, map data gets shifted by half a row and you can overlap it with new paths (allowing more items). However the top-left corner of Wisdom B1 and bottom-left corner of Floor 2 will always give value 7F (a filled quarter row from a long east/west hall), so only Floor 1 and 2 can generate trader items.

With that, I've set up a trader route that gets:

- Name entry: HERO_MILO_PYRA__FTTTTTTT (8 letters) for Super Flail, 2 Light Robes, a few spares to sell, and map items unlocked
- Floor 1 map: 3 Light Blades, Light Armor, Light Shield, Magic Ring, Barrier Ring, Cell Key
- Floor 1 with shifted data: Medallion, 2 Magic Rings, 3 Barrier Rings
- Floor 2 map: Mithril Armor, Mithril Hood, Barrier Ring, Vial of Tears

This skips the Floor 2 redo (early medallion), Light Shield backtracking, Floor 5 redo (early Light Armor / Vial of Tears) and part of Floor 4, while also giving everyone unlimited Bolt attacks, 1.56x total defense and 48% magic damage (each barrier ring is a passive +25% defense and -20% magic damage, each magic ring is -25% magic damage). Pyra doesn't even need a weapon anymore, either.

So now most of the Labyrinth Proper becomes a literal walk in the park, barely anything even hurts at all, and just killing everything on the way is already enough to fight Dark Sol (I finished at level 32).



Mr. Brax's text is more appropriate than ever


But it gets even better: during my runs and testing, I'd consistently get a broken tavern after Floor 3 (either a repeat of Pyra's cutscene or a softlock/crash) or sometimes a trader item from Floor 2's map would be mysteriously missing but later show up again, and I went to find out what was going on.

Simply opening a shop with over 64 items listed (enter/exit the trader) will overwrite variables past the item list ($3290 in RAM):
- The 66th item is replaced with 00 (bronze knife)
- The 68th item sets up the next castle cutscene (used for plot advances)
- The 69th item sets up the next tavern cutscene

So what if you get at least 68 items, and the 68th item just happens to be 0C (battle hammer)? Visiting the castle next will load the ending cutscene and finish the game!

That cuts another hour from the run (sub 3 is possible), but also cuts all of the fun with late game (finish the Trials, then almost instantly done), so maybe it should be its own category ...
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/498333129


This also seems fully consistent between emulators and console (I did my runs on console+cart, and all the route planning/testing on emulator).