Suikoden II

2015-12-11 02:06:25 pm

All the things

Hey all, long time no post.

I'm working on prettying up a near-final version of my notes for any% to be posted. Until that goes up, though, I wanted to bring up a few of the major changes that are coming to it.

-No more Kindness Early. Much earlier, I calculated that getting Kindness Early is about as fast as progressing without it, at least through SDS, Abom, and Pest Rat. At the time it was correct, but since then I've revisited the strategies used against all of those bosses. In the end, I found better strategies for each of the bosses that minimize the time lost compared to having Kindness for those fights. The end difference ends up being something on the order of 2-3 minutes. The new strats are fairly creative, however there are more variables to mess with that determine what the fastest actions are. Getting good luck can improve the time further than the typical consistent strats as well.

-Nanami leveling route. I had to play with this quite a bit since there are so many battles where she gets additional experience. This is a relatively minor one in the long run since the extra levels only translate to an additional 4-6% chance of hitting Luca, but it's important from the standpoint that it works without major time investment. Quick summary: have 3 people with you for leveling at the Border, try to kill her off vs Abomination, and keep a full party at Worm to wind up with level 39 for Luca. Luc's leveling route is also related to hers, but it isn't as strict.

-No Shin. While Shin seems super-fast to use and switch to in Tinto, he has some hidden time costs. The first is loss of time vs Worm for setting up his deaths. Second is the time vs Luca for the same reason. The third is the swap to and from having Kindness for Tinto. The last is the sum of menuing necessary to get him going. Instead, I came up with some strategies that leave Kindness on Nanami for Tinto and should overall save 45-60 seconds as a result.

-Rune changes. This is a pretty big one because it makes use of some otherwise completely overlooked runes. The better strategies for a lot of the boss battles only work because of Spark, and additionally Resurrection replaces Wind on Riou for dealing with a few mobs. Resurrection is great since Riou gets an affinity bonus for it, and it allows some strategies to work in Tinto that would otherwise be a lot trickier.

-Menuing reduction. This is a big one throughout, but the main goal is achieving everything while minimizing shop visits, total number of times entering menus, and the actual number of actions needed to be performed in menus. I found that I was underestimating menu losses in a lot of earlier attempts, so the difference from this one does show some difference. This also includes reducing the number of items I need to buy/sell/equip to make my end strategies possible.

-Luck reduction/consistency. With the exception of Family Attack missing on Luca, every battle strategy I have should be consistent or have a reasonably-timed backup strategy. Basically it works out most times that a difference between good luck and bad luck on a boss is about ~20 seconds of loss. Luca is the only one who this does not apply to since whiffing a Family Attack has no backup strat that can dish out damage quick enough.

-Duel changes. This is pretty minor, but since stats for duel characters were found recently I recalibrated some of the times I sharpen weapons or do certain equips to minimize the number of hits needed to win duels. It also is used to better justify why I pick up certain items, such as Fire Emblem and Friendship rune.

-Using Tsai as the final Kindness bearer. This has a number of reasons, but works out pretty well in a lot of the L'Ren fights. This makes Beast Rune perfectly consistent, however the time with Seed and Culgan is a bit more variable. Also, I use Eilie as the last member of the party for Unite Attacks because she has a high enough speed rating that she will never interfere with Rina's position as Uniter, but also to help a little early game where a high MAG stat can give faster strategies against SDS and Abom.

Lots of other minor changes came up to make this possible, but in the end I think that this route is around 6-7 minutes faster than the prior Shin route, and about 2-3 minutes faster than the route I showed on stream a couple months ago with a 6:12 time. I'm pretty pleased with it overall; it makes use of a lot of characters who would have otherwise been useless, and makes use of other mechanics that weren't really explored earlier. There are still some possible places where it can come down further, but I'll post those after the route notes are posted.

Hey all, long time no post.

I'm working on prettying up a near-final version of my notes for any% to be posted. Until that goes up, though, I wanted to bring up a few of the major changes that are coming to it.

-No more Kindness Early. Much earlier, I calculated that getting Kindness Early is about as fast as progressing without it, at least through SDS, Abom, and Pest Rat. At the time it was correct, but since then I've revisited the strategies used against all of those bosses. In the end, I found better strategies for each of the bosses that minimize the time lost compared to having Kindness for those fights. The end difference ends up being something on the order of 2-3 minutes. The new strats are fairly creative, however there are more variables to mess with that determine what the fastest actions are. Getting good luck can improve the time further than the typical consistent strats as well.

-Nanami leveling route. I had to play with this quite a bit since there are so many battles where she gets additional experience. This is a relatively minor one in  the long run since the extra levels only translate to an additional 4-6% chance of hitting Luca, but it's important from the standpoint that it works without major time investment. Quick summary: have 3 people with you for leveling at the Border, try to kill her off vs Abomination, and keep a full party at Worm to wind up with level 39 for Luca. Luc's leveling route is also related to hers, but it isn't as strict.

-No Shin. While Shin seems super-fast to use and switch to in Tinto, he has some hidden time costs. The first is loss of time vs Worm for setting up his deaths. Second is the time vs Luca for the same reason. The third is the swap to and from having Kindness for Tinto. The last is the sum of menuing necessary to get him going. Instead, I came up with some strategies that leave Kindness on Nanami for Tinto and should overall save 45-60 seconds as a result.

-Rune changes. This is a pretty big one because it makes use of some otherwise completely overlooked runes. The better strategies for a lot of the boss battles only work because of Spark, and additionally Resurrection replaces Wind on Riou for dealing with a few mobs. Resurrection is great since Riou gets an affinity bonus for it, and it allows some strategies to work in Tinto that would otherwise be a lot trickier.

-Menuing reduction. This is a big one throughout, but the main goal is achieving everything while minimizing shop visits, total number of times entering menus, and the actual number of actions needed to be performed in menus. I found that I was underestimating menu losses in a lot of earlier attempts, so the difference from this one does show some difference. This also includes reducing the number of items I need to buy/sell/equip to make my end strategies possible.

-Luck reduction/consistency. With the exception of Family Attack missing on Luca, every battle strategy I have should be consistent or have a reasonably-timed backup strategy. Basically it works out most times that a difference between good luck and bad luck on a boss is about ~20 seconds of loss. Luca is the only one who this does not apply to since whiffing a Family Attack has no backup strat that can dish out damage quick enough.

-Duel changes. This is pretty minor, but since stats for duel characters were found recently I recalibrated some of the times I sharpen weapons or do certain equips to minimize the number of hits needed to win duels. It also is used to better justify why I pick up certain items, such as Fire Emblem and Friendship rune.

-Using Tsai as the final Kindness bearer. This has a number of reasons, but works out pretty well in a lot of the L'Ren fights. This makes Beast Rune perfectly consistent, however the time with Seed and Culgan is a bit more variable. Also, I use Eilie as the last member of the party for Unite Attacks because she has a high enough speed rating that she will never interfere with Rina's position as Uniter, but also to help a little early game where a high MAG stat can give faster strategies against SDS and Abom.

Lots of other minor changes came up to make this possible, but in the end I think that this route is around 6-7 minutes faster than the prior Shin route, and about 2-3 minutes faster than the route I showed on stream a couple months ago with a 6:12 time. I'm pretty pleased with it overall; it makes use of a lot of characters who would have otherwise been useless, and makes use of other mechanics that weren't really explored earlier. There are still some possible places where it can come down further, but I'll post those after the route notes are posted.

Omnigamer

2016-05-06 01:18:20 pm

All the things

Nothing majorly new to report, but I wanted to coalesce some thoughts.

I don't see any remaining major time saves in the current route barring major new discoveries/bugs. There are a lot of minor differences between the routes of current active runners, but for the most part it just comes down to minor menu differences and accounting for luck/consistency tradeoffs. My route is much more oriented towards safety where need be, but should be less susceptible to random variation in STR/MAG/TEC/SPD stats. This includes things like grabbing the Fire Emblem in the Sewers, taking the Magic Ring from Viki, and grabbing the Karate Gear from Chaco. Some of these could be eliminated in the interest of saving time, but in my estimation you can save at most 30 seconds from chopping out the menuing while making otherwise simple segments more risky.

Major things that would help if a method were discovered:
-Killing Solon Zhee at North Window Battle. Currently less than a 1% chance of succeeding, and very dangerous to even attempt. Potentially saves minutes though.
-Recruit Amada early. Currently it just softlocks the game, but would save minutes if possible.
-Tai Ho skip. Please.

Minor improvements that don't have a means yet:
-Reduce to only 1 or 0 Arrange trips. I've minimized the number of moves and times to Arrange so far, but for optimal loadouts the best bet is still 2 Arranges (once for Kiba prep, the other for Templton).
-Better money route. Tai Ho still throws a wrench into money stuff early on, but a more optimal money route can save some time with shopping trips and leveling Riou's weapon.
-More consistent early-game. Failed escapes aside, having to hunt out specific battles is a huge time sink if unlucky. I worked out some alternatives assuming a longer Mist Monster fight where any number of your front row dies, but consistency at Flik is a big issue since the alternatives don't get me to level 8. I don't think there will be a way to improve Sindar.
-Removing some menus. It's hard to say which at present, but alternative strats in Gregminster, Tinto, Greenhill may lead to knocking off a menu or two. Most of the things I've checked lead to a pretty drastic drop in consistency or lose time elsewhere, though.
-Slightly different Luca strats. I don't like having to deal with two 1/8 failure chances when fighting him, and would like to get rid of that however possible. I can't think of anything that would be efficient enough to help, though.
-Other Kindness opportunities. Specifically, we are to the point where a REALLY good run could have a Kindness point given to Tsai in L'Ren. I need to think about where else to have him die off to counter this possibility. Specifically considering the Border soldier battles or waiting a turn during the White Wolves fights post-Luca.

I did a little bit of digging for TE last week as well. I think the best overall path is to recruit along the way until just after Greenhill. On the way back from Greenhill, you can make a detour to Radat to recruit Stallion and include him in your party to Matilda to pick up the remaining wayward recruits. Then once Matilda is done, before heading to the War Room, make a detour and use Viki to pick up the remaining recruits + Templton on the Ryube side. This allows for CL3 prior to Gregminster and otherwise beats out the travel time of any other combination of recruits. This also beats waiting until the end and doing a second trip to Gregminster by 2-3 minutes or more. The tricky part is ensuring CL2 by the time you visit Greenhill, but there are a number of options for this. I still don't think I'll be truly working on TE any time soon, but it's a fun thought exercise for now. I estimate a good time for TE should be at or below 7:15 using this type of route.

And that pretty much sums it up. My time is down to 5:57:37 or so, but was still hampered by about 8 minutes due to luck. Sub-5:50 is possible, but the luck required would be incredible throughout the run. I think my goal time is somewhere in the 5:50-5:52 range, which assumes generally better than average luck and hitting all of the major luck points (ie, Kiba). We'll see what happens.

Oh, and watch the run at RPGLB next week! Should be Tuesday 5/10 at 4:30 AM UTC.

Nothing majorly new to report, but I wanted to coalesce some thoughts.

I don't see any remaining major time saves in the current route barring major new discoveries/bugs. There are a lot of minor differences between the routes of current active runners, but for the most part it just comes down to minor menu differences and accounting for luck/consistency tradeoffs. My route is much more oriented towards safety where need be, but should be less susceptible to random variation in STR/MAG/TEC/SPD stats. This includes things like  grabbing the Fire Emblem in the Sewers, taking the Magic Ring from Viki, and grabbing the Karate Gear from Chaco. Some of these could be eliminated in the interest of saving time, but in my estimation you can save at most 30 seconds from chopping out the menuing while making otherwise simple segments more risky.

Major things that would help if a method were discovered:
-Killing Solon Zhee at North Window Battle. Currently less than a 1% chance of succeeding, and very dangerous to even attempt. Potentially saves minutes though.
-Recruit Amada early. Currently it just softlocks the game, but would save minutes if possible.
-Tai Ho skip. Please.

Minor improvements that don't have a means yet:
-Reduce to only 1 or 0 Arrange trips. I've minimized the number of moves and times to Arrange so far, but for optimal loadouts the best bet is still 2 Arranges (once for Kiba prep, the other for Templton).
-Better money route. Tai Ho still throws a wrench into money stuff early on, but a more optimal money route can save some time with shopping trips and leveling Riou's weapon.
-More consistent early-game. Failed escapes aside, having to hunt out specific battles is a huge time sink if unlucky. I worked out some alternatives assuming a longer Mist Monster fight where any number of your front row dies, but consistency at Flik is a big issue since the alternatives don't get me to level 8. I don't think there will be a way to improve Sindar.
-Removing some menus. It's hard to say which at present, but alternative strats in Gregminster, Tinto, Greenhill may lead to knocking off a menu or two. Most of the things I've checked lead to a pretty drastic drop in consistency or lose time elsewhere, though.
-Slightly different Luca strats. I don't like having to deal with two 1/8 failure chances when fighting him, and would like to get rid of that however possible. I can't think of anything that would be efficient enough to help, though.
-Other Kindness opportunities. Specifically, we are to the point where a REALLY good run could have a Kindness point given to Tsai in L'Ren. I need to think about where else to have him die off to counter this possibility. Specifically considering the Border soldier battles or waiting a turn during the White Wolves fights post-Luca.

I did a little bit of digging for TE last week as well. I think the best overall path is to recruit along the way until just after Greenhill. On the way back from Greenhill, you can make a detour to Radat to recruit Stallion and include him in your party to Matilda to pick up the remaining wayward recruits. Then once Matilda is done, before heading to the War Room, make a detour and use Viki to pick up the remaining recruits + Templton on the Ryube side. This allows for CL3 prior to Gregminster and otherwise beats out the travel time of any other combination of recruits. This also beats waiting until the end and doing a second trip to Gregminster by 2-3 minutes or more. The tricky part is ensuring CL2 by the time you visit Greenhill, but there are a number of options for this. I still don't think I'll be truly working on TE any time soon, but it's a fun thought exercise for now. I estimate a good time for TE should be at or below 7:15 using this type of route.

And that pretty much sums it up. My time is down to 5:57:37 or so, but was still hampered by about 8 minutes due to luck. Sub-5:50 is possible, but the luck required would be incredible throughout the run. I think my goal time is somewhere in the 5:50-5:52 range, which assumes generally better than average luck and hitting all of the major luck points (ie, Kiba). We'll see what happens.

Oh, and watch the run at RPGLB next week! Should be Tuesday 5/10 at 4:30 AM UTC.