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I had been thinking about TASing this game on and off and watching Jeff's awesome run was the last straw. I've been looking into more things about this game and have a WIP TAS at about an hour. (http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1471&start=40) Anyway, I got a lot of good ideas from Jeff's run and posts on TASvideos and wanted to return the favor with some things that might help an SDA run. Not everything is going to be helpful since in a TAS I can control the size of random mobs, manipulate chest amounts and make tremor hit everything.

First of all, text is displayed one character at a time so you really should give your main a one-letter name. You do not need the skull at all. Dungeon Destard is fastest from the altar and Shame and Despise are faster when done from their entrances than from the altar room. If you have the key and Gate magic it is faster to exit from those two, Gate to Britain and get back to the altar from Hythloth. Even if you do Despise from the altar, you can pick a different route on level 8 of Despise to avoid the room with the reaper that often puts you to sleep in a long and painful fight. Finally, giving every last gold piece to a beggar gives you both compassion and sacrifice which means you don't need to give blood.

About routing, I pick the paladin because he has the highest starting xp and most valuable equipment to sell. He starts in Trinisic too, so you can immediately sell your armor, buy a bow and start fighting. In the TAS I do 11 random fights. The gold from that plus my equipment plus a deathwarp is enough for the key and the xp gets me to level 4. A deathwarp in Zircon's forge is very convenient; you can effectively bank your gold by buying weapons, get the rune and then get back to Lord British with bonus gold. The reason this is so great is because having the key early allows for completely eliminating backtracking. Getting the gold completely from random encounters may not be practical in real time but you could pad it out with town chests for a small and easily recoverable virtue loss.

Now in the dungeons things are definitely going to be different. Level 4 paladin has 23 MP so you can use energy but not Gate or Tremor. I fix that by feeling up some orbs in Deceit. I still need to solo some big room fights in Deceit and I do it by casting Energy and tricking the enemies into killing themselves. That strategy saves a lot of time over straight out attacking because it avoids the text describing your attacks and the enemies' death. You don't get xp but you don't need it. This should save time in many places. If you have other party members you can have them step out of the room while the main hero plays decoy. After the battle you go to where the main ends up so he can't run if you want to progress. About Tremor, the chances to take out 7 or 8 enemies in one shot is probably only 1% or so. No problem in a TAS Smiley

Another big route difference is that I use Gate quite a bit instead of sailing around. The encounter rate on the ship is very low so avoiding ship travel speeds things up. With Gate you can warp to shrine of spirituality or black stone when the moons are right. One warning about Gate is that it resets your ships so you will need to get a new one.

For compassion and sacrifice I use several beggars that I pass by and pad the rest out with the beggar in Serpent's Hold who is by far the fastest. Otherwise I don't have anything to add for gaining virtue.

Throughout the TAS I trigger encounters faster by walking over higher-rate terrain. I posted the details on TASvideos but basically the way the algorithm works with the RNG is that a step on higher-rate terrain may actually advance the encounter accumulator more than on lower-rate terrain. Over time it will even out though. The point is that in a TAS I can see the actual numbers and tweak my path to manipulate encounters sooner so you can't do quite as well in real time. I've disassembled a few other algorithms as well, just check that thread.

I've been amazed at how SDA runs are able to incorporate techniques that I thought would be limited to TAS, so good luck using this in your run!
Thread title:  
Edit history:
presjpolk: 2013-12-26 03:59:05 pm
HELLO!
I do wonder how many of these strats are practical in a life run. As a kid casually I *loved* the Energy spell, but is it reliable against enemies with missile attacks?

So you couldn't find any virtue underflows either? Blast.  I tried my best. When I looked into beating Feasel's time, the only thing I didn't try was the skull but I remember using that repeatedly as a kid once, and sure enough, my virtues cratered. Smiley

And yeah I concluded the biggest way to beat Feasel's run was better Tremor luck, particularly in the Abyss. So I'm routing Warriors of Destiny NES instead. Smiley
Videogame Master
I love Ultima IV! I finished Master System version in 2 hours and 44 minutes, NES version is very similar SMS version but NES is more easy to play, I watched the current world record...well done!



Stygian abyss is hard to complete without Negate magic, I did this record does 7 or 8 years ago and I don't remember if other tactics is better to improve last dungeon!
HELLO!
I think your video cut off. It's missing the first 2:38:xx
Haven't played that SMS version but it actually looks closer to the PC version from what I can see there. The comment about Negate also sounds more like the PC version than NES.

Anyway, I was curious about how tough it would be to adapt my TAS route for real-time play. It's not that bad. The main changes are getting Geoff and Shamino for their equipment and setting up a badass duo for most of the action. That is, a paladin with tweaked MP, xbow and axe and the mage for extra magic power (including tremor). These two have a lot of options depending on the setup of the dungeon room. In most cases Mariah will usually cast a spell or two then retreat and let the paladin clean up. xbow gives much better attack than bow for a very low price compared to the +1 bow. It allows for one-shotting a lot of common enemies that need two with bow and only a few of the most powerful enemies can take more than two hits from it.

This route only needs to shop for herbs once. I played it out and it the limiting herb was ash. Ash is in most of the attack magics so it is generally possible to conserve it by using more physical attacks. The ice spell can also be useful - it uses pearl and mandrake and hits harder than the xbow. Exiting half the dungeons and not fighting so many rooms also helps conserve herbs since that means less fighting.

There was no problem getting enough fights for valor. The initial grind sequence probably helps with that. Gate saves a lot of time and avoids a lot of sailing where those stupid pirates pop up in front of you.

Route:
Pick Paladin
Trinsic: Sell Chain, buy bow, get rune
Gate to Moonglow
Good time to get black stone since I am here and need tons of gold. Wait a full cycle after getting stone. Get poisoned and stay on swamp for more fights. Don't walk too much though.
Gate to Jhelom
(Cycle moongates to one before SB)
Jhelom: Get Geoff
Gate to Skara Brae. Walk through swamp and poison Geoff on the way.
(Wait for moongate to get close to cycle for Minoc)
Skara Brae: Get Shamino
Gate to Minoc. Grind for remaining gold. Need 1100 total. Tried this twice and had really bad luck once with only 800 at this point but got luckier another time with 1200. Could sell more to make this safer - Geoff's Axe or leather - because next gold target is easier to hit.
Minoc: Sell Shamino's sword and buy +2 sword. Beggar, get rune, deathwarp
Castle Britain: Levelup, rune of spir, chests. Transfer everyone's equipment to main and drop off others at hostel. (I think this is faster than killing them off because some menus are simplified.)
Get a ship and sail to Buc den. Wait for encounter before sailing, then do another one near Paws and another one by Den if necessary.
Buc den: Sell all equipment except axe. With a little more gold including deathwarp I'll have 3400, enough for key and xbow. Also get herbs and give rest of gold to beggar. Ready axe and xbow for a pretty badass paladin.
Sail to Paws. Trigger a land fight to get gold for beggar
Paws: Beggar, rune of humility
Sail to Britain, get another fight outside on land.
Britain town: Get rune and do beggar in town
Castle Britain: Reaper *a lot - 15 or so (need to figure this out) then hythloth and balloon
Balloon to Serpent's Hold
Serpent's Hold: Beggar*5
Balloon to Cove
Cove: Talk to Mentallion, get candle
Fly to Spine, get white stone
Fly north and head to Yew. Need to get a fight in if no gold.
Yew: Flamis*a lot, 10-12 or so, rune, beggar. Now all virtues except valor are ready for avatarhood.
-On leaving Yew at Full/second half moons I had just enough time to hit shrine and get to gate for Britain. Maybe a phase after that can work but no more. Decide whether to do shrine based on that.
After gating to Britain, board the waiting ship. Sail to shrine of compassion and hit that.
Back to ship, get horn from island and continue to Moonglow. Sail through break in shoals and park ship there.
Pick up Mariah, get runes and spells.
Back to ship, visit Lycaeum for book
On to dungeon Deceit! Touch 4x orbs to get going with tremor. Get stone and need to backtrack for last orb. Then exit.
Back to ship, hit shrine of honesty. Sail up river to Shame.
Descend into Shame, get stone and take stairs
Gate to Britain. Then walk north to Despise.
Descend into Despise, get stone and take stairs
At this point moons should be close to or at double full. Gate to Minoc and hit shrine of Spirituality.
Walk to shrine of Sacrifice and hit that shrine as well.
(Now moons are close to double new so we could gate to Moonglow for black stone. But we already have it.)
Gate to Britain and enter Castle. Go to Hythloth and begin the main dungeon crawl.
Hythloth->Altar of Love->Covetous
Get the orange stone then head back down to Altar of Courage
Now go to dungeon Destard and get the red stone without a fight. Back to Altar.
Get the key of courage. Then cut through Shame to Altar of Truth.
Enter dungeon Wrong and get green stone. Back to Altar.
Get the key of truth. Then cut through hythloth to altar of love and get that key as well.
Leave altar and cast Exit, it doesn't matter which dungeon. Wrong is fastest.
Gate to Trinsic and visit shrine of Honor. May need a few extra steps for meditate cooldown but probably all right.
-The swamp guarding this shrine is likely to poison us. Leave Mariah poisoned and let her die slowly. If she stays alive for a little bit her MP can be useful against pirates.
(If skipped shrine of Justice earlier, Gate to Yew and do that now.)
Gate to Magincia. Procure a ship.
Sail south to get bell. Then back north and east around the Isle of Avatar towards shrine of humility.
Blow the horn, visit shrine.
Gate to Jhelom. Get another ship. (can enter town first if no ships appear)
Jhelom: Get the rune
Should have had more than enough battles by now to visit shrine of Valor and finish Avatarhood.
Seek now to conquer the Abyss - sail to Isle of Avatar, enter abyss and finish things. Blink from any remaining fights.
I timed myself with this route and was able to beat Feasel's time easily. I had very poor execution and not great luck. I think this route can get down to 1:40 or maybe better.
HELLO!
The only question I'd have is, if you're depending on a duo for combat, are you going to be strong enough to *do* the Abyss reliably?

This is exciting though. Are you going to bea ble to stream it?
You only have the avatar for the abyss regardless of how big your party is before then. You do have only the duo for all of the dungeon crawling, but by the time you do that you have a pretty badass duo. I didn't have much trouble, the only concern is conserving ash. Using ice as the magic missile spell of choice helps a lot with that.
HELLO!
That's my point: If you're using a duo for the earlier dungeons, then lose half your duo for the abyss... but ok. Smiley
Run is done and up on TASvideos with final time of 58:23.98. I wrote up a commentary to go with the run and a lua script that lights up the dungeons since a TAS skips casting light. Unfortunately the youtube encode doesn't have the subtitles and the downloadable video doesn't have the dungeons lit up. So I have to recommend playing back in FCEUX with the lightup lua script if possible. At least download the video for the subtitles.
http://tasvideos.org/2809M.html
Learning to Stream
Quote from TheAxeMan:
Run is done and up on TASvideos with final time of 58:23.98. I wrote up a commentary to go with the run and a lua script that lights up the dungeons since a TAS skips casting light. Unfortunately the youtube encode doesn't have the subtitles and the downloadable video doesn't have the dungeons lit up. So I have to recommend playing back in FCEUX with the lightup lua script if possible. At least download the video for the subtitles.
http://tasvideos.org/2809M.html


DEFINITELY watch it with the subtitles. TheAxeMan does a PHENOMENAL job with explaining EVERYTHING! Awesome details, fun facts and incredibly entertaining to boot! I learned more in this sub hour run then I ever read in a book or guide for this game.