Vandal Hearts

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2010-03-22 12:52:55 pm

2010-03-21 07:09:03 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

5-4 is done, short segment like I thought, and I got the wyrmfang. 5-5 is going to take a while to get down though, 6 turns and I may end up breaking the stage in half if things get luck dependent. So far, I can already tell I can't do the same thing from my test run.

Edit:
I forgot to mention I gained 5 minutes on the test run. Hopefully the next stage doesn't prove to be too much of a pain. The following one was pretty brain dead, if I remember correctly, except for the last section, but overall should be easy. Anyway, I'll be focusing on getting through the Sabina fight for now. I think this is where the length of the stages increase quite a bit.

Also, some notes on 5-4:

I had to kill a few extra enemies to make sure Zohar got up to 25, and Eleni gets there as well. I'm also trying to get Sara and Huxley up to 25 for their atk-def buff spell, which would have been helpful in 5-5 for killing off the armors that start out behind me. 2 Salamanders takes less time than letting them have 4 rounds of movement, and after that first round I would need to have the mages lag behind in order to take them out, which isn't very good since that delays how soon I can kill Sabina. Also, the healers cause quite a bit of pain in the first couple rounds since I can't leave any enemy units damaged to be killed next round.

5-4 is done, short segment like I thought, and I got the wyrmfang. 5-5 is going to take a while to get down though, 6 turns and I may end up breaking the stage in half if things get luck dependent. So far, I can already tell I can't do the same thing from my test run.

Edit:
I forgot to mention I gained 5 minutes on the test run. Hopefully the next stage doesn't prove to be too much of a pain. The following one was pretty brain dead, if I remember correctly, except for the last section, but overall should be easy. Anyway, I'll be focusing on getting through the Sabina fight for now. I think this is where the length of the stages increase quite a bit.

Also, some notes on 5-4:

I had to kill a few extra enemies to make sure Zohar got up to 25, and Eleni gets there as well. I'm also trying to get Sara and Huxley up to 25 for their atk-def buff spell, which would have been helpful in 5-5 for killing off the armors that start out behind me. 2 Salamanders takes less time than letting them have 4 rounds of movement, and after that first round I would need to have the mages lag behind in order to take them out, which isn't very good since that delays how soon I can kill Sabina. Also, the healers cause quite a bit of pain in the first couple rounds since I can't leave any enemy units damaged to be killed next round.

ZenicReverie

2010-03-28 05:20:34 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

I know what I'm going to be doing for 5-5 now. Just need to pull it off. Two segments for this stage and I know where I'm breaking it up (turn 3 after I move my guys). This gives me the best chance to manipulate all of the hits next turn and to land a spellbind (my first one I think) and make sure it lasts for the rest of the battle. So long as that archer doesn't regain control, I don't lose any guys, which is pretty cool for this stage. Turn 3 enemy has a mage I need to make sure he does a certain spell. After that it's just random blocking that could kill the segment (well that and bad input).

I should have the first segment done tonight hopefully. Oh, and I've completed a short test of the strategy that was a little sloppy and still managed a 10 minute saving over the previous test run, so it'll be at least another 10 minutes off the estimate.

ZenicReverie

2010-04-01 02:41:37 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

So, I haven't touched the game since the last post. I've been so lazy/busy, but would this game have a deaths category? Would a run where none of the main characters died be a worthwhile category? On the one hand it feels arbitrary for these types of games to have a no death category. Like if Warcraft 3 had no deaths it'd be like, yeah right. Or maybe Starcraft is a better example? Wait, do those have deaths? I'll go check...

mikwuyma

2010-04-01 07:05:49 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

How would this game have a deaths category? Killing off your party doesn't save time in this game because you flat-out lose.

ZenicReverie

2010-04-01 09:37:09 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from mikwuyma:

How would this game have a deaths category? Killing off your party doesn't save time in this game because you flat-out lose.

Yeah... that was one of my April 1st posts, feel free to pay no attention to any of them...

ZenicReverie

2010-04-07 12:05:22 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

I think I got a good segment for the first part of this stage. Just over 6 minutes for this first part. The next turn is nearly all luck with bad blocks and spell choice, but if that goes well, it's fairly smooth after that.

Some Notes:
It's actually slower to release the water to wash away the armors than to let them have their turn by about 5 seconds.
There's no loading screen when you load an in-battle save on this stage. Very odd.
I noticed this a few stages ago, but if you press and hold X while on a blank space and then move the cursor, the cursor will move at top speed. Not useful.

Not sure how soon I'll finish the stage since I thought this wouldn't take long at all.

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2010-06-06 12:59:32 am

2010-05-28 10:17:26 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

So, I've taken some time off from the run, but I'm back at it now. I had a good segment going this morning, but it was ruined in the last part by some bad luck costing me about 30 seconds. The archer woke up from paralysis, and the last AI mage decided to cast a different spell and was able to reach one of my guys with it. Normally the AI chooses the Magic Arrow spell, realizes no one is in range and skips their turn, but every so often they choose Rolling Thunder, which has a bigger range, and costs time.

I'm looking to end the segment at 4:34 save time, which is 12 - 13 minutes faster than my last test run for this segment. I think we can safely say that the last test run was pretty much crap at this point. With the improvements I plan for chapter 1, I can assuredly claim that the final run will be sub-6 hours. I may even go through most of chapter 2 and part of three to remove some other small planning and execution errors so long as save timer inconsistency won't look too bad.

Edit:
I might take a 4:35. There must have been some weird thing I did in testing to make the last AI mage not do anything because I haven't been able to make that happen all week. I just recorded a very good segment (except for the mage casting the spell that costs just short of 20 seconds). I'll continue to try tomorrow, but I'm not sure if it'll happen. Either way I'll be moving on to 5-6 soon. So, 5 more stages left, and then I re-record the first 5 stages in chapter 1.

So, I've taken some time off from the run, but I'm back at it now. I had a good segment going this morning, but it was ruined in the last part by some bad luck costing me about 30 seconds. The archer woke up from paralysis, and the last AI mage decided to cast a different spell and was able to reach one of my guys with it. Normally the AI chooses the Magic Arrow spell, realizes no one is in range and skips their turn, but every so often they choose Rolling Thunder, which has a bigger range, and costs time.

I'm looking to end the segment at 4:34 save time, which is 12 - 13 minutes faster than my last test run for this segment. I think we can safely say that the last test run was pretty much crap at this point. With the improvements I plan for chapter 1, I can assuredly claim that the final run will be sub-6 hours. I may even go through most of chapter 2 and part of three to remove some other small planning and execution errors so long as save timer inconsistency won't look too bad.

Edit:
I might take a 4:35. There must have been some weird thing I did in testing to make the last AI mage not do anything because I haven't been able to make that happen all week. I just recorded a very good segment (except for the mage casting the spell that costs just short of 20 seconds). I'll continue to try tomorrow, but I'm not sure if it'll happen. Either way I'll be moving on to 5-6 soon. So, 5 more stages left, and then I re-record the first 5 stages in chapter 1.

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2010-06-07 01:18:52 pm

2010-06-06 02:57:24 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Alright, so I got the AI mage to do what I wanted, too bad it also came with some input errors that cost about 1 - 2 seconds. So I'm moving on to 5-6 now. It's long, but I shouldn't have to split it up since it's fairly straightforward. I need to kill off the enemies as quickly as possible and leave a space open for Leena. There's not a whole lot to do in order to speed things up since I need to wait for the Leena's movement. I may actually end up splitting it because I remember the last four enemies being a problem sometimes.

Edit: I just went through this and it's actually easier than I thought it would be. I just need to get the button presses down for who I need to skip and when. There's only like 3 enemies that end up attacking, and the stage is actually completed on enemy turn 9. I think 5 minutes or so could be saved once I start getting this down.

Edit #2: Of course, I say that and then go on to find 10 things (mostly blocking, and a couple of bad level ups) that could go wrong. Some good news, I'll actually be able to use the moodring on Ash to save 3 - 5 seconds than if I didn't have it, so that'll at least offset the time it took to pick it up. In any case, this might take a couple of weeks to get down, but I'll spend most of next weekend doing this.

Alright, so I got the AI mage to do what I wanted, too bad it also came with some input errors that cost about 1 - 2 seconds. So I'm moving on to 5-6 now. It's long, but I shouldn't have to split it up since it's fairly straightforward. I need to kill off the enemies as quickly as possible and leave a space open for Leena. There's not a whole lot to do in order to speed things up since I need to wait for the Leena's movement. I may actually end up splitting it because I remember the last four enemies being a problem sometimes.

Edit: I just went through this and it's actually easier than I thought it would be. I just need to get the button presses down for who I need to skip and when. There's only like 3 enemies that end up attacking, and the stage is actually completed on enemy turn 9. I think 5 minutes or so could be saved once I start getting this down.

Edit #2: Of course, I say that and then go on to find 10 things (mostly blocking, and a couple of bad level ups) that could go wrong. Some good news, I'll actually be able to use the moodring on Ash to save 3 - 5 seconds than if I didn't have it, so that'll at least offset the time it took to pick it up. In any case, this might take a couple of weeks to get down, but I'll spend most of next weekend doing this.

ZenicReverie

2010-06-25 01:43:22 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

Starting chapter 6 and last 4 segments until the end. Of course, I still have the first 5 to redo, but I'll count that afterward. Time as of chapter 6 is a high 4:48.

The next stage will probably take the most planning since it's the longest. I have to figure out a few things like who should be surviving and who I can let die. Doing without Holy H2O seems completely possible.

Then there's this youtube video:

I can't reproduce Kane's AI decided to come down and cast Plasma Wave. I've never seen it done before when I've played through, and even with the same sort of setup, I can't seem to reproduce it. I'll probably have to go on without doing it unless it can be explained why he would choose to do that.

ZenicReverie

2010-06-27 12:31:15 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

Alright, I was so close I decided to play through the rest of the game to get a better estimate (and I wanted to see if I could get away with not upgrading armor). 5:50 isn't too bad considering some of the times were pretty close. I'm thinking possibly another 10 may come off, and possibly more with redoing most of chapter 1.

There's a lot of possible blocking in 6-1, so I'm considering breaking it up at about turn 3 because I have some item stuff to do and shopping for new weapons before the stage starts and it's annoying to do that over and over again (not that the stage itself isn't. I skip upgrading my armor this time though as it's mostly not necessary, and I ignore the additional weapons I gain as well as ignore upgrading the weapons of Clint, Grog, and Dolan.

So 6-1 specifically, I use healing wave twice on most of my people, so I'm only really saving time on buying the Holy H2O and saving Clint as Grog and Dolan die to the first blast. Everyone else needs to be saved for my strategy to work: none of the enemy mages gets a chance to use a spell, and only one archer gets a shot off.

6-2: fairly straightforward, rushing with Amon, Ash, and Kira kills off most of the enemies, which causes the last two far away bats to move closer. This allows me to kill them off on turn 3.

6-3: this one will take a little work. It'll definitely be done on turn 3, but I haven't decided on how that will be accomplished exactly. One thing to note is that there are some conversations that occur after each enemy turn. However, I've found that if you kill Dolan (he's part of the first conversation group, so maybe Sara or Amon would work as well), it will break all of the conversation groups so that none of them occur. Good thing I haven't bothered to level him so killing him off in one turn is a very easy task.

6-4: I need to figure out where everyone's going to go, but I am probably going to lose some people no matter what I do. The enemy mages don't seem to want to target the easy to hit Armors, and will most likely kill off Clint. Turn 3 is definitely possible though even if I lose Clint, Sara, and Huxley.

So now that I know I'm only going to purchase weapon upgrades (except for Clint, Grog, Dolan, Diego [he has the Rune Bow from Sabina]), and have a strategy for the next two stages down, it should only be a couple of weeks before those are done. The strategies for the last two aren't set because there's a lot of little things that change the AI during Xeno's stage, and what I do there will effect what the AI will do during Dolf's stage mostly depending if I level up certain guys or not. Definitely home stretch now though. At least until the end of the game. I still need to do the first 5 stages in chapter 1, but those are short.

Alright, I was so close I decided to play through the rest of the game to get a better estimate (and I wanted to see if I could get away with not upgrading armor). 5:50 isn't too bad considering some of the times were pretty close. I'm thinking possibly another 10 may come off, and possibly more with redoing most of chapter 1.

There's a lot of possible blocking in 6-1, so I'm considering breaking it up at about turn 3 because I have some item stuff to do and shopping for new weapons before the stage starts and it's annoying to do that over and over again (not that the stage itself isn't. I skip upgrading my armor this time though as it's mostly not necessary, and I ignore the additional weapons I gain as well as ignore upgrading the weapons of Clint, Grog, and Dolan.

So 6-1 specifically, I use healing wave twice on most of my people, so I'm only really saving time on buying the Holy H2O and saving Clint as Grog and Dolan die to the first blast. Everyone else needs to be saved for my strategy to work: none of the enemy mages gets a chance to use a spell, and only one archer gets a shot off.

6-2: fairly straightforward, rushing with Amon, Ash, and Kira kills off most of the enemies, which causes the last two far away bats to move closer. This allows me to kill them off on turn 3.

6-3: this one will take a little work. It'll definitely be done on turn 3, but I haven't decided on how that will be accomplished exactly. One thing to note is that there are some conversations that occur after each enemy turn. However, I've found that if you kill Dolan (he's part of the first conversation group, so maybe Sara or Amon would work as well), it will break all of the conversation groups so that none of them occur. Good thing I haven't bothered to level him so killing him off in one turn is a very easy task.

6-4: I need to figure out where everyone's going to go, but I am probably going to lose some people no matter what I do. The enemy mages don't seem to want to target the easy to hit Armors, and will most likely kill off Clint. Turn 3 is definitely possible though even if I lose Clint, Sara, and Huxley.

So now that I know I'm only going to purchase weapon upgrades (except for Clint, Grog, Dolan, Diego [he has the Rune Bow from Sabina]), and have a strategy for the next two stages down, it should only be a couple of weeks before those are done. The strategies for the last two aren't set because there's a lot of little things that change the AI during Xeno's stage, and what I do there will effect what the AI will do during Dolf's stage mostly depending if I level up certain guys or not. Definitely home stretch now though. At least until the end of the game. I still need to do the first 5 stages in chapter 1, but those are short.

ZenicReverie

2010-06-28 12:47:20 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

I've split 6-1. So now there's 4 segments left. I'm glad I split it. These mages go on blocking sprees sometimes. I'm not sure who's actually worse, the mages or priests. Anyway, I'll be working on the rest of the stage and the next before I post again about how the Xeno stage is looking.

ZenicReverie

2010-07-02 07:01:06 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from ZenicReverie:

I've split 6-1. So now there's 4 segments left. I'm glad I split it. These mages go on blocking sprees sometimes. I'm not sure who's actually worse, the mages or priests. Anyway, I'll be working on the rest of the stage and the next before I post again about how the Xeno stage is looking.

I'm going to go back and check, but I think I'm adding steps that I don't need to add. I'm going to look into skipping the purchase of weapons for my ninjas and only use one during 6-1. This will make the other one a target for attacks during the last two levels, but I think I can work with that. Needs a little more testing.

mikwuyma

2010-07-03 06:33:04 am

My feelings on The Demon Rush

I'm surprised you would even consider buying weapons for ninjas, they do almost no damage.

Also, I'm liking the current estimate. Cheesy

How did you shave off so much time? IIRC, your last estimate was 6 hours and 20 minutes.

Kharay1977

2010-07-03 06:52:34 am

Oh the memories... I played VH quite a bit back in the day. Request - If you'll consider it, would you mind updating your first post to reflect some of the bigger time savers? Just in case anyone else is interested in running this game. I mean, I might even be. Used to have a lot of ideas myself on how to shave off time. Can't recall any specific ones at this time though.

ZenicReverie

2010-07-03 11:56:36 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from mikwuyma:

I'm surprised you would even consider buying weapons for ninjas, they do almost no damage.

Also, I'm liking the current estimate. Cheesy

How did you shave off so much time? IIRC, your last estimate was 6 hours and 20 minutes.

Well the last estimate was basically the difference between where I was and the time I had listed for my previous test run. I guess the test run was just that sloppy or something. The new estimate is me running through the rest of the levels in a more professional speedrunning manner. I think a good minute or two was taken off my making 6-2 take 3 turns instead of 4.

As for buying weapons for the ninjas, it's because they do very little damage that I had it in the run because they will often times be able to take down an archer with the latest weapon.

Quote from Kharay1977:

Oh the memories... I played VH quite a bit back in the day. Request - If you'll consider it, would you mind updating your first post to reflect some of the bigger time savers? Just in case anyone else is interested in running this game. I mean, I might even be. Used to have a lot of ideas myself on how to shave off time. Can't recall any specific ones at this time though.

Honestly, everything kind of just fell into place when I thought about the goals and my options for moving everyone. What I'm planning to do is submit this when it's done, and if it gets rejected, I'll put the whole run up on youtube to help any future runners of the game. I'm not sure what the biggest time-savers are, and I could miss something crucial in a description of the strategies used. So, unless someone will be starting a run within the year, I'll keep with this plan.

If it does get rejected (I always look back at older segments and see so many mistakes after the fact that I feel like it could go either way [ExplodingCabage only plays PC games right? ;)] depending on the verifiers), then I don't think I'll be making another run, so I hope someone like you could take the youtube videos and really polish it up.

[quote="mikwuyma"]
I'm surprised you would even consider buying weapons for ninjas, they do almost no damage.

Also, I'm liking the current estimate. :D How did you shave off so much time? IIRC, your last estimate was 6 hours and 20 minutes.
[/quote]
Well the last estimate was basically the difference between where I was and the time I had listed for my previous test run. I guess the test run was just that sloppy or something. The new estimate is me running through the rest of the levels in a more professional speedrunning manner. I think a good minute or two was taken off my making 6-2 take 3 turns instead of 4.

As for buying weapons for the ninjas, it's because they do very little damage that I had it in the run because they will often times be able to take down an archer with the latest weapon.

[quote="Kharay1977"]
Oh the memories... I played VH quite a bit back in the day. Request - If you'll consider it, would you mind updating your first post to reflect some of the bigger time savers? Just in case anyone else is interested in running this game. I mean, I might even be. Used to have a lot of ideas myself on how to shave off time. Can't recall any specific ones at this time though.
[/quote]
Honestly, everything kind of just fell into place when I thought about the goals and my options for moving everyone. What I'm planning to do is submit this when it's done, and if it gets rejected, I'll put the whole run up on youtube to help any future runners of the game. I'm not sure what the biggest time-savers are, and I could miss something crucial in a description of the strategies used. So, unless someone will be starting a run within the year, I'll keep with this plan.

If it does get rejected (I always look back at older segments and see so many mistakes after the fact that I feel like it could go either way [ExplodingCabage only plays PC games right? ;)] depending on the verifiers), then I don't think I'll be making another run, so I hope someone like you could take the youtube videos and really polish it up.

ZenicReverie

2010-07-28 11:31:26 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

I've decided to keep the old segment since I haven't been able to reproduce the luck with Ash blocking. Overall I've found I'm not truly satisfied with this run. I also don't know at this point if using the exploit or not would be a separate category (most likely not), so the run could easily be beaten by one that uses it.

In any case, I'll be finishing this run, so if you were looking forward to it, you'll be able to watch it on youtube most likely. I'm still hoping to finish it by October, but I'm not holding my breath.

A couple things that have held me back during this run:

1) Attempting to segment only on the world map or in towns.
2) Continuing to minimize segments by only using the battle save once per stage (kind of a physical limitation as there's only one slot and I would need more cards to utilize it).

This mentality allowed me to accept some bad luck, and bad performance when I had good luck. Segmenting more heavily would definitely speed up the process of running the game, and save on sanity.

I picked up some unnecessary items, and didn't fully explore which weapon/armor upgrades are truly necessary, instead figuring that stuff out as I went along. I don't think I have it in me to produce an SDA quality run for this game, but I hope this run and videos will encourage someone with more time on their hands to optimize the entire game.

The whole experience has helped me grow as a speedrunner, as the quality really does increase as the segments progress. So instead of killing myself over this 10 seconds lost compared to the minutes throughout the rest of the run, I'll plod on through the last 4 segments I have planned. I hope my reluctance to achieve perfect luck in this one segment is understandable. Who knows, things may change and I may come back to this game in the future if no one else has touched it.

I've decided to keep the old segment since I haven't been able to reproduce the luck with Ash blocking. Overall I've found I'm not truly satisfied with this run. I also don't know at this point if using the exploit or not would be a separate category (most likely not), so the run could easily be beaten by one that uses it.

In any case, I'll be finishing this run, so if you were looking forward to it, you'll be able to watch it on youtube most likely. I'm still hoping to finish it by October, but I'm not holding my breath.

A couple things that have held me back during this run:

1) Attempting to segment only on the world map or in towns.
2) Continuing to minimize segments by only using the battle save once per stage (kind of a physical limitation as there's only one slot and I would need more cards to utilize it).

This mentality allowed me to accept some bad luck, and bad performance when I had good luck. Segmenting more heavily would definitely speed up the process of running the game, and save on sanity.

I picked up some unnecessary items, and didn't fully explore which weapon/armor upgrades are truly necessary, instead figuring that stuff out as I went along. I don't think I have it in me to produce an SDA quality run for this game, but I hope this run and videos will encourage someone with more time on their hands to optimize the entire game.

The whole experience has helped me grow as a speedrunner, as the quality really does increase as the segments progress. So instead of killing myself over this 10 seconds lost compared to the minutes throughout the rest of the run, I'll plod on through the last 4 segments I have planned. I hope my reluctance to achieve perfect luck in this one segment is understandable. Who knows, things may change and I may come back to this game in the future if no one else has touched it.

mikwuyma

2010-07-28 12:00:14 pm

My feelings on The Demon Rush

You should submit this run anyway because I doubt anyone will improve it, and there's still a lot of good planning even if the run isn't perfect (and a game like this is nearly impossible to perfect).

ZenicReverie

2010-07-28 03:29:22 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

:-[
I still don't know.

I'll take it under advisement Mike. Undecided

I don't really want to waste any verifier's time when I'm not sure if I'd even accept the run.

I'm in the middle of moving apartments. I'm going to back-up the previous segments just in case something happens to the recorder during the move. Since dubbing seems to need to happen in real-time, I'll use that time to take notes on mistakes and improvements (probably also start on runner comments). I'll send you my notes and then you can judge on whether it'd be a waste of time for others to take a look at it.

I guess I'm also anxious to get started on future projects, but I feel like I should finish this one first.

As an aside, the save before 6-2 looks like it will be 5:06 in case anyone cares to know the current time of at this position in the run. I've got the motions down for this segment, I just need to get a good recording of it.

getter77

2010-07-28 07:50:23 pm

100% runs=great to watch

I also say finish and submit---construct the foundation! 8) You never know that it might blow somebody away and make their day afterall.

ZenicReverie

2010-07-31 09:19:40 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

6-1 done, on to 6-2. I always seem to underestimate the amount of time that can be saved with better execution, got 5:05 as the save before 6-2. The next stage is pretty easy to execute, and is mainly just luck that there aren't any blocks (it's a running theme for the whole game).

Chromium

2010-08-01 05:47:05 pm

I truly hope you submit this, I love this game and seeing a run of it would be amazing. Just thought i'd let you know there is at least one more person on here who has been following this since the beginning.

ZenicReverie

2010-08-02 12:29:56 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from Chromium:

I truly hope you submit this, I love this game and seeing a run of it would be amazing. Just thought i'd let you know there is at least one more person on here who has been following this since the beginning.

Thanks for the encouragement. I hope the run doesn't disappoint you too much.

ZenicReverie

2010-08-07 08:31:18 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Next segment done, 2 left (Xeno fight, Dolf fight). I'm working on the strategy for Xeno at the moment. I think I have something down. Annoying though because I'm relying on the mage AI once again. I'm trying to minimize the spell casting since it takes up so much time. I need to figure out who not to move, and then get the best of luck to get through this.

I'm at 5:15, and tested out the strategy to get a save at the next point at 5:29, so estimated time drops by another 5 minutes.

ZenicReverie

2010-08-26 03:58:19 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

I've got a strategy down for Xeno. I tested out a few things that would work, but they'd be about a minute slower either way. There have been a couple of really good runs that get ruined by Xeno blocking. He has a really good block rate for a mage, probably because he's level 31 while I'm mostly stuck at 28 or less. I have a successful attempt recorded, but it has some sloppy execution that wastes about 10 seconds and doesn't have the best of luck. I'm trying to get a cleaner looking run even if I don't end up with better luck. So far, I'd estimate 10 - 15 hours trying to get this.

Final time after this segment looks like it'll be 5:24. So I'm lowering the ending estimate down to 5:40. Depending on how I can manipulate the last stage, I'll be trying to push it down closer to 5:35. I'd estimate mistakes in this run probably push 10 minutes. With better luck, better optimization, and better strategies, I can totally see this run pushing the 5 hour mark. I hope that someone will do just that. Someone obviously with more time than myself. Cheesy

I've been streaming attempts when I can. Usually in the early morning before work if I can get myself up a couple of hours earlier to burn through attempts. Usually 6 - 8 am PDT for those interested.

I've got a strategy down for Xeno. I tested out a few things that would work, but they'd be about a minute slower either way. There have been a couple of really good runs that get ruined by Xeno blocking. He has a really good block rate for a mage, probably because he's level 31 while I'm mostly stuck at 28 or less. I have a successful attempt recorded, but it has some sloppy execution that wastes about 10 seconds and doesn't have the best of luck. I'm trying to get a cleaner looking run even if I don't end up with better luck. So far, I'd estimate 10 - 15 hours trying to get this.

Final time after this segment looks like it'll be 5:24. So I'm lowering the ending estimate down to 5:40. Depending on how I can manipulate the last stage, I'll be trying to push it down closer to 5:35. I'd estimate mistakes in this run probably push 10 minutes. With better luck, better optimization, and better strategies, I can totally see this run pushing the 5 hour mark. I hope that someone will do just that. Someone obviously with more time than myself. :D

I've been streaming attempts when I can. Usually in the early morning before work if I can get myself up a couple of hours earlier to burn through attempts. Usually 6 - 8 am PDT for those interested.

ZenicReverie

2010-08-27 08:43:26 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

Well, complain about something and it goes away right? I finished up this segment, saving about 9 seconds. Not the best, but I'll take it. Almost done. I'm definitely going below 5:40. We'll just have to see how far below.

I've got the main strategy down, just need to work out the details of it. Like what order to attack and who should be attacking when. I need to manipulate the mage AI some, so more luck stuffed into this segment. Hopefully not more than a couple of weeks now.