Wild ARMS 4 Speed run

2007-12-05 02:28:43 am

Insanity Prelude

Anybody interested in watching one? I've already done a couple of practice runs but would still love to hear input to see if I can improve the times better.

I started from a New Game, although uploaded Wild ARMS Alter Code F data into it. It provides very minor bonuses, the only real useful one for the purposes of speed running is some extra money.

I've also done some practice runs on Wild ARMS Alter Code F for that matter. Would love to hear if people have interest in watching the game being played quickly.

Thread title:

Carcinogen

Edit history:

Carcinogen: 2007-12-05 02:41:50 am

2007-12-05 02:40:56 am

That's technically a new game + run. That's a little sketchy though, uploading the data from another game for a run here. Probably why we don't have any more .hack runs on the site since Infection.

We have to have a new game run before we can accept a new game +. That means you can't use the data from Alter Code F.

Tide

2007-12-05 02:45:09 am

Insanity Prelude

That's fine. I've made a couple of botches with the equipment in the current run. As long as I have enough for a couple of key pieces or equipment in the last upgrade point, this should be doable. Actually, that's probably the only real big change. At absolute worst, I'll grab a gella card, and use it on Augst.

I really doubt I need to do that though. it may make the final boss more difficult, but he's already killed me 6 gazillion times previously, a few more can't hurt >_>

Should I post down what I have so far?

ZenicReverie

2007-12-05 11:55:52 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

Yeah, post your segments and strategies. I haven't played 4, so I won't be able to help, but others (lurkers) will come out of the shadows once they see some actual work put into a run. I say we need a run of the first wild arms too, I wonder why no one has done one yet. Although, I do remember that game being rather long.

Tide

2007-12-05 05:01:45 pm

Insanity Prelude

Okay. This post will be long since it will basically contain all the work I've done so far from start to finish. As I mentioned, there may be a small minor set back in money, but I think we should still be safe regardless.

There are some things I haven't confirmed yet, like whether running is faster than sliding. Also in battle, I leave the camera on default. This might be slower than the bird's eye view camera. Again, unsure about it. Before starting the game though, I turn off all battle movies and cut ins for characters when they perform special attacks, since this will randomly slow down fights more than necessary. Holding down L1 and R1 while text is scrolling will basically skip it at the fastest speed possible. Naturally, this is what I used for all the dialouge.

Before I go on, this is a planned list of items to get. All of them have uses. But some I may be able to cut back.

Silver Sun - Used for Red Zone twinking. Also gives Yulie some more durability
Gunstar Sign - Not sure how often it triggers. But Raq's critical hit PS + Gunstar + Macha brand should be fairly nasty. On top of that, more crits = more damage. One of them popping up in an Intrude chain or counter will end fights MUCH faster.
Elder Record - Reduces MP by 1/4. Namely for Yulie and Turn shift. Arnaud and Jude also make good use of it.
Witch badge - Boosts Mag+25. Drops Defense. Arnaud has this. Since he needs all the Magic boosting to pump out workable offense. We'll have to accept the Def loss unfortunately.
Fighter badge - Helps in speed twinking. Dropping 25 points of speed allows some Turn Shifting mix as well as turn augumentation if needed
Cat's Paw - This is a pretty big duh
Tiny Flower - As is this. Best accessory main game
8 Fire Gems from Culane and 8 Hi Breaks from Forgotten Railroad. Without randoms, I'm also on a strict gem limit. The Fire gems can be sold at worst. The 8 Hi Breaks are CRUCIAL for beating down the Soldier gauntlet in Silver Star Express
Any type of Gella chests - Unless we want to track down gella cards.
Macha Brand - Yep. Gives Raquel a huge mid game offense boost
Marcus Garb - Boosts Mag by another 20. Doubles MP Cost! But since I'm fighting randoms relatively infrequently, I should get by. Effectively, this is Arnaud's end game armor to boot
2 to 3x Lucky Cards - For the fights with a set pattern and safe time to use. There's a lot of PC death, so getting an EXP boost gets us more option and abilities
Jude's Alter Parts - It's the only way to keep his attack decent. Although he's mostly using OCs, the ATP boost will still help out.
A couple of Dragon Fossils - Namely for HIT boost. We're going to twink for Bullets and reduce Usability to 1.5 since Auto Reload is actually a bad thing here.
Goat Doll - Needed for Trump Card and Divine Weapon. Should be comboable with Red Zone. Works with Crisis Speed, somewhat.
Castle Wall - Needed for beating Divine Weapon and handling Lambda without massive pain.

Everything else should be skippable.

Ciel Shelter: Game starts here. Move Jude into his own house, then head to the right and exit. Keep moving right and play the little sneak around game with the guards. I'm not sure how fast you can go with this, there are probably a couple of tricks that make this faster. Meet Yulie and head down to grab the key right. Go forward and do a bunch of slides. Pass the plat form area, drop down instead of going down the stairs, meet Arnaud. Game will proceed and you have to back track all the way to the village, where things will proceed. A couple of notes on this first segment.

First, no items are needed. So don't bother grabbing anything. This of couse makes the boss fight a lot more challenging than it is. For the actual boss fight, do not move to the centre HEX as that will get you killed very fast. Utilize Phantom Line and Arnaud's Blasts to get the work done as fast as you can. When Tony comes around, repeat and blitz him. He does counter, so if you're unlucky, Arnaud will probably die. Jude will likely still be alive, which is all we really need to claim a victory.

Second, due to no accelerator, the treck back to the village is more painful than usual. There's random encounters afloat, and may take a lot of resets to do well. So I recommend saving on the way back. There's always ONE guaranteed tutorial fight. I'm fairly certain you can't escape from any encounters either.

Forsaken path: Again no items are needed. I do double jump accelerator a lot since it keeps a rythm for when I can reactivate accelerator. It keeps battles to a minimum without sucking up the entire gauge. A tutorial fight in the beginning occurs. Try to get Yulie to finish them with a Material since you want the gems. Jude defends, Arnaud can help out with Blast.

Port Rosalia: Stop by the inn, meet Raquel. When you're back in control, buy Move and Attack and Comet Strike for her. Buy Fragile for Arnaud. Off to Culane Temple.

Culane Temple: Skip all the chests again. You have to fight Turasque and thankfully, all he does is poison. We don't have antidotes, but the fight should not last long anyway. Cast Fragile, and have Jude Phantom Line, Raquel Comet Strike, while Yulie defends or cast Material if you get the chance. Feel free to use as much MP as possible since there's a save point up ahead.

Okay. This post will be long since it will basically contain all the work I've done so far from start to finish. As I mentioned, there may be a small minor set back in money, but I think we should still be safe regardless.

There are some things I haven't confirmed yet, like whether running is faster than sliding. Also in battle, I leave the camera on default. This might be slower than the bird's eye view camera. Again, unsure about it. Before starting the game though, I turn off all battle movies and cut ins for characters when they perform special attacks, since this will randomly slow down fights more than necessary. Holding down L1 and R1 while text is scrolling will basically skip it at the fastest speed possible. Naturally, this is what I used for all the dialouge.

Before I go on, this is a planned list of items to get. All of them have uses. But some I may be able to cut back.

[b]Silver Sun[/b] -  Used for Red Zone twinking. Also gives Yulie some more durability 
[b]Gunstar Sign[/b] - Not sure how often it triggers. But Raq's critical hit PS + Gunstar + Macha brand should be fairly nasty. On top of that, more crits = more damage. One of them popping up in an Intrude chain or counter will end fights MUCH faster. 
[b]Elder Record[/b] - Reduces MP by 1/4. Namely for Yulie and Turn shift. Arnaud and Jude also make good use of it. 
[b]Witch badge[/b] - Boosts Mag+25. Drops Defense. Arnaud has this. Since he needs all the Magic boosting to pump out workable offense. We'll have to accept the Def loss unfortunately.
[b]Fighter badge[/b] - Helps in speed twinking. Dropping 25 points of speed allows some Turn Shifting mix as well as turn augumentation if needed
[b]Cat's Paw[/b] - This is a pretty big duh 
[b]Tiny Flower [/b]- As is this. Best accessory main game 
8 Fire Gems from Culane and 8 Hi Breaks from Forgotten Railroad. Without randoms, I'm also on a strict gem limit. The Fire gems can be sold at worst. The 8 Hi Breaks are CRUCIAL for beating down the Soldier gauntlet in Silver Star Express
[b]Any type of Gella chests[/b] - Unless we want to track down gella cards.
[b]Macha Brand[/b] - Yep. Gives Raquel a huge mid game offense boost 
[b]Marcus Garb[/b] - Boosts Mag by another 20. Doubles MP Cost! But since I'm fighting randoms relatively infrequently, I should get by. Effectively, this is Arnaud's end game armor to boot 
[b]2 to 3x Lucky Cards[/b] - For the fights with a set pattern and safe time to use. There's a lot of PC death, so getting an EXP boost gets us more option and abilities
[b]Jude's Alter Parts[/b] - It's the only way to keep his attack decent. Although he's mostly using OCs, the ATP boost will still help out. 
[b]A couple of Dragon Fossils[/b] - Namely for HIT boost. We're going to twink for Bullets and reduce Usability to 1.5 since Auto Reload is actually a bad thing here.
[b]Goat Doll [/b]- Needed for Trump Card and Divine Weapon. Should be comboable with Red Zone. Works with Crisis Speed, somewhat.
[b]Castle Wall [/b]- Needed for beating Divine Weapon and handling Lambda without massive pain.

Everything else should be skippable.

Ciel Shelter: Game starts here. Move Jude into his own house, then head to the right and exit. Keep moving right and play the little sneak around game with the guards. I'm not sure how fast you can go with this, there are probably a couple of tricks that make this faster. Meet Yulie and head down to grab the key right. Go forward and do a bunch of slides. Pass the plat form area, drop down instead of going down the stairs, meet Arnaud. Game will proceed and you have to back track all the way to the village, where things will proceed. A couple of notes on this first segment.

First, no items are needed. So don't bother grabbing anything. This of couse makes the boss fight a lot more challenging than it is. For the actual boss fight, do not move to the centre HEX as that will get you killed very fast. Utilize Phantom Line and Arnaud's Blasts to get the work done as fast as you can. When Tony comes around, repeat and blitz him. He does counter, so if you're unlucky, Arnaud will probably die. Jude will likely still be alive, which is all we really need to claim a victory.

Second, due to no accelerator, the treck back to the village is more painful than usual. There's random encounters afloat, and may take a lot of resets to do well. So I recommend saving on the way back. There's always ONE guaranteed tutorial fight. I'm fairly certain you can't escape from any encounters either.

Forsaken path: Again no items are needed. I do double jump accelerator a lot since it keeps a rythm for when I can reactivate accelerator. It keeps battles to a minimum without sucking up the entire gauge. A tutorial fight in the beginning occurs. Try to get Yulie to finish them with a Material since you want the gems. Jude defends, Arnaud can help out with Blast.

Port Rosalia: Stop by the inn, meet Raquel. When you're back in control, buy Move and Attack and Comet Strike for her. Buy Fragile for Arnaud. Off to Culane Temple.

Culane Temple: Skip all the chests again. You have to fight Turasque and thankfully, all he does is poison. We don't have antidotes, but the fight should not last long anyway. Cast Fragile, and have Jude Phantom Line, Raquel Comet Strike, while Yulie defends or cast Material if you get the chance. Feel free to use as much MP as possible since there's a save point up ahead.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:35:23 pm

Insanity Prelude

Culane Temple Tony: 90% of the time, Tony moves to the right. Jude phantom lines and kills the other soldiers. Tony attacks Raq and Yulie. I now have enough FP for 3 attacks. Yulie and Arnaud both defend. Intrude x 2 with Comet Strike = dead Tony.

Celesti Ruins: Avoid the Break Point. Don't bother with the Bronze Moon inside the first hut. Grab the Duplos by jumping off the ladder, then double jumping back up after blowing the derbis to them. Take the dragon fossil. Remember that the big statue is destroyed faster with bomb throwing than planting.

Earthbound Dead: Thanks to skipping battles, we can’t get sanctify. So this was all KINDS of Pain. Slow Down, physicals, magic draining. Arnaud needs Slow Down since Earthbound dead himself is quite fond of slowing you down as a counter. Try luring him into the Water Hex. One Fire Gem from Arnaud can take off as much as a Raquel hit and put him down. Yulie casts Protect on Raq's Hex to give her more attacks. Raquel Intrudes and smacks him as many times as possible.

Celesti Ruins Jeremy: The Jeremy with durability. The outcome of the battle depends solely on how often Raquel is hit. If she dies before the match gets going, reset since the fight will take too long. If on the other hand, he hits Jude more, the fight is insanely easy. Jude Ley Boosts for some breathing room (and space to guard if needed), while Yulie casts Protect on Jude's HEX. Jeremy runs and usually attacks Jude multiple times, but not always. The entire fight is about stalling for Raquel's chains. Arnaud casts Slow Down and Fragile, does nothing else.

The Great Wall: Grab Gunstar Sign. Double jump grabs on the ladder and make it to the end.

White Orphanage: One of the puzzles can be done by simply swinging the staff east to west instead of north to south three time. Grab the alter part and gella chest. Remember to activate the computer in one of the rooms to proceed.

Miscreation: This is random as all hell. There's no telling when he counters with Stone Bullet. Just that it’s often and it HURTS. Protect on Raq and Jude while they attack. You may need Jude to use some berries so him and Raq don't die. And yes, if they do die, it sucks. A lot. Since there’s no way Arnaud can do the job of two others. Throw on Slow down and move him to an elemental HEX and do whatever he can to help.

White Orphanage Jeremy: Same thing as Celesti Ruins Jeremy really. If Raquel dies early, this is going to suck a lot. If on the other hand, he hits her only once or twice, the fight goes much smoother. If Raquel lived in at least 3 of the 4 above fights, you can also afford Red Zone at this time. So theoretically, what should happen is Jeremy attacks Raq, misses several times, knocks her to critical before her turn. Raquel Intrudes and unloads a full chain of attacks. At this point, Arnaud and Jude can do the rest even if she falls.

Aerial Fortress: Whee! Fall through the stairs to be quick. Also, double jump on the poles if you feel gutsy. You don't need Accelerator on the switches and retracting platforms. Although they do make things easier.

Incubator: Also has Stone Bullet counters you do not want to see. Jude moves to the centre and becomes live bait. Cast Protect on that hex and let Raq waltz in as they attack. Move Arnaud to the Wind HEX after casting Slow Down. If you get the chance to cast Wind Blast, do it. It’s a lot of damage if Incubator hasn't moved. The safest way to do this is obviously with Jump. But you might not have the FP for it or are saving it for Intrude. As long as Jude and Raq are in the centre, Incubator can only really hit Yulie with Stone Bullet. And as long as Protect is on those two, you are more than likely to kill him and build FP then he will kill you.

Scythe: Yay, opening initiative. Arnaud casts Slow Down, Yulie casts Protect on their HEX. Jude moves into said Hex. Raq moves into the centre, gets Protect casted on her later, and Arnaud, Jude and Raquel proceed to go on the offense as much as possible. If Scythe gets lucky and avoids your attacks (ESPECIALLY if he's low on health), reset, try again. Really not that much strategy to it since you get Initiative. It's basically a standard slugfest. Just hope his universal evade fails to work. Side notes:

Don't rely on Red Zone here. If you get it and Scythe dodges, you're very likely screwed.
Don't summon materials as otherwise, Scythe will move into the other elemental hexes. Pain follows.
Don't attempt to kill him with poison. Its too slow and if you try to move away from him when he's in critical, he will follow you with Suction. Bad. Also not a good chipping move.

Wunderwaltrum - Very direct path to Belial. There's a couple of corners you can IIRC. Not sure about what else you can do. I basically did this without a single random fight. So its pretty optimal I felt (minus minor hiccups). As a side note, make sure Yulie has FP Advantage before the midboss. If not, reset to an earlier save and try to keep her alive. The "midboss" is destroyed her cast a Material on her turn. These Wind Gems will become important very quickly.

Culane Temple Tony: 90% of the time, Tony moves to the right. Jude phantom lines and kills the other soldiers. Tony attacks Raq and Yulie. I now have enough FP for 3 attacks. Yulie and Arnaud both defend. Intrude x 2 with Comet Strike = dead Tony.

Celesti Ruins: Avoid the Break Point. Don't bother with the Bronze Moon inside the first hut. Grab the Duplos by jumping off the ladder, then double jumping back up after blowing the derbis to them. Take the dragon fossil. Remember that the big statue is destroyed faster with bomb throwing than planting.

Earthbound Dead: Thanks to skipping battles, we can’t get sanctify. So this was all KINDS of Pain. Slow Down, physicals, magic draining. Arnaud needs Slow Down since Earthbound dead himself is quite fond of slowing you down as a counter. Try luring him into the Water Hex. One Fire Gem from Arnaud can take off as much as a Raquel hit and put him down. Yulie casts Protect on Raq's Hex to give her more attacks. Raquel Intrudes and smacks him as many times as possible.

Celesti Ruins Jeremy: The Jeremy with durability. The outcome of the battle depends solely on how often Raquel is hit. If she dies before the match gets going, reset since the fight will take too long. If on the other hand, he hits Jude more, the fight is insanely easy. Jude Ley Boosts for some breathing room (and space to guard if needed), while Yulie casts Protect on Jude's HEX. Jeremy runs and usually attacks Jude multiple times, but not always. The entire fight is about stalling for Raquel's chains. Arnaud casts Slow Down and Fragile, does nothing else.

The Great Wall: Grab Gunstar Sign. Double jump grabs on the ladder and make it to the end.

White Orphanage: One of the puzzles can be done by simply swinging the staff east to west instead of north to south three time. Grab the alter part and gella chest. Remember to activate the computer in one of the rooms to proceed.

Miscreation: This is random as all hell. There's no telling when he counters with Stone Bullet. Just that it’s often and it HURTS. Protect on Raq and Jude while they attack. You may need Jude to use some berries so him and Raq don't die. And yes, if they do die, it sucks. A lot. Since there’s no way Arnaud can do the job of two others. Throw on Slow down and move him to an elemental HEX and do whatever he can to help.

White Orphanage Jeremy: Same thing as Celesti Ruins Jeremy really. If Raquel dies early, this is going to suck a lot. If on the other hand, he hits her only once or twice, the fight goes much smoother. If Raquel lived in at least 3 of the 4 above fights, you can also afford Red Zone at this time. So theoretically, what should happen is Jeremy attacks Raq, misses several times, knocks her to critical before her turn. Raquel Intrudes and unloads a full chain of attacks. At this point, Arnaud and Jude can do the rest even if she falls.

Aerial Fortress: Whee! Fall through the stairs to be quick. Also, double jump on the poles if you feel gutsy. You don't need Accelerator on the switches and retracting platforms. Although they do make things easier.

Incubator: Also has Stone Bullet counters you do not want to see. Jude moves to the centre and becomes live bait. Cast Protect on that hex and let Raq waltz in as they attack. Move Arnaud to the Wind HEX after casting Slow Down. If you get the chance to cast Wind Blast, do it. It’s a lot of damage if Incubator hasn't moved. The safest way to do this is obviously with Jump. But you might not have the FP for it or are saving it for Intrude. As long as Jude and Raq are in the centre, Incubator can only really hit Yulie with Stone Bullet. And as long as Protect is on those two, you are more than likely to kill him and build FP then he will kill you.

Scythe: Yay, opening initiative. Arnaud casts Slow Down, Yulie casts Protect on their HEX. Jude moves into said Hex. Raq moves into the centre, gets Protect casted on her later, and Arnaud, Jude and Raquel proceed to go on the offense as much as possible. If Scythe gets lucky and avoids your attacks (ESPECIALLY if he's low on health), reset, try again. Really not that much strategy to it since you get Initiative. It's basically a standard slugfest. Just hope his universal evade fails to work. Side notes:

Don't rely on Red Zone here. If you get it and Scythe dodges, you're very likely screwed. 
Don't summon materials as otherwise, Scythe will move into the other elemental hexes. Pain follows. 
Don't attempt to kill him with poison. Its too slow and if you try to move away from him when he's in critical, he will follow you with Suction. Bad. Also not a good chipping move.

Wunderwaltrum - Very direct path to Belial. There's a couple of corners you can IIRC. Not sure about what else you can do. I basically did this without a single random fight. So its pretty optimal I felt (minus minor hiccups). As a side note, make sure Yulie has FP Advantage before the midboss. If not, reset to an earlier save and try to keep her alive. The "midboss" is destroyed her cast a Material on her turn. These Wind Gems will become important very quickly.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:35:53 pm

Insanity Prelude

Belial 1 and 2: Two fights back to back against one of the harder bosses in the game, Whoo...boy. First of all, gems can pierce the distortion and stop it from using defender. Second of all, Belial can wipe out a full team if she gets two consecutive turns. Requires smart AI, but it can happen and can be incredibly frustrating if she does it in the second fight.

Jude's first step is to move into the centre. This serves two purposes. One, Belial has a chance to use her shittier physical, saving damage. Two, I can now cast Protect on that HEX. Arnaud's main priority is ALWAYS Slow Down. Always. Since the fight otherwise will go wildly out of control. Once Raq and Jude get moved to the centre, start chipping away at the distortion. Try to time it such that it falls right before Raq’s turn. If Arnaud gets a free turn, have him move in and use any Freeze Gems you have until she moves off the Fire HEX. If Yulie gets a free turn, move her to an elemental hex so she can cast Materials. These also pierce the distortion. Red Zone isn't very useful thanks to Distortion. But keep it since the AI may decide to forgo using a shield when it’s down.

The second fight is more or less the same. Except this time, Arnaud's stepping on the Earth Hex. If Belial moves beside you, pop out any wind gems you have (but save some for Grabboid). That's essentially it. A lot of it depends on what Belial does. Hope she uses Distortion assault on the magical PCs and her physicals on the physical PCs and she never renews her shield.

Notes:
1) Poison Bite is useless. Honestly, 5% damage isn't worth it since you're aiming to kill her fast.
2) Turn Shift Yulie may be faster than FP Advantage Yulie. I haven’t gotten conclusive evidence on this. And the strategy is up in the air really.

Sea of Trees: Run to the end. Basically that's it!

Night City: To buy: Raquel's new sword. Everyone's new armor. Jude's Alter Part. You should have JUST enough cash to do it. If not, sell some Fire gems. Avoid buying Arnaud and Yulie’s weapons for now. Get the Silver Sun and Dragon Fossil. On your way to Raymond, check the barrel beside the bystander. A nice Lucky Card without much off track movement.

Calculon's Pass: MORE RUNNING

Palpatta Passage: Actually very quick. First grab the sword to the left. Hit the switch and move across the platform. Find the other other sword and bring it back. Hit the second switch which you couldn't before due to a lava pit. Now run across. Fight Kresnik. Climb to the right. Jump stomp the switches and double jump to reach the stairs. Now run back by solving the Fire pot puzzle in a standard fashion (avoid randoms as possible). The Soldiers are offed by a straight slugfest essentially. The fastest of which involves Red Zone twinking. Don't worry too much if someone falls since there's a Save Point coming up.

Grabboid: Wind Weakness + starting on Earth Hex = Wind gems causes lots of pain. This is what the Wind Gems are for. Move Arnaud to the centre after Slow Down. Move Raq and Jude into a different HEX if possible, since Grabboid does counter with Stone Bullet. And no, you don't want to see it ever. After that, Turn Shift + Raquel physicals and Arnaud Wind gems pull off a quick win. Jude does nothing. Yulie casts Protect namely on Raquel and turn shifts repeatedly afterwards.

Kresnik: Phantom Line repeatedly until Jude hits critical. Use heal berries (second time you see healing) until you double, phantom line again. He should be dead.

Neve' D'argent: The only tricky part is that the Alter part is gotten after the save point. Make sure to grab the Gella chest as well.

Cerulean Tunnel: Get ready for pain since there's a lot of items. Get the Marcus Grab in the second room. It’s in the top right. Move back down. Fight Kraken and do the puzzles with Gawn as normal. Later on in the level, in the room before Hugo, treck to the very right to pick up the Fighter Badge. Get ready to hit reset a few times since the randoms seem to occur much more often.

Kraken: Hope he uses Slumber Fog but continously whiffs. Hydro Pressure also isn't all that painful (Jude and Raquel getting 3HKO'd by magic? Whoa), so hope he uses that instead of his Isolate physicals. Meanwhile, Jude Phantom Lines, Arnaud casts Slow Down followed by Fire Gems, Raq physicals when possible.

Hugo: Not sure if Replace works. If it does, there’s a fixed way of doing this. Otherwise, the fastest way requires Isolate. Attack Hugo and he must move to one of the bottom HEXes. He attacks, cast Isolate and instantly trap him. Be prepared to hit reset a lot. Eventually, I settled with a split that occupied all the corners with Hugo in the centre. The moment he moved, I trapped him, and had Raquel unleash 4 attacks. No thanks to him hitting all 4 characters in the beginning along with FP Advance existing now. A quick follow up beatdown afterward will make it such that Hugo does not see more than another turn.

Belial 1 and 2: Two fights back to back against one of the harder bosses in the game, Whoo...boy. First of all, gems can pierce the distortion and stop it from using defender. Second of all, Belial can wipe out a full team if she gets two consecutive turns. Requires smart AI, but it can happen and can be incredibly frustrating if she does it in the second fight.

Jude's first step is to move into the centre. This serves two purposes. One, Belial has a chance to use her shittier physical, saving damage. Two, I can now cast Protect on that HEX. Arnaud's main priority is ALWAYS Slow Down. Always. Since the fight otherwise will go wildly out of control. Once Raq and Jude get moved to the centre, start chipping away at the distortion. Try to time it such that it falls right before Raq’s turn. If Arnaud gets a free turn, have him move in and use any Freeze Gems you have until she moves off the Fire HEX. If Yulie gets a free turn, move her to an elemental hex so she can cast Materials. These also pierce the distortion. Red Zone isn't very useful thanks to Distortion. But keep it since the AI may decide to forgo using a shield when it’s down.

The second fight is more or less the same. Except this time, Arnaud's stepping on the Earth Hex. If Belial moves beside you, pop out any wind gems you have (but save some for Grabboid). That's essentially it. A lot of it depends on what Belial does. Hope she uses Distortion assault on the magical PCs and her physicals on the physical PCs and she never renews her shield.

Notes: 
1)      Poison Bite is useless. Honestly, 5% damage isn't worth it since you're aiming to kill her fast. 
2)      Turn Shift Yulie may be faster than FP Advantage Yulie. I haven’t gotten conclusive evidence on this. And the strategy is up in the air really.

Sea of Trees: Run to the end. Basically that's it!

Night City: To buy: Raquel's new sword. Everyone's new armor. Jude's Alter Part. You should have JUST enough cash to do it. If not, sell some Fire gems. Avoid buying Arnaud and Yulie’s weapons for now. Get the Silver Sun and Dragon Fossil. On your way to Raymond, check the barrel beside the bystander. A nice Lucky Card without much off track movement.

Calculon's Pass: MORE RUNNING

Palpatta Passage: Actually very quick. First grab the sword to the left. Hit the switch and move across the platform. Find the other other sword and bring it back. Hit the second switch which you couldn't before due to a lava pit. Now run across. Fight Kresnik. Climb to the right. Jump stomp the switches and double jump to reach the stairs. Now run back by solving the Fire pot puzzle in a standard fashion (avoid randoms as possible). The Soldiers are offed by a straight slugfest essentially. The fastest of which involves Red Zone twinking. Don't worry too much if someone falls since there's a Save Point coming up.

Grabboid: Wind Weakness + starting on Earth Hex = Wind gems causes lots of pain. This is what the Wind Gems are for. Move Arnaud to the centre after Slow Down. Move Raq and Jude into a different HEX if possible, since Grabboid does counter with Stone Bullet. And no, you don't want to see it ever. After that, Turn Shift + Raquel physicals and Arnaud Wind gems pull off a quick win. Jude does nothing. Yulie casts Protect namely on Raquel and turn shifts repeatedly afterwards.

Kresnik: Phantom Line repeatedly until Jude hits critical. Use heal berries (second time you see healing) until you double, phantom line again. He should be dead.

Neve' D'argent: The only tricky part is that the Alter part is gotten after the save point. Make sure to grab the Gella chest as well.

Cerulean Tunnel: Get ready for pain since there's a lot of items. Get the Marcus Grab in the second room. It’s in the top right. Move back down. Fight Kraken and do the puzzles with Gawn as normal. Later on in the level, in the room before Hugo, treck to the very right to pick up the Fighter Badge. Get ready to hit reset a few times since the randoms seem to occur much more often.

Kraken: Hope he uses Slumber Fog but continously whiffs. Hydro Pressure also isn't all that painful (Jude and Raquel getting 3HKO'd by magic? Whoa), so hope he uses that instead of his Isolate physicals. Meanwhile, Jude Phantom Lines, Arnaud casts Slow Down followed by Fire Gems, Raq physicals when possible.

Hugo: Not sure if Replace works. If it does, there’s a fixed way of doing this. Otherwise, the fastest way requires Isolate. Attack Hugo and he must move to one of the bottom HEXes. He attacks, cast Isolate and instantly trap him. Be prepared to hit reset a lot. Eventually, I settled with a split that occupied all the corners with Hugo in the centre. The moment he moved, I trapped him, and had Raquel unleash 4 attacks. No thanks to him hitting all 4 characters in the beginning along with FP Advance existing now. A quick follow up beatdown afterward will make it such that Hugo does not see more than another turn.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:36:23 pm

Insanity Prelude

Mil'muku Skyway: Second level of pain. Actually only the first half is painful since you're grabbing a lot of stuff. Get the Elder record in the second room. Get the Witch badge in the third room. Head down when you see a fork. Cut corners if possible and remember that you can still fight randoms on the wire mesh. So either climb up to double jump accelerator, or make your trips fast. Before the Rat Monkey fight, head to the teleporter you didn't pop out from and jump around in the middle. Do a stomp to cause the lift to rise. Pick up the Macha Brand. Speaking of Rat Monkeys, they are killed in three moves: Jude Phantom Line, Arnaud Jump then Fire blast. Yulie Sanctifies. Second half of this level is essentially a quick run to the end with no other chests being needed. Head down again at the new fork since its slightly faster.

Spriggans: The individuals are taken care of fairly quickly (Arnaud  2 blasts, Raquel  wait for turn and attack, Jude  Phantom Line + physical). For Yulie, cast Protect. Followed by Turn Shift if an enemy will jump in before hand. Raquel now has Hi Counter and the Macha brand. So two hits kills the cronies. Intrude takes care of that nicely. A critical hit or two also makes things faster than usual.

Dolls: 100% foolproof strategy here. In case you missed it, Twink Raq for a Red Zone. Jude uses Joint Struggle on Fiore, Banned spell?! goes. Raquel activates Intrude (thanks to FP Advance) and smacks Fiore once and Asia once. Arnaud jumps, uses a fully twinked Fire Blast on Fiore and toasts her nicely. Asia at this point can a) Cast Hi-blast, killing everyone but Yulie, who responds with Revive. A prompt beating ensues. b) Cast Illusion, in which case, Arnaud uses Blast, Jude defends and does nothing else while Raquel moves and smacks her around.

Desolate Railroad -
Grab the 8 Hi Breaks. Run to the end.

Buckeye -
Relatively short shopping list. New weapon updates for Yulie/Arnaud. Armor upgrades for everyone except Arnaud. Should have more than enough gella to spare. Trigger Etemanaki and we're off.

Etemanaki -
Pretty big dungeon overall. The platforming can’t be helped; you have to do it. Otherwise, pass the Safety garb, fight Guardian Chimera. Hope he acts stupid. Enil goes down without much of a problem. Had to twink the original strategy a bit because Yulie did not have 210 RFX. She had 204 >_>. And yes, it mattered.

Guardian Chimera:
Right off the bat, he insta doubles. And this spells LOTS of trouble since he can immediatley cast a Material and kill Raquel and Jude before you even get a turn. On a good day, he will move and physical Raquel but whiff and she smacks him with a counter and crits. Hi Counter + Crit = 11000 damage or so, which means if you're lucky, the bastard kills himself in two moves. Have Arnaud cast Slow Down and Fragile, then Blast with any other spare turns. Yulie turn shifts as much as possible. Jude can phantom line, but it won't do that much damage overall. Raquel's your ticket to doing this fast. And the fastest way requires a Hi-Counter or critical or two in between. Too bad there's no save point before hand.

Enil:
Because Yulie did not have enough speed, I can't pull off the standard strategy, so I adapted it. This one requires more luck and you run the risk of losing a PC. Thankfully, there is a save point right before here, so you can afford resetting for a good run.

Jude equips a Fighter Badge. Yulie wants a Silver Sun, Arnaud uses Witch badge and Raquel has the Gunstar Sign. Jude's clone goes first, attacks and builds up some needed FP. If you're lucky, Defender would've kicked in and all PCs will be alive. If not, there's a good chance Yulie will die. Hence you want the Silver sun. I'm not sure if it works, but every little bit of extra HP should help out. Jude Mystic Fire, all the clones are dead, everyone else takes an extra 900-1000 damage. The Jude clone deals between 1500-1800 damage when he hits Yulie. So on a low variance, she should live. Jump to the Water HEX, cast Blast for around 5500-6000 damage. Enil will now get a turn. Depending on who it is, you either lose a PC or everyone ends up winning basically. Hope for a Raquel clone. Yulie's next turn is to use a Lucky Card. Raquel gets her turn, smacks Enil silly. One crit should be all it takes to win.

Note: It’s faster to do this with a tiny Flower. However, to even use a Tiny Flower at this point, we need to rare steal it from a monster in Desolate Railroad. AND it’s a rare steal. It may be worth doing (the ACF strategies requires stealing a MP repair from the rat monkey afterall), but I don’t know whether or not it’s worth the time to do it. First, unlike the rat monkey, the monster doesn’t even appear that frequently. Second, Jude’s stealing accuracy is mehish compared to Jane (who seemed to be fairly decent), so the entire process takes a lot longer. It will change some fights if we get one, but the rest of this run did not have one until Forbidden Valley.

Silver Star Express -
Get ready for lots of pain and resets. We're about to fight 10 battles in a row. 8 of which you have to do without a save point for optimal outcomes. So we're relying on lots of luck, Raquel criticals and high variance damage. The more your allies remain alive, the better since you acquire pretty good experience. As an aside, you can't run away from these battles. I tried, believe me. By the time I finished the first SSE battle, clock was at 3:31. After 7 battles + Tank Vehicle, I reached the save point at 3:41. This essentially implies between all the talking and plot scenes in between, it took me a grand total of 10 minutes. Less than a minute per battle which is pretty good.

Mil'muku Skyway: Second level of pain. Actually only the first half is painful since you're grabbing a lot of stuff. Get the Elder record in the second room. Get the Witch badge in the third room. Head down when you see a fork. Cut corners if possible and remember that you can still fight randoms on the wire mesh. So either climb up to double jump accelerator, or make your trips fast. Before the Rat Monkey fight, head to the teleporter you didn't pop out from and jump around in the middle. Do a stomp to cause the lift to rise. Pick up the Macha Brand. Speaking of Rat Monkeys, they are killed in three moves: Jude Phantom Line, Arnaud Jump then Fire blast. Yulie Sanctifies. Second half of this level is essentially a quick run to the end with no other chests being needed. Head down again at the new fork since its slightly faster.

Spriggans: The individuals are taken care of fairly quickly (Arnaud &#61664; 2 blasts, Raquel &#61664; wait for turn and attack, Jude &#61664; Phantom Line + physical). For Yulie, cast Protect. Followed by Turn Shift if an enemy will jump in before hand. Raquel now has Hi Counter and the Macha brand. So two hits kills the cronies. Intrude takes care of that nicely. A critical hit or two also makes things faster than usual.

Dolls: 100% foolproof strategy here. In case you missed it, Twink Raq for a Red Zone. Jude uses Joint Struggle on Fiore, Banned spell?! goes. Raquel activates Intrude (thanks to FP Advance) and smacks Fiore once and Asia once. Arnaud jumps, uses a fully twinked Fire Blast on Fiore and toasts her nicely. Asia at this point can a) Cast Hi-blast, killing everyone but Yulie, who responds with Revive. A prompt beating ensues. b) Cast Illusion, in which case, Arnaud uses Blast, Jude defends and does nothing else while Raquel moves and smacks her around.

Desolate Railroad - 
Grab the 8 Hi Breaks. Run to the end.

Buckeye - 
Relatively short shopping list. New weapon updates for Yulie/Arnaud. Armor upgrades for everyone except Arnaud. Should have more than enough gella to spare. Trigger Etemanaki and we're off.

Etemanaki - 
Pretty big dungeon overall. The platforming can’t be helped; you have to do it. Otherwise, pass the Safety garb, fight Guardian Chimera. Hope he acts stupid. Enil goes down without much of a problem. Had to twink the original strategy a bit because Yulie did not have 210 RFX. She had 204 >_>. And yes, it mattered.

Guardian Chimera: 
Right off the bat, he insta doubles. And this spells LOTS of trouble since he can immediatley cast a Material and kill Raquel and Jude before you even get a turn. On a good day, he will move and physical Raquel but whiff and she smacks him with a counter and crits. Hi Counter + Crit = 11000 damage or so, which means if you're lucky, the bastard kills himself in two moves. Have Arnaud cast Slow Down and Fragile, then Blast with any other spare turns. Yulie turn shifts as much as possible. Jude can phantom line, but it won't do that much damage overall. Raquel's your ticket to doing this fast. And the fastest way requires a Hi-Counter or critical or two in between. Too bad there's no save point before hand.

Enil: 
Because Yulie did not have enough speed, I can't pull off the standard strategy, so I adapted it. This one requires more luck and you run the risk of losing a PC. Thankfully, there is a save point right before here, so you can afford resetting for a good run.

Jude equips a Fighter Badge. Yulie wants a Silver Sun, Arnaud uses Witch badge and Raquel has the Gunstar Sign. Jude's clone goes first, attacks and builds up some needed FP. If you're lucky, Defender would've kicked in and all PCs will be alive. If not, there's a good chance Yulie will die. Hence you want the Silver sun. I'm not sure if it works, but every little bit of extra HP should help out. Jude Mystic Fire, all the clones are dead, everyone else takes an extra 900-1000 damage. The Jude clone deals between 1500-1800 damage when he hits Yulie. So on a low variance, she should live. Jump to the Water HEX, cast Blast for around 5500-6000 damage. Enil will now get a turn. Depending on who it is, you either lose a PC or everyone ends up winning basically. Hope for a Raquel clone. Yulie's next turn is to use a Lucky Card. Raquel gets her turn, smacks Enil silly. One crit should be all it takes to win.

Note: It’s faster to do this with a tiny Flower. However, to even use a Tiny Flower at this point, we need to rare steal it from a monster in Desolate Railroad. AND it’s a rare steal. It may be worth doing (the ACF strategies requires stealing a MP repair from the rat monkey afterall), but I don’t know whether or not it’s worth the time to do it. First, unlike the rat monkey, the monster doesn’t even appear that frequently. Second, Jude’s stealing accuracy is mehish compared to Jane (who seemed to be fairly decent), so the entire process takes a lot longer. It will change some fights if we get one, but the rest of this run did not have one until Forbidden Valley.

Silver Star Express - 
Get ready for lots of pain and resets. We're about to fight 10 battles in a row. 8 of which you have to do without a save point for optimal outcomes. So we're relying on lots of luck, Raquel criticals and high variance damage. The more your allies remain alive, the better since you acquire pretty good experience. As an aside, you can't run away from these battles. I tried, believe me. By the time I finished the first SSE battle, clock was at 3:31. After 7 battles + Tank Vehicle, I reached the save point at 3:41. This essentially implies between all the talking and plot scenes in between, it took me a grand total of 10 minutes. Less than a minute per battle which is pretty good.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:37:17 pm

Insanity Prelude

Solider Gauntlet (1-8): 8 various battles with set formations. Remember those 8 Hi Breaks? I sure hope you got them since they are one of the few tickets to making this possible. Raq OHKOs when she crits, so it’s worthwhile to maintain her setup. Giving Jude the Fighter badge is also a good idea since you will want a bit more power for Phantom Line + Joint Struggle. Listing out as many as I can remember. Not all of them unfortunately.

Battle 1: Solider gets a turn, almost always hits Yulie. Jude goes, phantom lines the solider in front. Arnaud cast Slow Down on the Dreadnought, Yulie Turn Shifts to Raquel, who uses Intrude and smacks the soldier previous shot. This should kill him regardless of criticalling. Smack the shit out of the other solider. Yulie's next turn, Gather and bring everyone back. The soldier should move toward you and the dreadnought shouldn't get a turn yet. Joint Struggle the other soldier on Jude's next turn. Clean up the remaining dreadnought.

Battle 2: Yulie is almost guaranteed to die. Anyways, when you get your turn (the marksman should all outspeed you), Jude should Phantom Line the HEXes on the right. If Arnaud is still alive, which he should be, pop a Hi Break on the Soldiers inside the Wind HEX and watch as they go splat. Raq smashes the soliders previously shot. Intrude if you must.

Battle 4: This is short. Jude Joint Struggles. It needs to KILL both Dreadnoughts in a hit. Might require some luck. Once that happens, Jump to the Wind HEX, pop out a Hi Break. Win.

Battle 5: Getting hazy on memory. Anyways, every one starts out in the same HEX for the next 4 fights. So expect some Joint Struggle and Gathering hijinx in general. The marksman move first. Depending on their position, your attacks vary. However, its still Jude Phantom lines the one Arnaud is not going to kill with a Hi Break. Arnaud uses a Hi Break, Yulie turn shifts and Raq cleans up what Jude started and gets a couple of extra hits in. Gather and pull everyone back. Once the soldiers move beside you (hopefully), Jude Joint Struggles one of them to death, have Arnaud either Hi Break again or just defend and let Raquel do the clean up work.

Battle 6: I think this is the right one. Most of these eventually end up looking the same anyway >_>. For this one, Jude guards first. Arnaud Jumps, Hi Breaks the Wind Hex, leading to splattery. Yulie turn shifts, Raquel gets the next turn, Intrudes, and smacks the soldiers not named Dreadnought. I got some luck around here thanks to Hi Counter and criticals. If one of those pop up, you're in good hands. This applies to practically every battle though.

Tank Vehicle: Yulie is guaranteed to die (again!). Tank Vehicle insta doubles. As long as Arnaud lives, this match is sealed. Jump, cast Shut Out. Heal Raq if she's about to die or hope for a Red Zone. Intrude on her turn and smash it silly. Jude can help out with Short Circuit, but he's likely injured pretty bad at this point. If you are VERY lucky, Raquel counters both hits with crits and gets Red Zone at the end.

Balgaine: There apparantly IS a random factor in this battle. There’s +5% RFX that is applied on every standard physical attack. This will determine if you can save up to 8 seconds on Balgaine.

Buy Quicken for Yulie and place the Fighter Badge on Jude, making sure he is slower than Arnaud. Arnaud needs Reinforce. Initial turn order:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Balgaine --> Yulie --> Raquel --> Arnaud --> Jude

On the first turn, Jump to a HEX beside Balgaine. On Jude's turn, use a Joint Struggle, which deals around 6500 on average. Balgaine will charge Detonation Lv 1. If all goes well, he dies before pulling it off. Next Yulie is up, cast Quicken. Raquel gets a turn, not enough FP for Intrude, so one attack is all we get. At this point thanks to Quicken, the turn order becomes:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Yulie --> Arnaud --> Jude --> Balgaine --> Raquel

Arnaud Lucky cards the entire team. We're only getting another EXP bonus on one other fight. Jude pulls another Joint Struggle. Yulie proceeds to Turn Shift to Arnaud then to Jude. Arnaud defends, Jude uses Joint Struggle for a third time. With 75 FP or so built, Yulie passes to Raquel. I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

The off chance random element, is that after her attack, the turn order MAY look like this:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Yulie --> Arnaud --> Jude --> Raquel --> Balgaine

In which case, Yulie and Arnaud's second turn on that list are both spent defending.

Solider Gauntlet (1-8): 8 various battles with set formations. Remember those 8 Hi Breaks? I sure hope you got them since they are one of the few tickets to making this possible. Raq OHKOs when she crits, so it’s worthwhile to maintain her setup. Giving Jude the Fighter badge is also a good idea since you will want a bit more power for Phantom Line + Joint Struggle. Listing out as many as I can remember. Not all of them unfortunately.

Battle 1: Solider gets a turn, almost always hits Yulie. Jude goes, phantom lines the solider in front. Arnaud cast Slow Down on the Dreadnought, Yulie Turn Shifts to Raquel, who uses Intrude and smacks the soldier previous shot. This should kill him regardless of criticalling. Smack the shit out of the other solider. Yulie's next turn, Gather and bring everyone back. The soldier should move toward you and the dreadnought shouldn't get a turn yet. Joint Struggle the other soldier on Jude's next turn. Clean up the remaining dreadnought.

Battle 2: Yulie is almost guaranteed to die. Anyways, when you get your turn (the marksman should all outspeed you), Jude should Phantom Line the HEXes on the right. If Arnaud is still alive, which he should be, pop a Hi Break on the Soldiers inside the Wind HEX and watch as they go splat. Raq smashes the soliders previously shot. Intrude if you must.

Battle 4: This is short. Jude Joint Struggles. It needs to KILL both Dreadnoughts in a hit. Might require some luck. Once that happens, Jump to the Wind HEX, pop out a Hi Break. Win.

Battle 5: Getting hazy on memory. Anyways, every one starts out in the same HEX for the next 4 fights. So expect some Joint Struggle and Gathering hijinx in general. The marksman move first. Depending on their position, your attacks vary. However, its still Jude Phantom lines the one Arnaud is not going to kill with a Hi Break. Arnaud uses a Hi Break, Yulie turn shifts and Raq cleans up what Jude started and gets a couple of extra hits in. Gather and pull everyone back. Once the soldiers move beside you (hopefully), Jude Joint Struggles one of them to death, have Arnaud either Hi Break again or just defend and let Raquel do the clean up work.

Battle 6: I think this is the right one. Most of these eventually end up looking the same anyway >_>. For this one, Jude guards first. Arnaud Jumps, Hi Breaks the Wind Hex, leading to splattery. Yulie turn shifts, Raquel gets the next turn, Intrudes, and smacks the soldiers not named Dreadnought. I got some luck around here thanks to Hi Counter and criticals. If one of those pop up, you're in good hands. This applies to practically every battle though.

Tank Vehicle: Yulie is guaranteed to die (again!). Tank Vehicle insta doubles. As long as Arnaud lives, this match is sealed. Jump, cast Shut Out. Heal Raq if she's about to die or hope for a Red Zone. Intrude on her turn and smash it silly. Jude can help out with Short Circuit, but he's likely injured pretty bad at this point. If you are VERY lucky, Raquel counters both hits with crits and gets Red Zone at the end.

Balgaine: There apparantly IS a random factor in this battle. There’s +5% RFX that is applied on every standard physical attack. This will determine if you can save up to 8 seconds on Balgaine.

Buy Quicken for Yulie and place the Fighter Badge on Jude, making sure he is slower than Arnaud. Arnaud needs Reinforce. Initial turn order:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Balgaine --> Yulie --> Raquel --> Arnaud --> Jude

On the first turn, Jump to a HEX beside Balgaine. On Jude's turn, use a Joint Struggle, which deals around 6500 on average. Balgaine will charge Detonation Lv 1. If all goes well, he dies before pulling it off. Next Yulie is up, cast Quicken. Raquel gets a turn, not enough FP for Intrude, so one attack is all we get. At this point thanks to Quicken, the turn order becomes:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Yulie --> Arnaud --> Jude --> Balgaine --> Raquel

Arnaud Lucky cards the entire team. We're only getting another EXP bonus on one other fight. Jude pulls another Joint Struggle. Yulie proceeds to Turn Shift to Arnaud then to Jude. Arnaud defends, Jude uses Joint Struggle for a third time. With 75 FP or so built, Yulie passes to Raquel. I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

The off chance random element, is that after her attack, the turn order MAY look like this:

Arnaud --> Jude --> Yulie --> Arnaud --> Jude --> Raquel --> Balgaine

In which case, Yulie and Arnaud's second turn on that list are both spent defending.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:37:42 pm

Insanity Prelude

Verklerung:
Grabbed three items I think. A dragon Fossil, the last Lucky Card we will be using and a Gella Chest

Puzzles, the rotating bars for the first one should look like a staircase from right to left. The second one only requires you to turn the right handle twice. There is also one light gem puzzle that doesn't require two throws, only 1 will get you across the chasm with the rod.

Baskar Village (Abandoned Village):
Grab the Alter Part and move on. Nothing else other than that.

Garra De Leon:
The laser puzzle is tricky. But well timed accelerator use and non accelerator use means you rarely have to stop moving. The block puzzle only requires the spring to be moved into where the stack of blocks are. Should be fairly quick. Rest of it...Mmmm...a section in the middle can be done by Accelerator hold instead of tapping. The sword switches, one of them requires you to backtrack back, so get that first before running forward.

On the escape, you have to grab the sword before heading to the top. So even being allowed to double jump from the rotating platform is useless. The sword requires you to bring the platform down, then back up. Really annoying process, but you have to do it. Finally, the last series of rotating platforms, make gracious use of Accelerator. And DON'T FALL.

Tony III: This is quite possibly the FASTEST battle ever. Anyways, Gunstar sign on Raquel, Arnaud and Jude doesn't matter. Kresnik gets nothing. Saves time in the end since you have to unequip it off him later to boot or lose it for the next several dungeons.

Initial turn order for fun!:

Tony --> Tony --> Jude --> Arnaud --> Kresnik --> Tony --> Raquel

Really Jude and Arnaud's turn order doesn't matter as long as they both go before Tony. Anyways, 90% of the time, Tony will come barging down. Followed by a regular physical. The next part is best divided into an if clause:

IF Raquel counters and crits: The match ends. Approximate time? 5-10 seconds
IF Raquel counters but doesn't crit: Jude uses Joint Struggle, Arnaud defends, Kresnik pulls a Lock On and ends the fight. You lose a x0.7 bonus, but what can you do? Approx. 15-25 seconds
IF Raquel doesn't counter: Jude joint struggles, Arnaud casts Slow Down, Kresnik casts Adrenaline Rush. New turn order:

Raquel --> Tony --> Doesn't matter.

You have 25 FP as well. Can we say splat? Approximate time - 25-30 seconds

Super Soldier:
After the last two joke fights, this one actually requires some set up. First Silver Sun on Raquel and mix twink for HP. Max twink HP for Jude as well. What I do know, is that if Red Zone triggers early, the fight is MUCH shorter. And that’s what we will be aiming for.

Super Soldier will get 2 turns right off the bat. And he will, 99% of the time cast 2 blasts, which will kill. However, thanks to the set up, Raquel will live in critical and Jude will live on survival. There’s a chance he dies, we don’t want that. Reset until he lives. At this point, trigger Intrude, smack an enemy not Super Soldier since he has blocker. Intrude as many times as you can, and Dragon Edge/Comet Strike. If he’s still alive, Jude should get a turn and Phantom Line to finish. Arnaud casts a powered up Hi Blast on the last enemy and the fight ends in 58 seconds.

Prototype Gear:
Another headache. I didn't get the Holy grail since its such a long detour in Velkerung. So we're stuck rolling the odds and hoping for Arnaud and Yulie (at least one of them) to live past 2 shots of Radious breath. Or hoping the idiot moves and doesn't attack. The actual fight itself is pretty basic, with Short Circuit over Joint Struggle due to Radious Breath, Quicken on Raquel, Slow Down to get a smooth offense rolling. Depending on who lives, this fight was done purely with Jude and Raquel.

Augst 1/Augst 2: No explanation needed. One Lucky Card later and the fight proceeds with a prompt smack down of doom. I’m wondering if Fragile will speed things up though.

Dragon Fossil Mine:
Get the Cat's Paw. Its in the third area of the mine. Everything else here is vanilla.

Halim:
A change in plans. With an equipment upgrade in Rosalia coming up, the duration of these new equips is extremely short lived. The armors might justify your purchase. But be sure to have 44800 gella left. You need it for Raquel's Great Sword after. For now, your Gunstar/Cats Paw and Macha Brand set up will work. Anyways, talk to Henri, GRAB THE TINY FLOWER. Its in the non duplo chest.

Verklerung: 
Grabbed three items I think. A dragon Fossil, the last Lucky Card we will be using and a Gella Chest

Puzzles, the rotating bars for the first one should look like a staircase from right to left. The second one only requires you to turn the right handle twice. There is also one light gem puzzle that doesn't require two throws, only 1 will get you across the chasm with the rod.

Baskar Village (Abandoned Village): 
Grab the Alter Part and move on. Nothing else other than that.

Garra De Leon: 
The laser puzzle is tricky. But well timed accelerator use and non accelerator use means you rarely have to stop moving. The block puzzle only requires the spring to be moved into where the stack of blocks are. Should be fairly quick. Rest of it...Mmmm...a section in the middle can be done by Accelerator hold instead of tapping. The sword switches, one of them requires you to backtrack back, so get that first before running forward.

On the escape, you have to grab the sword before heading to the top. So even being allowed to double jump from the rotating platform is useless. The sword requires you to bring the platform down, then back up. Really annoying process, but you have to do it. Finally, the last series of rotating platforms, make gracious use of Accelerator. And DON'T FALL.

Tony III: This is quite possibly the FASTEST battle ever. Anyways, Gunstar sign on Raquel, Arnaud and Jude doesn't matter. Kresnik gets nothing. Saves time in the end since you have to unequip it off him later to boot or lose it for the next several dungeons.

Initial turn order for fun!:

Tony --> Tony --> Jude --> Arnaud --> Kresnik --> Tony --> Raquel

Really Jude and Arnaud's turn order doesn't matter as long as they both go before Tony. Anyways, 90% of the time, Tony will come barging down. Followed by a regular physical. The next part is best divided into an if clause:

IF Raquel counters and crits: The match ends. Approximate time? 5-10 seconds 
IF Raquel counters but doesn't crit: Jude uses Joint Struggle, Arnaud defends, Kresnik pulls a Lock On and ends the fight. You lose a x0.7 bonus, but what can you do? Approx. 15-25 seconds 
IF Raquel doesn't counter: Jude joint struggles, Arnaud casts Slow Down, Kresnik casts Adrenaline Rush. New turn order:

Raquel --> Tony --> Doesn't matter.

You have 25 FP as well. Can we say splat? Approximate time - 25-30 seconds

Super Soldier: 
After the last two joke fights, this one actually requires some set up. First Silver Sun on Raquel and mix twink for HP. Max twink HP for Jude as well. What I do know, is that if Red Zone triggers early, the fight is MUCH shorter. And that’s what we will be aiming for.

Super Soldier will get 2 turns right off the bat. And he will, 99% of the time cast 2 blasts, which will kill. However, thanks to the set up, Raquel will live in critical and Jude will live on survival. There’s a chance he dies, we don’t want that. Reset until he lives. At this point, trigger Intrude, smack an enemy not Super Soldier since he has blocker. Intrude as many times as you can, and Dragon Edge/Comet Strike. If he’s still alive, Jude should get a turn and Phantom Line to finish. Arnaud casts a powered up Hi Blast on the last enemy and the fight ends in 58 seconds.

Prototype Gear: 
Another headache. I didn't get the Holy grail since its such a long detour in Velkerung. So we're stuck rolling the odds and hoping for Arnaud and Yulie (at least one of them) to live past 2 shots of Radious breath. Or hoping the idiot moves and doesn't attack. The actual fight itself is pretty basic, with Short Circuit over Joint Struggle due to Radious Breath, Quicken on Raquel, Slow Down to get a smooth offense rolling. Depending on who lives, this fight was done purely with Jude and Raquel.

Augst 1/Augst 2: No explanation needed. One Lucky Card later and the fight proceeds with a prompt smack down of doom. I’m wondering if Fragile will speed things up though.

Dragon Fossil Mine: 
Get the Cat's Paw. Its in the third area of the mine. Everything else here is vanilla.

Halim: 
A change in plans. With an equipment upgrade in Rosalia coming up, the duration of these new equips is extremely short lived. The armors might justify your purchase. But be sure to have 44800 gella left. You need it for Raquel's Great Sword after. For now, your Gunstar/Cats Paw and Macha Brand set up will work. Anyways, talk to Henri, GRAB THE TINY FLOWER. Its in the non duplo chest.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:38:20 pm

Insanity Prelude

Forbidden Valley:
De-equip the Fighter badge on Jude. You really want to be able to run ASAP if a fight triggers. Not just because you're naturally weaker, but also because they waste a lot of time. Anyway, accelerator jumps repeatedly until the puzzles. The first one only requires a Fire crystal. Then the plat splits in two. The one up north can be done by first throwing the crystal onto the flame, reactivating the crystal to send the lift up, then bringing a flame crystal to the next room, where you manipulate the ice crystal and flame crystal to open two doors. The one to the east can be done by throwing the crystal to the fire, then making a mad dash to the next room. Note that the crystal puzzles can be done faster with accelerator since Jude moves slower while he’s carrying it. Light all the torches there, and then use the three crystals to snuff out the flames on the purple pedestals. Turn both switches and keep heading up. Fight Smiling Sphere. Once you fall through the bridge, you will eventually come to a stange area where there are 4 purple pedestals. You don't need to DO anything here. So keep moving. There's a save point up the stairs if you're injured. But don’t bother otherwise. After goldrake, follow the trail of coins in the next room and we're done. I’m going to make a change in the route and grab the gella chest here just to make sure I have enough cash in Rosalia.

Smiling Sphere dude: Kaesaran Paesara or whatever his name is, surprisingly easy battle. Thankfully too. Tiny Flower on Yulie. Cat's Paw on Raquel. Witch Badge on Arnaud.

Turn order: Boss --> Boss --> Yulie --> Jude --> Boss --> Arnaud --> Boss --> Raquel

Always waste his first attack with a BEST SMILE. Yulie gets her turn, Turn Shift. Jude moves. Yulie gets another turn, Turn Shift again. Arnaud Jumps on the Wind HEX and casts 1x Hi Blast. Smiling Sphere man goes again and creates a clone. Turn Shift, Jude gets a turn and uses Silver Launcher. Smiling Sphere man gets his last turn, creates a clone. Turn Shift to Raquel, Intrude, smack twice for the win. Fight ends in under 90 seconds.

Goldrake:
Tiny Flower on Yulie again. Exploit Weakness on Arnaud. First turn, Goldrake will do something. Usually, not really significant. Yulie gets a turn and casts Turn Shift. Arnaud jumps and uses any remaining Wind Gems for a ton of damage. Cast Replace later on to steal his HEX, which drops the power of Stone Bullet. You should also try twinking Raquel for a Red Zone so after one Stone Bullet, she can move and smack his face in. From here, keep using Turn Shift and have Raquel trigger Intrude and physicals when she finally gets a turn. The fight is fairly quick (58 seconds or so) if he remains on the ground. Which he should since we’re finishing this fight as fast as we can.

Blue Amity beach:
Grab the Goat Doll. Now run all the way to the exit.

Port Rosalia: Talk to the fat man by the ship dock. Skip text with Kresnik and head to the general store. BUY: Raquel's Great sword, Raquel/Yulie/Jude's armor. Sell everything else you have to fund it. I think you won't need anything else in the game and certainly hope you don't need an armor tweak for Red Zone.

Jeremy 3/4:
Cat’s Paw/Tiny Flower on Raquel along with as many class levels as possible. Yulie has the Goat Doll just in case. Fight starts, Jeremy will come barreling down and attack. With luck, he attacks Raquel, and she Hi Counters instantly ending it. If not, Raquel should still get the first turn after. One physical attack and hope for high variance will finish it.

The second fight is similar. Except Raquel has initiative. Intrude, move and attack twice. First fight lasts 14 seconds, second fight also lasts 14 seconds.

Farmel
Strategy is very simple. How fast it goes depends on what stance she's using. Barrier stance = good. Since Jude and Raquel combined definitely do a lot more than Arnaud alone. As an aside, it might be a good idea to burn some CGs on Hyper instead of Hi Blast. There is a good reason not to.

The last save point before Farmel is at Dievas Airport after the gawn fight. Sounds like a good place to save, except if you do, you have to backtrack and grab the staff then come back down. This wastes roughly 15 seconds or so. NOT saving means you get to do Jane Does (easy) and Gawn (oh god the pain) all over again!

So, I didn't. Stuck with Hi Blast so I can hit both stances decently. As an aside, if you can get Yulie to Replace or an Isolate on the Wind HEX, then it should speed up the fight regardless of stances since Arnaud now deals x1.5 more from Hi Blast.

Reclaimer Dragon -
Random as hell. Think I mentioned this last time. Having him locked in the Fire HEX means Arnaud deals more damage. Otherwise, hope he uses some non lethal status continuosly and hitting the wrong people. Raquel being capable of landing her hits in solidly makes this smoother obviously.

Reinseige - Raquel with Tiny Flower. Intrude, 2 swings. If he's still alive, Jude should get a turn after (Fighter Badge OFF). Phantom Line or Silver Launcher should do the trick.

Cyanoides - Is essentially solo'd by Kres. Run to the Water HEX. Cast Adrenaline Rush and hope for Hydro Pressures a lot while you blast him with Lock On Apoptosis. If your HP goes really low, you can attempt a last minute Pile Bunker. Jude doesn't contribute much, but Silver Launcher should at least do some of the work. On that note, he died before getting a turn on this run >_>.

Arnaud/Raquel/Yulie team fight - This fight I don't have a strategy down pat. But if you can get both Exploit Weakness and Hi Blast, set it up before Reinseige. Anyways, Yulie should cast Replace on Arnaud so he's on the Water HEX. Raquel with Tiny Flower still opens up with two swings. Afterwards, have Yulie either Turn Shift or cast Quicken or Raquel's HEX. I'll find a fixed way soon enough.

Lambda - Pretty much fixed strategy. Oh Lambda can do stuff to mess this up, but it works most of the time so, it's pretty nifty.

Jude has Fighter Badge/Silver Sun, Raquel has Cat's paw/Gunstar, Yulie has Goat Doll/Castle Wall, Arnaud has Witch badge/Tiny Flower.

Fight starts, Lambda does something. Usually not significant (Yulie blocks, Jude/Raquel and Arnaud all survive at least a hit). Arnaud's turn, jump to the centre HEX, then cast Illusion. Next turn, Lambda either hits Jude or Raquel, which most of the time, is a wasted maneuver. Or he physicals Arnaud/Yulie, who should both be able to dodge it with Illusion. If both of them are in the range of KO, have Jude heal them with a Heal berry. Otherwise, Ley boost/Guard. Yulie's turn, cast Replace and force Lambda into the centre.

Now as long as you pay attention to where Lambda is looking, you will always hit him with at least two characters. Most of the time, he won't be looking at Raquel after Replace, which leads to Intrude, attack x2 and fight ends. If he blocks one hit, Jude gets a follow up and Gatling Raid, followed by a Hi Blast from Arnaud usually seals it.

Because I'm not running back to the save point, this fight needs to go WELL since I have 2 more fights after this one.

Forbidden Valley: 
De-equip the Fighter badge on Jude. You really want to be able to run ASAP if a fight triggers. Not just because you're naturally weaker, but also because they waste a lot of time. Anyway, accelerator jumps repeatedly until the puzzles. The first one only requires a Fire crystal. Then the plat splits in two. The one up north can be done by first throwing the crystal onto the flame, reactivating the crystal to send the lift up, then bringing a flame crystal to the next room, where you manipulate the ice crystal and flame crystal to open two doors. The one to the east can be done by throwing the crystal to the fire, then making a mad dash to the next room. Note that the crystal puzzles can be done faster with accelerator since Jude moves slower while he’s carrying it. Light all the torches there, and then use the three crystals to snuff out the flames on the purple pedestals. Turn both switches and keep heading up. Fight Smiling Sphere. Once you fall through the bridge, you will eventually come to a stange area where there are 4 purple pedestals. You don't need to DO anything here. So keep moving. There's a save point up the stairs if you're injured. But don’t bother otherwise. After goldrake, follow the trail of coins in the next room and we're done. I’m going to make a change in the route and grab the gella chest here just to make sure I have enough cash in Rosalia.

Smiling Sphere dude: Kaesaran Paesara or whatever his name is, surprisingly easy battle. Thankfully too. Tiny Flower on Yulie. Cat's Paw on Raquel. Witch Badge on Arnaud.

Turn order: Boss --> Boss --> Yulie --> Jude --> Boss --> Arnaud --> Boss --> Raquel

Always waste his first attack with a BEST SMILE. Yulie gets her turn, Turn Shift. Jude moves. Yulie gets another turn, Turn Shift again. Arnaud Jumps on the Wind HEX and casts 1x Hi Blast. Smiling Sphere man goes again and creates a clone. Turn Shift, Jude gets a turn and uses Silver Launcher. Smiling Sphere man gets his last turn, creates a clone. Turn Shift to Raquel, Intrude, smack twice for the win. Fight ends in under 90 seconds.

Goldrake: 
 Tiny Flower on Yulie again. Exploit Weakness on Arnaud. First turn, Goldrake will do something. Usually, not really significant. Yulie gets a turn and casts Turn Shift. Arnaud jumps and uses any remaining Wind Gems for a ton of damage. Cast Replace later on to steal his HEX, which drops the power of Stone Bullet. You should also try twinking Raquel for a Red Zone so after one Stone Bullet, she can move and smack his face in. From here, keep using Turn Shift and have Raquel trigger Intrude and physicals when she finally gets a turn. The fight is fairly quick (58 seconds or so) if he remains on the ground. Which he should since we’re finishing this fight as fast as we can.

Blue Amity beach: 
Grab the Goat Doll. Now run all the way to the exit.

Port Rosalia: Talk to the fat man by the ship dock. Skip text with Kresnik and head to the general store. BUY: Raquel's Great sword, Raquel/Yulie/Jude's armor. Sell everything else you have to fund it. I think you won't need anything else in the game and certainly hope you don't need an armor tweak for Red Zone.

Jeremy 3/4:
Cat’s Paw/Tiny Flower on Raquel along with as many class levels as possible. Yulie has the Goat Doll just in case. Fight starts, Jeremy will come barreling down and attack. With luck, he attacks Raquel, and she Hi Counters instantly ending it. If not, Raquel should still get the first turn after. One physical attack and hope for high variance will finish it.

The second fight is similar. Except Raquel has initiative. Intrude, move and attack twice. First fight lasts 14 seconds, second fight also lasts 14 seconds.

Farmel
Strategy is very simple. How fast it goes depends on what stance she's using. Barrier stance = good. Since Jude and Raquel combined definitely do a lot more than Arnaud alone. As an aside, it might be a good idea to burn some CGs on Hyper instead of Hi Blast. There is a good reason not to.

The last save point before Farmel is at Dievas Airport after the gawn fight. Sounds like a good place to save, except if you do, you have to backtrack and grab the staff then come back down. This wastes roughly 15 seconds or so. NOT saving means you get to do Jane Does (easy) and Gawn (oh god the pain) all over again!

So, I didn't. Stuck with Hi Blast so I can hit both stances decently. As an aside, if you can get Yulie to Replace or an Isolate on the Wind HEX, then it should speed up the fight regardless of stances since Arnaud now deals x1.5 more from Hi Blast.

Reclaimer Dragon - 
Random as hell. Think I mentioned this last time. Having him locked in the Fire HEX means Arnaud deals more damage. Otherwise, hope he uses some non lethal status continuosly and hitting the wrong people. Raquel being capable of landing her hits in solidly makes this smoother obviously.

Reinseige - Raquel with Tiny Flower. Intrude, 2 swings. If he's still alive, Jude should get a turn after (Fighter Badge OFF). Phantom Line or Silver Launcher should do the trick.

Cyanoides - Is essentially solo'd by Kres. Run to the Water HEX. Cast Adrenaline Rush and hope for Hydro Pressures a lot while you blast him with Lock On Apoptosis. If your HP goes really low, you can attempt a last minute Pile Bunker. Jude doesn't contribute much, but Silver Launcher should at least do some of the work. On that note, he died before getting a turn on this run >_>.

Arnaud/Raquel/Yulie team fight - This fight I don't have a strategy down pat. But if you can get both Exploit Weakness and Hi Blast, set it up before Reinseige. Anyways, Yulie should cast Replace on Arnaud so he's on the Water HEX. Raquel with Tiny Flower still opens up with two swings. Afterwards, have Yulie either Turn Shift or cast Quicken or Raquel's HEX. I'll find a fixed way soon enough.

Lambda - Pretty much fixed strategy. Oh Lambda can do stuff to mess this up, but it works most of the time so, it's pretty nifty.

Jude has Fighter Badge/Silver Sun, Raquel has Cat's paw/Gunstar, Yulie has Goat Doll/Castle Wall, Arnaud has Witch badge/Tiny Flower.

Fight starts, Lambda does something. Usually not significant (Yulie blocks, Jude/Raquel and Arnaud all survive at least a hit). Arnaud's turn, jump to the centre HEX, then cast Illusion. Next turn, Lambda either hits Jude or Raquel, which most of the time, is a wasted maneuver. Or he physicals Arnaud/Yulie, who should both be able to dodge it with Illusion. If both of them are in the range of KO, have Jude heal them with a Heal berry. Otherwise, Ley boost/Guard. Yulie's turn, cast Replace and force Lambda into the centre.

Now as long as you pay attention to where Lambda is looking, you will always hit him with at least two characters. Most of the time, he won't be looking at Raquel after Replace, which leads to Intrude, attack x2 and fight ends. If he blocks one hit, Jude gets a follow up and Gatling Raid, followed by a Hi Blast from Arnaud usually seals it.

Because I'm not running back to the save point, this fight needs to go WELL since I have 2 more fights after this one.

Tide

2007-12-05 06:38:56 pm

Insanity Prelude

DW1 - We're about to go through 3 fights under levelled and with a very small inventory. So your set up will drastically determine how the strategy for all three fights work. Of course, grab class levels for any remaining CG after two badges.

Jude's set up: 710 ATP/3.00 ACN along with Mithral guard. His accessories were the Silver Sun/Elder Record. His CGs are mostly untouched. Silver Launcher loses to Apoptosis and Rapid attack is not useful since Apoptosis is an OC.
Arnaud's set up: Doesn’t matter/Marcus Garb. His accessories were Witch badge/Tiny Flower. Adjust CGs for has Hi Blast and Hyper.
Yulie's set up: Doesn’t matter/Mirage Ring. Her accessories were Castle Wall/Goat Doll. Adjust CGs for Quicken and Healing Plus. Conserve MP if you have extra CGs.
Raquel's set up: Great Sword/Sun Wall. Accessories: Cat's Paw/Gunstar Sign. CGs for Exorcism and Rapid Attack. Exorcism is mainly back up, but can be important.

DW1 for the most part, is non threatening. However! He can still kill you if something goes wrong. There are two ways of approaching this fight, I thought about. First and foremost, DW's Devices don't defend against magic. So, one method is to have Arnaud Hi Blast them. Problem: His magic even twinked with Marcus Garb and Witch badge is not enough. He almost kills them.

Method two: Isolate. The Devices only have 100% Defender if they are on the same HEX. Problem: Isolate going wrong leaves you in prime position of dying horribly.

So take your pick and hope for some luck. There's an alternative to equip Raquel with the Tiny Flower, but I decided not to do this since she's effectively wasted an action against DW1. Arnaud at least has stuff he can contribute in DW2 and 3, although his worth in DW3 is debatable. We'll see, I'll run some more fights against him to tell.

Anyway, once the Devices are removed from DW, get a couple of turns going and splat him with Raquel/Jude. If he's still on the Fire HEX, Arnaud's Hi Blast deals around 11000 (which is the same as Jude and Raquel's attacks). If not, he should cast Slow Down and Hyper on Jude/Raquel to bolster their damage.

DW2 - If he continuously uses Claymore and it continuously hits, I assure you, it is annoying as all hell. Dead Heat going off can massively screw things offer. Prism Laser is an instant reset. Anyways, MOST of the time, I can kill him before things go too out of control. He has an obsession with Claymore, so Dragon Edge/Red Zone Raquel works wonders here. Cast Hyper on Raquel as well. Arnaud's first turn is to Jump to either the Water HEX for more damage, or Jump beside DW and cast Hyper to provide Jude/Raquel with more offense. Yulie should Turn Shift and Quicken as needed. Protect is also VERY useful since it reduces Claymore to 0 damage against her. You can wait for it to whiff and pound him in the face afterwards.

DW3 - And here's where everything goes crazy. Problems!
1) The Sword Radii can kill Yulie/Arnaud relatively easily. Which is not good.
2) Accelerator
3) Opening ABM Salvo hurts due to enemies not being cluttered.
4) Arch Smasher hurts
5) RANDOM ACCELERATOR + WEAPON BOOST = arghno
6) PLOT KO. God damn. I've won several times with one or two characters dead. But because EVERYONE needs to be alive, it means Yulie cannot under any circumstances die more than once. And you thought healing plus has no use.

Arnaud's opening turn features casting Hyper. DW goes, and hits you with something. With luck, you will still be alive. If not, expect a reset. Usually he doesn't. On Jude's turn, Apoptosis across the HEX. With Hyper, the Sword Radii all die in one hit and regenerate a lot of FP. As a bonus, if you hit DW, he will take a boosted hit. Now then, DW gets a turn. If you're lucky, he won't kill you. Cast Quicken and Protect on Yulie’s turn. The other sword radii can’t reach you yet, so you should be safe. Yulie's capable of tanking most of DW’s attack after Protect, so yes, definitely do it. THEN, when all is said and done, cast Revive to bring all the dead allies back. Have Raquel Intrude 2 – 4 times. This will depend on how many boosted Apoptosis shots hit. Attack as many times as you can. You can still die if he pops up with Accelerator so keep a sharp eye on the buffers. When the plot KO triggers, keep Protect active, cast Reinforce, and use Gather to bring everyone back. Have Raquel use Moonlight. Once 100 FP is reached, Arc Impulse to finish the job. Very very luck dependent fight unfortunately.

After that, save at Ex File to determine the ending time. It came out to 6:11:10 for me.

DW1 - We're about to go through 3 fights under levelled and with a very small inventory. So your set up will drastically determine how the strategy for all three fights work. Of course, grab class levels for any remaining CG after two badges.

Jude's set up: 710 ATP/3.00 ACN along with Mithral guard. His accessories were the Silver Sun/Elder Record. His CGs are mostly untouched. Silver Launcher loses to Apoptosis and Rapid attack is not useful since Apoptosis is an OC. 
Arnaud's set up: Doesn’t matter/Marcus Garb. His accessories were Witch badge/Tiny Flower. Adjust CGs for has Hi Blast and Hyper. 
Yulie's set up: Doesn’t matter/Mirage Ring. Her accessories were Castle Wall/Goat Doll. Adjust CGs for Quicken and Healing Plus. Conserve MP if you have extra CGs. 
Raquel's set up: Great Sword/Sun Wall. Accessories: Cat's Paw/Gunstar Sign. CGs for Exorcism and Rapid Attack. Exorcism is mainly back up, but can be important.

DW1 for the most part, is non threatening. However! He can still kill you if something goes wrong. There are two ways of approaching this fight, I thought about. First and foremost, DW's Devices don't defend against magic. So, one method is to have Arnaud Hi Blast them. Problem: His magic even twinked with Marcus Garb and Witch badge is not enough. He almost kills them.

Method two: Isolate. The Devices only have 100% Defender if they are on the same HEX. Problem: Isolate going wrong leaves you in prime position of dying horribly.

So take your pick and hope for some luck. There's an alternative to equip Raquel with the Tiny Flower, but I decided not to do this since she's effectively wasted an action against DW1. Arnaud at least has stuff he can contribute in DW2 and 3, although his worth in DW3 is debatable. We'll see, I'll run some more fights against him to tell.

Anyway, once the Devices are removed from DW, get a couple of turns going and splat him with Raquel/Jude. If he's still on the Fire HEX, Arnaud's Hi Blast deals around 11000 (which is the same as Jude and Raquel's attacks). If not, he should cast Slow Down and Hyper on Jude/Raquel to bolster their damage.

DW2 - If he continuously uses Claymore and it continuously hits, I assure you, it is annoying as all hell. Dead Heat going off can massively screw things offer. Prism Laser is an instant reset. Anyways, MOST of the time, I can kill him before things go too out of control. He has an obsession with Claymore, so Dragon Edge/Red Zone Raquel works wonders here. Cast Hyper on Raquel as well. Arnaud's first turn is to Jump to either the Water HEX for more damage, or Jump beside DW and cast Hyper to provide Jude/Raquel with more offense. Yulie should Turn Shift and Quicken as needed. Protect is also VERY useful since it reduces Claymore to 0 damage against her. You can wait for it to whiff and pound him in the face afterwards.

DW3 - And here's where everything goes crazy. Problems! 
1) The Sword Radii can kill Yulie/Arnaud relatively easily. Which is not good. 
2) Accelerator 
3) Opening ABM Salvo hurts due to enemies not being cluttered. 
4) Arch Smasher hurts 
5) RANDOM ACCELERATOR + WEAPON BOOST = arghno 
6) PLOT KO. God damn. I've won several times with one or two characters dead. But because EVERYONE needs to be alive, it means Yulie cannot under any circumstances die more than once. And you thought healing plus has no use.

Arnaud's opening turn features casting Hyper. DW goes, and hits you with something. With luck, you will still be alive. If not, expect a reset. Usually he doesn't. On Jude's turn, Apoptosis across the HEX. With Hyper, the Sword Radii all die in one hit and regenerate a lot of FP. As a bonus, if you hit DW, he will take a boosted hit. Now then, DW gets a turn. If you're lucky, he won't kill you. Cast Quicken and Protect on Yulie’s turn. The other sword radii can’t reach you yet, so you should be safe. Yulie's capable of tanking most of DW’s attack after Protect, so yes, definitely do it. THEN, when all is said and done, cast Revive to bring all the dead allies back. Have Raquel Intrude 2 – 4 times. This will depend on how many boosted Apoptosis shots hit. Attack as many times as you can. You can still die if he pops up with Accelerator so keep a sharp eye on the buffers. When the plot KO triggers, keep Protect active, cast Reinforce, and use Gather to bring everyone back. Have Raquel use Moonlight. Once 100 FP is reached, Arc Impulse to finish the job. Very very luck dependent fight unfortunately.

After that, save at Ex File to determine the ending time. It came out to 6:11:10 for me.

getter77

2007-12-05 09:04:03 pm

100% runs=great to watch

Holy McDamn that's A writeup! Aquatiger would approve....or see you as a destined rival detail giver.

I can help none at all, but good luck with rounding this out for sure.

Tide

2007-12-06 06:30:37 am

Insanity Prelude

I decided to do some reviewing of my other speed run work as well as other videos, and thought about some other ways of making this faster. Essentially, most of the speed will probably be attributed to improving the battles. I think the platforming elements (since they have to be solved in a specific way) will probably remain relatively the same. Again, unless a huge breakthrough comes through.

That said, I did an entire review of all the potential useful badges I have not listed. Here's some tentative thoughts:

The "No" list
- Sheriff Star: Not possible
- Status blockers: Outside of Holy Grails for Prototype Gear, can't see much use. You will never have enough to dodge Prism Laser safely anyway
- Element blockers: Very nice in theory. There's 2 spots where they can be useful: Guardian Chimera and any boss after Abandoned Village since that's where you can first pick up a Geo amulet. In short? Only the Frey amulet has potential use, and its on ONE boss. Might be useful for Super Soldier in ensuring Jude will survive. Wind and Water are useless pretty certain.
- Rabbit Badge: Probably needed if I'm considering doing some stealing to improve some fight times
- Punching Glove: No. On a critical chance, a rare chance to do uber damage. Sounds way too infrequent. Plus you have to watch the FA animation
- The Suns (HP boost): Outside of the Silver Sun I'm already getting, can't see them being useful. BUT! Bronze Suns are needed for Synthesis. Which COULD be used (but unlikely).
- The Moons (MP boost): No. Rarely run out of MP outside of the final
- Hourglass: See above really

Now we get into the interesting list:
- Berserker Badge: x2 offense at x0.5 Defense. Seems awesome. Problem? Rare steal from a monster that doesn't appear frequently. Also, unlike other Wild ARMS games, Defense in WA4 ACTUALLY matters. Still worth looking into

- Full Carrot: Start at 100 FP if get first turn in battle. This seems useless at first thanks to 200+ average speed enemies. BUT! With a Tiny Flower equipped on our fastest member or in other slower bosses, we can get a huge use out of this. Example?

Balgaine now becomes: Full Carrot Arnaud, start at 100 FP, Jump beside Balgaine and use a Lucky Card. Jude still Joint Struggles, however, instead of needing to cast Quicken and then Turn Shifting three times, Yulie can now safely defend and watch as a 75 FP Raquel rips through Chainsaw Rocketman

The problem again, is that its a rare steal from a non-frequent enemy. Could always just continuously reset until we get it in the first try. And its early enough to consider (Autumn River).

- Speed Skates: +100 RFX at the start of battle. Stacks with Tiny Flower's Detonation boost. Remember that Full Carrot? Well now we can combo it together! This won't be available until Valley of Oblivion at the earliest. But its probably very useful for the rest of the battles up ahead.

- Prism Staff: When in critical grant 25 FP. Comboable with Raquel. Since she also has Red Zone, guaranteed Intrude chain. Problem? You can't even steal this. You have to make one, and there aren't enough chest components for it. Very unlikely to be use sadly.

- King's Crown: Guaranteed first turn critical. Sounds awesome! And it is! But? Rare steal from rare monster or requires a ton of parts to make >_>. No.

- Red Pepper: Gradual Regeneration. I can think of one use mainly. And that one use isn't much. Still. It's there. I may think about it. Its a semi rare steal for once (tier 2 item on a monster with 3 items) so getting it shouldn't be too much of a headache.

- Ryan's Shield: Randomly blocks attacks. Bad on your attackers. Might help Yulie! Don't see the point though.

- Tiny Flower: We can steal one earlier. Yep. Desolate Railroad rare steal. Looking like a better (although more frustrating) decision every minute. This will cut back on Enil/Tank Vehicle/Balgaine/Tony III and Prototype Gear as well as both Augst fights. Huge pay off if it works.

- Thief Badge: Can get this as early as great wall. And its good. Trade 25 attack for 25 more speed. Ideally, Arnaud or Yulie will have this. Problem: Jude's not hitting level 12 by Great Wall. So the next earliest (and latest for that matter) place he can steal it is Calculon Pass. He can also get it from a Shotel Gob in 3 floor dungeons. But they actually hit pretty hard so it will be tricky.

Whew, that's around it for the reviewing.

Ideally, set ups with this taken into consideration will look something like...

Jude: Full Carrot/Tiny Flower
Arnaud: Witch badge/Speed Skates
Yulie: Castle Wall/Thief Badge
Raquel: Cat's Paw/Berserker Badge

Not sure if the time lost to initiate a battle, stealing the item and running away will make up for the advantages gained though.

I decided to do some reviewing of my other speed run work as well as other videos, and thought about some other ways of making this faster. Essentially, most of the speed will probably be attributed to improving the battles. I think the platforming elements (since they have to be solved in a specific way) will probably remain relatively the same. Again, unless a huge breakthrough comes through.

That said, I did an entire review of all the potential useful badges I have not listed. Here's some tentative thoughts:

[u]The "No" list[/u]
- Sheriff Star: Not possible
- Status blockers: Outside of Holy Grails for Prototype Gear, can't see much use. You will never have enough to dodge Prism Laser safely anyway
- Element blockers: Very nice in theory. There's 2 spots where they can be useful: Guardian Chimera and any boss after Abandoned Village since that's where you can first pick up a Geo amulet. In short? Only the Frey amulet has potential use, and its on ONE boss. Might be useful for Super Soldier in ensuring Jude will survive. Wind and Water are useless pretty certain.
- Rabbit Badge: Probably needed if I'm considering doing some stealing to improve some fight times
- Punching Glove: No. On a critical chance, a rare chance to do uber damage. Sounds way too infrequent. Plus you have to watch the FA animation
- The Suns (HP boost): Outside of the Silver Sun I'm already getting, can't see them being useful. BUT! Bronze Suns are needed for Synthesis. Which COULD be used (but unlikely).
- The Moons (MP boost): No. Rarely run out of MP outside of the final
- Hourglass: See above really

Now we get into the interesting list:
- Berserker Badge: x2 offense at x0.5 Defense. Seems awesome. Problem? Rare steal from a monster that doesn't appear frequently. Also, unlike other Wild ARMS games, Defense in WA4 ACTUALLY matters. Still worth looking into

- Full Carrot: Start at 100 FP if get first turn in battle. This seems useless at first thanks to 200+ average speed enemies. BUT! With a Tiny Flower equipped on our fastest member or in other slower bosses, we can get a huge use out of this. Example?

Balgaine now becomes: Full Carrot Arnaud, start at 100 FP, Jump beside Balgaine and use a Lucky Card. Jude still Joint Struggles, however, instead of needing to cast Quicken and then Turn Shifting three times, Yulie can now safely defend and watch as a 75 FP Raquel rips through Chainsaw Rocketman

The problem again, is that its a rare steal from a non-frequent enemy. Could always just continuously reset until we get it in the first try. And its early enough to consider (Autumn River).

- Speed Skates: +100 RFX at the start of battle. Stacks with Tiny Flower's Detonation boost. Remember that Full Carrot? Well now we can combo it together! This won't be available until Valley of Oblivion at the earliest. But its probably very useful for the rest of the battles up ahead.

- Prism Staff: When in critical grant 25 FP. Comboable with Raquel. Since she also has Red Zone, guaranteed Intrude chain. Problem? You can't even steal this. You have to make one, and there aren't enough chest components for it. Very unlikely to be use sadly.

- King's Crown: Guaranteed first turn critical. Sounds awesome! And it is! But? Rare steal from rare monster or requires a ton of parts to make >_>. No.

- Red Pepper: Gradual Regeneration. I can think of one use mainly. And that one use isn't much. Still. It's there. I may think about it. Its a semi rare steal for once (tier 2 item on a monster with 3 items) so getting it shouldn't be too much of a headache.

- Ryan's Shield: Randomly blocks attacks. Bad on your attackers. Might help Yulie! Don't see the point though.

- Tiny Flower: We can steal one earlier. Yep. Desolate Railroad rare steal. Looking like a better (although more frustrating) decision every minute. This will cut back on Enil/Tank Vehicle/Balgaine/Tony III and Prototype Gear as well as both Augst fights. Huge pay off if it works.

- Thief Badge: Can get this as early as great wall. And its good. Trade 25 attack for 25 more speed. Ideally, Arnaud or Yulie will have this. Problem: Jude's not hitting level 12 by Great Wall. So the next earliest (and latest for that matter) place he can steal it is Calculon Pass. He can also get it from a Shotel Gob in 3 floor dungeons. But they actually hit pretty hard so it will be tricky.

Whew, that's around it for the reviewing.

Ideally, set ups with this taken into consideration will look something like...

Jude: Full Carrot/Tiny Flower
Arnaud: Witch badge/Speed Skates
Yulie: Castle Wall/Thief Badge
Raquel: Cat's Paw/Berserker Badge

Not sure if the time lost to initiate a battle, stealing the item and running away will make up for the advantages gained though.

Tide

2007-12-10 08:54:50 pm

Insanity Prelude

Just restarted again, going to check to see if the new methods are any faster.

Found a new strategy against Turasque. Pretty sure that fight is at close to the best time I'm going to see.

Tide

2007-12-14 01:27:10 am

Insanity Prelude

Update:
I've made it all the way to Cerulean Tunnel. A couple of things I underestimated. One of them was the amount of early game cash - it doesn't exist.

The shop at Night City basically held items that were way over my cash amount. I had a grand total of 2900. Raquel's sword costs 3600. Considering how I have close to no items in my inventory, and I need the Wind Gems for Grabboid, I had to find an alternative way to get cash.

Luckily, there was one: By gathering all the consumables in the city, and selling them off, I get 5600 cash or so. Enough to buy the sword and Jude's Alter Part. I'm left with a whopping 208 Gella, to which 200 will be spent getting 2 Heal Berries (which I thought I needed for Kresnik, but it wasn't the case here).

The detour to and from took around an extra minute and a half or so. Not very promising. Perhaps if there was a easy gella card chest, that could be swiped instead. But I'll await for opinions (if any)

The good news is, I'm around 8-9 minutes faster than my old time as we speak. And I haven't even gotten to the big change in strategies yet. If this keeps up, sub 6 hours is definitely doable.

The next shop shouldn't feature this problem as Raquel and Arnaud do not need to purchase weapon/armor respectively. I also have several boss fights gone that will help raise some money to do it.

Although from the looks of it, doesn't seem to be raising much interest from anybody.

Update:
I've made it all the way to Cerulean Tunnel. A couple of things I underestimated. One of them was the amount of early game cash - it doesn't exist.

The shop at Night City basically held items that were way over my cash amount. I had a grand total of 2900. Raquel's sword costs 3600. Considering how I have close to no items in my inventory, and I need the Wind Gems for Grabboid, I had to find an alternative way to get cash.

Luckily, there was one: By gathering all the consumables in the city, and selling them off, I get 5600 cash or so. Enough to buy the sword and Jude's Alter Part. I'm left with a whopping 208 Gella, to which 200 will be spent getting 2 Heal Berries (which I thought I needed for Kresnik, but it wasn't the case here).

The detour to and from took around an extra minute and a half or so. Not very promising. Perhaps if there was a easy gella card chest, that could be swiped instead. But I'll await for opinions (if any)

The good news is, I'm around 8-9 minutes faster than my old time as we speak. And I haven't even gotten to the big change in strategies yet. If this keeps up, sub 6 hours is definitely doable.

The next shop shouldn't feature this problem as Raquel and Arnaud do not need to purchase weapon/armor respectively. I also have several boss fights gone that will help raise some money to do it.

Although from the looks of it, doesn't seem to be raising much interest from anybody.

Tide

Edit history:

Tide: 2007-12-15 01:18:26 am

2007-12-14 09:01:24 pm

Insanity Prelude

Okay, finally made it to Autumn River.

First, I did some fooling around with Hugo and found a way to completely bypass System Chronos from ever triggering. Overall, its a little more reliable than waiting for perfect Isolates. It also felt a little faster overall, although I cannot confirm for certain.

Second, doing a brief test, it seems the frog enemies that carry the Full Carrot only appear 20% of the time in the area. On top of that, the item is a tier 1 of 3, making this incredibly aggrevating. I have a feeling I'm going to be resetting here for a while. I'll confirm with some other sources to see if its worthwhile. Given its segmented, I have to get lucky eventually.

Again, if anybody has any comments, I'm all ears.

EDIT: FINALLY. After 30 resets and 1 full hour of repeatedly resetting, I managed to steal it from those stupid Frogs. On my first try and managed to run immediately afterwards too.

We'll see pretty soon if the next few fights will be sped up.

Deadstick

2007-12-15 04:27:45 am

...

It's nice to know that someone actually is attempting a speedrun for a game in the Wild ARMS series. Good luck on finding more time savers, and producing an awesome speedrun.

Tide

2007-12-16 04:07:09 pm

Insanity Prelude

Oh yes. A Tiny Flower has been stolen within 2 minutes.
*dances*

Not as fast as the Full Carrot, but I won't complain. Still pretty optimal. Looking at my time after Enil, I'm now 10 minutes ahead. The next section (Silver Star Express/ Garra De Leon) will determine if that extra 3 minutes is worth spending.

There are some changes of course. First, I am drastically underestimating the amount of cash you need. I got to the store and did not have enough money to update all my armor. Not a good sign. The weapons, tentatively, I'm skipping. They shouldn't matter too much altogether. I'm hoping they don't affect Joint Struggle at this point, but no idea.

Second, activating the break point in Mil'muku Skyway is around 30 seconds faster than not. You could try running the entire way and hoping for no encounter, but that's incredibly unlikely. It seems that if a break point can be activated easily and early, it will be very beneficial. I count only 1 location this is true for >_>. And that's this one. Altogether, when I was at the Dolls, I was around 12 minutes faster. So progress right now is standard. I've gained 2 minutes since last I updated.

Oh yes. A Tiny Flower has been stolen within 2 minutes.
*dances*

Not as fast as the Full Carrot, but I won't complain. Still pretty optimal. Looking at my time after Enil, I'm now 10 minutes ahead. The next section (Silver Star Express/ Garra De Leon) will determine if that extra 3 minutes is worth spending.

There are some changes of course. First, I am drastically underestimating the amount of cash you need. I got to the store and did not have enough money to update all my armor. Not a good sign. The weapons, tentatively, I'm skipping. They shouldn't matter too much altogether. I'm hoping they don't affect Joint Struggle at this point, but no idea.

Second, activating the break point in Mil'muku Skyway is around 30 seconds faster than not. You could try running the entire way and hoping for no encounter, but that's incredibly unlikely. It seems that if a break point can be activated easily and early, it will be very beneficial. I count only 1 location this is true for >_>. And that's this one. Altogether, when I was at the Dolls, I was around 12 minutes faster. So progress right now is standard. I've gained 2 minutes since last I updated.

Tide

Edit history:

Tide: 2007-12-16 10:35:11 pm

2007-12-16 10:34:26 pm

Insanity Prelude

Thanks to the new accessories, I got to use a pre-prepared strategy that one of my other sources developed with me.

Enil was basically Mystic Gem --> Raquel intrude twice, One hit crits, the other is a regular. That's game. And should be less than 30 seconds altogether.

The Soldier series. Here's where a lot of time was saved. Looks like its worth it overall. If everything was smooth and with very small quips, you can probably get an even larger lead out of this. Regardless, thanks to our new founded accessories, Raquel has a good chance of going second. Jude has the Full Carrot and usually gets the first turn. So we have 100FP to begin all fights. The only BAD thing is that if you stay in the same HEX for too long, you might trigger a Combination Art from being learned. Which we never use. So we want to avoid that. Its a little tricky, but if they activate, you lose a couple of seconds. Nothing major, but something I'm going to be trying to avoid.

As for strategy, its all Raquel --> 100 FP Intrude chain for most of these fights. This saves a lot of resources. To note, Fight 4 with the 4 Dreadnoughts, should still be fought with Joint Struggle/Hi-Break. But to reduce the luck needed for a OHKO, we can swap the Tiny Flower around to make it work. A couple of other fights, a 5 hit Intrude chain may not finish everything off (it usually does though). So Arnaud's Hi-Breaks will come in to do some clean up work.

Tank Vehicle is now, get hit once, Intrude, attack twice. Jude Joint Struggles once without the Fighter Badge. That should kill it on the spot. So yeah, this fight just became another 30 second fight or so.

Balgaine as pre-planned works perfectly. There are a couple of changes. First, thanks to the Intrude spamming of the last 9 battles, we have left over Hi-Breaks. We can take advantage of this by having the Jump go to the Wind HEX, which allows Arnaud to deal good damage as well. Jude still needs to be slower than Arnaud, so his badge set up still requires the Fighter badge. Raquel can't have the Tiny Flower since otherwise she would be faster than everyone else. Fight starts, Jump to the Wind HEX, Hi-Break. Jude does Joint Struggle. Yulie goes and uses a Lucky Card. This EXP boost will make life a little easier towards the end. Raquel goes, match the number of Intrudes to the amount of HP he has left (you have to eyeball it), and smack him to death.

Previous time at Velkerung was 3:46. Test run this time around: 3:34. Looking good so far. I'll see if I can get a bigger time difference. Raquel getting those crits are keys to making this faster. Of course, having an extra Tiny Flower should prove to be immensely helpful for the battles to come.

Thanks to the new accessories, I got to use a pre-prepared strategy that one of my other sources developed with me.

Enil was basically Mystic Gem --> Raquel intrude twice, One hit crits, the other is a regular. That's game. And should be less than 30 seconds altogether.

The Soldier series. Here's where a lot of time was saved. Looks like its worth it overall. If everything was smooth and with very small quips, you can probably get an even larger lead out of this. Regardless, thanks to our new founded accessories, Raquel has a good chance of going second. Jude has the Full Carrot and usually gets the first turn. So we have 100FP to begin all fights. The only BAD thing is that if you stay in the same HEX for too long, you might trigger a Combination Art from being learned. Which we never use. So we want to avoid that. Its a little tricky, but if they activate, you lose a couple of seconds. Nothing major, but something I'm going to be trying to avoid.

As for strategy, its all Raquel --> 100 FP Intrude chain for most of these fights. This saves a lot of resources. To note, Fight 4 with the 4 Dreadnoughts, should still be fought with Joint Struggle/Hi-Break. But to reduce the luck needed for a OHKO, we can swap the Tiny Flower around to make it work. A couple of other fights, a 5 hit Intrude chain may not finish everything off (it usually does though). So Arnaud's Hi-Breaks will come in to do some clean up work.

Tank Vehicle is now, get hit once, Intrude, attack twice. Jude Joint Struggles once without the Fighter Badge. That should kill it on the spot. So yeah, this fight just became another 30 second fight or so.

Balgaine as pre-planned works perfectly. There are a couple of changes. First, thanks to the Intrude spamming of the last 9 battles, we have left over Hi-Breaks. We can take advantage of this by having the Jump go to the Wind HEX, which allows Arnaud to deal good damage as well. Jude still needs to be slower than Arnaud, so his badge set up still requires the Fighter badge. Raquel can't have the Tiny Flower since otherwise she would be faster than everyone else. Fight starts, Jump to the Wind HEX, Hi-Break. Jude does Joint Struggle. Yulie goes and uses a Lucky Card. This EXP boost will make life a little easier towards the end. Raquel goes, match the number of Intrudes to the amount of HP he has left (you have to eyeball it), and smack him to death.

Previous time at Velkerung was [b]3:46[/b]. Test run this time around: [b]3:34[/b]. Looking good so far. I'll see if I can get a bigger time difference. Raquel getting those crits are keys to making this faster. Of course, having an extra Tiny Flower should prove to be immensely helpful for the battles to come.

Tide

Edit history:

Tide: 2007-12-19 12:43:04 am

2007-12-17 10:12:29 pm

Insanity Prelude

After running it 10 more times, I found a little new discovery that looks to be incredibly fast. Well not new to me; I just always thought learning the technique would never happen. It probably won't work though, given the large amount of luck it looks like it needs.

Anyways, I've mentioned last time that there's a chance of learning combo arts. Most of these are useless. However! Raquel and Arnaud have a dual tech called Genocide Edge. This inflicts Instant Death (ID) at a set percentage and deals damage otherwise. It's also MT and hits all HEXes.

What this means is, thanks to the Full Carrot and Tiny Flower, realistically, the fastest time involves killing most of the soldier gauntlet with the ID kicking in on your second move. This is incredibly rare most likely. To put into perspective why: each fight has around 4 Soldiers. If we assume a 50% ID rate (which seems accurate from eyeballing, there's no official documentation, so I have no clue on its actual rate), a perfect segment will involve:

a) Not triggering other combo arts
b) 50% ID at 4 enemies for 7 straight fights. This means that there's a large degree one will survive. If even one survives, I will have to do mop up duty. In other words, no longer as fast as it could be.

It's worth a shot on some groups since if it kicks in, I get to avoid watching those Dreadnoughts counterattacking. I don't want to be resetting repeatedly until I get perfect ID kicking in though. Thoughts?

Some others I've mapped out more reliable methods, so I probably won't take a risk on those. I had to reload a segment to learn Genocide Edge and get Arnaud more EXP. That way OHKOing both Dreadnoughts in the 4th fight does not require as much luck.

EDIT: Did a test run - Time taken for all 7 Soldier battles + Tank Vehicle = 7 minutes. Was at the save point at 3:27. For reference, last time I was there, clock was at 3:41. So...approx. 14 minutes faster than the old run assuming everything else afterwards goes just as well.

After running it 10 more times, I found a little new discovery that looks to be incredibly fast. Well not new to me; I just always thought learning the technique would never happen. It probably won't work though, given the large amount of luck it looks like it needs.

Anyways, I've mentioned last time that there's a chance of learning combo arts. Most of these are useless. However! Raquel and Arnaud have a dual tech called Genocide Edge. This inflicts Instant Death (ID) at a set percentage and deals damage otherwise. It's also MT and hits all HEXes.

What this means is, thanks to the Full Carrot and Tiny Flower, realistically, the fastest time involves killing most of the soldier gauntlet with the ID kicking in on your second move. This is incredibly rare most likely. To put into perspective why: each fight has around 4 Soldiers. If we assume a 50% ID rate (which seems accurate from eyeballing, there's no official documentation, so I have no clue on its actual rate), a perfect segment will involve:

a) Not triggering other combo arts
b) 50% ID at 4 enemies for 7 straight fights. This means that there's a large degree one will survive. If even one survives, I will have to do mop up duty. In other words, no longer as fast as it could be.

It's worth a shot on some groups since if it kicks in, I get to avoid watching those Dreadnoughts counterattacking. I don't want to be resetting repeatedly until I get perfect ID kicking in though. Thoughts?

Some others I've mapped out more reliable methods, so I probably won't take a risk on those. I had to reload a segment to learn Genocide Edge and get Arnaud more EXP. That way OHKOing both Dreadnoughts in the 4th fight does not require as much luck.

EDIT: Did a test run - Time taken for all 7 Soldier battles + Tank Vehicle = 7 minutes. Was at the save point at 3:27. For reference, last time I was there, clock was at 3:41. So...approx. 14 minutes faster than the old run assuming everything else afterwards goes just as well.

Tide

2007-12-20 06:46:29 am

Insanity Prelude

Managed to tape the segment. Quality is incredibly epic. I will eventually get a TV tuner or something so I can get better capture when I'm taping the actual run. But for now:

If you're curious about the progress.

Tide

2007-12-21 04:41:42 am

Insanity Prelude

Hate Goldrake so much.

I think I got a new strategy for Mr.Smiling Sphere. It works as long as he doesn't move. Which seems to be a 1/4 chance. Mm...Augst has a new strategy as well although that's just really getting the most milage out of my offense. Think that covers everything up to date. Around 15 minutes faster at the moment. I'll see if I can shave off some extra time. Won't be easy. But we'll see.

Tide

2007-12-22 08:15:51 am

Insanity Prelude

Ran some timed tests. The new method on smiling sphere is the around 17 seconds faster than my old preferred time. As to what is it, I'll let you find out when I eventually tape it.

Goldrake is a different story. Had varying times, and a lot of is due to the question of: Does Raquel critical hit on her first swing? Yes = 39 second battle or so. No = 1 minute. Mphm, I have a secondary strategy I thought of, but I will need to time the amount of time I save, its reliability as well as the amount of time needed to prepare the materials. Which shouldn't be much. Tenatively, it should work. But we'll see. The problem is he OHKO Raq's even under Tiny Flower's initial Detonation turn, making this already luck inherent from the beginning.

Tide

Edit history:

Tide: 2007-12-23 06:18:25 pm

2007-12-23 06:47:45 am

Insanity Prelude

Found a good way to kill Goldrake reliably without sacrificing much time and hoping for critical hits from Raquel.

So ideally, Valley of Oblivion can be done in around 10 minutes and 49 seconds. The new method is also only around 25-30 seconds on Goldrake, so it works out fairly well.

In Port Rosalia again and just make a shopping adjustment; I have just enough money to grab the Great Sword, Raquel and Yulie's last pieces of armor along with 3 more heal berries and 1 revive fruit. This should be everything I need to finish the game. Time is 4:49ish before Jeremy 3. Roughly 16 minutes faster I think

EDIT: On to Dievas Airport in under 5 hours (4:57:01). I gave a trial run and figured out how to handle the Jane Does in 26 seconds. It is as hilarious as it sounds. Took me a while to figure it out though.

Made a new discovery on Trump Card. I'll fool around a bit to optimize the time. This segment is always trouble since I can't use the save point.