with a few corrections.
Sometimes you may feel that Soma is acting like a fool when you are watching this movie, which is because either he has too many HP or he is eager for something from an enemy.
- Baselard (dropped by Zombie)
A must-get in every main quest TAS. I got it for better damage output.
- Tunic (dropped by Zombie)
Getting this didn't cost any time, and instead, it actually saved time by reducing lags mysteriously in the Mermen room.
- Lubicant Soul (dropped by Lubicant)
Boosts all of Soma's stats by 1+(MaxHP-HP)/MaxHP times, except for LCK. Very useful in almost all runs.
- Muramasa (dropped by Lubicant)
Pros:
It has Curse Attribute, which means that it can inflict additional damage to an enemy susceptible to it, amount of which is based on the left HP of the enemy. It is also a multi-hitting weapon.
Cons:
It's a short ranged weapon, and its ATK bonus is a little too small. It would be inefficient to fight Final Guard with, which had very high defense.
- Ronginus's Spear (dropped by Erinys)
A Holy-Attributed weapon with high attack power. I got Ronginus's Spear from Erinys right before fighting Final Guard.
- Final Sword (dropped by Final Guard)
Easily the best weapon in this game, thanks to its third-highest attack power, long range and multi-hitting.
- Stolas Soul (dropped by Stolas)
Boosts Soma's INT by 16. Easily surpassed by Lubicant Soul and not even useful. Accquired to trigger the death glitch.
- Red Minotaur Soul (dropped by Red Minotaur)
Inflicts massive damage in a very large range but requires at least Level 15 for the enormous 150 MP consumption. Useless in this run and not accqiured.
- Other stuff
Anything out of the route wouldn't be worth the extra time to get.
- HP-ups
Required to perform the death-warp glitch. I used the glitch four times, so I got 4 HP-ups: Tasty Meat x2 (dropped by Killer Fish), Super Potion x1 (picked up behind Final Guard), High Potion x1 (dropped by Stolas).
- MP-ups
Useless since the only I could use hearts drops from candles to recover MP. So I didn't bother getting these.
- EXP
After some calculations, I decided that Level 12 should be the optimal final level.
The death-warp glitch was not discovered by me. I am not not sure who discovered it first. However, I learnt it from @JOACHIM.
It is possible because:
- After a soul-getting or level-up pause, you are granted access to the menu screen within a few frames.
- A level-up pause will be cancelled if a room transition, soul-getting or death occurrs at the same time as level-up occurrs.
- You can save your game (use SLEEP) at the menu screen as long as you are not flagged "in boss fight", provided that you have saved the game once in a save room.
- When you load a game that was saved at the menu screen, you are set standing where you enter the room.
- The game won't try to kill you by examing if your HP is 0. The kill test is only done when you get hit (The "harmless" Blacked-out Door can kill you if you touch it with 0 HP).
- When your HP is 0, you can go off screen without room transitions. As soon as your HP exceeds 0, you get room transitions immediately. Unfortunately, you'll usually end up with black screen and have to reset the game.
Now I think you can figure out how to use death warps. ;)
Every enemy killed was not only for its goodies, but also for its EXP. Using level-ups is usually faster than getting souls to perform the death warp, but there were times when I had to get a soul to force a pause.
The route-planning itself cost me much more time than TASing. This route's the fastest by now on I know. It was just discovered with lots of nearly blind tests. Who could have known that you could get to Chaotic Realm from such an off-screen spot? :D