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Fro Jackson wrote:
I like how the run is turning out thus far : )
Quick question: Does talon do his "special attacks" only during Chapter 5? If not, you could possibly use those to end battles faster. If I recall correctly, there is one where he trips and causes some large amount of damage to an enemy.
He only does his special attacks in chp 5. But I most definately will be exploiting those when the time comes!
Looking ahead, my part will always have the following:
Hero - duh, but mainly because I can control him
Alena - the only one that has a greater than 1/64 chance of delivering a critical. Hers is lv/256. at lv 99 for instance she has roughly a 1 in 3 chance of getting a critical. combine that with stilletto earings. . .
Taloom - getting criticals is nothing compared to his other attacks. He can bring in an army of merchants to woop some serious ass. also, He can make enemies go to sleep (might be very useful since I will be seriously underleveled).
Ragnar - The way this is going I should NOT need heal spells, so no cristo or nara. Brey and Mara probably won't be leveled high enough to have useful attack spells. so by default he will be my 4th character if I use one. The way its going I may not.
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well chapter 3 is finished (check my page)
the total time is 53 minutes. my original estimate (about a year ago) was that the 1st 4 chapter could be done in under an hour. In my notes I have about 10 minutes worth of improvment for the 1st 3 chapters. That gives me 17 minutes for chapter 4 to still be on pace.
its a little ruff, but done in only 23 minutes!
Note, I went ahead and just fought 13 battles, I tried doing the 6 broad sword Idea noted above but it was way slower. It turned out not to be as boring as I thought.
here are the optimizations for chp 3 that I have noted already:
1) 1st time in Endor walk out immediately (I waste 2 steps)
2) 2nd time I buy wings I should buy them from a random merchant (35 frames saved)
3) Die 1 step after getting statue (instead of 2) (16 frames saved?)
4) Get the 660 gold in cave (so I don’t have to sell broad sword, allowing one less fight later)
5) Talk to king (to get permission for shop) after dying after selling everyting. That way I can wing out and not have to backtrack
6) On way back to buy shop stop and buy wings (instead of after get shop) (a few steps saved)
7) Wing to lakanaba 1st round of fights (better chance of lone slimes and slime couples)
8) Maniuplate encounters better (every step if possible)
9) Manipulate drops to be 1st frame (how long you hit button and in what combinations affect outcome so this should be possible) [potentially several seconds saved]
10) Get 7 of one item each round of fights instead of mixed. This means the guy not listing both categories of remaining items [about 25 frames saved] (only of course if this can be done without costing any frames!)
11) Buy the one wing before delivering final goods instead of after (saving a lot of backtracking).
All in all Id say about 2-3 minutes worth of improvements
Id love to hear any more suggestions
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the only version I'm familiar with is the PC version. In that one you can skip directly to mayhem. If that is possible on the NES then you should do so. Especially since the 1st 10 levels or so are introductory and only have one job per level. They would be pretty boring to watch.
I don't think any levels prior to mayhem would demonstrate any cool events that couldn't be shown off in a mayhem only run.
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the armor shop in bonmalo buys armor at a random value up to about 2x the buy value. Notice I get 2118 gold for a half plate.
As for the broad sword Idea:
2000 (buy value) x 2 (wife sell) x 6 = 24,000
when I need 21,041. So won't have to manuplate to get max value.
(After redoing the cave it will only be 5 which will have to be for version 2)
This should work, but It would take time because after the fights I would have to wing back to endor, give them to her one at a time, rest, then take the gold.
It may take longer than the battles but at least it would be more entertaining.
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updated the wip. I just bought the shop. I have no equipment and 1359 gold. I have no idea the fastest way fill the kings order (7 broad sword and 7 half plates). I have 3 options:
1) get into 14 battles and manipulate luck to get a h.p. or broad sword drop everytime.
2) get some items and have the wife sell them (manipulate luck so she sells them all quickly for max value)
3) bounce back and forth between endor and bonmalmo (buying armor in endor, selling in bonmalmo) manipulate luck to get max value for the armor.
for options 2 and 3, after raising the money I would then need to purchase the weapons and armor and take them to the king.
Of course I could do a combo of all 3, for more variety (option 1 is going to be especially boring)
Any thoughts?
BTW, In version 2 I plan to pick up the gold in the treasure chest in the cave, after losing half from dying I'll still have enough to not have to sell the broad sword to raise the 35k (I was only like 100 gold away!). If I do options 2 or 3, that will save me 500 gold. If I do option 1, that will be 13 fights instead 14.
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Tilus wrote:
Not to rain on your parade so far, but wouldn't it be faster in Chapter 3 to buy Wings of Wyvern from one of those "random battle shops" you come across in the field every so often? I'm sure it'd be quite a bit less walking than going off to the right in Brynmaer (whatever that town's called) and buying the Wings there.
Don't worry about raining on my parade. This is a test run. I'm excited to hear about anything that might save time. I tested your theory and it's slightly faster. By my count it is only 35 frames faster to buy anything from the random merchants than at the Bonmalmo (or whatever) Item shop. But since I have to do that twice, that is saving one full second. I'll make that change on my version 2 run. thanks
[edit] I forgot that the 1st time I buy wings I cant buy them from a random merchant because I have no money until I enter the castle and sell the leather armor. I must sell it in the castle because they pay way more for it. A normal item shop wouldn't give me enough money to buy 8 wings.
So I would only save time when I buy wings the second time, but thats still 35 frames of improvement.
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Update: (same place)
http://www.adelikat.com/Temp
I at the point where I made peace with Endor and Bonlamo. Also inlcuded is a savestate so that you can watch only chapter 3 and not have to sit through the other two. Just make sure you play the .fcm file and read-only before loading the savestate.
I'm glad I didn't redo the other chapters because I found several more time savers! In chapter 3 you will notice a much more effecient use of the Wings. I can apply this to chapter 2 as well. All in all, I'd say version 2 will save 5 minutes in chp 2 and 3 minutes in chp 1.
In chp3, I lose time when I 1st walk into Endor, I accidentally walked one step too far. I don't plan on fixing it in this version.
Right now I am having problems with getting the store. I need 35,000 gold. My calculation put me at about 34,000 after cleaning out the cave and even selling the armor in bonmalo for max gold. I'm torn about how best to come up with the extra cash. As is I have to fight a metal slime to level up. But I can't get a good drop from that fight because you can't get half plate and broad swords until at least lv 3. So that would mean one more fight to get to 35,000. Or I could wing to Endor and purchase armor and wing back to bonmalo. I'm not sure which would be better.
Perhaps buying and selling armor would be better anyway so that I can keep the broad sword and half plate from the cave to fill the kings order. That would mean 2 less fights to have to deal with. 14 fights will be pretty boring.
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Acmlm wrote:
And about manipulating fights, how will Chapter 5 go, since you can only control the hero?
It going to be a total pain in the ass!
It means I'm going to have to mainulate both the enemy action and my own party.
The frame of the last input command (attack, parry etc) is when the order of attacks and enemy actions are determined. the actual damage of the attack will do is determined on the command just before.
What is going be a headache is that my party's actions are determined the moment before their own turn.
The only thing that I can think of that would make it easier to make sure that my party attacks 1st, my hero 2nd, and the enemies last whenever possible. That way the luck manipulation I do doesn't interfere with the others actions.
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I did more testing. It turns out that you can get a critical hit when you attack yourself which aside from being histerical also saves alot of time. In chapter 1 using the death shortcut will save well over 1 minute.
So after leaving izmut I immediately get into a fight with a tree stump (or whaterver its called) critical hit myself and then get attacked by the enemy causing me to die. The second time I leave izmut I will have the sword of malice and very few hp's so killing myself will be quicker.
[edit] also dying resets it to day which means the woman you need to talk to is outside saving even more time.
I hadn't thought of using it to escape caves in ch 2 - 5. The problem with the golden bracelet is that you have to wait until nighttime to deliver it anyway and dying resets it to the beginning of the day.
I was under the impression that one needs to talk to a cleric in a town or a king in order for the "shortcut using death" method to work
partially correct. if you don't see a cleric it defaults you to the 1st one in the chapter. Later you just need to save your game at one in a different town which is usually going to be way faster than backtracking through a cave.
in chapter 3 you'll only get one character revived when you die. But you'll be at a house of healing so you can revive right away
I assume you mean chp 2. I kill off cristo anyway and I want to kill off brey since he is not necessary. I'm just afraid that when I get to chp 5 I will wish I had leveled him up for the outside & return spells.
As far as "death as a shortcut". Why wouldn't I want to do that. Its not like there would be two separate runs published (could any run of this game get published anyway?)
I have decided that I will continue on to chapter 3 since I will most likely find several more time savers that will require me to redo it.
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I just discovered a way to significantly improve chapter 1. By getting into a fight right outside Izmit, I can warp back to the castle. I just tried this on my 1st trip back and I saved 400 frames from a completely unoptimized battle. With an optimized strategy it could save about 1000 frames! And since I have to make the trip twice that would be a saving of about 2000 frames (about 30 seconds).
I'm kind of torn about what to do. I want to redo this but maybe its better to keep going and get a good version 1 with plans on optimizing? I also worry that I'll be burned out by the time I finsish it and won't want to do another version.
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TheAxeMan wrote:
Ok, now the big timesaver you missed is using the wings from the top of the birdsong tower instead of going all the way back down. Besides that everything is awesome, my favorite chapter is coming up next!
Wow, didnt know about that one, that will save about 25 seconds! I guess I'm redoing chapter 2, I will change that, use the door command and equip in battle
I will keep the extra wing since wings do not reset the day/night to daytime. That may be useful in chapter 5 since there will be many situations where I night to go somewhere at night
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lol, running through the most of the game with one living character at 5 hp!
Looks good, the luck manipulation is much better. What was the point of having the thief and why in 3rd position?
Also, do you plan finishing the game with just the one character?
It might actually save time in the long run to stay at an inn or use some heal potions. That would allow you to take more hits and potentially not have to delay as much in the fights.
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okay, I crunched some numbers:
I lost 109 frames using thief's key instead of door command
It cost me 288 frames to buy the extra wing.
It is 25 frames FASTER to use the return spell instead of the wing. Originally I thought that the flash animation plus having to scroll through the spell list made it longer but there is a lot more text when using the wing.
So after I change the end to use the spell instead of the wing (which means I have it in case I need it for chp 5) I will have lost 394 frames, or about 6 1/2 seconds. My ruff estimation is that there is a 600 frame risk of recording chapter 2 (from the potential loss of frames when manipulation the treasure chest and the criticals). So unless anyone can think of anymore time-savers, I will not redo this, on move on to chapter 3.
BTW, no enemy in chapter 1 leaves a wing of wyvern forturnately :)Seems the programmers were thorough in making sure you must walk back and forth between the towns.
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But a few things... on the way into the tournament... did I hear you run into the door before you opened it? Could you not have avoided those herbs during the tourney?
its actually faster to bump into the wall in that situation (in order to get the menu up at the earliest frame).
The medical herbs in the tourney are not random and can't be avoided.
And that one long ass trip to get into the town from the cave in Chapter 1... there was no faster way of luck manipulation? That made me go... "WTF?! JUST GO INTO THE TOWN DAMNIT!"
I have to walk around until it gets dark. It has nothing to do with luck manipulation.
And in regards to that extra set of Wyvern wings, they may help in Chapter 5? I mean some of the moves now may just help save frames there...
I am trying to plan ahead for chapter 5. That's the reason I leveled up Brey instead of killing him off along with cristo. I know I get him in the party relatively early and his outside and return spells should come in handy then.
Btw, in Chapter 2, instead of simply using the Door command on the door in the tower, you used the thief key. When you have a key in your inventory, you don't have to use it, the Door option "upgrades" itself.
I did? didn't notice. I am aware that you can always use the door option
I guess I wasn't thinking at the moment. That's going to bug the crap out of me.
Should I redo chapter 2 for the door command and buying one less wing? I always run the risk of getting some long pauses on criticals and other luck manipulation that would cancel out the time saved to redo it.
Also, It occured to me that some of the enemies in chapter 1 might drop wing of wyverns. I haven't checked the drop list though. It might not save much time since you would have to get into the fight, get a critical hit, get the drop and use the wing. That would negate alot of the time saved.
Honestly I hope none of the enemies to drop em' since I REALLY do not want to redo the boss fight! One of the criticals required me to check every frame for over 200 frames!
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http://www.adelikat.com/Temp
Chapter 2 is complete, Ive got a few suprises in there. The total time is now 30:20 which puts the total time of chapter 2 around 18 minutes.
One place I lost time it that I bought one more wing of wyvern than necessary. I didn't realize that Brey could get the return spell at level 9. In my test run he didn't get it until lv 10. Since I already had it, I used it instead of the return spell since it was a few frames faster. Total I lost about 200 frames but I didn't feel it warranted redoing some incredibly random fights since I could very easily lose more time if it takes longer to get the criticals.
Also, Manipulating criticals with Alena is MUCH EASIER than with ragnar. Once I leveled her up, the most I had to wait was about 80 frames. One criticals I manages to get on the 1st frame!. With Ragnar I had to wait on average of 100-200 frames.
I'm hoping for some feedback before going on to chapter 3
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okay, so I'm a complete dumb@ss.
After recording chapter one I stopped and began testing routes and strategies for chapter 2, to speed up the process I used some game genie codes to level up quicker. Once I figured out my route I immediately replayed my .fcm file and noticed the desynch. BUT I FORGOT TO TURN OFF THE GAME GENIE CODES.
So good news that there is nothing wrong with chapter 1 and I am now making chapter 2.
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This tool will give a huge advantage to someone trying to improve an existing movie.
When I was making my Mike Tyson's Punchout movie had a lot of trouble re-creating some moves from Phil's movie. They require pushing Up or down at the right time which has no visible effects on the screen so I had no way of knowing when to push what. I wished I this program back then!
A program like this would allow you to see exactly how someone else pulled of a cool stunt, glitch, or manipulated luck.
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apparently my file was desynched (must have loaded a savestate out of order). Anyway it turns out the be a great thing because I redid the movie and am now over 1 minute faster!
In this version I completely skip healie and fight the boss fight alone! I manipulate luck perfectly in this one with enemies missing attacks and getting all the criticals I need. Also, I manipulated luck better in the level ups and got 5 more Hp's and 2 more strength points.
You can get it at the same place:
http://www.adelikat.com/Temp
the total time for chapter 1 is now 11:55
Also, the DW3 .fcm file is in very preliminary stages, I plan on doing a run of this game to (currently on hold for this run)
[EDIT!!!]
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay this desynchs in the same place. This time I know it worked at one point. I had to replay the movie to continue on to the second chapter (which I made some progress on ). Now when I go back to play it again it desynchs! Also my backup files (which do not have any chapter 2 recorded) do the same thing. I seems to have something to do with the fact that the game saves your progress after chapter 1. Both times after I recorded past that point the run will not play properly. I tried seleting the .sav file before loading the rom but this did not change anything. Unless someone has any ideas whats going on, I'm afraid that this project is over since I can't go pass chapter 1!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Well, I've decided to take a stab at this. I've just completed chapter 1, My final time is 13:08, 35 seconds faster than mookish's original attempt. Also I manipulated luck on the level ups and got 10 more HP's which should come in handy later on.
This game is quite tedious when it comes to manipulating battles, I desparately request someone with some hacking skills to help figure out more with randomizer in this game! Something similar to DW1 is probably going to be required, especially in with chapter 3. My main concern there isn't getting the criticals as much as getting enemy drops (In order to get the 7 Broad Swords and 7 half plates)
Anyway you can download the .fcm file here:
http://www.adelikat.com/Temp
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No, But if he were actively working on it (or at least testing and planning) then yes
Saying he might have intentions of doing it doesn't mean he will actually get around to doing it. But even then he has more of an argument than he does in this situation
