Poison needle and bomb crags is a great idea! Plus, it shows off the "super leveling" area east of Kanave. Nice work.
Sounds like your patience with the battling system is working pretty well so far. Keep up the good work!
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dave_dfwm wrote:
I can defeat his henchmen pretty easily, but not him. HP regen sucks.
You may wanna consider a Battle Axe drop from Avengers for your Hero. This might help easing up battles until you get the Orochi Sword (or Thor's Sword, if you plan on fighting the Troll before the Orochi).
Joined: 7/30/2006
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New WIP posted. I busted ass on this all day, and I got the ship!!!!
If you watch this WIP, note that the Kandar fight (and everything after it) isn't TAS-style yet. When I update this file, it will be the same moves, except frame-precise.
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~dbrown3/DW3boat.zip
Fighting all those metal slimes was pretty exciting. There is a reason I walk around after Dhama for a long time. The slimes come out at night in the icefield near Muor.
This is the point now where the game becomes extremely non-linear. I know I can level with metal babbles on the shrine island, but there are many other options too.
Perhaps I should first get the final key? Ordering here will matter because of time obviously, and there a few items that I can't throw away, and don't want to spend time storing at the vault. By far, the quickest way to get rid of these items is to throw them on the merchant when I start the new town. I will already give him the thief key and royal scroll, but it would be great if I could also give him the magic key, sailor thigh bone, and locket of love.
At this point, I'll need help and input from you guys. What route do you think will be the fastest? What level is a safe bet for Baramos?
The only other random drop I can think of getting is a Mysterious Hat from a Glacier Basher. I can get it before Ramia, I suppose.
///////////
Another glitch update. There is a glitch with the Silver Harp in the Monster Fight Gambling Area. If used correctly, you can earn a HUGE amount of cash, but I don't know if I'll have a use for gold if I make it to the underworld to get the harp. I did try this glitch, and it works.
Excellent progress, keep up the good work :).
EDIT:
Why did you parry/fight with more than one person on the Kandar fight when Kandar was the only one left?
Wouldn't it save time to just parry/fight the person who is going to be hit?
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Once you have the ship you need to level in that area south of greenlad, there are metal babbles there.
As far as route planning:
Get the final key first. This requires returning to aliahan and sailing over to lancel to buy an invisibility herb. Then return to portoga and sail up to eginbear for the vase of drought (that should be a fun room to optimize :) ) Then test to see if sailing left from eginbear is quicker than returning to Dhama or Jipang (if you visited there) and sailing north.
The green & red orb can be obtained at anytime since there simply require returning to portoga (green) or aliahan (red) and sailing to them.
Don't visit the new town until you have gotten the first 4 orbs. Once you do you will simply need to drop off the merchant and walk in and out of the town several times.
Also you will probably want to sail to soo and pick up the staff of thunder.
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Pasky:
You are correct about the Parry/Fight. I may not even need to do it at all if no one dies. I planned on doing what you suggested, though.
Adelikat -- that seems to be a good route. The late new town visit will allow me to drop of the Vase of Drought and Magic Key on the Merchant too. However, if I go there last, I could also give him the Mirror of Ra and Sailor Bone and Locket of Love??
I may not be able to work on this project for a couple of days now that the week has started. I've got some big assignments due here first. Yay grad school....
Thanks for the input and support!
I dug up the route I had roughly mapped out last summer. It was really just a rough draft. Here is the pertaining section:
Return to Aliahan
Sail to Lancel
Get invis herbs
Sail to Edinburg from Portoga? or Noaniels?
Get Vase of Drought
Sail West
Fight metal babbles (enough to kill Orochi and Boss Troll)
Notes: Edinbear is closest town to metal babble location
Return to Baharata
Go to Jipang
Kill Orochi
Get purple orb
Sail to reef
Get final key
Notes: No keys needed to fight Orochi, only have to visit Jipang once
Return to ?
go to Samanao cave
get mirror of ra
fight boss troll
get staff of change
Return to Aliahan? and get merchant
Sail to house of pirates
Get red orb
Return to Edinbear
Sail to new town
Get yellow orb
sail to greenlad
get sailor's thighbone
(level more?)
Return to Romaly
get locket of love off of phantom ship
Return to Noaniels?
go to jail
get sword of gaia
Return to Baharata
Go to volcano
Go to cave of necrogond
Fight more metal babbles (enough to kill Baramos)
Get silver orb
Go/Return to baharata
get green orb from tedanki
Note: Tedanki is closest to Liamland, so visit on the way there
Sail to Liamland
Get Ramia
As Adelikat mentioned, it might be faster to sail from Edinbear directly to the shoal shrine (maybe getting metal babbles on the way) and then hit up Jipang later. I tried to minimize the amount of revisits to recurring locations, but things like the stupid house of pirates are in the middle of nowhere. Metal babbles in the negrogond cave also add a way to break up the amount of leveling needed if that is desirable.
Edit: I just realized that I left the Navel of the Earth off of the route, but that's probably because you can do it anytime after you have the final key. It's pretty independent.
I've done some more testing on my theory about needing to only kill the Orochi and the Boss Troll to get the NewTown to grow so you can get the Yellow Orb.
Edit: Update. Here is what the logic is for NewTown Advancement
Level 0: drop off merchant
Level 1: collect any 1 orb or kill the boss troll. There may be other things to move to level 1 as well.
Level 2: collect the purple orb. If you have only the purple orb, you can advance from level 1 to level 2 by exiting and entering.
Level 3: have the purple orb and kill the boss troll. collecting the change staff is not required to get the town to advance (although you would always need it anyway).
Level 4 and yellow orb: have the purple orb, kill the boss troll, and have at least 2 other orbs (red, green, blue, silver)
Edit 2: Aparently you must also cast return or use a wing of wyvern to acheive the final growth
This leaves a little flexibility in ordering of orb collection. If it works out that silver is best kept till last, then at least one other orb can be put off until after getting yellow.
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Yes -- I believe I would definitely get the Yellow orb last...just to make sure the town is fully grown when I visit it again.
An odd question that I had wondered about last night... would it be worth it to pick up the lamp of darkness? It seems that metal babbles come out a lot more often on the island at night, and there are at least two places I need to be at night. (( Well, if I go to Tedanki at night first and then use the inn to get the lamp, I could use it for Samanao if needed to save time)).
As for leveling, I would level a bit for the Boss Troll, then try and level on my way through the Necrogond cave for Baramos.
Thanks for your helping and testing, ledauphinbenoit.
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You might as well wait until last to do the yellow orb since it isn't on the way to anything, so it won't affect time.
I think you should get the lamp of darkness since it isn't too far out of the way and could save a lot of time in samonao and possibly a few other places.
The boss troll will be difficult since his regenerations is 90-100 per round and has 300ish hp to start. Sap will definately be necessary. Also, don't waste time attacking the first round and instead use status spells to weaken him since any attacks will be negated by the regen.
Perhaps use the orochi sword with the hero, cast increase with the wizard, and then sap & speed up with the pilgrams. I think the defense cast by the orochi sword & sap will add together, lowering his defense further. I could be wrong about this though.
Of course sleep could be substitued for increase if you think you can keep him asleep for any meaningful length of time.
Manipulating a thor's sword fromt the boss troll is probably wishful thinking but it would save a TON of time of you could get it. Since it cast firevolt, those ice clouds on the way to the silver orb will be a piece of cake.
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The Boss Troll has 320 HP. Besides the usual Gamefaqs info someone posted some game dumps in the DW3 forum there. All of the monster stats, encounter groups, monster actions, and monster spell resistances are listed in text files. Swordoids are unexpectedly very vulnerable to Expel. Nifty.
This is a snippet:
dw3bestiary.txt wrote:
Baramos does considerably less damage than Zoma but unless you're level 30+ Baramos will be one-shotting you anyway. (The second Zoma must be his transformation after you use the SoL. His attack pattern becomes much less mean.) Yeah, the Boss Troll is bad news. But, the Boss Troll and every other nasty boss will have about 300-600 HP. Since you're making a TAS you can take them out with Bikill and/or a critical hit.
The way critical hits work in DW3 is that they only use your attack power, period. Enemy defense, your level, and special statuses are ignored. I have seen a first round knock out of Zoma on a console. The sage first used the Ball of Light. (This turned out to be a wasted action because Zoma's HP is not 2048 before you use it. The bestiary/map insert is wrong.) Then the wizard cast Chance and recieved the "tremendous attack power" that grants automatic critcal hits. After Zoma took a turn the hero and soldier attacked last for over 500 damage each and Zoma was defeated. This was a lvl 40 party and they did not whore Strength Seeds, either. They only had good weapons. You've got the perfect party because you need the Pilgrim/Sage for manipulation. As long as you can get a manipulated Chance spell off against Zoma/Baramos he can kill either of the two rear characters with his first and last action. All you need to do is use the previous encounter to manipulate the Chance spell and stick the Metorite Armband on the Wizard.
Without critical hits in the first round, Baramos/Zoma turn into epic 20+ round fights because they also have crazy stupid regeneration. (Same as the Boss Troll maybe?) So whenever they use their free breath weapons to annihilate your party you're actually falling behind on their HP and yours. I'm positive that even with the best manipulation possible it is impossible for a level 20 party to win against Baramos. I'd give Zoma a minimum tool-assisted level of 30.
But there is good news! You sort of can maybe not need to level up to 30/40 and still win. All you really need to win is a combined attack power of approximately 500 between your three non-wizard characters. Then as long as the boss du jour does not interfere by killing someone before they take their action, you win in one round against anything! 500 ATP can be reached with a decent set of (cursed?) weapons on a level 20 party. So really, only the wizard needs to hit 36-40 for the Chance spell. For a level 1 character this takes just 8-12 solo Metal Babbles. Let the Metal Babbles kill your other level 16 characters and then let the Wizard get to work with the Poison Needle just like you did on the Metal Slimes. Each MB will give 48,240 XP and the experience chart is on GFAQs.
The critical-Chance strategy also gives you three important spells: Stepguard, Day-Night, and Open. Stepguard will prevent swamps and barriers from killing your low level party. I think this is required to beat the game. Day-Night and Open are obvious time savers! You'll also get Invisibility but you won't need it for anything. If you're skeptical, you're going to need to raise your level above 16 anyway, and the Final Key takes an annoying amount of running around to get. If you can handle MBs as easily as you handled the MSs then the Open spell is both faster and less work to you as a runner. And if you go for Open, you might as well get Chance at the cost of 4 more MBs.
Looks like a Thor's Sword from the Boss Troll is 1/256, which is about as expected. Not quite as bad as those Stilleto Earrings Adelikat was trying for in DW4 (1/2048).
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Second half of my giant wall of text. If no one posts in between and I'm accused of double posting, oh well. I'm not running this game, just testing it. Even though I'm tired of working on runs right now I'll never get tired of breaking games. :) (Or trying to.)
This is probably common knowledge, but on GameFAQs there is a save state hacking FAQ. However, all of the offsets are 0x1FAC too far from where they should be in a .fcs file. I'm assuming this is the Famtasia -> FCEU conversion. Probably every NES save state is like that.
I wanted to know more about the Chance spell and I couldn't find any reference material on the Internet. So I made my own!
Chance Spell Outcomes wrote:
- All enemies "depart", same effect as Expel. (no XP, normal GP)
- All enemies "shatter into pieces". (normal XP and GP)
- Heal one party member.
- Heal all party members.
- Set an unblockable confuse status on all allies and monsters!
- Set an unblockable sleep status on all allies and monsters!
- "Nothing happens" targetting all allies and monsters.
- "Calls forth something unbelievably frightening". (all allies faint, all monsters run away)
- "Time ceases". (The wizard gets three free actions, like the Quick spell in FF6.)
- "Chance... chance... chance... (echoes)" (Maybe sets surround status?)
- "Gains tremendous attack power." (All allies get automatic critical hits!)
- "The area is engulfed in darkness." (Set surround status on both sides.)
- "The foe is taken off guard." (Not sure, but I think the enemy loses a turn.)
- Robmagic effect targetting one enemy.
- The party's formation is re-arranged!
This isn't a complete list. I'm positive that I remember one very negative but rare outcome where the party was sucked into an alternate dimension and the penalty was an instant "Wiped out". This list is all of the most common effects and I think they're all about equally likely. The healing and auto-critical effects are especially common, fortunately.
I tried looking for the random number index variable and I sort of found something. I noticed that if I used a cheat code to freeze the value at 001C (the exact value does not matter) that I could manipulate different battle actions, the success of the poison needle, and the Chance spell by waiting a number of frames. Normally a delay would not matter and it would take different actions to cause different outcomes for a given set of input. Normally 001C changes once every time someone takes a turn, which is very suspicious. I didn't get any side effects from freezing this memory location, either. I suspect that this game might do something crazy like switch which random number table/seed it uses depending on the time that a random number is pulled. >_< That would explain why Zelda 1 is such a pain in the butt. It would also explain why DW series battles are "fixed" once you enter your commands but heavily manipulatable from round to round - the text flies by and you can't interfere with input until the next round.
I went to a DQ fansite I heard of three new bugs in DW3. The first one involves dying of poison on the overworld map after accepting the challenge of the Navel of the Earth. The result is that you're taken to a corrupted map. I haven't tested this one yet but I hope it's useful. The second new bug involves using the Dream Ruby right before a temporary party switch, such as having your fortune told in Assaram. Since this was old news to the regulars on that DQ site nobody even bothered to say what the effect was. The third bug will teach a Merchant random wizard spells. First, you have to level a wizard up and promote the wizard to a merchant. Next, you have to sacrifice your wizard-merchant for the New Town. As soon as you do, go back to Allihan and create a new Merchant. If the glitch worked then your new Merchant should know a few Wizard spells! I only say that these bugs are new because I didn't know, they're not on GameFAQs, and they're very obscure.
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I did some testing on those bugs:
1) Dying from poison on the navel of the earth quest. If you die on the overworld map, it takes to a corruped map in which you are stuck so it is usless. If you die in the cave then you will appear in the cave again but be dead. Every step you take makes it say "xxxx is dead". It is annoying to walk around this way but I managed to get back to the town and it allowed me to exit the town and get in my ship. So I was a single dead character walking around. Also, I couldn't get into any encounters. This seems useless since you can't cast any spells or get any items. I didn't have enough patience to get to a forced encounter such as orochi. But it might be worth checking out what happens.
2) Using the dream ruby makes you numb and unable to move, if you then talk to that fortune teller you get to walk around as a numb character. I don't see anything useful about that.
3) The merchant trick works and I got some powerful spells from it - Bikill, firebane, snowblast, blazemore, and robmagic. But it was useless because the newly created merchant has no MP to cast them. Robmagic is free so I used that but it didn't give me any MP since my max MP is 0.
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This weekend I will be able to play / test some more. I am intrigued by your posts, Catastrophe... Would the Chance spell be worth getting? If so, would it be worth getting right away as you say so I can ignore the Final key?
Also, as another reminder, boss battles can be manipulated into have a "good" first round by using heal and wizard's ring before the fight.
I recently heard of another glitch, but it would also involve a high level wizard. I've heard if you get a falcon sword to your wizard, and then cast transform into a powerful character, and you do double attacks for huge damage. I have not yet tried this, but will this weekend, hopefully.
Keep up the great testing though, and I will definitely do the same! Maybe this run will just be the start of ways to try and break this game.
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WIP Update.
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~dbrown3/DW3LVL20.zip
This WIP is now TAS-played through to the Level 20. I kill Kandar, get the boat, and get the final key first. I then get the blue orb, and manipulate an interesting fight in the Navel of Earth cave. Watch the WIP and you'll see it....
I use the Magic Key in the fight to manipulate my level up stats. The magic key doesn't do anything, but it makes the Simiac fight one more time which uses the RNG. Incidentally, the Simiac is the creature I've chosen for my avatar.
I next sail to Tedanki from Lancel. I want to get the Lamp of Darkness, as Metal Babbles come out at night more often. I'll of course pick up the Orb while I'm here.
Next -- off to the leveling area. I fight mostly slimes, as babbles are tough to get. The movie ends when I kill my first metal babble (tremendous hit from hero) and all my characters are on level 20.
As soon as I learn Bikill, I may actually try to fight the Boss Troll first. I think he may actually be easier than the Orochi since he doesn't breathe fire or attack twice. I guess we'll see....
EDIT:
If you watch the video, you may notice I do some very unorthodox things during fights, such as casting what appear to be useless spells, or even attempting (unsuccessfully) to run away from a fight I want to win. All of these actions manipulate enemy turns. Some of the metal slime fights may seem 1 or 2 rounds longer than what you think they would be, but other attack strategies would have caused the slimes to run away. I use the sequence that kills the most enemies.
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Ignore the last post. Well, read the information, but don't watch that WIP. Instead, watch this one.
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~dbrown3/DW3Gaia.zip
This WIP gets the blue and green orb, and ends when I pick up the Sword of Gaia. I killed the Boss Troll with minimum trouble. I tried to get him to drop a Thor Sword, but it just wasn't happening. I even have a save state with him asleep, defenseless, and all of my characters BiKill'ed.
The Phantom ship went by quickly.. I pick up some extra gold which I'll need later. On the way to Olivia, I fight some more metal slimes to level up the hero. I discovered this fight by pure accident when I ran my boat ashore.
In terms of time, I'm about 15 minutes ahead of how long I originally thought it would take to get to this point.
In playing, I've discovered (and since used) another way of manipulating the RNG.
Example: Suppose there is one enemy. I have a pilgrim use Sap, and it is ineffective. My wizard then chants Blazemore, and the spell doesn't work. I reload, and try the pilgrim use Defence instead. Defence is also ineffective, but this time, Blazemore works. The two different spells caused a different outcome for the RNG, even though they were both used on just one enemy and both ineffective.
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Wow, 1hr 16 minutes and you have killed the boss troll :O
This might turn out quite nicely :)
I will check out the run later and hopefully have some useful feedback.
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adelikat wrote:
I did some testing on those bugs:
#1 seems potentially useful since random encounters are disabled. Or maybe not since dialog boxes keep popping up? Were you getting them on the ship and in the town too? If you weren't then maybe this trick could be used for long walking sequnces, such as the Cave of the Necrogond. #3 I forgot that merchants don't use magic. D'oh! I doubt that a class change would be worth it even if you could manage the unheard of 1/2048 Book of Satori drop from a Blue Beak.
Was fighting all those Metal Slimes really necessary? You did eventally find a single babble and each babble is worth 10 slimes! Did you really, really try to encounter more babbles? Don't settle for Metal Slimes just because they were easier to manipulate and almost as good. You kill an average of 3 Metal Slimes per battle. You would have to manipulate and win 3 whole encounters with Metal Slimes faster than you could just one Metal Babble for the tradeoff to be worth it. Even with the Lamp of Darkness is the RNG really that bad? Those are long battles with the Metal Slimes, too. The lone Metal Babble went kind of quick.
As a side note, the Shoes of Happiness only have a 1/32 drop rate. The good news is that these are the coolest accessory in video game history! The bad news is that their usefulness is overestimated and that they're actually 93% useless, even in a console run. But hey, SHOES! Not everyone knows that the drop rate is 1/32. I used to assume that they were 1/256 before the Internet existed. Even though the Shoes waste time and a precious inventory slot I think they're worth a million entertainment points! You could do something awesome with them like throw them away just to pick up an orb once you run out of inventory space. Viewers would flip out when they see that! It would be great! You'd get another million points if you could pull this off: walk up to the merchant with 34,995 gold, sell the Shoes for 8, and buy the Sword of Kings.
My Chance strategy sort of relies on easy access to Metal Babbles. No babbles, no Chance. The Final Key and Lamp of Darkness don't take all that long to get. However, the boss battles do take a long time. With heal/ring/seed manipulation of the first round you could one-shot everything short of Zoma and Baramos, and they should die in one round. It's too late now, but you'll have three more inventory spaces if you don't do the Final Key quests. Plus, skipping the final key is a gamer's dream. Everyone knows that it's possible, but no one wants to spend a week powerleveling to do it. If you level the wizard in 20-30 minutes, preferably less, it would be awesome like a sequence breaker. And then if you get Open then you might as well go for Chance.
The optimal time to level up is after you get the ship and before you do anything else. Are you planning on beating the game at level 22? Because going back for more is sub-optimal. Why not get every level you'll ever need all at once?
Chance has other interesting uses besides the auto-crticial. Since the Boss Troll is a normal monster I think it can be "shattered into pieces". That would save at least a minute! Maybe Orochi can be shattered too? I wouldn't be surprised if Chance ignored the target's spell resistances. Also, if you can't manipulate auto-criticals, then time stop + transform + Falcon Sword = auto win. If you decide not to use Chance then transform + Falcon Sword is definitely your best bet, but then you'd need to be equipped well enough to survive hits from Zoma and his goons.
If you could skip the Ball of Light that would be awesome as well. Remember, Zoma does not lose half his HP - his stats just go down and his attack pattern changes. Someone should test this fact since it goes against conventional wisdom and my only source are the new game dumps. Maybe the game multiplies his HP by 2 when he appears, I dunno.
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The optimal time to level up is after you get the ship and before you do anything else. Are you planning on beating the game at level 22? Because going back for more is sub-optimal. Why not get every level you'll ever need all at once?
Metal babbles appear in the necrogond cave and will be much easier to manipulate. I've discovered that dungeon fights are easier (and quicker) to manip/predict than overworld fights. I'm going to hit a couple on the way through the cave, and even possibly try to get a couple in Baramos' castle. This will be quicker than hunting on the shrine island.
Also, when I get to the underworld, MB's are VERY common north of Rimuldar and will be quick to get if I need.
The only reason I stopped at level 21 before the boss troll is because that level gave me Bikill. I had to manip the 8 metal slime fight to give me 2 spells for the wizard that level, or else he would have just learned snowblast.
Ball of Light that would be awesome as well. Remember, Zoma does not lose half his HP - his stats just go down and his attack pattern changes.
On another party in a copy of the rom I named dwarrior3test.nes, I have successfully beaten Zoma without the Sphere of Light. Using SAP on him works pretty consistently, and lowers his Defense by 300 points!! For Zoma, I would imagine a good first round being Sap and a couple of other status spells working.
But I need to worry about Baramos now. A good first round for him could involve sleep, stopspell, and Sap working, with the Wizard Bikilling the hero.
I just did a really bad job of explaining the 'dream ruby' bug, that thing is a big memory corruption bug targeted at the area around your stats.
To do it correctly:
Kill off your hero
Use the dream ruby to paralyze all three other party members.
While getting your fortune told, your name/stats will be replaced by the dead party member.
Each step you take upstairs displays a "Heroname has died" message 7 times, and decrements a random byte of your stats each message.
Now your job as the TAS guy is to manipulate the memory corruption bug.
I just tested it out, it corrupted the first letter of the character's name, the list of learned spells, the first weapon, etc, screwed up the name of the 4th party member, etc. I'd say keep a memory viewer open, and see if it's corrupting a useful byte (like the MSB of your experience!), or possibly the byte which indicates your class and gender.
Only major problem is that it takes about a minute of real time to get out of the room, since there's 7 "you have died" messages triggering every step your take.
I'm pretty sure if you load up your inventory with low numbered items (cypress stick, club) and do the glitch, you will end up with equipped orbs. I don't think the game cares about placing duplicate orbs.
Also, Pilgrim + Zombie Slasher penetrates metal enemies.
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Holy crap, that could be really useful. You would have to of course get the dream ruby and do the manipulation, but if you could get the silver orb for instance, that would more than pay for it.
How cool would it be if you could somehow how get all 6 orbs this way! Sequence breaking from hell! And/or maybe a nice sword of kings for the baramos fight.
Right now I'm looking to see the exact mechanics of how the bug works...
So far I see it works by triggering the code which handles poison swamp, but with an invalid [random?] value for register X. Normally register X specify's which character to decrease the HP for, but it's not valid here, so it's modifying the value at address First Player's HP + some random X.
So the game thinks its decreasing your HP, and checks to see if the value goes below zero. It's a 16-bit check, if the 16-bit value covers two clubs, it's okay, but two unequipped cypress sticks is not. From the hex values for items, a cypress stick/nothing will have to decrease 3 times (00=cypress stick, FE = black raven, FC=green orb), and a club will have to decrease 4 times (01 = club, FF = nothing, FD=slime stick, FB=blue orb)
I haven't tested the game's orb acceptor, but it might accept 6 green orbs.
Game modifys 71C + X, player's inventories are 77C-79B. X must be between 60 and 7F.
edit: I just tried it out, and manged to get the item number to decrease by two every step taken. On my trials, it modified the first slot of the second party member. There is a minimum of 5 steps to walk total.
You can take 5+any multiple of two steps.
Possibly useful:
Cypress Stick (00) changes to Rainbow Drop (76) in 5 steps
Club (01) changes to Silver Orb (77) in 5 steps
Wing of Wyvern (68) changes to Final Key (5A) in 7 steps
Could this also be abused to get some Pepper for the king of Portoga, or to get the Final Key early on, or to even cheat your way to the ingredients to the Rainbow Drop?
I don't know how abusable this will really turn out to be, but if it's as bad as I'm thinking, it could warrant separate runs.
