Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom
ventuz wrote:
And btw, I looked thru this thread again, noone is actually doing speedrun on this, makes me sad, lol.
I'd be happy to do a run of any game, no matter how long, just I don't have enough knowledge to do them. The only game I do have enough knowledge about is Lemmings (which I don't think I ever completed).
If people would tell me what to do, I'd do it, but I guess that if people did know what to do they'd be doing it themselves (if that makes any sense).
A 3 player run of this would be kool, does anyone know if you can record a movie while netplaying? I would like to do a run on this but I think it would be much better with 3 players and in real life I don't know anyone that would do something like that with me...
I don't think it will be technically possible to play with three players thought the whole game at the same time since there is that limmitation in Snes9x. But it would be kewl.
There is no need to kill any monsters, except at the beginning. Bosses will make up the bulk of your XP, bringing you to about lvl 40. Kill the girl for the rest, but make sure she is a pygmy moogle first. :)
Here are a few things I learned on my trip through:
- Rally runs: Running is only done in one direction. When you start to run, you lose all your energy, and must recharge. When you play 1-player, your NPC allies never lose energy on their run. If you press the select button, you can switch to another character, and have a full run bar again. Keep switching between characters when you need to change directions in a run. It's shaved a few seconds for me.
- Most bosses, and dangerous monsters, are weak against Salamando, gnome (no substitute) and sylphid. The only other handy sprite spell is dispell magic, but with tweaking you won't have to worry about wall. I don't think any boss is strong against all of them, so simply cast more times. Lots of bosses have no weakness, so just use your highest level spells.
- You'll only need magic for bosses, and not much of it at high levels. Decide if you'd rather eat fairy walnuts, instead of using magic absorb.
- You can go much further than you may think when you're running a diagonal. In gaia's navel, one diagonal run can cover alot of land.
- Some spells, like sabers and fireball, are launched at the target. If you hug your target, all the parts of the spell will make contact much faster.
- Moon energy is the bomb. 100% critical hits, for a long time, for 2 mana. Charge the weapon for unbelievably devastating (999) results.
- Allies are really dumb about charging their weapons. Get a buddy to play them instead.
- Pretty much every physical attack can be avoided. Magic is a bit tougher to defend against. Counter with wall, or the sprite's own magic. Gauntlets have the best magic Def., and are cheap. Helmets are half/half, and armor has poor magic def.
- Entangling roots can disable annoying monsters. Explosion, hi level lava wave, and burst also have long effects. Okay, pretty much any spell will do it.
- Balloon seems to get rid of monster evade. Too bad it doesn't work well enough on bosses.
- Pygmy characters have faster casting times. NPCs can cast spells as soon as they start recovering. Bracelets have a big resist to the midge mallet.
- There are many monsters that drop really, really good armor. A little treasure manipulation can go a long way to equipping your party. Most armor treasure is trapped, so use a hi-level analyse spell to disarm it.
- My favorite weapons are the sword(obstacles, final battle), whip(best long range, obstacles), and spear(wide sweep). Forge them to the max. Other weapons get disabling abilities at a certain level, so keep it that way.
- Cure water owns all defensive magic.
- Whack unconsious members with the mallet to wake them up. Whack them again to make them normal again. May only work on NPCs, though.
Cute list you made there. If everybody had that help with their games it would be alot quicker done. :D
So.. At all times the girl and the sprite should be pygmysized in order to be more efficent in killing stuff with their magics.
Also.. The action grid might be something that should be taken into concideration.
Instead of letting your party go wild and hit at everything possible you could tell them to keep close and stay away from enemies. That way they might not goof around as much. But I don't know if this is the best though.
Two of the most important statements I'd like to add a bit to:
- Pygmy characters have faster casting times. NPCs can cast spells as soon as they start recovering. Bracelets have a big resist to the midge mallet.
This is crucial. This means that in a boss battle, you will never want to control the sprite: access its magic while controlling another character, tell it to cast the spell, and the exact frame after the summoned spellcaster disappears, cast the spell a second time. It will be cast so fast that not only can the boss not react, but you won't even give time for the damage numbers to appear.
I don't know how leveling spells would work, but I THINK this also means that you can cast spell after spell on a weak enemy and stop after your MP runs out, so that you don't need to run around looking for other enemies. Of course, this means that you will only get XP for the one enemy, but I think the only stat that will affect gametime in the end will be Magic Attack(I think that's one, anyway).
- My favorite weapons are the sword(obstacles, final battle), whip(best long range, obstacles), and spear(wide sweep). Forge them to the max. Other weapons get disabling abilities at a certain level, so keep it that way.
I think spear is really the best weapon in terms of sheer power. The only problem is you can't cut things or cross obstacles, but you have the sword and whip for that. But about the other weapons disabling, this is a good point. One of the most useful weapons in the game is the Sprite Spear for its ability to cast balloon on whatever you attack. But I guess this won't necessarily be useful in a time attack.
- My favorite weapons are the sword(obstacles, final battle), whip(best long range, obstacles), and spear(wide sweep). Forge them to the max. Other weapons get disabling abilities at a certain level, so keep it that way.
I think that for speed run, weapon of choice would be sword (boy), whip (girl/sprite) and ax (girl/sprite).. no time switching between spear and ax. ax is also for obstacles.
You really just have to weigh variables with each other. I mean is the whip really necessary?
1) How long it takes to switch to the whip for the rare crossing a chasm
2) How long it would take to beat final boss with uncharged sword
3) How long it would take to switch to axe for rock obstacles
4) How much time would be lost due to losing the small improvement on spear.
http://mitglied.lycos.de/deinbenutzername/Secret%20of%20Mana%20(U).smv
here, I just started a SoM run. I will do this 1 player, this game is extremly long and very time-consuming, a 2 or even 3 player run would take even much more time as all 2/3 players gotta do every move perfect before you can go on and not rerecord, and I think we couldn't go on that often with it because not every player does always have the time or motivation to play and then we maybe often couldn't go on for weeks because somebody has no time for it and we have to wait for every player before we can go on...
If anybody know's something to improve in the run that far please tell me
Looks good so far.
I hate to nitpick on such a small thing, but I think you could have dashed at around frame 11330 and didn't. That's the only mistake I really saw.
Otherwise, do you think it's possible to critical more often during the boss fight? As long as it doesn't take you more time to manipulate luck than to attack normally twice, it's worth it. Otherwise, good job with the manipulation- gem missle would've been a pain.
You really just have to weigh variables with each other. I mean is the whip really necessary?
1) How long it takes to switch to the whip for the rare crossing a chasm
2) How long it would take to beat final boss with uncharged sword
3) How long it would take to switch to axe for rock obstacles
4) How much time would be lost due to losing the small improvement on spear.
I didnt think Spear would be used that much in making speedrun, (avoid all npc, luck maintain, etc..)
To Zer0, very good. But, im not sure if this will make faster. Over on the little bridges at beginning, dont take all the steps - take upper diagonally. And at that point ghost calling you "...A..., ...A..." start off running lower right diagonally instead of straight down?
Oh, another variable I forgot, which would probably be more important than any of those, is how far out of the way each orb is/how often you get each type from a mandatory boss- I'm sure sword is probably the most popular in that respect.
You really just have to weigh variables with each other. I mean is the whip really necessary?
1) How long it takes to switch to the whip for the rare crossing a chasm
2) How long it would take to beat final boss with uncharged sword
3) How long it would take to switch to axe for rock obstacles
4) How much time would be lost due to losing the small improvement on spear.
For 1) it's not that rare really. The whip will come in handy at many places. So switching would become annoying. Especially in the last place.
If you ask me, sword, axe and whip are the only weapons needed more or less.
2) Depending on which last boss you mean, if it's Tanatos or the dragon. Tanatos is weak against lumina, so you would wanna use that really. Both sabres and lucent beam. This will deal a great portion of damage in short time. Might as well add the lunar strength or what it's called. For the dragon (last battle) you would cast dryads sabres with the girl and sprite so that the boy gets mana sword. It takes for ever to beat the dragon without it. I have done this my self as the first time I went through the game I didn't know I was supposed to cast dryads magic. Hehe.
3) The axe is also frequent used and can cut both rock obstacles and shrubs. How ever the range is pretty bad, but the axe is still a good and strong weapon.
4) Not sure if this would mean so much in time measurements really. Depends on how fast you would gain orbs for the certein weapon. If you can build up the axe or whip with a decent speed I think it would be better to leave the spear out. Not 100% sure on it though.
Looks good so far.
I hate to nitpick on such a small thing, but I think you could have dashed at around frame 11330 and didn't. That's the only mistake I really saw.
Otherwise, do you think it's possible to critical more often during the boss fight? As long as it doesn't take you more time to manipulate luck than to attack normally twice, it's worth it. Otherwise, good job with the manipulation- gem missle would've been a pain.
1. Ohh your right, I could've been 1 sec faster there... hmm... time for me to learn hexediting movies!
2. I did the boss fight 10 times or so and then picked the best one of it, and in all of the different movies I only managed 1 critical hit, I think this would take HUGE time to land a critical hit every time
You really just have to weigh variables with each other. I mean is the whip really necessary?
1) How long it takes to switch to the whip for the rare crossing a chasm
Hmm... there's the whip place in the witch's forest, dark cave, sage's mountain, Sunken land, tons in the Mana fortress... it's needed a lot. Plus, it seems to be the fastest long range weapon there is.
2) How long it would take to beat final boss with uncharged sword
Long. With plain weapons, I remember getting 550 damage from an 8 power attack. If you're good, you can get in two full hits with every character. With one mana and a full 8-charge, the boy can do 999. With moon energy and the full mana sword, every swing does guaranteed 999 crits.
On Thanatos, moon energy is also essential. You can get a 999 crit with a lvl 6 charge, and do about 200 damage on a normal swing. I didn't use the light saber for those numbers.
3) How long it would take to switch to axe for rock obstacles
There's maybe 3 axe obstacles. One to enter the witch's forest, a few in flammie's cave(I think?), and some in the sage's mountain or the black dungeon. In the mana fortress, the axe will help with plowing through the crystal "grass".
4) How much time would be lost due to losing the small improvement on spear.
Not sure. It's my favorite weapon because it's pretty easy to hit with. You may want to keep it as a sprite's spear, for the balloon ability. A few other weapons can get the balloon ability, too. Dunno how much that will be needed with tweaking, though.
I will do this 1 player, this game is extremly long and very time-consuming, a 2 or even 3 player run would take even much more time as all 2/3 players gotta do every move perfect before you can go on and not rerecord, and I think we couldn't go on that often with it because not every player does always have the time or motivation to play and then we maybe often couldn't go on for weeks because somebody has no time for it and we have to wait for every player before we can go on...
Aww... can't you have 2 player for the bosses? It's very tough to get the NPCs to charge up their weapons, and that will help quite a bit with killing the boss. You can't charge your weapon and get the sprite to kill stuff at the same time. That, and humans can avoid the bosses' attacks, while NPCs have trouble.
Edit: I almost forgot. Lucent barrier will make your characters invincible, so they don't spend time falling from damage. It may come in handy, especially in the pure land.
Aww... can't you have 2 player for the bosses? It's very tough to get the NPCs to charge up their weapons, and that will help quite a bit with killing the boss. You can't charge your weapon and get the sprite to kill stuff at the same time. That, and humans can avoid the bosses' attacks, while NPCs have trouble.
It is not hard at all. In the action grid section you can set how far they should charge their weapons and also what distance and agressitivity they should have. Basicly I like to keep the action grid in the upper left corner. Allso in the menu you can choose the target option for your NPC. The NPC will walk towards this target and release it's charge. Pretty simple.
Would still be better with more players though.
After doing a little testing, it seems that casting analyze isn't needed. Once a treasure chest drops, you can manipulate luck to get what you want. Doing this, it is possible to get essentially everything you need by treasure.
I found out that agility makes a big difference in the frames to get to 100%. A character at lvl 1 takes about 28 "ticks", while a really high lvl character takes about half the time. Some items do give agility bonuses, so they may be worth it.
Will the video have the characters picking up the final energy orbs at the mana fortress? Those things are very rare. You can expect to get to the lvl 90's before getting them all without any assistance. With assistance, you can spend about 10 minutes of reloading to get one treasure, and manipulating that for another minute or two to get an orb. There are some areas with pairs or triples of monsters, to make it easier to get what you want. It would be neat to see them all picked up just before the final boss.
So, has anyone got a list of what spells would be worth training? Casting a magic spell costs alot of frames, so only the bare minimum should be used.
I don't think the final orbs should be picked up at the Mana Fortress. It would do nothing else than waste time.
As for the spells, I do remember Gnome being the most commonly used, especially during the first half of the game.
Almost everything will probably have to be leveled a bit. I remember that if you have Undine at lvl 0, Fire Gigas (or whatever, it's the first Gigas-type boss) will take some Faerie Walnuts. But if you have it at lvl 1 or 2 in the beginning of the fight, it'll be MUCH faster.
Side note: I think the Goblins in the Fire Gigas' palace drop Faerie Walnuts.
Hmm.. The least needed spell would be Shade I suppose. Unless you wanna use the dispel magic. But the only place I can think of straight away is that ugly creature in the tree palace. It casts wall straight away which is pretty annoying.
Illumina is good for Thanatos and some vampire boss I think. So you might wanna level it a bit.
Sylphid, Undine, Salamando and Gnome should be at a decent level. Atleast around level 5 each I suppose.
Dryad won't be necessary to level that far I think. It's only strong against one or two bosses. Plus the last fight.
Also.. Spend no time to level Luna. Those levels will gain good along side playing. If you use it frequently to smash enemies harder by moon strength and MP absorb etc.
cant get that .smv file .. link seems to be dead or something .. cant you reupload it?? ... maybe to this url http://uploaded.fastuploads.info if it works or something :o :p
