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The Legend of Zelda "Swordless" (1st Quest)

  • aims for fastest time
  • takes damage to save time
  • abuses programming errors
  • manipulates luck
  • uses a game restart sequence
  • no deaths
  • no predefined saves
  • genre: adventure
  • uses emulator fceu 0.98.28
This run is my first submission to TASvideos and I believe the first of its kind.
This is one of my favorite all-time NES games. If you are unfamiliar with this game you can refer to Baxter and Morrison's 2nd quest movie submission notes for a brief recap of the plot here: #2091: Baxter & Morrison's NES The Legend of Zelda "2nd quest" in 24:59.83
You can also find a highly in-depth description of enemy drops, enemy movement, gameplay techniques, link's movement, and a description of the screen scroll glitch in those same submission notes.
This is technically not a "swordless" run for the obvious reason that you have to collect one of the three swords in order to hit Ganon and complete the game. There has been lots of discussion in the forums as to what the best way to end a run of this type would be. To my knowledge the point of this site is for people to show off game "completion" in the least amount of frames. Without collecting a sword, game completion is not possible. So instead of a freezing glitch, dying on Ganon, or stopping the movie when you enter Ganon's room, I chose to collect the sword and kill Ganon. Note that I only get the sword after acquiring all 8 peices of the triforce, and do not use it until the fight with Ganon.

A Few Quirks:

There are a few things I'd like to point out about my route, the screen scroll glitch, and enemy manipulations/drops.

Route:

First off, I was asked in the forums after I posted my WIP about why I use the gambling game more than the published 1st quest any %. In that run they only use the gambling game twice and get the rest of their rupees from enemy drops and a 100 rupee secret to everyone room on the way to level 8.
When I started attempting this run I noticed that if you get the candle on the way to level 4, when you pick up the ladder there and reset, the game for some unknown reason sets your item to the candle on restart. This of course is suboptimal since you don't need the candle until the 100 rupee secret room (if you plan on getting this) or level 8, and it forces you to access the menu to switch back to the bombs. After some testing I found that it is slightly faster to get the candle later (skipping the 100 rupees) since there's a candle room on the way to level 8. So basically you're trading 2 gamble screens for 1 menu screen and the 100 rupee secret, also allowing you to screen scroll glitch past the first candle room and the rupee secret. Furthermore, getting the candle near level 8 allows you to move up/right and down/left respectively, allowing a few frames to be saved by zig-zagging.
You may also wonder why I dont ever use the whistle to warp to level 3 to go to levels 4 and 7, and to level 1 when going to level 9. If going to level 7 before completing level 4 it is in fact faster to use the whistle, but with the screen scroll glitch it makes it optimal to do level 4 first and then over to level 7 by use of the glitch. Additionally I have to reset to get the wooden sword anyway, so I dont have to worry about walking 1 screen away from level 7 to use the whistle.
As for not using the whistle to go to level 1 after I pick up the wooden sword. In the any% they whistle from level 6 to 1, but I obviously have a different route and using the whistle after getting the wooden sword is much slower than just screen scroll glitch walking up past level 1.

Screen Scroll Glitch:

There are some places in the overworld where I do the glitch and I move in a seemingly suboptimal way. This only happens when moving north/south through the black portion at the top of the screen. For some reason if there's bushes or rocks at the top of the screen they are offset in some places by about a block worth of movement. For example, while on the way to get the 30 rupees in the beginning of the run, when screen scrolling at the first forest screen after the beach area, it looks like you may be able to hug the bushes on the right and perform the glitch there. This is not so because the bushes are offset slightly. This is the reason you see me enter the bottom of the screen in the middle, come out of the top half a block to the left, and have to go back to the right before i reenter from the top and move on. This happens a few times during the run and may look a bit strange.

Enemy Drops:

Some dungeon rooms again may seem suboptimal, and I'm sure a few frames could probably be saved here and there (although this would ultimately change the entire run from there on out which may or may not be desireable). You may see me kill some enemies first when it looked like i could have hit/killed more with the same bomb. Most of the time this is because i need to get a certain drop from a certain enemy and if I were to kill any other enemies first it would change the value of $052A thus changing the type of drop. An example of this would be in level 7 when entering the locked door room with 3 bats and 3 blue boomerang baddies, I drop 2 consecutive bombs to kill 2 of the 3 blue boomerangers where i could have killed some bats as well or even all 6 enemies with the 2 bombs. This is misleading because killing any of the bats before i killed the boomerangers would not have allowed me to get a bomb drop there. I tried to prevent this from happening as much as possible but unfortunately it does a few times.

Enemy Manipulations:

Since this is a swordless run it would seem unfair to compare dungeon room completion times to the any% runs. There is no sword present which makes it considerably harder to complete rooms in as timely a fashion (especially blue darknut rooms), because without the sword you can not do things like lay a bomb/swing your sword at the same time (possibly setting up enemies in a group) and swing your sword when the bomb explodes hitting them with both and doing extra damage (cutting down on enemy cooldown and bomb usage).

The Route:

As you can imagine the route plan for a swordless run is drastically different from an any% since you can only hit the dragon bosses of level 4 and 8 with the wand, and to get that you must get the ladder from level 4. With that in mind I believe that the route is pretty much fully optomized.
  • get 30 rupees from the friendly enemy
  • reset
  • get bombs
  • reset
  • use left over rupees for gambling
  • level 3 triforce
  • raft
  • save and continue
  • ladder
  • save and continue
  • bow
  • level 1 triforce
  • wand
  • level 6 triforce
  • reset
  • candle on the way to level 8
  • level 8 triforce
  • level 2 triforce
  • meat
  • whistle
  • level 5 triforce
  • reset
  • level 4 triforce
  • level 7 triforce
  • reset
  • wooden sword
  • reset
  • silver arrows
  • Ganon/Zelda

Credits:

I would like to thank Phil, Baxter, and Morrison for their 1st and 2nd quest any% runs and submission texts. Without these this run would never have been possible. And also Baxter again for his feedback and encouragement in pm's and the forums early on. A special thanks goes out to LordTom for responding to my posts recently. It seemed like people had lost interest in this run considering noone really responded to my posted WIP and additional comments. Your responses and encouragement were very timely, without which i may have put off finishing this run for awhile or possibly indefinately. I hope everyone enjoys the run whether published or not. Its been a long time coming!
adelikat: Claimined for judging. I think this submission has implications for the site as a whole so I will handle it. Expect a verdict in the upcoming days.
adelikat: Accepting for publication. Verdict
Aktan: Processing as "Swordless Challenge"
FractalFusion: Replaced movie to change rerecord count to 12000, which is closer to the number of actual rerecords done.
adelikat: Replace submission file with .fm2 file

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Posted: 7/21/2010 1:56 AM
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jprofit22
Player (51)
Joined: 1/19/2009
Posts: 100
Derakon wrote:
I finally got to watch this thanks to Aktan's encode. Thanks, Aktan! I take it that the bow doesn't work against hydras (boss of levels 4/8)? If it did that'd save getting the wand, though you'd need a fair amount more rupees. I know the submission text says you can only hit them with the wand...just double-checking. :)
Yes, the only two items that can damage the hydra bosses are the sword or the wand. Incidentally the wand is actually equal in power to the white sword (which is twice as powerful as the wooden sword) speeding up these boss fights a little. Edit: To be honest I've never tried laying a bomb to hit the hydras, but this would be counterproductive I think because you would use up all your bombs pretty quickly, and my gut says they won't hit them anyway. Something to check out though for an any%.
Given the utility of damage boosting, I have to wonder if it could be worth grabbing one of the closer heart containers to enable more of them. This would of course also require you to regain health more before picking up a Triforce piece, so the extra manipulation required (plus the fact that you only start with 3 full hearts after a restart anyway) might make it not worthwhile.
A similar question was asked earlier in the thread. My response was that although you may be able to utilize a few more enemy boosts, many times this would be unfavorable since it would reset the value of $0050, which is the memory address for consecutive enemy kill count. When 10 enemies in a row are killed without Link taking damage, the drop from the tenth enemy becomes a "good" drop (bomb, faerie, 5 rupees), regardless of the enemy killed (as long as the enemy is able to drop something of course: bats and like-likes drop nothing as well as a few other enemies). In contrast to the any%, I have to keep a very careful eye on planning bomb drops since i have no sword to fall back on, so many times I have to sacrifice some enemy boosting to set up a bomb drop from an enemy that wouldn't normally give a bomb. You can look at the chart for enemy drops in the link I provided to the 2nd quest any% submission notes if you need more clarification. Also, I started this run under the pretense of being a "minimalist" run, which I was convinced to change to "swordless" before submission. Considering a true minimalist run would just collect the sword instead of the wand, and would be painfully similar to the any% just without collecting heart containers. I feel as though this adds some entertainment value to the run as well, to complete the game not only without a sword (mostly; for the skeptics out there), but with the minimum amount of heart containers.
Right before the level-7 boss, you switch to bombs, use your last one to kill some boomerang guys, which switches you to the wand, and then you pick up some bombs from the boomerang guy's corpse. Why not just kill them with the wand? Are the bombs really faster even when the pause screen is taken into account?
If you watch a bit closer you will see that the bomb not only kills the boomerang guys, it also blows open the wall to the boss, which is the only entrance to the boss room.
Random thought: does anyone know how the "tally up your earned money" thing interacts with savefiles? That is, when you get some money, it isn't immediately added to your displayed rupee count; instead, 1 is added per frame (or however fast it is). I noticed that at the 30 rupee secret at the beginning of the game, the game was restarted before the tally finished, and continued working properly after the load. That says to me that either the tally progress is saved in the safefile, or else it's memory that's not cleared when the game is reloaded. The latter case might potentially allow for some abuse by using multiple savefiles, maybe?
I wish I had an answer for you here. Unfortunately I'm not very well versed in memory address location or save state manipulation. I got all the information I used in this run from the 2nd quest submission notes, and a few pms and posts from Baxter.
Posted: 7/21/2010 4:57 AM
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snorlax
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Where is Baxter? I'd like to see his comments on this movie.
Posted: 7/21/2010 4:59 AM
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jprofit22
Player (51)
Joined: 1/19/2009
Posts: 100
snorlax wrote:
Where is Baxter? I'd like to see his comments on this movie.
I was just saying this earlier to a good friend of mine. Baxter is unfortunately on vacation somewhere until early August. Edit: He sent me back a pm a couple days ago so he has access to a computer, but I suspect its a public computer and he is unable to download anything onto it.
Posted: 7/21/2010 6:39 AM
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Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
For a title, how about "Swordless until Ganon"? Not too long, and captures the essence of the challenge.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 7/21/2010 10:17 AM
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Noxxa
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Patashu wrote:
For a title, how about "Swordless until Ganon"? Not too long, and captures the essence of the challenge.
Makes it seem even more arbitrary than it already is, IMO.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Posted: 7/21/2010 11:28 AM
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Lord_Tom
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I suggest: -We keep the "swordless" title - that's a familiar term that's been around for years and best conveys the challenge. -State in the first sentence of the movie description how this movie handles the conflict between the challenge and what is required (at this point) to complete the game. If someone finds a truly swordless technique in the future, everyone understands this movie will be toast. -As I read things, only a small minority has actually taken issue with publication of the movie as is. This small minority would be unlikely to be satisfied by any of the possible permutations to this movie's ending (which would require redefining "completing the game" as opposed to appyling a caveat to "swordless"). There's been a ton of semantic discussions - very frequent, fun and healthy around here - but nothing has arisen to justify taking away the author's prerogatives to make the reasonable decisions jprofit22 made. -Let's publish this bad boy! :)
Posted: 7/21/2010 1:26 PM
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ObadiahtheSlim
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 150
Swordless is a well known challenge from back in the day. This run satisfies the challenge. No sword is used at all until Ganon. Since a sword is required for Ganon, the challenge ends when you get to his room without one. In the interest of brevity, they grab a sword before getting to Ganon. This is just like the 100% Rondo of Blood using the level select cheat code. It allows them to skip having to face the final boss twice to get the 100% ending. Grabbing the sword before Ganon allows for the author of this run to skip having to face Ganon twice (once without a sword to complete the challenge) to get a game ending.
Posted: 7/21/2010 1:54 PM
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Warp
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DrJones wrote:
I prefer the options where you either freeze the game
Why? The whole foundation of speedrunning is to complete the game. A speedrun that doesn't complete the game isn't. A "speedrun" that just goes half-way through and then gives up is worthless. (In this case it wouldn't be "half-way", but conceptually it would be the same thing.) It would also raise more dilemmas than it would be worth: Exactly at which point would it be acceptable for the run to be terminated? Why not one second earlier (thus getting a faster time)? Who dictates the exact point of termination, given that the game itself gives no obvious, logical and unambiguous place to do so? If that would be accepted here, it would probably have to be, once again, considered a unique exception to the rules allowed for this game (in this category) only. We should minimize such game-specific exceptions as far as possible to reduce controversy. (I'm not saying we should never grant game-specific exceptions to the rules. I'm just saying that we should avoid them unless there's a really good reason. "It's not completely swordless" is certainly not such a reason.)
or play a "hack" that is basically the same game but that allows you to hit Gannon without the sword.
That would be even worse. It would go against all the principles of fair TASing. Or put it in other words: It would be cheating, as defined by TASing standards. We had to fight for years to convince the general public that we don't cheat with the games. We certainly shouldn't start doing so now. Even suggesting such a thing is a horrible idea. (Note that the above is not a statement against accepting so-called "hacks" which are, effectively, their own independent games, just built on top of existing game code. They are never considered the original game in any way.)
Posted: 7/21/2010 6:00 PM
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DrJones
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
Warp wrote:
DrJones wrote:
I prefer the options where you either freeze the game
Why? The whole foundation of speedrunning is to complete the game. A speedrun that doesn't complete the game isn't. A "speedrun" that just goes half-way through and then gives up is worthless. (In this case it wouldn't be "half-way", but conceptually it would be the same thing.)
Castlevania: Symphony of the night's speedruns end at the last save point. The "swordless" speedruns traditionally end at gannon's room, and usually by using the freezing glitch, which is why it's one of the options given there. Moreover, we have TASes that don't complete the game such as the one from Rygar (movie ends just before the game's ending) and the Ghost 'n' goblins ones. Not counting the TASes from games that have no end, like Excitebike or Kung-Fu master. Even the Lemmings TAS was published without beating the whole game.
or play a "hack" that is basically the same game but that allows you to hit Gannon without the sword.
That would be even worse. It would go against all the principles of fair TASing. Or put it in other words: It would be cheating, as defined by TASing standards. We had to fight for years to convince the general public that we don't cheat with the games. We certainly shouldn't start doing so now. Even suggesting such a thing is a horrible idea. (Note that the above is not a statement against accepting so-called "hacks" which are, effectively, their own independent games, just built on top of existing game code. They are never considered the original game in any way.)
IHMO, it's not cheat if the ROM only competes in its own category.
No.
Posted: 7/21/2010 8:45 PM
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upthorn
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DrJones wrote:
IHMO, it's not cheat if the ROM only competes in its own category.
You're failing to understand the objection. When the video leaks out onto the internet as a TAS of Zelda that completes the game without ever using a sword, people are first going to think "Wow, you can kill Ganon in the original Zelda without using your sword? I wonder how that works." And then when they find out that the ROM was hacked to make it possible will be disappointed and angry that they were lied to. That is how it would be a cheat. Not so much in the context of this site as in the context of the internet at large.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 7/21/2010 8:48 PM
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scrimpeh
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Needless to say, getting the run to sync on a hacked rom is a completely different story.
Posted: 7/21/2010 11:56 PM
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Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
Mothrayas wrote:
Patashu wrote:
For a title, how about "Swordless until Ganon"? Not too long, and captures the essence of the challenge.
Makes it seem even more arbitrary than it already is, IMO.
But it's accurate!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 7/22/2010 12:12 AM
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Noob_Irdoh
Joined: 6/4/2009
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Arbitrary goal is arbitrary. No thanks.
Posted: 7/22/2010 12:20 AM
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kwinse
Joined: 5/13/2006
Posts: 283
upthorn wrote:
DrJones wrote:
IHMO, it's not cheat if the ROM only competes in its own category.
You're failing to understand the objection. When the video leaks out onto the internet as a TAS of Zelda that completes the game without ever using a sword, people are first going to think "Wow, you can kill Ganon in the original Zelda without using your sword? I wonder how that works." And then when they find out that the ROM was hacked to make it possible will be disappointed and angry that they were lied to. That is how it would be a cheat. Not so much in the context of this site as in the context of the internet at large.
But if the run is clearly labeled as using a hacked rom (both in video titles and the video's watermarks) then the people who don't read that information are the only ones to blame.
<Zurreco> if so called professional players cant adapt to every playing field, theyre obviously not that great
Posted: 7/22/2010 12:59 AM
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upthorn
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But it will still reflect poorly on our community, because the average youtuber is functionally illiterate.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 7/22/2010 2:25 AM
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SwordlessLink
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A+ run, would watch again, excellent category choice! :D :D :D
Posted: 7/22/2010 2:46 AM
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jprofit22
Player (51)
Joined: 1/19/2009
Posts: 100
Swordless Link wrote:
A+ run, would watch again, excellent category choice! :D :D :D
In your honor sir! :D
Posted: 7/22/2010 2:47 AM
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adelikat
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Swordless link likes your swordless link movie sorry, I had to point out the awesomeness of that.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Posted: 7/22/2010 4:54 AM
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Pointless_Boy
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Joined: 6/18/2010
Posts: 183
adelikat wrote:
Swordless link likes your swordless link movie sorry, I had to point out the awesomeness of that.
NO YOU ARE WRONG IT'S ONLY AWESOME IF HIS FORUM NICKNAME WAS "MOSTLY SWORDLESS LINK" OR "LINK THAT ONLY USES SWORD WHEN NECESSARY" :o
Posted: 7/22/2010 12:19 PM
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DrJones
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
That would be an awesome nickname, actually.
No.
Posted: 7/22/2010 1:05 PM
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Sticky
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
I vote the unnecessarily long nick Link that only uses sword when necessary.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Posted: 7/22/2010 2:57 PM
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Pointless_Boy
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How do I go about getting my name changed to Link That Only Uses Sword When Necessary?
Posted: 7/22/2010 4:07 PM
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Lord_Tom
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The joke's already been made, so that would be Pointless, Boy.
Posted: 7/22/2010 4:48 PM
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Warp
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upthorn wrote:
But it will still reflect poorly on our community, because the average youtuber is functionally illiterate.
Besides, the sole reason for using such a hack would be to make the term "swordless" more accurate. Which, IMO, makes little sense. Creating hacks to make category names more accurate is just silly.
Posted: 7/22/2010 5:37 PM
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dwangoAC
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I didn't pay attention to which emulator this was created with, converted the .fcm to .fm2 and watched it in FCEUX 2.1.4. That worked great until the beginning of Level 8 when he died and I couldn't figure out why. :) Based on the discussion that happened following the April 1st site changes this year I'm voting yes based purely on entertainment value alone. This is a unique run which was entertaining to watch. I realize there will definitely be bickering over what to call it but this run does stand on its own two feet as its own category. I keep thinking of "Nearly Headless Nick" every time I see the nearly swordless debate. :) Thanks for the awesome run, A.C. ******
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
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