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Well, situation solved
the site I got my info was wrong, Gigademon's HP is 1200 not 1023
in case anybody is interested, the RAM address that holds boss HP is 727E
Bad news is I have to redo the Gigademon fight anyway becuase this game has a nasty habit of desynching during level ups :(
Just posting to say I'm still anxiously awaiting the completion of this. Good luck adelikat.
(And I still hope you'll consider DW3 no matter how improbable :D)
My God, you're at Gigademon! So close...
How much faster are you so far?
This is definitely one of the runs I've been looking forward to the most. Keep it up!
http://www.woodus.com/den/games/dw4nes/monsters.php
according to this chart, the Gigademon has 1023 hp (which seems to be max HP for any enemy)
I just inflicted 1054 damage to him in the first round but he did not go down!
According to that chart, Gigademon has 1200 HP. It's Master Malice who has 1023 HP.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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It DID say 1023 before I brought it to their attention, its now updated.
While I am at Gigademon, it is only the 2nd guardian fight. That means 3 guardian fight and then the long tedious fight with necrosario. So while I am so close, It will take a while to complete, manipulating critical hits takes far more time (real time) than anything else, and I got A LOT of critical to get in these battles. In addition, my schedule has gotten suprisingly busy so I would be able to work on it occasionaly.
As far as how much time I've saved, I want to keep that a suprise (which also means no WIP until it is done). All I will say is that is won't be sub2hr (I made that overzealous prediction before I started the new run) but it will be a significant improvement ;)
I know what it's like not having enough time, but just do it a chunk as you go. I doubt anybody ever did these movies in long segments. We're anxiously awaiting.
Life is like a box of chocolates-when you want peanut butter, all you get is coconut.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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I haven't given up on this run, I've actually had many set backs including a hard drive crash!. Fortunatetly I was able to retrieve my data on this run was saved. I lost about 1 week and a half on that. Also I have had several desynch problems causing me to redo chunks of the run.
The good news is I have defeated all 4 guardians and I am on my way to necrosario :)
http://www.yuko2ch.net/rockman/sup0066.fcm
(DragonWarrior4 FCM)
Mr. Morimoto devised this method.
Though you might already possibly have known.
If you use the Aeolus'Shield ,Anderougs disappear.
It takes time until Aeolus 'Shield is taken.
However, because the time of lebel up disappears, it might possibly be fast.
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well, I certainly didn't know about that trick. The aeolus shield is very far out of the way though, plus you need to unluck 4 doors to get to it. I am not sure it would be faster or not. If it is faster it is certainly not by much.
i watched this video almost in its entirety....i played this game through way too many times when i was younger
its takes you roughly 57 seconds to walk out of the cave with the magic key in chapter 5....why not just use outside?
in chapter 5 mara is currently level 6 i believe after killing balzak in chapter 4
she learns outside at level 9
although mara is dead before this point
i think it may possibly be faster to keep her alive for the end of the fight with the lighthouse bengal (mara needs 789 exp if my numbers are right to get to level 9 and learn outside)
then the end of the cave with the padequia root would be mara and the hero killing themselves
the hero would be down a small amount of exp but i would think the 50+ second gain may compensate
OR
the hero learns outside at level 13 (currently 9) though he actually needs around 7000 (more or less) experience to level this high
he would be up experience from this point and would deal higher damages obviously....is there anywhere you can engage a metal babble with just the hero in the party? or something similar to the effect
it takes alena around 45-48 seconds to level up 5 times from killing the metal slime in chapter 2
suggestions
#1 keep mara alive for lighthouse battle should be enough to get her to learn outside if my numbers are right...
#2 have mara kill something in chapter 4, 789 experience isnt all that much (orin is too good) the leveling sequence (text) itself would only take maybe 25 seconds
#3 get hero 7000+/- experience in chapter 5, a metal babble would be enough (i dont know my monster locations well enough to know if there is one nearby when youre sailing or anything)
final thoughts....the first and second options seem like the best, though i cannot guarantee that any of them are a better option......may be worth looking into if you are going to redo a run with this aeolus shield trick
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I promise you I have tested this area and that is the fastest.
It takes more time to scroll through the level ups than it does to walk out of the cave. You say it takes mara 45-48 sec to level up from the metal slime but you also have to factor in the battle sequence as well since leveling her up will require an additional fight.
In my first run, I used the silver taro cards to double the xp of the balzack fight so that mara could get outside without an additional encounter. But the time it takes to get the cards + the additional level ups is not enough to compensate.
Keeping her alive for the lighthouse bengal fight is not a good solution either. As a spell-caster, Mara has extremely poor AI and does bat-shit things in this fight. Casting useless spells eats up a lot of time in addition to having to level her up. Also, as you mentioned, you would have to kill her off in the cave so that will take time as well.
There is a possible faster solution but none of those are it. I think I should have just sent the lone hero into the cave, that way I could kill him off to get out. I haven't tested this for sure but I think it may be faster. I didn't come up with this solution until much later in the game. I didn't want to redo it for this especially since it will be only a marginal savings.
One day I will redo this run but it won't be for the aeolus shield trick. I am almost positive that it is slower. Should I redo it, it will be for even more insane luck manipulation.
alright...just checking if you may have overlooked something...seems you were very thorough though
"I think I should have just sent the lone hero into the cave, that way I could kill him off to get out."
yeah that does make a lot more sense actually
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Well I've started up a v3 of this game. here is Chapter 1 completed 299 frames faster. Also Ragnar has 4 more strength points, that should come in handy.
I used the memory watch,macro editor and bascibot to achieve incredible luck manipulation. All frames were saved by better luck manipulation but also reducing "delay frames". Often criticals and other events are manipulated to have no delay whatsoever! This is by using strategic button presses to manipulate luck rather than delay frames and by using basicbot to brute force these outcomes rather than doing it "by hand".
Even using these new tools, this is a long and tedious process, so it will take some time before I am done with this movie. Also, it is sort of a side project, and not on my priority list.
A good improvement for the first chapter. I would think there are more sizable chunks to be gained later. Hopefully the tools will help to get over the more troublesome spots better than last time (the first fight in chapter 2 comes to mind). Nice work Adelikat.
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http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/893648594/Dragon_Warrior_4_%28U%29.fcm
Project over.
In v2 I dealt with ridicouls amounts of desyncs and now in this version as well. I check constantly to make sure it stays in sync but yet it does so anyway. This would have been a complete chapter 2, with top notch luck manipulation and a change in strategy that saved some good time.
But instead it desyncs in the level ups after the chameleon fight. This is typical as it badly emulates level ups. An .fcm will often desync there and it often crashes if you press the wrong buttons.
I checked this level up after the I TASed it and finally got a desync free level up. I went on to TAS the rest of the chapter only to find it desyncs now.
Unless this kind of thing can be corrected somehow, I don't intend to ever touch a TAS of this game again. This is isn't worth it.
The movie file is corrupt. Even if I ignore the invalid events that nesmock reports and look at just what FCEU sees, everything after frame ~54000 is constant up+down+left. I doubt you intended to do nothing but hold those three directions for 10 straight minutes.
By removing one frame from where you said it desyncs (the level-up around frame 48000) I extended the desync point out to frame ~52000: Dragon_Warrior_4_(U) adelikat resync52000.fcm. Admittedly this doesn't help much practically because there is hardly any luck manipulation up to that point. So the desync problem is real, but so are the crashes and the mysterious corruption of the movie file. Maybe these three problems are related.
Perhaps you have a valid copy of the run for frames beyond ~50000 saved away somewhere? A desync 10 minutes before the end of a WIP isn't quite as big a roadblock as having those 10 minutes all deleted.
Super Bounce!
If you haven't seen it, there is now an SDA run of this game which clocks in at around 6 hours.
http://speeddemosarchive.com/DragonWarrior4.html
They abuse the Sword of the Lethargy on everything to put it to sleep. Who knew you could use it on bosses too? I can't remember if that was ever discussed in the past. I remember that the Aeolus Shield was too tough to get, but you can buy a Sword of Lethargy in Stancia.
Anyway, just thought I would log that in case someone does a run again someday.
Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 69
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Hi Adelikat. First of all, thanks for your run of DWIV which is my favourite game of all time. Second, thanks for everything you do for the site and the community. It's really quite impressive.
I'm convinced by your google code page that you're doing a new run of DWIV with DarkKobold. I see a screenshot with a recent build of FCEUX :) If that's true, I wish you the best of luck. I see many times that you throw your arms up in the air to give up which speaks to the level of difficulty you've had with this game. I trust the addition of lua scripts will ease the process greatly.
adelikat wrote:
There is a possible faster solution but none of those are it. I think I should have just sent the lone hero into the cave, that way I could kill him off to get out. I haven't tested this for sure but I think it may be faster. I didn't come up with this solution until much later in the game. I didn't want to redo it for this especially since it will be only a marginal savings.
And just in case you haven't figured this point out in the last five years - you can't kill off just the hero to get out of the cave west of Keeleon. It's a double wide cave which means the wagon can enter it. Killing off the hero would have four other party members jump out of the wagon (dead or not - I think as many surviving as possible come out first then a batch of three come out once they're dead assuming you don't switch out first). I don't know if there's a travel door on the continent that you could go alone to, but that would probably be out of your way. I also doubt you could do enough sequence breaking to level up Ad legitimately since you get Outside two boss fights later.
Following this thread, being new to me, makes me feel like people are talking about DWIV right now :P I would love to follow your WIPs if you have any. Best of luck
