According to
nJOY, a Japanese walkthrough site, Dark Lord drops demon’s claw. He also drops ??? seed, weapon & armor seed and stardust herb so it'll take a while to get the claw.
I started to suspect that Moon Sabre might be slow. From waiting the appearance of the chestbox to start re-walking via getting the item, it took 366 frames according to the frames of my getting a dreamsee herb.
I think the bosses pre-glitch where you can use claw (means Tzenker, Genova and Golem2) 1 claw is enough. In both single segments I mentioned, they also buy 1 against each these bosses.
There are many mandatory battles where you can’t run away in Mirage Palace, so to retrieve glitched Kevin, dreamsee herbs are necessary. I’ll probably use 4 herbs. At least 2 herbs are definitely necessary. I can adjust the number of herbs I get before meeting Flammie.
EDIT: About keeping the game busy:
It may be a specific trick of Hawk and Kevin because of their double attack. It might be a little difficult on snes9x v1.43 since I heard the lag on v1.43 was less than that on v1.51.
I may restart on (J) rom because I remember Carlie’s idiom is very, very specific. It’s very funny. Everyone here will feel regret but this game was released only in Japan so Japanese audience is strongly longing for a TAS of this game.
EDIT2: Null-input(s), B(1frame), direction key(1frame) then holding A is sometimes slightly faster than null-input(s) then direction key + holding A. (At the beginning of the screen)
If you can’t use weapon cancel, delaying screen transition enable you to use it.
EDIT: I progressed just before FMH. Up to there, I took over 30k rerecords.
(For those who read this first, my smv will sync with 3-player controllable and improvement patch. I make the run just for fun and I’m not going to submit.)
Why did I take too many rerecords?
The length of frames you hold A affect when you attack. And I tried both order of the weapon cancel(1P -> 2P and 2P -> 1P) when they couldn’t cancel at the same frame. I sometimes got Carlie to attack and sometimes didn’t. When Kevin could use lv1 tech, I tried both lv1 tech and normal attack then I adopted the faster way. And the frame is different according to where you exit the screen by pixels. So I had no choice but to take too many rerecords.
I was able to use stat cap abuses without a missing attack. The boss battle will be hard with Carlie who is not a good attacker. I may not be able to beat him before bubble breath.
If there is an improvement, please tell me.
@praetarius3
I thought Hawk should have bought a weapon at Astoria. Hawk is a good attacker. It will probably save times in the long run.If you reach Forthena at night, you only have to talk this girl at the pub in order to make the cannon appear. It might be faster but you have to use a Dreamsee Herb before you get a Chibikko Hammer when you progress the game at a normal or a little faster pace.