This TAS completes all 256 Levels of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin in just over 6 minutes. Compare this to my best playthrough which took just over 6 HOURS. Enough said.

This TAS completes the game on Hard difficulty, which means the player must descend at least 12 floors before they can face the Minotaur and grab the Tarmin Treasure. But we're not just going to do the bare minimum... no, no, no, we are descending all the way to the bottom of this dungeon! The lowest level in the dungeon you can reach is 256, after which you will wrap back around to level 1... but that isn't very interesting... I want to defeat a Minotaur and collect the Tarmin Treasure on level 256, which is arguably the hardest feat one can pull off in this game. This is because the Minotaurs get more and more powerful with each level you descend. By Level 256, the Minotaurs will start with a whopping 176-201 war level and an 88-100 spiritual level, which are some pretty daunting stats.

A 12x12 maze comprises each level. On Level 12 and beyond, there are two ladders per level—one will be on a random tile in the 4th north-south corridor and the other will be on the 8th north-south corridor. Now, imagine how time-consuming it would be to manually manipulate the ladders to be in convenient locations for 255 levels. And what if you wanted to test different RNG seeds? That's why this TAS would've been practically impossible without the help of a Lua script which automatically and (somewhat) optimally descends most of the levels. It works by automatically finding level layouts where the ladder is on the same tile or one tile ahead of the player. A savestate is made for each level that is descended, and if the script gets stuck in a situation where it takes too long (>100 frames) to find the next ladder, the script progressively calls back to previous levels to see if a faster solution can be found. The script can recall up to the past nine levels. When reaching the end of the corridor, the script has the player turn around. I also tried running a script which only accepted descending ladders on the same tile as the player, and another which allowed descending ladders two tiles ahead of the player, but both seemed to be slower overall. You can download the Lua script here.

The Lua script was not used on Levels 1-11, 103, 201, 204, 233, 244, 256. For the first 11 levels, it is because the inputs are directly copy and pasted from the currently published TAS, as I was very satisfied with the speed at which the Teleport Book and 43 war defense was obtained. In the other levels, we made quick and strategic detours to pick up the game's best weapon, extra defense, and stamina potions required to defeat a Level 256 Minotaur. A separate Lua script was used to signal when there was a good item one space ahead of the player, and that Lua script can be downloaded here.

You can also download the RAM Watch file I used for this TAS here

In all overworld maze layouts on Hard, you are forced to cross to the other side of at least one maze before floor 12, which was done immediately. This is the reason I wait so long on the title screen, as I needed to find a scenario where no door separated me and the ladder, and the ladder wasn't positioned too far into the floor. The scenario found in the run is the best possible.

Nothing important to do here; I just manually manipulate the exit ladder to be as close as possible, and without having to go through any doors (no help from the Lua script just yet).

We pick up the Teleport Book, which allows you to phase through walls and is a TAS essential, as no navigation around walls or through doors is necessary anymore. Teleport speed is also faster than walking speed, so this will be the main means of travel for the rest for the run. Having a large orange bag in our path of travel, and dropping a Teleport book after negligible luck manipulation was a huge help, as the Teleport book is a pretty difficult item to find this fast.

We pick up a Small Pink Ring for +10 war defense and +20 spiritual defense. Under normal circumstances, the +20 spiritual defense boost would be the most coveted part of the item. And while our spiritual defense level will play a minor role later, for this run it is our war defense we are really aiming to drive up, so we need this +10 war defense boost.

We pick up a Large Gold Shield for +26 war defense.

We pick up a Gold Gauntlet for +7 war defense.

It's time to let that Lua script do its thing! You may have noticed how insanely high the rerecord count of this submission is. Needless to say, I tested countless branching paths to make sure I found the fastest descent possible, deviating from the script to pick up only the best items in as little travel time as possible.

We pick up the Purple Book. This is the most powerful weapon in the game, granting 65 spiritual attack, multiple uses, and an absolute necessity to defeat the Minotaur in as few turns as possible.

We first pick up a Gold Hauberk for +12 war defense. Then, we manipulate a +10 Spiritual Stamina Potion drop from a large orange bag.

We first manipulate a +10 War Stamina Potion drop from a small blue bag. Then, we grab a Platinum Breastplate for +30 war defense.

We manipulate a +10 War Stamina Potion drop from a small blue bag.

We manipulate a +10 War Stamina Potion drop from an orange coin belt.

A Level 256 Minotaur requires at least 5 turns (and lots of luck) to defeat when fighting at such low stats. On Medium and Hard difficulty, the Minotaur targets whichever player stamina (war or spiritual) is lower. To accurately determine which one he will target, spiritual stats need to be multiplied by two first; and in the event of a tie, the Minotaur will target your war stamina. Since most of our efforts have been invested in driving up our war defense, we will make sure our war stamina stays lower than 2x our spiritual stamina when the Minotaur attacks, so our heavily defended war stamina is targeted. Right as the Minotaur throws his war weapon, we will use our +10 War Stamina Potions to both restore and drive up our war stamina to absorb each attack.

The Minotaur's stamina, defense, and attack level vary wildly from frame-to-frame. By carefully selecting the frames we attack on, we can manipulate the Minotaur to both take more damage and deliver less-powerful attacks than usual. After extensive luck manipulation, we were able to defeat the Minotaur in 5 turns—with a twist! I found that I can defeat the Minotaur slightly faster if I let him attack my spiritual stamina for the last two turns—which is honestly quite incredible I survived given how poor my spiritual stats were.

In the end, due to the sheer unfathomably sprawling nature of the RNG behind this run, improvements are certainly possible, even despite the TAS employing some fairly robust scripts. But these scripts sure as hell saved me a ton of time and allowed me to converge on a solution I was satisfied with.

Darkman425: Claiming for judging.

Darkman425: That's a crazy amount of RNG manipulation done to not only descend past all floors to the bottom, but also get lucky item drops in the way as well. I'm quite impressed with the work to build the script and analyze the results for a fast track to the hardest version of the Minotaur. Nice work!

I consider reaching each floor and beating the boss at the very last one before the loop point a type of full completion. For the navigation through all dungeon floors in the game I would consider this a Standard goal. The only thing I'm not quite sure on would be the goal name so I might want to discuss this with the publishers later if needed.

Accepting to Standard for full completion.

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