Erim is the fast one. I spent from November until the start of Erim's run just getting to the MTRF. Since then I've just finished the Cranes while Erim is... moving a hellova lot faster than I am
and saving time. But then again, I spent alot of time learning how the game works, not using turbo-A, and comparing myself to Jyzero. Since I don't do any of those things anymore my real world speed will increase. I talk to Erim every day on AIM and we exchange everything but we agreed not to post secrets about each other's runs. (Including secrets that apply to both of our runs.)
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1068/run.smv is my latest WIP. I stopped at the very frame where you first get control of the airship. Number 128 played out in an unexpected way. The first thing I tried was 2 Blitzes or Chain Saws and a Tiger Break. Then I realized that it would be much faster to manipulate one extremely high damage attack and use just one. Unfortunately, one Aurabolt does a calculated and verified [578..658]. Sabin's Tiger Break basically does 2615 if I do the 'right' one. Combined that deals a total of 3273 damage, which is 3 HP short! So then I decide to skip the rare steal and have Locke punch the boss since I can't really use the rare steal anyway.
Unfortunately, this boss has a counter that might as well be called !Drain. I was already manipulating away the chances of him using this. Unfortunately the remaining possibilities seemed to always result in either a !Drain on Locke, a Slice on Sabin, or a Rapier on Edgar. (Dead, dead, dead, in that order.) Since !Drain leaves the boss with more HP than Locke started his turn with, that is also bad. ;) I also tried having Sabin summon Bahamut at the start of the battle. I was happy to see that it did 800+ damage every time! However, doing so also kills off the two wingmen. Not only do I need those two wingmen to knock Sabin down to low HP, but they also take longer to fade away and die than the entire battle in this WIP! So Bahamut was ruled out.
I found my current (odd) solution while essentially brute forcing frames on Sabin's first Aurabolt. I don't know what I was looking for, but I found a rare sequence of random numbers that allowed me to take a beating from Number 128 at the start of the battle, live (barely), and counter attack just in time for a DA before he gets his turn again. Surprisingly I do not use Tiger Break even though Sabin is set up for it. It turned out to be faster for Sabin to assist Locke. The reason is because Locke is ready to take an action right as $7E3A3E unlocks DA moves. If I were level 8 here I'd be screwed. Well, no, but I'd take 1500 frames just killing it with 2 DAs, which is still bad.
The above lengthy example is what I mean by mapping out the RNG. For example, I have written down on a piece of paper here that "569 -> *, 2, 5" which means that pressing A to confirm my attack on frame xxx569 results in Edgar and Locke getting beaten down to 5 and 2 HP. Also, "471470 = 653", which was Aurabolt damage on a previous test run. Let's pretend that Number 128 does only have 3273 HP and that Aurabolt + Tiger Break manipulated to their full potential will kill him. I'll test 30-40 values for $BE for Aurabolt, write down all the 658's, and reload to the beginning of the battle. Now, I do whatever
new and different manipulation I have to do to get Sabin's butt kicked. Now, I Aurabolt on one of my chosen frames, do 658 damage, do Tiger Break when $BE = A5, do 2615 damage, and not have to worry about manipulating two things at once. :) Number 128 messes this up quite a bit because of his darn three parts. They'd frequently interrupt me and cause me to 'miss' the frame I was aiming for.
Desperation moves are very easy. I made a slight typo on the first page. Replace 'D9' with 'D1' and blame some temporarily bad penmanship. :) In addition to noting which frames gave Sabin a DA, I also noted the damage that they would do against any foe. So I also have a table of 8C->2468, A5->2615, E3->2395, and so on for all 16 values. Now if I ever need at least 2500 damage from Sabin to end a battle I'll know without doing a single re-record or test which DA is the fastest that will also get the job done! This is how I did Dadaluma. I figured out that a punch, a Chain Saw, and a Tiger Break would do the job. Then I just went back and picked the fastest frames for the last two attacks that had the result I wanted.
