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.
