http://thatdenny.googlepages.com/Ultima-QuestoftheAvatarU.fm2
Here it is, my mostly TAS-ish final testrun through the game. I stopped after 74 minutes, since the run is just some boating, some fighting, a couple of shrines, and the Abyss, and it'll look just like it would in the final TAS. Don't feel like I want/need to do that extra work. Anyway, I discovered so much more during this testrun.
The path is pretty much set, with some overworld fidgeting. When I actually gate to Moonglow will depend on what the moons are doing after I exit the dungeons. If I have to wait a long time, I may put off getting the Book in the Lyceum until then.
I need to do a certain test--get the sextant from Vesper and use it to find the exact coordinates of the places I need the balloon to get to and carve out a quickest path that way. I'm probably going out of my way to go to Lyceum first but that's just what the wind was already doing when I hopped in. Plus, I should be in the balloon as little as possible because it stops the random battle counter from increasing.
Manipulating the random battle counter is an interesting process. Every type of tile has a different range that it can increase the counter by, and it seems to go slower when standing still. However, sometimes choosing to walk onto a Plains tile instead of a Lumpy tile will make it go up more, and USUALLY it doesn't have an effect. Checking out all of these combinations during every walking trip will need to happen, though, because maxing out the counter as OFTEN as possible is highly desired in this run, so as to have to hit up the Shrine of Humility's devils as little as possible.
Which will be a very hard part of the run--manipulating Tremor will be very difficult there, and aiming for perfection could easily require a half a minute for each battle! In the dungeons, it's far easier-standing in front of a doorway beats the otherwise-omnipresent 16-frame rule, and allows for much more malleable manipulation. During the dungeon part of this testrun, I got very lazy with the TAS-ness, but now that I've figured THAT juicy tidbit out, I feel that the stones and keys hunt will be much noticeably faster in the submitted run. Still seems like 1:10 will be roughly the target time.
Interestingly, the deathwarp I use in this run actually increases my Sacrifice virtue by 2! This in fact lowers the number of Healer visits I need to make by one--a great time saver. Unfortunately, the method I use to deathwarp, while quick and humorous, lowers Compassion by 2, meaning that I'll have to visit a Beggar one more time. To counter this, I just need to die in battle somewhere else--keeping the Sacrifice rating boost but not losing to Compassion (actually, I should test if dying to Poison increases Sacrifice--I doubt it, but it's worth looking into because that would be much faster)
Various notes:
*Should I use the name i? I think it's funny for about 10 minutes, but its better than the other non-frame-wasting alternatives: A, B, F I dunno. i has 12 golds sounds like funny to me. I forgot that I did it in the 2 1/2 hour run, though, so it's way old.
*I'll get the three chests in Moonglow in the final version, and also use the moongate to get to Minoc. Getting over to those Wizards as soon as possible to maximize EXP will be the fastest way, but it'll cut down on the number of chests I pick up.
*I use Yew to power-raise Compassion and Sacrifice--my first big thought was to use Skara Brae, since it also has an herb store, but Yew was so much faster and easier and, as this run shows, with manipulation herbs aren't as much of a concern.
*Should've done a Beggar in Minoc while I was there.
*While the trick to exit a Room Battle by just walking out of it is a nifty one I NEVER knew about before, manipulating Tremor will blow all of those wasted minutes out of the water.
*I'll use Heal in the dungeons intermittently--if there are long walking spells without battles, then the MP raising per step will give the viewer something to look at.
*Augh, that one battle in Despise with the four Reavers and three Dinosaurs...MAN. Those are high level creatures, so Tremor hits less frequently for them, so manipulating Tremor to destroy them will be horrrible.
Also! Paste this into a txt file and open it in the Memory Watch feature--it's got the more important variables viewable there
680C Honesty
680D Compassion
680E Valor
680F Justice
6810 Sacrifice
6811 Honor
6812 Spirituality
6813 Humility
!6827 Money
!68b9 EXP
D9 Encount|Count
0036 Random
681F Ash
6820 Ginseng
6821 Garlic
6822 Silkweb
6823 Moss
6824 Pearl
6826 Manroot
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68e3 Beggar|counter
68ec Blood|counter
68e1 Meditate|counter
