This TAS completes Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Cloudy Mountain was later added to the title to distinguish from the sequels) without collecting any tools or using the corner skip. For comparison, the RTA world record does this in 1:29.

This movie desyncs when played back on BizHawk 2.8 or later due to a bug that was introduced during that build causing enemy AI to not behave correctly. I have already opened a thread concerning this issue on the GitHub BizHawk forum.

I've already made a glitchless TAS which simply forgoes the corner skip and thought such a simple restriction probably wasn't interesting enough to submit to TASVideos. That's how I came up with this idea to also collect no tools (low%) to amp up the challenge! To the uninitiated viewer, this just looks like more of what's already been seen in the Any% and All Tools TASes; but people well familiarized with the game may be more intrigued by the unique routing this brings about. After all, many would never even think to play the game like this because it would most-often result in an inefficient and long-winded game.

The game was played on the hardest difficulty, which the manual calls "Hero" difficulty. It features the fastest enemies.

This game supports playing with two controllers simultaneously even though it's single player. We can use this fact to squeeze twice as many inputs into certain places, which was used extensively in the run. Two spaces can now be moved at once on the overworld map, and picking up items and shooting or counting arrows can both be done while running.

In essence, we want to find overworld maps which have the least number of black mountains separating the starting location from Cloudy Mountain; with rivers, forests, and gates being treated as obstacles in this calculation. Turns out, the best map layouts have ONLY FOUR black mountains of separation, which is far lower than I was expecting. There is about a 1 in 32 chance of getting one of these layouts, hence the longer wait on the title screen compared to my submissions for the other branches.

The branch title of "glitchless" is simply meant to signify that I was aiming to avoid using the corner skip. But technically, the run does not forgo all glitches, as I opt to enter the third mountain in an uninitialized state. By inputting a map movement on controllers 1 and 2 at the same time, we can enter a black mountain before the game is even able to process the mountain's true identity. Inside, a black mountain is identical to a purple mountain. This was done because the RNG entering the uninitialized black mountain was simply better than had I entered it in its true blue mountain state.

For each regular mountain, we were able to easily find ladder chambers adjacent to the start; and in Cloudy Mountain, a scenario with one crown half adjacent to the start, with the other crown half adjacent to the first. With all straight corridor connections, this amounts to perfect cave navigation. For more detailed general information on navigating these mountains, please see my submission notes for the Any% and All Tools TASes.

"The gameplay of AD&D: Cloudy Mountain involves exploring a series of randomly generated mazes, searching for tools or arrows with which to progress on the overworld map, or to defeat monsters. The end goal is to reach Cloudy Mountain and recover the Crown of Kings from the fearsome winged dragons!

In this TAS, Winslinator decided to avoid using any skips or tools whatsoever for the ultimate Cloudy Mountain challenge! This "challenge" failed spectacularly, as he was able to beat the game even faster than he did in his "all tools" TAS.

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: I'm setting this to delayed, because I want to be fair about how we handle this category. Since they are very rare, it would seem that it wasn't included in the rules for standard. I'm going to wait until something is solidified so that we don't have to cancel or face a lack of enthusiasm for "Alternative". I don't see a reason why this shouldn't be accepted, but our senior staff would like things to be handled by a hard set of guidelines. I'll be watching out for any development.

nymx: Ok. I've been given the "Go" for classifying this as low%. The rules will be updated soon. I've taken a bit of time to make sure of what I'm seeing. The glitch used in the any% was avoided, items were avoided for collection (same as any%). So this has all the characteristics of a low% run...which is obviously going to fit between the any% and 100% runs.

Accepting as a new branch of "low%".

nymx: Changing to "Low%" only, as requested.

fsvgm777: Processing.