Game objectives

• Emulator: BizHawk 2.11
• Game version: Europe - French EU
• Without glitches
• Easy Mode
• RNG manipulation
• RTA time: 4:19:46
• TAS time: 4:26:41

RNG manipulation

• In this game we manipulate the RNG to get a better layout of the enemies and their attacks, drops and lucky hits, In this game, there are several methods we can use as manipulation:
• Performing different attacks
• How many damage points do we deal, e.g. when using Drill Shell or by shooting fireballs using the fire flower
• Being iddle in areas with NPCs/enemies (Even during events)
• Perform Mario and Luigi animations before enemy attacks when they are not targeted. (only works in specific frames)
• Jumping as Paper Mario in the overworld
• Walk and stop constantly (with Paper Mario)
• Control after cannon ball launch (changes the RNG value every frame when we control it)

Attack mechanics

• This game uses gear mechanics during certain attacks. These attacks depend on which boots or hammers are used for Mario, Luigi, and Paper Mario for specific attacks. Gear such as gloves, badges, and trousers are general gear items. Jump and hammer attacks use these specific attacks, but bros/trio attacks are different and depend on what gear is used for them and for a specific character. The list is provided below.

Mario

• Red Shell: This attack is used by shoes and how much POW it has, and whether Mario or Luigi kicks the Red shell.
• Rocket Blast: This attack is used by shoes and how much POW it has, and which Mario & Luigi will jump on the enemy.
• Bomb Debry: This attack is used by Hammer and depends on how much POW it has, and only for Mario, Luigi is not included.
• Cannon Ball: This attack is not used either by the boots or the hammer, and POW is counted for both Mario and Luigi even if Luigi is controlling it.
• Toad Trial: This attack is not used either by the boots or the hammer, and POW is counted for both Mario and Luigi.

Luigi

• Fire Flower: This attack is not used either by the boots or the hammer, and POW is counted for both Mario and Luigi.
• Drill Shell: This attack is not used either by the boots or the hammer, and POW is counted for both Mario and Luigi when targeting, for mashing it is only counted for Luigi.
• Dropchopper: This attack is used by shoes and how much POW it has, and POW is counted for both Mario and Luigi.

Paper Mario

• Trio Racquet: This attack is not used by either boots or hammer, and POW is counted for everyone depending on who hits the ball, it is also random.
• Trio Kite: This attack is used by Paper Mario's Hammer, and POW is only counted for Paper Mario.

Cards mechanics

• In this game from Paper Goomba, you can obtain cards, different abilities have different effects, and sometimes there are better variants available later on that you can purchase, such as POW, which gives you +25% more coins or EXP. In this game, the card shuffling mechanic during battles is different, changing the layout causes the cards to be reshuffled, but that’s not all, The RNG for shuffling cards depends on the RNG as soon as you enter the menu. This means that if I change one card before a battle, the game already saves the layout I’ll get in the battle. Taking a different card will give the same layout, except that I won’t get the card I discarded, which is why I usually enter the menu at certain points; an example is Roy and Wendy, where I had to stop to get a good card layout. I do this throughout the entire TAS.
• The cards I use most often are POW, Damage Raiser, EXP cards, dev down, the card that gives Star Points in exchange for half a HP, and others, EXP and coin cards can be stacked together to give even more coins and EXP depending on how these specific cards are used, which I also use in TAS. Up to level 12, I keep Paper Mario alive and then let him die, because from level 12 onwards I can give him 10 more star points on the bottom screen, which will be useful later on.

Version

• This TAS uses the French EU version because it has faster text scrolling compared to other versions. It should be mentioned that this is only the case for the European version, USA version for French is different, and the text speed is not the same, resulting in lost time.

Easy Mode

• This game also features Easy Mode, which increases the strength of our companions during battles.
• Easy Mode also makes bros/Trio attacks easier. If we have Easy Mode enabled and it is selected when choosing an attack, we must, every time, disable it by pressing R to save time. The only time I use it is for drill shell because it also causes us to deal even more damage than without Easy Mode.

Gear used List

• I won't discuss some of them because they have no practical use and are only used to increase damage
• Since I'm playing the French version, gear will be listed in both English and French, some items in the EU version have different names, so (EU) is added to make it clear

Paper Goombas

• I just attack the goombas, get on crumple one Paper Goomba to avoid his attack.
• With a double jump, Great saves 14 frames over Excellent, but unfortunately Excellent is required to get a crumple on Paper enemies.

Goombas

• Just jump, we get Great to save frames

Paper Goomba (stack boss)

• This is another tutorial, this time for Paper Mario.
• During the escape attempt, I take a hit on purpose to save time. Escaping is pointless because the game will cause Mario & Luigi to fall anyway.
• Performing a Excellent jump is faster than an unsuccessful sixth jump by 8 frames.

Paper Goombas & Goombas (Toad Mission)

• Jumps on Goombas at the right moment to get a 2 Goombas and 2 Paper Goombas and deal 2 damage.
• The fastest way to defeat them is with the hammer for Paper Mario because it deals damage to everyone, saving time without getting Excellent.
• Defeat all enemies with the red shell 3D. The red shell kick is faster than getting a hit, even if there are no enemies left. The red shell is also faster only when 1-2 kicks are required.

Goombas (Trio attack tutorial)

• I manipulate RNG during cutscenes to get a better seed
• From the very beginning, the game forces us to use the Trio attack, I simply use it and defeat the goombas faster.

Petey Piranha

• Petey Piranha has over 143 health, I use fire flower because Petey Piranha is weak to fire and uses attacks to deal more damage

Papercraft Goomba

• This is the first battle of its kind. Our goal is to clear the area of all enemies on the board in order to reach the boss and defeat him. We can also be defeated three times to skip this, but it's slower, and we need a hammer, which will be needed in later battles.

Spnies

• I use fire flower to manipulate their layout and deal enough damage to defeat them faster.

Fly Guys

• The fastest way to defeat them is to attack the one with the bomb and less HP. Shy Guy on top will always be the one attacking, the other one not, there are a few exceptions, but they do not change much.
• I enter the second fight with a dash (yes, you can do that too) because Shy Guy is too high to enter with a jump.
• For the third fight, since we have to shoot and cannot enter the fight with a jump or hammer, instead of waiting for Paper Mario's jump, I start immediately and then finish it as Mario.
• In the last two fights, I manipulate the RNG so that one bob-omb from the counterattack hits the Shy Guy at the top.

Big Pokey & Paper Tower Pokey

• I use Drill Shell because it deals more damage, from Paper Tower Pokey I take damage on purpose to save time.

Papercraft Kamek

• I'm skipping this fight because it's slower, the fastest way to lose is to use dash on Pokey.

Hammer Bros. & Paper Hammer Bros

• In these battles, we must recover the attack blocks that have been stolen, the order is always the same.
• I manipulate RNG to get better battle setups.

Hammer Bros (Card tutorial)

• This is a tutorial battle, just like in previous battles, I’m hoping for good RNG, the fastest attacks is throwing hammers by the two Hammer Bros
• I'm doing a double run to get the Steady Boots for the next battles

Roy & Wendy

• Before the fight, I open the card menu at just the right moment so that I get a good card layout in the fight, I’ll keep doing this for the entire TAS
• I use Rocket Blast and Drill Shell to deal more damage, I leave Paper Mario out of the trio attacks in this battle and in future battles up to a certain point because trio attacks are slower, I attack Wendy first because she has less health than Roy, and Roy’s attack after defeating Wendy deals almost half the damage with a counterattack
• I'll wait in one attack to get a lucky hit

Cheep Cheep

• I’m entering the fight with them once to get the POW Gloves for the next sections

Koopa Troopas

• I use the fire flower because it’s faster, I also avoid taking drops by firing fireballs

Paper Petey Piranha

• It’s the same as with Roy & Wendy, I use Rocket Blast and Drill Shell, and I leave Paper Mario out of the trio attack
• Drill shell on excellent because I need star points for the next sections
• I use jumps on Petey Piranha instead of attacking his original copy, as he doesn’t restore the copies, which makes it easier for me to use Drill Shell and deal more damage
• I’m taking damage from Paper Petey Piranha during the airplane section on purpose because it saves time
• I use EXP cards at the end to level up

Piranha Plants

• I'm fighting to get the Flame Hammer for Mario, but unfortunately, because of the RNG and drop rate, I have to lose time on counterattacks

Wiggler & Paper Kamek

• I let Wiggler kill Paper Mario to save time on turns and to skip the boomerang tutorial
• In this fight, I switch to the Fire Flower because it deals more damage, especially against Paper Kamek, for Mario, I use Bomb Debry and then switch to Rocket Blast for the damage
• In the final turn, I’m bringing Paper Mario back to life because he needs EXP for an upgrade that will be important later on.

Papercraft Bowser Jr.

• Did I mention anything about skipping the Papercraft battles? Well, not this time. The fastest way would be to skip this battle by losing three times, but instead I’m going through it normally because this battle drops the Perfect POW Gloves, which I’ll need in the later sections of the TAS. There are also the Bundling Boots for Paper Mario, but they’re not useful as I’m leaving him out of the battle anyway.
• This battle is one of my favourites out of all the Papercraft battles, and you can see why, I’ll skip the part where I clear the board of all the enemies
• The first part of the battle is catching up Bowser Jr. and attacking him, after the jump, I hit him again fast before he runs away
• The second phase is starting to get tough. Now we have to catch up Bowser Jr. while dodging the shells. Unfortunately, we can’t hit him immediately after the jump because Bowser Jr. is now very fast and I won’t be able to attack him fast enough.
• The third phase now involves attacking him with bombs and using dash, when hitting him for the second time I can use dash on him at the right moment before he throws the bombs

Chargin' Chuck Corps

• This fight is one of the hardest to optimise, my goal is to defeat all the Chargin' Chuck Corps in the fight as fast as possible. In the video, this fight looks easy, but it isn’t. If two or more Chargin' Chuck Corps are defeated, more will appear, the goal is to defeat them all before the next wave arrives.
• Calling the next ones is only counted if Mario and Luigi have defeated more of them during the turn, or if there are less left, they will be called after the turn, counterattack is not counted
• I use the Cannon Ball and the Dropchopper to clear them from the battle field more faster.

Cheep Cheep

• It's another fight for Hammer.

Fire Bros

• It’s just a minigame, we need to find the right Fire Bro who has the stolen medallion to finish the minigame, unfortunately, what needs to be clarified here is that this minigame must be completed by winning two fights, regardless of which fight we enter first, we will never get the medallion. We must defeat the first one not only to get a hint, but so that the Fire Bro mentions the coins won for finding the right Fire Bro, only then will the game allow us to get the medallion back.
• In the first fight, I use the Rocket Blaster on Fire Bro and defeat the second one with a Drill Shell, as I can’t manage to take out both at once with a Cannon Ball.
• In the second fight, I can already beat everyone with Cannon Ball because the Paper Fire Bros have less HP than the 3D ones, I just use it and finish the minigame.

Ludwig & Larry

• I don’t shuffle the cards before this fight. In this fight, I use POW and Dev Down to deal more damage right from the start. Because I’m not shuffling the cards, I use the 50% and 25% EXP cards to gain a bit more EXP after this fight
• I use both Cannon Ball and Drill Shell to defeat Larry faster and defeat Ludwig with a counterattack
• I tried to manipulate getting the Shiny Battle Card I wanted, but I didn’t manage to do so, instead, I got a 50% Star Points Boost, and on top of that, I managed to get Lucky on the counterattack

Papercraft King Boo

• I'm losing this fight because it's faster
• The fastest way is simply to step into the lava several times, the second boost from the beginning loses 10 frames

Fly Guys

• This is another minigame, we have to rescue Toadette, and we need to catch up Fly Guy to start the fight.
• I use Cannon Ball to take out both of them at once, then Drill Shell to manipulate the card layout and defeat Fly Guy

Bowser Jr. & Paper Bowser Jr.

• That fight caused more problems, but we’ll get to that
• My goal is to defeat both Bowser Jr. at once to gain more EXP. In this fight, I keep Paper Mario alive, not only because the Trio attack allows me to deal damage to both of them, but also because Bowser Jr. has a ball attack that requires keeping everyone alive, it needs to be bounced so that it hits Bowser Jr. If at least one of us dies, it’s an instant game over
• In this fight, I have to use attacks that hit Bowser Jr.'s head, so the Fire Flower isn't an option here, instead, I use the Drill Shell. For Mario, I use Cannon Ball because, at the right angle, it can attack both at once, as well as the Trio Whirligig to deal damage

Paper Bob-ombs

• I enter two fights where I can get Shiny, I manipulate the RNG to get the two shiny cards I want, one Raiser damage with fewer stars to replace, and the other for another EXP Twice.

King Boo

• Since we don’t have Paper Mario on our team, we can’t immediately gain POW from Paper Mario’s defeat, however, we can use King Boo to defeat him. If Paper Boo comes with Paper Mario, attacking King Boo will cause Paper Mario to take damage, we use this to gain POW and deal damage at the same time
• I'm not defeating King Boo's with counterattack on purpose because of the EXP

King Bob-omb

• This fight is easy, I use a Raiser Damage 50% card to deal more damage not only with the Drill Shell but also with the Bob-ombs, the damage from a Bob-ombs is always 57, but by using the Raiser, we can deal over 120 damage per Bob-omb
• Hammer is faster to use as Mario than the Cannon Ball
• I'm getting hit by the last counterattack because it's faster and more EXP and Coins

Papercraft Bowser

• This is the last fight, in this fight... Wait, we're skipping this one too
• I manipulate my movements so that Whomp doesn't block me from entering the electricity

Goombas & Paper Bob-ombs

• This is the last minigame, we have to destroy the cannon in 5 minutes before it fires at Peach's Castle, the first and second are Goombas, and the third is a Paper Bob-omb
• I use Bomb Debry because it's faster and takes out all the enemies

Horned Ant Troopers

• The strategy changes a bit here, instead of Bomb Debry, I use Cannon Ball to take it all down.

Shy Guy & Chain Chomp & Paper Chain Chomp

• I attack Shy Buy with a jump and finish it off with Drill Shell
• Admittedly, I could target Chain Chomp since he has POW Gloves DX, which would increase the damage a little, but it's slower because he has more HP and DEF than Shy Guy

Kamek & Paper Kamek

• This fight isn't one of the harder ones in TAS either, my goal is to deal damage to both of them to defeat them faster. My initial plan was to take them both down at once to get more coins and EXP, but I could still get them even if one of them died later.
• This fight is one of the worst. Kamek can disable certain attacks if we’ve used them, it could cause problems later on. The best way to handle this is to use Jump attacks instead of Bros attacks, so we use Jump on the first turn to get it disabled, and then we can use Bros attacks.
• I use Toad Trail and Drill Shell to beat them faster

Enemy RUsh

• I won't go over every fight in a separate section, I'll just discuss it step by step
• Goombas & Koopa Troopas: I use shell to defeat them faster
• Spinies & Ninjis: It's the same thing, the shell would defeat them faster
• Hammer Bros & Spikes: Instead of a shell, it defeats them with a fire flower
• Shy Guys: Same as before
• Broozers: I use Toad Trail to get through them faster

Roy & Wendy

• This fight is the same as the last one, only harder, it’s also the last fight where I’ll use Twice EXP
• My goal is to defeat Roy and Wendy at the same time to earn more EXP. Since I can't use Toad Trail because they're too far apart, I have to use Cannon Ball instead.
• I also use Drill Shell on Roy and finish them both off with Cannon Ball

Ludwig & Larry

• This one is easier. I use Toad Trial to deal damage to both of them, then finish off Ludwig with Drill Shell so that Larry uses the ball.

Morton & Iggy & Lemmy

• This fight is also pretty fast, it's just a compilation of bosses' attacks like Airplane, Boomerang (we’re seeing this for the first time in a while, we usually learn this in the fight against Wiggler), and Ball Bounce. These attacks kill us instantly, except for Iggy during his punch, so causing Paper Mario to die is not possible. For Mario, we can get POW only when Iggy attacks him, which I was able to do. then we gain the advantage to attack them before they regain control.
• I use Cannon Ball on Morton because he has more HP than Iggy and Lemmy in this case, and finish Morton with a jump.

Bowser & Paper Bowser

• I boost my damage right from the start to move on to the next phase faster, I use Cannon Ball and target both of them, and then a Drill Shell on Bowser

Shiny RoboBowser

• At the start, I use raiser damage by 50%. At first, I wanted to finish him off with a counterattack from balls, but it turned out I was really strong against Bowser, so I took advantage of that.
• I'm waiting before using Cannon Ball to get Lucky, I couldn't get it the first time.
• I use Drill Shell to deal massive damage, then counter, and finish Bowser with Cannon Ball

Save time

• During the fight against Petey Piranha, we can skip the tutorial by simply performing a second counterattack by jumping on his head, this way, I can skip the tutorial and save a minute.
• At 47:40, I can perform a jump boost while moving across quicksand, this saves a few frames
• In catching Bowser Jr., losing the minigame 5 times is faster
• At 3:29:10, it's faster to use the Trio Glider instead of the Trio Drill, this saves over 700 frames
• Trio Glider also saves time in Neo Bowser Castle than Trio Drill

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