This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1476: dave_dfwm's NES Dragon Warrior III in 2:14:07.67

Well, allow me to be the first to vote Yes, and the first to post. Of course I had most of the movie watched already from your WIPs. I'm glad to see this game finally get done, despite it's uncooperative RNG. The fact that you got it under 2:15:00 is impressive enough, especially when a lot of others thought sub 3-hour alone would be a feat. While I'm sure a more polished run could shave a bit more time off, I believe this should be published anyway because A) the unpredictability of the game may not necessarily make a polished run go as smoothly, B) A lot of work clearly went into it and the author did a great job manipulating what he could within the game engine, and C) it's the last Dragon Warrior game on the NES to not get a movie. Anyway, kudos Dave! Or should we start calling you Erdrick now?

Nice movie. With liberal use of turbo on the most boring scenes (ship, flying, levelups and shops) it wasn't even boring, even though that's what you would expect from a 2 hour+ movie. Anyway, the gameplay seemed to be in order and everything I noticed as strange were sufficiently covered in author's explanation. Another landmark in the land of luck manipulation. Yes-ing this.

Also did quite a bit of FFing here, though that's not a commentary on the quality of the movie (just the length). Seems to be extremely well planned and well executed. Good job dave! Yes vote here.

>Dave uses Magic Key, but nothing happens! >Simiac is confused!

...No kidding? Thou hast done well in TASing the Dragon Warrior III. Of votes, thou hast gained 1 yes.

(cannot vote since I'm a "lurker") Great job there! Awesome trick with the bomb crags, that works well even in non-tool assisted play. I'd love to see the Glitch Run, if anyone decides to make that, because I'm not going to make that video :). Too much crazy route planning.

Wow, you completed & submitted this run before I had a chance to look at any WIP other than the one that got to the magic key. This is a nice run and had several suprising moments: 1) Using the poison needle on the bomb crags was very nice :) At first, I forgot you had it and was like WTF, am I about to watch you kill for creatures with 400hp by hitting them for 1-3 damage?! Then I was like, "oh yeah :S" 2) In the navel of the earth: confusing the simiac and having him kill the metal slime is genious :D Later with the gold bashers it was very nice as well. 3) The route to greenlad was nice, I didn't think of that 4) You butchered the orochi! very nice :) 5) giving the merchant your unneeded items so they go to the vault was a very creative idea :) 6) You got the thor's sword from the granit titans, major cool points. And this saves you from getting the sword of kings, which is very nice. Possible Improvements: 1) At the beginning you should NOT have done the fast message speed (sorry I didn't notice this in your first wip). By putting it on slow, you can manualy scroll through messages which is quicker. 2) Perhaps you shouldn't get the get the until after you die? The pilgrams are useful for heal spells, but the wizard is just one more person to kill off and to later revive. 3) You should have the party members attack each other in pyramid in order to die quicker. You do this by selecting attack, and then selecting the arrow above the enemies's names, this will give you a list of your own party members to attack. 4) In isis - getting the 70 & 60 gold pieces were worth it? 5) The path getting the meterite armband was interesting, did you test to confirm it was faster than simply walking from the queens room? or getting it first then backtracking to that room? 6) In Kanave, you moved past the shopkeeper and then euipped & used items. It would have been faster to do this while your movement was already stopped at the shop. You move a little and then do it again, again this cost time. 7) If you have any control whatsoever on level ups, manipulating a stat to have NO gain is a nice timesaver too. Especially when you get 1 point of luck. Making that 0 will save about 1 second. 8) Again at isis, you should get to the shop and then equip your items 9) You should use memory watch for hp values. Metal slimes have a chance of having 3 hp instead of 4 which could ease your leveling up sections of this run. 10) In the kandar fight, watching his hp will also help in making decisions since his regeneration is random. You may be able to get lower regen numbers which could reduce the # of hits he needs to take 11) Perhaps you should get to the final key by returning to barahata, that way you can stop by jipang on the way. Then later, you can return right to it to fight the orochi. 12) Going to a place with metal babbles and settling for metal slimes seems silly. Even taking a long time to maniuplate the encounter or running from the slimes seems faster than going through the long slime fights. If the rng doesn't seem to let you get them, go get the red orb first and then come back with a new rng. Also, the one time you got a babble was during the day, perhaps they are more common then? At the very least, they seem no less common at night, so perhaps you don't need to use the lamp. 13) In the mirror of ra cave, I question whether opening a chest of 56 gold is worth it. The higher gold & seeds might be, but you should check to see if they actually paid off since you had to walk extra steps, open the chest, use the item, and use extra heal spells to manipulate away encounters. Perhaps getting one more dancing jewel in the silver orb cave would be faster than opening these chests. 14) was casting infernos on the boss troll even worth the time & mp it took? or was it to get the right outcome? I know it is a long shot, but I REALLY want to see a thor's sword manipulated there :) 15) I would think it is possible to manipulate the movements of the pirate ship to be moving toward you instead of away from you. 16) again, why get small amounts of gold in the ship? Perhaps a dancing jewel is a bigger payoff then taking extra steps and using heal spells. Plus you aren't down to 0 gold after you buy all the equipment for the baramos fight. You need to plan exactly how much you need and only get that. 17) I think getting metal slimes along the way is a mistake since you can get metal babbles in the cave of necrogod. 18) Once you got healmore, you could use it to manipulate the rng differently than heal, did you try both to see which one gave a better outcome? 19) Ice clouds give you a snowblast sword, which isn't as good as the thunder sword (or thor's sword :P) but sells for 48,000 gold. Not as cool as manipulating a huge casino payoff but should cure your gold problems much faster (though a pain to manipulate). It would also save you from casting snowblast in the orochi fight. 20) When you got the merchant, it would have been quicker to return to alaihan rather than walk out. If you couldn't afford the mp at the time, then simply return to eginbear and then go back to get the red orb later. 21) I think returning to portoga may be a bit faster to get to the new town. 22) You can get the yellow orb without return. Go outside, and come back in. Then, go outside and walk until nighttime. Go back to the town, and it will grow as normal. I thought I got it to work by simply running from an encounter too, but I don't know for sure. Also, using the lamp of darkness (not giving it to the merchant) may work the same way. 23) when you buy your weapons & armor, you should equip them then. Again it is better to do those things while already stopped. Or you should walk right up to baramos and do it then. 24) At the island where you get the phoenix, there are glacier bashers that leave the mysterious hat which reduces mp consumption. Perhaps manipulating one of those could save some inn usage later. 25) Why get the magic bikini if you aren't going to equip it and see that hot 8-bit pilgram booty? ;p It has the same effect as magic armor, so it wouldn't hurt you to have it equipped. So equip it sooner rather than at the zoma fight where we barely get to see it anyway. Though if you were ever to redo it, you probaby wouldn't be able to get it anyway. 26) In the sacred amulet tower, why did you use the acorns of life and only get 2hp? Is that even worth the time it takes to get & use it? Same for the 1 that gave you 4hp. You have time before you need use them, why not wait until a better opportunity when it will give you 5hp? 27) Intelligense & vitality seeds are actually useless and give you less mp & hp rather than more. Unless you are manipulating luck, don't take the time to use these. 28) Did you try using heal spells to mainpulate the ortega fight into being shorter? Even shortening it a round or two would save a lot of time. 29) The big payoff for having healers instead of fighters/soliders is that zoma fight :O Major damage from the onslaught of healall's :) I wonder though if you couldn't fight less babbles and defeat zoma at the lowest level that you get healall. You have plenty of hp/mp to spare in that fight. He should be possible a few levels lower. I think this run is more of a test run than a polished TAS. The problem is that you don't have enough control over the rng in this game to ensure that these improvements wouldn't get negated by some bad luck. As a result, I don't think this movie should be rejected based on this. Overall, I think this run is a good contribution to the site, and the final time is much lower than I expected. For those who don't know, there is a glitch in this game that will allow you to essentially manipulate your inventory to contain just about any item you want. This would result in drastic shortcuts, by my estimates it would save at least 30 minutes. A glitched run I think would be less repetive and a whole lot shorter. Some say that there should be both version epresented on the site but I disagree. I vote yes to this run on the basis that a future glitched run obsolete it (though currently, there is no one who is actively working on it). Until then, I think this run should be published on this site :)

Thanks for the comments, all. Adelikat, I believe I can answer some of your questions, comments.

3) You should have the party members attack each other in pyramid in order to die quicker. You do this by selecting attack, and then selecting the arrow above the enemies's names, this will give you a list of your own party members to attack.

I had no weapons on my characters at this point. Attacking wouldn't have done enough damage to kill them, resulting in needless attacks taking time.

4) In isis - getting the 70 & 60 gold pieces were worth it?

I realized at the end that I had gotten a couple of gold chests here and there that in the end, were not needed. I got the gold early in the game because I honestly thought it would get tight at the end when I made the final big purchases in Samanao. I also thought that I would have to manipulate more than one monster arena fight. Getting 3 or 4 chests of gold is faster than manipulating a monster arena fight. However, upon discovering the HUGE payoff fight of 50,000 gold, those chests were obsoleted and a few seconds was lost. There were some chests other places too.

6) In Kanave, you moved past the shopkeeper and then euipped & used items. It would have been faster to do this while your movement was already stopped at the shop. You move a little and then do it again, again this cost time.

Noted -- although there was one time where (for some reason) I lagged when coming out of a dialogue box and a huge wait was needed to re-enter it. Moving avoided this mystery lag. I don't remember what town it was in.

7) If you have any control whatsoever on level ups, manipulating a stat to have NO gain is a nice timesaver too. Especially when you get 1 point of luck. Making that 0 will save about 1 second.

Interesting idea that I had not thought of. Bare bones level ups. Level ups can be manipulated by the turn that ends the fight, but I have a feeling that ending the fight differently would take longer than the time gained by a 0 stat increase in an attribute.

14) was casting infernos on the boss troll even worth the time & mp it took? or was it to get the right outcome? I know it is a long shot, but I REALLY want to see a thor's sword manipulated there :)

Casting infernos (for 9 damage points I believe) manipulated Blazemore into working, which obviously causes much more damage. :-) As for the Thor's Sword, I really wanted to see it too. Some info site I viewed says that Boss Troll has 1/256 chance to drop it. Try as I may, it wasn't coming, and I wasn't able to test all combinations of fight endings due to health regen. As you may have read in the discussion forum, at one point, I had the Boss Troll asleep, sapped, surrounded, and all my characters bikilled just trying different attack combos to manip a drop!

19) Ice clouds give you a snowblast sword, which isn't as good as the thunder sword (or thor's sword :P) but sells for 48,000 gold. Not as cool as manipulating a huge casino payoff but should cure your gold problems much faster (though a pain to manipulate). It would also save you from casting snowblast in the orochi fight.

I think it's Thor's Sword that sells for that much. The snowblast sword only sells for the same amount as the Golden Claw, 11,250 gold.

24) At the island where you get the phoenix, there are glacier bashers that leave the mysterious hat which reduces mp consumption. Perhaps manipulating one of those could save some inn usage later.

This idea was actually tried unsuccessfully. I realized though, that the only inn I used after Ramia was in Tantegel. Using the inn (and visiting town in general... note the extra step and pause in town) manipulated favorable enemy movement. The hat would have saved MP, but due to the fact that everyone used MP (and took some damage), I'm sure that the inn (and no manip) is faster. As another aside, glacier bashers have a large amount of HP!

25) Why get the magic bikini if you aren't going to equip it and see that hot 8-bit pilgram booty? ;p It has the same effect as magic armor, so it wouldn't hurt you to have it equipped. So equip it sooner rather than at the zoma fight where we barely get to see it anyway. Though if you were ever to redo it, you probaby wouldn't be able to get it anyway.

Basically, it is equipped just before the Zoma fight because the Magic Armor protects against fire which is cast by Baramos Bomus.

26) In the sacred amulet tower, why did you use the acorns of life and only get 2hp? Is that even worth the time it takes to get & use it? Same for the 1 that gave you 4hp. You have time before you need use them, why not wait until a better opportunity when it will give you 5hp? 27) Intelligense & vitality seeds are actually useless and give you less mp & hp rather than more. Unless you are manipulating luck, don't take the time to use these.

Using all the acorns manipulated the fights (many babbles in the top floor). I wasn't concerned at this point with maxing HP out for the hero. As for point 27, I was always under the impression that using Int and Vitality seeds had their effect at the next level up. It "added" the int or vit you got from the seed onto the level stat to create a higher MP or HP. Also, an intelligence seed is used to manip the bomb crag fight.

I think this run is more of a test run than a polished TAS. The problem is that you don't have enough control over the rng in this game to ensure that these improvements wouldn't get negated by some bad luck.

I'd consider it somewhere between a test and a polished TAS. It is definitely improvable in a couple of places. I believe this is because I learned so much about the game while making the TAS. It reminds me a little bit of the original Final Fantasy I TAS and the FFMQ TAS. Both were originally accepted, but then greatly improved upon.

vitality seeds & intellegence seeds SHOULD help your next level up but down, possibly an error in programming. What they actually do is lower it because the game decides your mp & hp increase based on how high your vitality & intelligence. If your stats are too high, you get bad level ups. So these should never actually be used in a TAS or actual game play unfortunately. and doh, you are right about the snowblast sword. Though 11,000 gold is still a very nice amount of gold :) EDIT: and yeah, calling it a test run may be a bit exaggerated since I think it is still publication worthy.

Very interested in seeing this one. I'll vote after watching. About as interesting to watch as Dragon Warrior games get. Loaded with interesting shortcuts and abuse. Leveling up is boring, but necessary. Overall, it should be good enough to publish

vitality seeds & intellegence seeds SHOULD help your next level up but down, possibly an error in programming. What they actually do is lower it because the game decides your mp & hp increase based on how high your vitality & intelligence. If your stats are too high, you get bad level ups. So these should never actually be used in a TAS or actual game play unfortunately.

Interesting. I'm familiar with the GBC port of this game, and I never found this to be a problem. Did you try factoring in the following level-ups after the next one? In the GBC version, if Vit or Int don't take their proper effect at a level-up, they still will eventually. I watched this movie, and I'm voting yes because I have a soft spot for this game and thought it was neat to see it beaten so quickly, even though it's really boring to watch.

I finally get to watch something on the workbench that I 1) Haven't already watched to completion 2) Understand and 3) Have the ROM for! I voted yes. Medical Herbs do 128 damage to Zoma? That's pretty darn cool. You should've equipped the bikini sooner, just because, but that's okay. Adelikat's #12 still bugs me but I brought it up during the WIP and I got my answer then. I can sympathize with RNGs that act like little spoiled children. (You're in big trouble $7E1F6D! Go sit in the corner until you turn 25 or 26!)

this was way boring

this was way boring

I would highly doubt anyone would watch this completely through without hitting the fast forward key.

this was way boring

I would highly doubt anyone would watch this completely through without hitting the fast forward key.

it is excactly me hitting the fast forward button

Finally DQIII :D I love watching DQ games ^_^ Keep up the good work!

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [838] NES Dragon Warrior III by dave_dfwm in 2:14:07.67

So far an enjoyable watch, well for a NES Dragon Quest Video, but why was it named Dragon Warrior 2 on the script in the opening?

yeah he's right it does say dragon warrior 2 :-/ im a huge fan of this game even though ive never TAS'd anything in my life i do enjoy watching im kinda sad of the amount of long walking around and long battle sequences, so i did fast forward as well, but i realize this is unavoidable in the run the main issues i noticed were the text speed, and that annoying long fight with ortega (did text make that even longer or was that just me?) it did seem like you were a little reserved/careful with regard to gold pieces, leveling, equipment equipped, and health too, but its definitely hard to know what kind of resources you will need when getting to the end medical herb on zoma is too cool im not a big fan of a glitched run obsoleting the real one but i do know that adelikat is a champion for pointing out all those little details :) very good for a first run through of a game with an RNG so unforgiving at times, i definitely see the effort put into the manipulation though i was actually waiting for this run to be published :) EDIT: Kirk will try to work on capitalizations and punctuations, only because asked so nicely. I don't usually pay attention to it, heh.

Let me guess- adelikat chose the screen shot? ;)

Wow, amazing guess ;)