Our hero, G, has spent most of life without a father figure. When asked to go on an epic journey, the king only gives him 50 pieces of gold. These issues anger G, causing him to allow Baramos wreak havoc on the overworld while G goes straight to Alefgard, which has better outside walking music anyway.

Information

Usual Stuff..
  • Author: Dave Brown, (dave_dfwm)
  • ROM: Dragon Warrior III (U).nes
  • Heavily abuses programming errors
  • Uses death

About this movie

I submit this movie and ask that it not obsolete the current “non-glitched” run of the game. The glitch allows a HUGE part of the game to be skipped (the boat, the orbs, and Baramos). Playing with the glitch is almost like TASing an entirely new game. I hope you all enjoy this TAS.
A large part of my time spent making this movie involved route planning. Another time-consuming venture was doing a cost-benefit analysis on what items to glitch, how useful the items are, and how much time it takes to glitch them.

Brief Summary (spoilers in this section)

The beginning of the movie is similar to my full run. I start the game, pick up two pilgrims (reason for this is mentioned later) and a wizard, and go on my way. I still complete the Tower of Najima and Cave of Enticement dungeons, but I pick up some extra treasure along the way, and buy a Thorn Whip in Reeve. I pick up the Poison Needle at night in Kanave.
This is where the movie becomes drastically different than the full run. Instead of walking to the Magic Key, I get the Dream Ruby (note also that I have already picked up my party). I die, and buy some Bronze Shields in Romaly, and walk to Assaram, using the Fairy Water along the way. I then buy a Spider Web for 4 times the retail price in Assaram, and walk around until night. I want to get my fortune told (i.e., get a backrub).
This is the beginning of the Dream Ruby glitch, brought to our attention by Dwedit, who provided some invaluable information in the making of this TAS. You may want to fast forward through this part of the movie where I am performing a memory corruption glitch. I will fully explain the glitch at the end of this submission text.
I return to Kanave and sell my Black Raven for 58,500 gold pieces. My poverty problem is now solved. I buy some herbs and another wing. Notice at this point, 3 of my characters have a maximum HP of zero. I need to fight some enemies to give me some HP-gaining level ups, but I cannot get touched even once, or I will die. What enemy works for this? Bomb Crags will do nicely. Notice how I take down 4 bomb crags in 3 rounds… How does this happen? My hero has a Poison Needle equipped! After a satisfactory level gain, one of my pilgrims uses his Wing of Wyvern and goes to….Rimuldar?!?!? Immediately, I get a VERY lucky Metal Babble fight before even using the inn. One babble runs, but the other attacks and misses! This is a great opportunity for a Poison Needle strike. I walk into town, and using my leftover Black Raven gold, buy some more armor and use the inn.
On the way to Zoma’s Castle, one of my pilgrims uses a spare Rainbow Drop that he just happened to have from a previous journey. The Granite Titans get “defeated” quickly. How did a level 18 pilgrim learn that spell anyway? My wizard learns the StepGuard spell in the 2nd Granite Titan fight.
Unfortunately, the Ortega fight is unbearably long and there wasn’t much I could do about it. Seeing his father die, G feels vindicated about his absence for the last 16 years. I pick up the Sage’s Stone, Leaf of World Tree, and Wizard’s Ring. The Wizard’s Ring is extremely valuable at this point.
The last floor of Zoma’s Castle involves some insane luck manipulation. The King Hydra fight takes 3 rounds of battle and kills the wizard, and the Leaf of the World Tree comes in handy after the fight. However, Baramos Bomus gets annihilated in 1 round. Zoma gets taken down by Healall and herbs. Onto Tantegel (for the first time) so I can meet the king and become Erdrick. Roll the credits.

About the glitch

The glitch basically allows you to play as if you have a game genie. It allows (limited) access to memory addresses, and lets you screw them up. You can glitch items, spells, return locations, infinite gold (not shown), and infinite experience points (not shown), among other things. In a test run, I got two characters the infinite experience points, which gets them to level 99 after one fight, even if the enemy runs away. However, I didn’t feel like the audience wanted to watch 99 level ups.
To start, kill of your hero, and use the dream ruby to make the rest of your party members numb. Then, use the cut-scene in Assaram to get your fortune told. The game performs some “bad math”, which messes with memory addresses.
Items are the easiest to glitch. To glitch an item, put the item you want to glitch at the top spot in the second person’s inventory. Each step taken in the fortune telling room will turn the item into the item 2 spaces below it in the RAM map. http://www.datacrystal.org/wiki/Dragon_Warrior_III:RAM_map
However, I noticed something here that was initially overlooked by everyone else in the discussion forums. Glitching items can let you equip weapons and armor that normally can’t be equipped by certain characters. This is a huge advantage to help me win the game a low level. However, since the item glitched must be at the top of the inventory slot, and transferring items (even to yourself) unequips them, only 1 ‘special’ item per character can be equipped. Due the nature of the equip screen, I decided that a shield would work best, since this means that a legit armor can still be equipped. However, I use this to give my hero a Poison Needle.
The return locations are difficult to glitch, but I perform this in the first step of the room. Put simply, it involves using the fairy water, and waiting for a certain musical note in the town song to play. Put technically, address AD (fairy water) needs to be 1E (number of steps left), and address D8 (music related) needs to be 61. A big thanks to Dwedit for figuring all that out. Without return locations, many more items would have needed to be glitched, such as orbs and the black pepper. Note that I never get a boat in this game.

Items that I glitch

This table shows what is going on in the glitch room, in no particular order.
Starting ItemEnding ItemNumber of Steps
Cypress StickBlack Raven1
Cypress StickRainbow Drop5
Spider WebSphere of Light1
Dream RubyMagic Key1
Wayfarer’s ClothesWater Flying Cloth1
Wayfarer’s ClothesArmor of Radiance4
ClothesSword of Kings2
Equipped Thorn WhipEquipped Poison Needle1
Bronze ShieldShield of Heroes1
Equipped Bronze ShieldEquipped Shield of Heroes1
Equipped Bronze ShieldEquipped Shield of Heroes1
Equipped Leather HelmetEquipped Shield of Heroes4
Non-glitched useful items include two magic armors and an iron mask purchased in Rimuldar.

Questions and Answers

Here are some things you may wonder about.
  • Q: What’s with the extra treasures picked up in the first 3 dungeons?
  • A: Gold use was a big part of route planning for this run. I needed to have the proper items so I could glitch everything all at once. I had to buy 3 bronze shields and a spider web. Note that my gold is zero when I enter the Cave of Enticement. This was a pain because I had to be very careful about using heal spells, since I had to make it through the cave and get at least to the healing spring in the dream ruby cave without using an inn.
  • Q: Why visit Kanave and do the Bomb Crags when you get babbles in Rimuldar?
  • A: I had zero HP on most of my characters, so they couldn’t get hit by the fireball spell. I tried doing this, but was unable to manipulate a death-free fight. Ironically enough, I get the fight I was looking for after the bomb crag fight. The babble doesn’t touch me. Furthermore, Rimuldar does NOT have an item shop, and I needed a place to sell the Black Raven and buy herbs. I use some leftover gold to buy armor in Rimuldar.
  • Q: What happened to your names?
  • A: Another memory address the glitch hits is the character names. I wasn’t too concerned about the fact that some names changed. Either way, V Ron is much better than Viron anyway.

Final Notes

I encourage others to try this run. I glitch many items, which takes almost 7 minutes real time. A ‘bare bones’ glitch run would involve getting only the magic key, rainbow drop, return locations, and the sphere of light, but would involve a lot more leveling up due to less equipment. You could think of this run as doubling as a “minimum level” goal if there ever were such a competition. As for this run, I would like to thank Dwedit, who offered much help and figured out how to glitch Alefgard return locations.

Oddities and Random Information

Other stuff:
  • I fight only 4 fights strictly for the purpose of leveling up. In three of these fights, all of my characters except for the hero have 0 HP.
  • All of my characters have a Shield of Heroes equipped (50 defense).
  • Using the Black Raven produces a warm light around the area, “but nothing happens”!
  • Using the Stick Slime with either do nothing, reset the game, or freeze the game.
  • I enter Zoma’s Castle on level 18 and beat Zoma on level 20. During the Zoma fight, my characters have an average HP max of 103.
  • During testing, I had a medical herb do only 4 damage on Zoma, but in the final video, I have another 240+ herb. I don’t know what the max damage possible is.

NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. Here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1689: dave_dfwm's NES Dragon Warrior 3 "item glitch" in 57:28.27
adelikat
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Outstanding. The return list glitching suprised me a lot Oo The luck manipulation was stellar as usual. Amazing how such an unforgiving RNG can be manipulated so well. I know it was unintentional, but major style points for glitching Viron's name to V ron. Much cooler XD I was a proponent of a glitched run obsoleting the published movie. But that is when I thought it would be just glitching a few orbs into the inventory. This skips most of the game. As such, it deserves its own category. Encoding in process.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Morrison
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G is dead.
twitch.tv/Retrogaming2084
Joined: 2/1/2007
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Yikes. This tells me that RPG TAS's are really not for me. Such a game-breaking run, and even the glitch itself bored me. Weird when RPGs were my favourite genre when I played enough video-games to be able to pick one out.
juef
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While I liked watching the non-glitched version a bit more, I can't vote anything else than 'Yes' on this one! The glitch itself is interesting, but what amazed me even more is the way it has been abused. I mean, one had to think for a while to realise what had to be gotten from the glitch, and how to do it. The usual medical herb killing Zoma is still one of my favorite 'ROFL' TAS moments. Defeating Baramos Bomus & Gonus without ever thinking of fighting the 'original' is also hilarious in my opinion.
Post subject: one more thing...
Player (245)
Joined: 7/30/2006
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I forgot to mention in the submission text that you can also glitch wizard spells, but it is much harder to do than glitching pilgrim spells. You can glitch the high end wizard spells, but only if you learn "Outside" first. [Thanks also goes to Dwedit for this information]. Another bummer, you cannot get Blazemost or Open. Chance, Transform, Bedragon, and Firevolt may have been useful though. I had tried this in another test run, but I couldn't avoid getting 9999999 experience points. I thought about using a soldier to give the experience points to (and then giving him back to Luisa so he didn't level up), but that idea didn't work out to well. Also note that when learning the high level spells -- you can learn them on level 1, but you can't USE them in battle until you have learned at least one spell on the second list. The scroll arrow doesn't appear until then.
Dwedit
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For the benefit of those who don't want to stop the movie to see what happened each run through the dream ruby glitchland, Here are Before and After pics of the characters' stats! Before: After first run-through: After second run-through: Especially notable is that "V ron" forgets Defeat, and many characters max hp or mp goes to zero.
Joined: 8/13/2005
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Watching the actual glitch room was pretty painful. How long did that part take to record? Honestly, I didn't really enjoy watching this at all (compared to the existing non-glitch movies or otherwise)... but it really is an interesting corruption glitch and an impressive low-level finish.
Joined: 11/16/2006
Posts: 66
I knew of the glitch since you mentioned it in the first movie, Dave, but I never imagined it could manipulate so many things in the memory (return locations, spells, stats, etc.) I thought it was just items. As such this run is quite awesome from a glitchiness standpoint. Actually watching though, it was hard to understand and boring at times, and skips a lot of interesting "normal" parts so I definitely advocate publishing alongside the other movie. This continues to be one of my favorite RPG TASes on the site, and I hope that you will shockingly improve both of the runs. I also appreciate the detailed submission text. Without it this movie would be excrutiating to watch.
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Location: Japan, Anjo
yes vote.
DiffCalc .NET Frameworks 3.5 required.
Joined: 7/28/2005
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Jesus, that's an elaborate glitch! Definite yes vote from me, and the screenshot definitely has to be a "G is dead" picture. Also, I refuse to believe the non-sensical script that occurs when you get your "fortune told" wasn't the result of NoA's mass-censoring.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [955] NES Dragon Warrior III "item glitch" by dave_dfwm in 57:28.27
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Dragon Warrior 3 completed quickly by using a bizarre glitch that allows the author to fill his inventory with useful items, manipulate is stats, and even add places to his return list! This allows most of the game to be skipped.
Little typo.
adelikat
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Thanks (fixed).
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Joined: 4/3/2005
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As the glitch is already likely to be fast-forwarded, I wonder if having a character gain 9999999 exp points saves time or not.
No.
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Posts: 339
DrJones wrote:
As the glitch is already likely to be fast-forwarded, I wonder if having a character gain 9999999 exp points saves time or not.
Okay, so, it takes around 9 seconds for a single level to be gained. Assuming they start at level 1 (I am unsure), that is 392-396 level ups to be done, for a total time of 3528-3564 seconds, or almost an hour for both. So, in other words, no.
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About the 99 (98 acutally) level ups. I don't think it would be good to have it for all the characters. However, if you could somehow glitch only the HERO getting the level ups and no one else, you could try a unique TAS of a solo win of this game (which is insanely difficult, but possible). The hero would have to be on level 99 by himself, and of course have all the best equipment, and heavily abuse the lightning spell. The Noh Mask would have to be equipped before the Zoma fight. MP and HP are very important, so the levelups would have to be manipulated to produce a quality outcome. I have actually won this game with a solo hero. I obviously didn't record it since it took many hours of turbo A pressing on hyper emulator speed to gain experience. I also heavily manipulated each level up. This TAS idea would only allow one manipulation for ALL the level ups. However, the idea is slightly intriguing, but I doubt the end result would be a goal many people would be interested in seeing. My only advice (should someone want to try it) would be to have the following inventory in the Hero's bag. Armor of Radiance Shield of Heroes Noh Mask (don't equip until right before Zoma) Sphere of Light Magic Key Wizard's Ring (picked up in Zoma's Castle) Rainbow Drop Medical Herb maybe if it can be used on Zoma for more damage than Lightning No weapon needed. I'm not interested in re-TASing this game for a while. I've been working on a new project.