I was considering Zone Two training at one point, but the odds are stacked against the player there. An MSH in a training fight has a 5% chance of dropping. Great if you can get it, but a complete waste of time 95% of the time. I could maybe see multiple training fights in Zone Two if it helps breeze through the rest of the game, but I'm not sure if that payoff is worth it. Still, I haven't tested it out myself, so it might be worth exploring.

Since we're discussing potential strategies, some of you may recall when I asked if the code could be analysed to evaluate the feasibility of potential strategies. At the time, I was considering whether a Guardian run would be viable. My logic was that skills that scaled with both Strength and Magic (such as Electro Bolt and Flame Strike) might work best with the Guardian class and that you could be more flexible with items (I was even wondering at one point if both the blade and the rifle might be helpful at the end of Zone One provided that you adjusted which items to buy in future accordingly, which would surely have been quite the Holy Grail in Sonny speedrunning!).

However, as in Sonny's spiritual predecessor, Sinjid: SOTW, the most balanced class also appears to have the lowest ceiling due to the lack of specialisation. Even if a Guardian run would ensure consistency (and even that's not guaranteed), how far can one get with it? Also, IIRC, Quick Strike doesn't do as much damage for a Guardian as it does for an Assassin or a Gunslinger, so any time-saves in Zones Two and Three would have to counter the lost time in Zone One.

Another strategy I tried was re-speccing BEFORE you eat your first item. I thought that it might be possible to start as a Gunslinger before re-speccing at some point and effectively becoming an Assassin, but the game doesn't allow you to do that as you'll always have a Gunslinger's base attributes even after re-speccing. The wiki also tells me that re-speccing loses you two points in Strength and Speed (roughly the opposite of what happens in Sonny 2), so any abilities and redistribution of attribute points had better be worth it. Re-speccing later in the game is also impractical because of the way item-eating works. It looks as if re-speccing is only viable in Any% Glitchless, where the item-eating problem obviously doesn't exist.

'The odds of getting a single MSH during a run is about 17.6%, so resetting for it is probably not a great idea, especially if you want to reset for it during the first possible fight, which would be a 3% chance.'

This is true to a point, and it depends on how far you wanna go with lowering your time, but speaking from personal experience, there will come a point when your only option is to reset for an MSH. I've only come close to beating my PB a couple of times so far, and on both those occasions, I picked up an MSH. The great thing about the magic strategy was that you could get pretty far without one as the MSH simply wasn't as useful, but that also means that a physical run with an MSH is more powerful than a magic run with an MSH.

I've been trying something out to keep the advantages of the MSH without relying on it too much, and I've managed to set a new PB split for the second third of Zone Three, which is the first time that something like that happened in a while (I didn't even get particularly lucky with item drops). Still, it doesn't seem to solve the problem of Zone Two being a bit of a slog without the MSH, so it probably won't amount to anything for now.

Anyway, AFAIK, at least one MSH is basically mandatory for WR, and preferably one in the first two fights in which it is available (a 5.91% chance if my maths is correct). A new strategy may emerge that changes this, but for now, that's the current situation. You can get a good sub-16 time without an MSH (trust me, I've achieved plenty of them while grinding), so you've got about two minutes to shave off before you need to start worrying about resetting for an MSH.

For now, I'd just carry on doing what you're doing as there are still plenty of ways to improve on a 17:40 without needing to grind for MSH, but if you ever decide to try to push for WR (or want to improve a PB that's sub-15:30 or so), it might be worth considering whether it's worth spending sixteen minutes on a run that's evidently not going to approach anywhere near that time. That's just my experience, though; as someone who has little time in which to speedrun, I'm naturally inclined towards whatever shortcuts I can find, which includes stopping halfway if I don't obtain an MSH at some point.

There are a couple of additional tips that will come in handy.

Firstly, pay attention to when Veradux moves compared to when you move. This is because Veradux has a healing move which can dispel stuns (he also has a healing move which DOESN'T dispel stuns, which is rather annoying). If he moves after you do then it's best just to skip your turn (by clicking the exclamation mark at the bottom of the screen) as he can't do anything to help you, but if moves BEFORE you do, it's worth attacking an enemy even while stunned as there's a possibility that Veradux will dispel your stun, thus ensuring that the attack goes through (of course, it could also be the case that Veradux does absolutely nothing to help, but that's RNG for you).

Secondly, be careful with the rock golems as they are heavy hitters. If one of them enrages, stun it (or use Supression to reduce the blow if you can't stun it). If both of them enrage...just stun one of them and pray that RNG is in your favour (you have to be REALLY unlucky for that to happen though).

Finally, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO EAT ITEMS! This may seem obvious, but Any% absolutely depends on the item-eating glitch, so make sure that you can pull it off with consistency. Of course, this doesn't matter at all if you're running Any% Glitchless (which reminds me, I should probably attempt that at some point).

'Sorry for making it seem like a small task to get WR or even speedrun'

There's nothing to apologise for, and sorry if I came across as critical there.

'I didn't even know you could equip skills more than 1 on your skill wheel until I saw like 8 smashes lol.'

Hey, it could be worse. When I first played this game as a kid, I didn't even realise that you could level-up your skills and equip items on your allies. Needless to say, I didn't get very far. 😛

Firstly, welcome to Sonny speedrunning! We're relatively small compared to a lot of other games, so it's always nice to see new runners!

As for your question, menuing and eating the gear may not seem like much, but consistently being able to do those things quickly without slipping up takes practice; blundering can cost you a good few seconds or, if you're going for WR, can completely kill a run (I've had a few runs die because, in my haste, I accidentally learned/levelled up the wrong skills or forgot to equip/eat certain items). Memorising what skills to learn, what stats to upgrade and what items to equip/eat (and when) is part of the challenge if you want to save time.

That being said, even the battles themselves require practice. When I first started, I spent quite a bit of time practising going through the game slowly so that I could get used to memorising what to do in each battle (what moves to use, which enemies to target first and any potential backup strategies in case RNG screwed me over). Like with menuing, knowing these things off the top of your head ensures quick and consistent execution. Zone One is pretty normalised (partly because most of the item drops are completely scripted and the enemy AI is incredibly simplistic) but there's more variance in Zones Two and Three (though thankfully not to the same extent as Sonny 2, where the enemy AI is far more reliant on RNG).

As well as copious amounts of practice, patience is key (as with any speedrun). Half your runs will die immediately after Zone One due to item drop RNG (thankfully, you'll only have wasted three minutes in those instances), and there are a few run-killers if you're looking for WR (the ghost enemies in Zone Two and the Baron in Zone Three are especially annoying in this regard). The current WR is also very lucky when it comes to RNG (the Moon-Struck Horrors in Zone Two is a must, but it only has a 3% chance of dropping in the middle of Zone Two and getting both of them only has a 0.09% chance of occurring) so get ready for the grind if you want to go for that (I myself am currently on a hiatus due in part to the immense grind).

The Sonny Wiki is a great resource, BTW. It contains a list of every single battle in the game, every single item drop, every single skill and every single enemy (including their behaviour), so if you want to come up with an alternative route or if you're just curious, that's the place to go.

Finally, just a couple of notes on the route: Firstly, Ischmar's route doesn't include training in Zone Three, but I'd recommend doing it anyway to get a good time (watch some of the top runs to figure out what to do in this regard); secondly, the WR route is actually very different from Ischmar's route, but the latter appears to be faster on average despite having a lower ceiling, so it's up to you which one you want to follow for now.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. I'm sure that others will chime in with their own comments (compared to some of the runners here, I started relatively recently), but those would be my tips. In any case, I hope you enjoy running Sonny!

It's no secret that Sonny 2 speedrunning isn't nearly as active as Sonny speedrunning. There are probably multiple reasons for this, but speaking for myself personally, the sheer length of a run, the complex item management, the RNG and the amount of practice required all serve to dissuade me from attempting to speedrun Sonny 2, and I doubt I'm alone in that. With that being said, on a discussion regarding new categories for the original Sonny game, I discussed the possibility of IL categories:

'On a related note, would IL categories be viable? Instead of worrying about beating the entire game as quickly as possible, you could choose just to focus on one zone. This might open up new possibilities in Sonny speedrunning as well as be a less 'grindy' category overall. From a feasibility standpoint, you could simply just turn off autosave and save at the beginning of a particular zone in order to attempt multiple runs on the same savefile.

Of course, the question then becomes what limits should be placed on Zones Two, Three and Four. Zone One is fine as everyone starts on equal ground, but that won't be the case for later zones. Even a rule such as 'sell all your items' won't work as RNG means that different players will have different amounts of money. I suppose you could discard all your items instead, but that doesn't change the fact that the amount of money you get from each battle varies slightly.

Honestly, now that I think about it, IL categories would only really work for Zone One, and that'd probably be the most boring zone to attempt to speedrun on its own as it's already pretty optimised. Interestingly enough, it might actually be a great idea for Sonny 2 as I believe the amount of money you gain from each fight is fixed in that game, and perhaps I should give these ruminations on that game's forums. Given how time-consuming Sonny 2 speedruns are, IL categories are almost necessary to get people involved.'

Thinking about it, however, I feel as if IL categories would make more sense in Sonny 2 than in Sonny 1. For one, if I'm not mistaken, the amount of gold you have at the start of each zone should be the same for each run provided that you discard items rather than selling them and provided that you don't train. The same will of course go for skills and attributes, which should remain the same for each run barring any training fights (or respeccing in some runs and not in others). This will hopefully ensure that no-one has an unfair advantage for a particular zone.

Secondly, an IL category for Sonny 2 would obviously be far quicker to speedrun than Any% (No Major Glitches). Thirdly, since you don't have to consider reaching a particular zone at a particular pace or consider how quickly you'll be able to complete subsequent zones, new strategies might end up being viable (for example, perhaps the psychological or hydraulic classes are more suitable for finishing a particular zone quickly than the biological class is?).

What do you guys think about this idea? I personally feel that it could be quite exciting, but perhaps there are issues with IL categories that I've overlooked.

On a related note, would IL categories be viable? Instead of worrying about beating the entire game as quickly as possible, you could choose just to focus on one zone. This might open up new possibilities in Sonny speedrunning as well as be a less 'grindy' category overall. From a feasibility standpoint, you could simply just turn off autosave and save at the beginning of a particular zone in order to attempt multiple runs on the same savefile.

Of course, the question then becomes what limits should be placed on Zones Two, Three and Four. Zone One is fine as everyone starts on equal ground, but that won't be the case for later zones. Even a rule such as 'sell all your items' won't work as RNG means that different players will have different amounts of money. I suppose you could discard all your items instead, but that doesn't change the fact that the amount of money you get from each battle varies slightly.

Honestly, now that I think about it, IL categories would only really work for Zone One, and that'd probably be the most boring zone to attempt to speedrun on its own as it's already pretty optimised. Interestingly enough, it might actually be a great idea for Sonny 2 as I believe the amount of money you gain from each fight is fixed in that game, and perhaps I should give these ruminations on that game's forums. Given how time-consuming Sonny 2 speedruns are, IL categories are almost necessary to get people involved.

As for the low% suggestion, I'm not too keen on limiting allies as I don't tend to regard them as counting towards 'completion'. Items might also be a concern if we count merely collecting items as qualifying towards 'completion' (as a lot of games do from what I can tell), given the random nature of drops, so your suggestion for limiting the equipping and eating of items instead makes sense. Levels and XP also make sense, but the problem is combining all these attributes together. Does one extra level correlate with one item equipped? What if you equip an item for one battle, unequip it for the next then re-equip it afterwards? Determining what counts as making the 'least' progress will be a serious difficulty in my eyes, but it could theoretically be done.

I'd personally be interested in seeing whether it would be possible to beat the game using only the starting items (without eating any items, of course), and if so, it might make for a cool speedrunning category. It wouldn't really qualify as a strict low% category, though. Also, given that we know that training in Zone Three is quicker than not training in Any%, a no-training category might also be interesting to explore. I would also have suggested a no-allies category, but given how useless Veradux is in Any%, I don't think that will be necessary. :P

Now, Any% Glitchless without allies on the other hand...

So here's the state of play at the minute.

Right now, the two Sonny games don't work on Ruffle yet. They've also been temporarily removed from Armor Games (they're still up on Kongregate and Newgrounds, not that they're playable). This may change in the future, but for now, that's a dead end.

Reports are that Supernova doesn't work. Looking at the reviews, I expected this. Unless that changes, the games are no longer playable on Kongregate.

Unexpectedly, the Newgrounds Player also doesn't work. It was ready for Adobe's kill switch, but it turns out that Microsoft included their own kill switch into Windows, and the devs weren't ready for that. For now, the Newgrounds Player doesn't work. There are a couple of workarounds, though:

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1462656

So, what does this mean? Are the games unplayable without the workaround? Well, not quite. There's still BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, and having tested it out, it works! Both the Sonny games are playable, and Sonny 2 even includes the Hydraulic class. For now, this is the best option for speedrunning, but I'm personally considering this a temporary solution until the games work on Ruffle. Still, thanks to the efforts of archivists, Sonny speedrunning isn't dead; it just requires a couple of downloads for the time being.

https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/downloads/

It might be worth adding this to the 'Resources' tab.

Hmm...Flash games still seem to work for me so far. Looks as if Chrome isn't ditching it until the 'kill switch' on the 12th of January. Anyone have a different experience so far?

https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1-kongregate/topics/1932722-the-future-of-flash-games-on-kongregate

Is this what you're referring to, Luni? Looking at the reviews on the Chrome store, it doesn't seem to work all that well (if at all). Looks like I might finally have to move away from Kongregate after stubbornly sticking to it all these years (Newgrounds, Armor Games and Flashpoint should all still work).

Hey y'all. While I've been attempting to reclaim the Any% world record, I've been doing some routing on the side as a backup plan. Unfortunately, I have absolutely zero experience routing, so it hasn't gone well so far. 😅

I've thought up of a strategy that might have potential, but it leads to a slower Zone One and before I continue to Zone Two, I want to make sure that it's actually viable. I know which build I want to try out; it's just a matter of finding the right balance of stats to save time.

Luckily, the wiki is an invaluable resource for this. It lists precisely how each move scales with each stat and it also provides info on each enemy, so in theory, calculating what stats are needed (and thus what items and crits are needed) to beat each enemy as quickly as possible should be trivial.

There's just one problem: This doesn't work in practice. Attacks can do more or less damage depending on the enemy's level. This wouldn't be an issue if I knew how to take the enemy's level into account, but the trouble is that for all the excellent info which the wiki contains, it doesn't seem to give any formulae that factors in the enemy's level as far as I can see. It lists the level of each enemy, but not how that affects how much damage they take.

tbh, I don't really feel like routing through the entire game using trial-and-error alone (there are far too many stat and item combinations for that; I could be using that time to try to beat the record!), so plotting a route mathematically is the only available option from my perspective. Provided that I can work out exactly what stats are needed for each battle, that should be doable.

That's why I'm here. Most of you will have far more experience with routing than I do, so I was wondering if anyone had any tips for going through the process more efficiently? More specifically, how does one go about accounting for the enemy levels when trying to think up a strategy? Even if that particular problem can't be fixed, are there other ways to streamline the process?

I was going to post a topic about this closer to Dec 31st, but a recent Armor Games announcement has forced my hand.

https://armorgames.com/news/the-future-of-flash-on-armor-games

tl;dr: Some games on AG will still work using Ruffle (no download required), and those that don't will be temporarily disabled on Jan 12th until they can be made to work without needing third-party software (e.g. Newgrounds Player)

I know that a couple of us have expressed concerns that the Sonny games will be unplayable following Dec 31st, but if this initiative succeeds, that doesn't have to be the case. The best-case scenario is that both games work on Ruffle and will continue to be playable on Jan 1st.

The middle-case scenario is that the games will be unplayable via Ruffle throughout January, but will eventually be made to work at some point. In this case, speedrunning should be able to continue.

The worst-case scenario is that the Sonny games don't work at all using Ruffle, which will no doubt hinder speedruns. HOWEVER, that doesn't necessarily mean doom and gloom. Being able to go to a website and click on the game's icon to open it within the browser without any need for special software will no longer be possible if this scenario comes to pass, but there are a couple of alternatives.

Firstly, the Newgrounds Player. It can run downloaded Flash files (I've actually used it to run a Sonny 2 mod which a wiki user published earlier this year), as well as Flash games on Newgrounds. The only catch is that you have to install it, but once you do, provided that you're using Newgrounds to run the game, Sonny should still be playable simply by opening its Newgrounds page. Sonny 2 should also be playable, though the Hydraulic class may be locked (I haven't tested it out yet).

Secondly, if things get really desperate, there's BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. This is basically a massive archive of many, MANY Flash games, which includes the two Sonny games. I haven't tested it yet, so I can't confirm if it works. The downside is that you have to open the game within the Flashpoint program instead of being able to do so via your web browser, and once again, the Hydraulic class may be locked (though I'll have to check this).

Obviously, I hope that the games will still be playable on Armor Games. This will not only ensure that nothing will have to change on the player's end but it should also mean that the Hydraulic class is still playable on Sonny 2. Nonetheless, it seems to me that Sonny speedrunning doesn't have to end after Dec 31st. which is obviously great news.