Didn't see your comment, Jett (if there's a notification option I didn't see it). I do plan on making a big video dump at some point. See what people can do with it.

I may consider 100% somewhere down the line. I've mostly been tinkering with All Obsidians, but I feel like delving into Any% for a bit to build up the nerve for AO (there's so many things that can kill you in it) - but I'm not doing the vine launch like Jett did, I hate that skip beyond belief.

Slow-as-molasses reply here. (TL;DR - I don't think KttC is necessary, NG+ is friendly enough, and just go into NG by not loading any saves/using an Xbox 360 profile for quick resets and don't care about achievement exp, it's not worth the headache)

I couldn't comment on any co-op categories (maybe there's some interesting split duties that works out), but I'm not too sure about KttC personally. While it appears to change a few things here and there, such as jumping up Wang's tower and (maybe, haven't tested it) climbing Cowell's tower from the south (so re-warping to Stripey's Cafe), I'm not sure there's enough to differentiate it from NG+, and NG+ is overall a fairly accessible category - the only thing that might not be straightforward is knowing that the supply point warps have position memory between save files, so those need to be chosen before resetting. Although that reorder for Fang-Yin, Timbol, and Rzeznik is something I hadn't considered. That's actually a time-save, thanks.

On your gripes with NG: I have the same issue. That said, just don't bother with setting up a new profile and ignore the achievements, they're nearly all just for agility anyway and only a couple matter (so it's just a couple of extra orbs, and on XB1 I think the faster initial loading time counteracts the achievements, maybe 360 is 1-2secs faster?). Don't get me wrong, it's still far more brutal than NG+, but you can make it work, and on XB1 you can tell the console to not load any saves so you can start fresh without deleting NG+ data (I forget the exact details on how to do this, though, it's been a while).

I've been messing around with finding the gems in this game on and off over the year, and I think the final total is 1,542 (388S/386E/382R/386D). By level in SERD order: A1: 15/15/20/25 [75] A3: 15/15/20/25 [75] A5: 15/15/20/25 [75] A6: 15/15/20/25 [75] D1: 20/19/18/18 [75] [a] D2: 10/11/11/10 [42] [b] E2: 18/25/16/16 [75] E5: 17/25/16/17 [75] E6: 17/25/17/16 [75] E7: 18/25/16/16 [75] F1: 19/17/20/19 [75] F2: 18/18/20/19 [75] F3: 18/18/20/19 [75] F4: 19/17/20/19 [75] F6: 18/18/20/19 [75] LIFE: 18/19/19/19 [75] TOWN: 18/19/19/19 [75] W1: 25/18/17/15 [75] W2: 25/18/17/15 [75] W3: 25/17/18/15 [75] W4: 25/17/18/15 [75]

[a] This matches with the numbers in the current guide, but I'd like a third party check. Also, when I reloaded the save to double-check the gems, the three gems in the vats at the bottom of the level containing an emerald, ruby, and diamond (the fourth containing a half-dissolved catalisk) respawn with the map reloading (from the main menu, the debug menu, and even leaving the level and coming back manually through the D1 tower door). So this'll have to be a caveat to the run. I also checked if they stopped respawning if I made my gem count in the level 75 (D2 = 42, so 11 reloads and pickups of 3 gems = +33), and they still respawned at 78 total collected, so it's likely a bug.

[b] This one I haven't found all 75 gems, but I believe it's 75 like all levels apart from D2. I end up with 18/24/16/16 and I can't find emerald 25, but I think it's there because it matches Stephen's map and every other 75-gem level with gem counts over 20 are exactly, never an in between. The emeralds I found were: -The 3 right at the beginning of the level. [3] -The 2 leading up to the level 3 lightning barrier. [5] -The 2 at the tower bridge. [7] -The 1 halfway down the path wrapping around the tower. [8] -The 1 near the waterfall leading into the ice slide/sleeth area (by the ornate tunnel). [9] -The 3 in front of the "palace" with the fire power, and the 2 up high with the nearby obsidian. [14] -The 3 inside the fire power's "palace." [17] -The 3 in the underground part of the tower. [20] -The 3 on the conveyor belt in the grotto. [23] -The 1 next to the high-up key (at the pipe) in the grotto. [24] For the life of me, I can't find emerald 25 in E2 (I think I re-searched the level 5 times, including restarting from a fresh file). It's probably in some obvious place, as I'm bad with collectibles.

I've also been working on All Obsidians on-and-off, and I think the 100% route would be near-identical (outside performing D2 instead of the death realm skip). The overview of the route up to the E5 earth power, where the key difference is (I'm using debug level names to prevent confusion):

1. W1 (start)
2. W4 [AP1]
3. W1->W2 [WD1/WP1]
4. W1->TOWN->E2 [FP1] [c] 5) E5->F2 [AP2/LD1]
5. F4 [FD1] [d] 7) F2->E5 [FD2/EP1] [c] It's possible to clip into the conveyor belt by the earth power and get to the obsidian by all the rockshard monsters. From there you can use the sloped wall to boost Azurik's flight up higher to climb up to the acid blocks by the fire disc, and then climb the rocks to get on top of the map and 5-roll into the F2 load trigger. For coming back in you spawn inside the un-drilled rock and can clip out of it. [d] This order uses Rueake's air 2 mountain climbing method, but in 100% you'd want to grab it before entering F2 & F4 so you don't have to revisit those levels for the gem rocks. What you do is get on the yellow crane and roll off of it as it spins and Azurik gets flung onto the earth power if timed correctly, and then you do the previously-mentioned OOB method. The earth power would therefore be at the start of step 5. I would presume this to save a few minutes in backtracking if done first try (either from E6 OOB a second time or entering E7 for the drill key and then going back to E7 again later with WP2 for the fire power).

I should also note I go back around the map because it's possible to escape the fire guardian's arena after killing him without his disc fragment being the last fire disc piece (slope jump up the ramp with full air 2 and roll-bounce off of the electric fence's corner post so you can fly over), and you can use air 2 to get OOB in F1 to break into F3. I believe it saves ~5mins in obsidians & 100%, but probably loses ~1min in Any%.

Tell me if I'm missing something/got something wrong.

I wouldn't expect to be able to control the drop rates, then again I'm not the kind of person to find those sorts of things, but if there ever is a way to max out all brain stem drops that would pretty much remove all ~10min of grinding and a lot of random pick ups in 100%.

If I'm understanding you correctly, I presume you're talking about the blonde female civilians in Turnipseed Farm? Because there's something like 6 of them that always drop 50 DNA, just like Santa Modesta crazies and the Union Town doomsayers. Some humans in the game have surprisingly high-DNA brainstems.

The inconsistent DNA you're talking about sounds like the RNG on the drop amounts. I've had a civilian drop 100 DNA once (only once), but these higher DNA amounts are pretty rare, although I never went and mapped out the odds I just know they're low.

@Ecdycis Not only does dunking Roboprez work (which means you can skip out on probes earlier on and save more time), you gave me reason to see if I could get Silhouette out of her arena and so the same to her. Yes, you can get her out of her arena by clipping her through a corner with a car or robot in the arena, and then make her chase you over the lake into the water (Furon superior IQ).

What I'm looking at for the final mission is something like 35+secs saved for Roboprez and ~1:30 saved for Silhouette (compared to the pre-phase skipping trick Austin found, compared to the phase skipping it's probably ~50s saved). They're easily the most unreliable and awful tricks in the game, and they're right at the end, but they should turn a ~6min final mission into a ~4min one if (keyword) they're done well.

So thanks, Ecdycis, for the info, inspiration, and killing everyone's runs over an hour in.

As far as I can tell I can't see any real use for this in a speedrun outside of going to Rabotnikov from Golyak, but only in NG if the plan is to use the Hothead on him (and limpets followed up by the shotgun may be better anyway).

That said, it does help with grinding up Firearms EXP (for a NG+ character or going for the 4* Agent achievements) by respawning gangs over and over and heading straight to Garcia with an HMG and the shotgun. The HMG really benefits from the glitch and makes it considerably less painful overall. A 100% route would probably have some use for this as well at some point while collecting 800 orbs.

I don't know how, and I don't know why, but as far as I can tell Golyak becomes unkillable using the Firefly method with either the Free-For-All Pack or the Getting Busy Bonus Pack (and I'm going to assume this is the same for having the Four-Play Pack installed). This happened on the Xbox One S with an Xbox 360 disc, in case that's relevant.

For reference, I'm referring to this method:

The tactic is to hit him with the first Firefly shot so he falls, and then he can be killed on his way down with more shots. This only works if he stays by the edge (i.e. he doesn't run away).

Older NG+ attempts I still have on my hard drive had 20 shots at Golyak (where he never ran), and 13 times he fell (65%) so he had a chance of dying. The amount of times he ran away with any of the DLC installed was 25/25. Not a big sample size but I'm not willing to try even further hoping it's just a long fluke.

So unless another strategy works faster for him, NG+ and his Time Trial needs to be done without DLC for the best strategies as far as I can tell. This also rules out using the Racecar instead of the Supercar for Sovetnik/Romanova, which would've been ~3.5-4.5s time saved while Firefly Golyak is ~6s faster than Shotgun Golyak (without factoring in swimming over Rabotnikov to make it even faster).

If anyone can confirm or deny they're experiencing the same thing, that would be appreciated.

Reviving this because I've found a weird trick with the ending cutscenes: if you extract after killing the final gang and the 5 second dossier countdown begins, then respawn in The Keep, the true endgame 'cleared the city' cutscene plays before the cutscene for the gang (actually, in some instances I'm not sure it plays at all if you do this), even before the loading screen.

I bring this up because it appears to save ~2-2.5secs, involves technical skill instead of just waiting for 5 seconds, and intuitively I've been thinking this should count as a valid way to end a run, after all it is the true final cutscene (unlike using one of the 'gang defeated' cutscenes as the end-point).

So is it a fair assumption that skipping to the final cutscene like this is legal for the boards?

Edit: I should also say that the endpoint using this cutscene is the first frame of black screen after warping (because the beginning of this cutscene is fading in from black).

Yep, those are the rules I'm thinking of. You'll likely need to go and get Supreme yourself for this because I think he currently only tangentially pays attention to this game (i.e. probably not the forum).

Now this is where it gets weird. I believe it makes more sense to focus on tracked collectibles than anything else, so it's fair to say ignoring the max upgraded Warriors, the bonus section, and rune pouch.

However, by this standard, I do still hold that alternative skins should be part of 100% because they are tracked collectibles, just in the wrong page of the Wotnot book, if that makes any sense. Collecting them also does add something of substance in the routing as well, because 100% is mostly a collect-a-thon (so they fit right in), and it gives rise to finding an optimal route for collecting a substantial amount of runes (not just for fruits and elixirs in the shops), such as multiple stone chests.

Or maybe the added runes make it a little too much? I don't know, but I'd be willing to try the lot for what that's worth, and the other shop purchases aren't exactly cheap by comparison if my notes are correct (395 runes, the skins + the pouch upgrade costing another 500 runes on top), so it's probably fine.

And on the "collect-and-complete-everything-OCD" category, yes we could just have a 'Max%' (or 'Wotnot%'/'Completed Wotnot') category made down the line. Never know, it could turn out to be a pretty hilarious meme category. 4Head

I always found this one a bit difficult to define. I agree the four criteria you've given are definite, but then are we defining just the Wotnot's back stat page or also completing the Warriors' profiles? Either way I presume we're ignoring the 'bonus' section in the Wotnot, which is the cheat codes and concept art (so high-scoring the individual levels) and max upgrading the rune pouch (seeing as it's not really being 'tracked' in the Wotnot).

If we're just going for the back stat page, then I agree there's nothing else to it, but if the Warrior page is relevant, then I think the following need adding: -All 10 alternative Warrior skins (also needs one pouch upgrade) -Max upgrade all 10 Warriors

The 'max upgrades' are admittedly more of a time sink than anything else (just spam through upgrades after getting all the fruit), but from following 'complete the Wotnot book', that's how I took it.

(I guess we're now using this thread as 'Kameo General Discussion')

The cutscene skips are actually very straightforward (these are however the only ones I had ever found when looking with quit-outs).

When I say quit-out, I mean pressing 'select' to go back to the main menu, where you should only need to mash 'A' to go back into the game. I timed this process in Enchanted Kingdom (post-game) to be 13secs. I'm under the impression that you're quitting out of the entire game program, not the 'in-game' part back to the main menu.

If your XB1 is taking ~46secs to go from 'start game' to the black screen after the intro cinematic (in your vid), while my X360 (my old one, I haven't tried on this new, not-knackered one) took ~51secs, that's likely either faster loading times or comparable loading times (as I said, I haven't tried on my new X360). But I'm not familiar with Rare Replay and XB1 Kameo so I can only speculate.

On optimisations, as far as I can tell, yes it appears mainly to be combat and menuing/swapping out Elemental Warriors. I'm trying to recall my old searches (one year ago) and I don't remember finding viable glitches outside of the quit-out exploit. It mainly appears to be optimal vanilla gameplay.

As long as you have a valid video that can be timed in real-time by the moderator, there shouldn't be a problem. I've been submitting the raw footage as my runs on other games with no issue. And there's not much point worrying about the in-game time for this game as it only goes down to minutes.

And even though this isn't what you asked about, I did run this game a while back and there are some quit-out abuses if you wish to use them. Copy-and-pasted from the Kameo SDA thread: "...there's a few tricks that abuse the checkpoint system via quit-outs: -Some cutscenes become skippable (out of the ~30-35min worth of them), namely the first cutscene in Thorn's Castle when dropping off of the ice wall with Chilla (done during his falling animation), and all of the cutscenes that play when picking up the Elemental Sprites (done immediately after pressing 'A' to absorb them). This trims down probably ~5min worth of cutscenes. -It's possible to quit out after destroying the last catapult while defending the Red Shrine, warping Kameo back into Snow Top Village, skipping Farron's "victory cutscene," so you can progress immediately and not need to trek back. I estimated ~1m15s saved doing this."

Something I've noticed between the versions of the game is that the saucer animations lag more (or seemingly at all) on Xbox 360 (using the Xbox disc) compared to Xbox, PS2, and the PS4 port (I don't know about PS3).

For now, I based my observation off of Turnipseed Farm as the landing and take-off animations appear consistent no matter where they're done (I recall the times being unchanged when taking off from 'The Lone Gunman' mission).

The approximate observed times (Takeoff | Landing): My Xbox 360: 22secs (21secs at TheUnbiasedGamer's angle, not furonwarrior's) | 24secs (Ariel Torano's angle) TheUnbiasedGamer's Xbox 360: 20secs | 23.5secs () Furonwarrior's Xbox: 15.5secs | 17.5secs () (Landing from 'Earth Women are Delicious': []) Ariel Torano's Xbox: 15.5secs | 17.5secs () Austinthegamer's PS2: 15.5secs | 17.5secs ('Earth Women are Delicious' intro) () James Best's PS4: 15.5secs | 17.5secs ()

The strange thing is the times appear consistent regardless of location or angle change on all versions except the Xbox 360, which I believe is poor emulation at this point. So the change in angles on lag is likely nonexistent or irrelevant outside of the Xbox 360, and a second of difference doesn't mean much thanks to the slow turn radius of the saucer, so it's rarely likely to be worth accounting for.

My Xbox 360 appears to be a little slow also, but even comparing to TheUnbiasedGamer there are still seconds of difference. Using my 22secs takeoff and 24secs landing animations (because they copied the other versions' angles more accurately), there is still a +2secs difference between takeoff and landing, and appears consistently ~6.5secs slower.

To put this into perspective, there are 27 landing and takeoff saucer animations in the Any% run (including cutscenes, which might have dialogue that lasts longer than 17.5secs, negating the version differences somewhat): -My Xbox 360 wastes a projected total of ~175.5secs. -TheUnbiasedGamer's Xbox 360 wastes a projected total of ~148.5secs (if taken as a consistent ~5.5secs each).

I'll need to revisit at a later date and crop & compare my and Austin's PBs to see what the overall difference is and confirm/refute my suspicions.

Also if anyone has knowledge of version differences in general and can offer some insight, that would be appreciated.

For now I don't know about load times as I can't test these because I need footage of definite mashing A/start or X/start through loading screens on the other versions.

The rapid fire glitch for the Quantum Deconstructor used probably only saves 15secs on Roboprez, but I have no reason to assume the other versions can't do it (unless it's bad Xbox --> Xbox 360 emulation at work).

TL;DR: For anyone interested in running the game, at least based on the saucer animations, I would recommend not running on Xbox 360 unless that's all you have and don't mind potentially throwing away 2.5-3 minutes RTA. Also use a different console and get your free WR. 4Head

An update to the DNA grinding. There are two very quick side missions early on: 'Farmland Fiasco' in Turnipseed Farm (land Saucer after completing 'Destination Earth') and 'Rockwell BBQ' in Rockwell (after completing 'Citizen Crypto').

'Farmland Fiasco' has a high density of easily-extracted, relatively high-DNA farmers that rewards 200 DNA (and eventually 300 DNA) for completing the mission (repeatedly). Completing enough missions until earning 300 DNA four times (20 farmers), plus all of the DNA from brain extraction, should give ~6,300 DNA in up to 15mins.

'Rockwell BBQ' doesn't give any brain stems, but killing the cows for the first three difficulties (6, 9, and 12 cows) gives 600 DNA in a little over a minute (even while using time to grab a probe), which is more rapid grinding than ‘Farmland Fiasco’. With practice (and good DNA drops), the total time between the two grinds may drop by a minute or two to a little over 14mins.

These are both done on the way to grabbing probes throughout their levels, and make up ~7,000 of the 8,350 DNA needed. Along with extracting certain high-value brain stems (female civilians in Turnipseed Farm, Mayors, (rarely) Generals, and the President), this easily reaches the DNA required - usually a few hundred over.

The issue is the 7k grinding section is 3,200 DNA rewarded from completing missions, which aren't boosted by post-game +50% brain stem DNA. So a method of skipping the ~7 minutes of ending cutscenes is needed to farm like this during the endgame (but it at least makes resets for dying during farming less punishing a reset).

On attempting farming off of the Majestic Agents, the problem is they generally don't come about in such huge densities like the farmers and take about twice as long to extract for about twice the amount of DNA (while getting no 'mission completed' DNA bonuses).

I also ran into an issue of trying to farm them in Capitol City and they eventually stopped spawning, which I believe is because the game can only spawn so many assets at once, and tanks spawning in the background struggle to despawn (destroyed or active) and clog the spawn pool.

Also, the Majestic Agents spawning during ‘South by Southwest’ get blocked by their cars, making it difficult to collect their brain stems while extracting others AND making spawn limits an issue again. I tried an alternative by hovering around the beach behind the target motel for the mission, but they only spawn in trios, with groups still being quite far from another, and still no bonus from 'mission completed' screens.

So for now, it seems some early game farmer and cow side mission grinding is the way to go. On run length: from my test runs this category is likely to get near to (or even under) 2 hours with some practice, optimisation, and good brain stem RNG.

So if I've read everything correctly, the end-time is sticking to when the 5 second dossier countdown ends (what Blues' time is calibrated to at 23:07), and not the absolute end cinematic at 23:29 in his video? If I've got that right, thanks for the clarification.

The rules define the time range as: "Timing starts after character select, and ends at final cutscene."

Just to clarify, does "final cutscene" mean the last gang's extermination cutscene, or the full "city cleared" cinematic that comes ~5 seconds afterwards? I ask because I would assume the latter, but Blues' NG+ run (the only reference) is timed to the former.

I was hoping for feedback on proposing a 100% category, which is viable through the Invasion Report (stats screen). Proposed criteria: -Complete all 22 missions. -Collect all 184 probes. -Purchase all 18 upgrades. -'World overlord Complete' at 100%.

The 184 probes make up 13,800 DNA, and all of the upgrades in total cost 22,150 DNA, so an extra 8,350 DNA needs to be collected throughout the run. The probes: -Turnipseed Farm: 25 probes. -Rockwell: 30 probes. -Santa Modesta: 50 probes. -Area 42: 24 probes. -Union Town: 25 probes. -Capitol City: 30 probes.

The upgrades: Zap-O-Matic: 2,500 DNA

1. 250 DNA
2. 750 DNA
3. 1,500 DNA Disintegrator Ray: 3,400 DNA
4. 400 DNA
5. 1,000 DNA
6. 2,000 DNA Ion Detonator: 4,250 DNA
7. 500 DNA
8. 1,250 DNA
9. 2,500 DNA Psychokinesis: 5,000 DNA
10. 500 DNA
11. 1,500 DNA
12. 3,000 DNA Death Ray: 1,500 DNA
13. 500 DNA
14. 1,000 DNA Sonic Boom: 2,000 DNA
15. 750 DNA
16. 1,250 DNA Quantum Deconstructor: 3,500 DNA
17. 1,000 DNA
18. 2,500 DNA

If grind is a worry, there are many 50/100+ DNA targets along the way through the missions and levels, and I've recently found a disorientation-anal probe combination that allows 2-shotting (instead of 3-shotting) Majestic agents, making them the best reliable DNA targets, at least at maximum notoriety. So, if done correctly, actual dedicated time to grinding should be fairly minimal.

I would also note the post-game yields 50% more DNA from extracted brainstems. However, to activate post-game the unskippable final cutscenes and credits must be watched, which is ~7 minutes long. So the grind period would need to be initially over 15 minutes to justify grinding post-game.

The 'World overlord Complete' statistic is the 100% metric, where all six levels in the game have their own '[level] complete' statistic, when they reach 100%, so will World Overlord. Completing main missions, collecting probes, and unlocking extras increase these percentages. Upgrades don't increase the percentages.

Collecting all of the probes and completing all of the missions also completely unlock various sections of the game's Archives (extras screen) for further confirmation of a complete 100% run. Relevant sections: -B-Movie Theater -Furonigami - Some Assembly Required -Furon Propaganda