Khananaphone found during the Big20 that you can save maybe a second on the final boss by screen-wrapping an attack during the spawn-in. While the boss is flashing he apparently has a hitbox at the back of his sprite.
Between this and the two cycle statues (which may not be RTA viable) you can probably save a couple more seconds in an ideal run. I don't plan to go for it any time soon, so I figured I'd document it before it's forgotten.
With clone fight one-shots no longer a worry thanks to healing item cheese, there's no mechanical reason to limit STR duping. We could go all the way to 500 if we wanted... though I suspect diminishing returns set in pretty quick.
I just did a few runs going to 200. I'm pretty trash at duping, especially extended duping like the Power Wine dupe, but I was still able to pull in a 1:39 with a fairly rough run. It has me wondering what optimal STR target would be.
I chose 200-225 for the specific reason that it allows you to destroy everything but 'heavy' enemies like Golems with one Claw flurry up until Chaos Castle. After that you need to resort to knife spins. 250+ STR may let you claw flurry everything there too, but I don't personally feel it's worthwhile.
200 STR also lets you kill the first two limbs of Vatali in one cycle without Guts, kill two balls on the Dryazhek snake in one knife spin, and two-cycle Dark Mistress.
I guess I just feel like these are all breakpoints that'd need significant more STR to surpass, and then you're moving into diminishing returns.
Maybe we need to do some Math here D: Anyone have thoughts?
1.) I removed Shiden's runs as his twitch account seems to have gone foom, taking the video proof with it :( He's welcome to re-submit. His runs were Easy mode, 10m45s and 11m42s.
2.) I retimed my Normal WR to 9m36s. I timed from character control but all other remaining runners in the game time from start screen. So I'm adjusting to their consensus :) If you pick up the game please time from start.
Though no one runs this I thought I'd document a finding, just in case :)
While trying to find a marathon safe route for the Handheld Heroes marathon I stumbled onto a new glitch that can be used to develop at the very least a race-safe route that eliminates the need for 75% of health drops my WR route uses.
I call this glitch skill swapping, or in the specific case I use for safety strats "Shieldswap". It does what it says on the tin: swaps Lane's 50% damage shield to another hero so I can do another character's damage while using the damage mitigation usually only available to Lane.
The way it works is simple. If you press select to open the character select menu the frame after you use a B-skill, that skill will remain in effect after the swap. Usually this just results in a hilarious glitched out animation like skillswapping Pit's bomb to Kyle results in exploding skeletons. Lane's shield is, so far, the only useful use of the glitch I've found.
I've built a marathon route based on this. It's exactly the same as the WR route except if you don't get a tear from Bat Boss, you take Lane and Kyle and on the hand boss use Lane to start the fight until she's one hit from death, then use Shieldswap to protect Kyle. When his HP runs out, swap to the Hero to finish the fight; you should need zero healing items.
You can then use Shieldswap on Knight but you have to wait until he's about to hit you to get any use out of it. If done right you can beat Knight with only two potions instead of four.
Finally you can Shieldswap on Barius to beat him with zero healing items if you start with Zold, switch to Lane, and shieldswap just before his first volley hits you. If done right you will shield two cycles, giving Zold enough HP to finish the fight with no healing needed.
All in all this drops the healing item requirement for a run from 10 potions to 2-3. Unfortunately the time you waste getting Lane and juggling her MP means it's not WR-viable without a major reroute, but it'd be good for new runners, people who don't want to reset on bad drops, and races.
I submitted Any% Normal Brawler for the Handheld Heroes marathon. If anyone else is up for seeing if they can make it a race, throw in a submssion :)
http://www.speedrun.com/Handheld_Heroes/thread/vaoy5
Edit: I'd even be cool with Brawler VS Ninja if Fon wanted to throw in Ninja. We'd just call it "Any% Normal" then obviously ;) That would actually be a pretty sweet thing to watch.
I've done some testing of the differences between the two difficulties (first option in the options menu, defaults to Normal, can be flipped to Easy).
Here's what's different on Normal that's notable to a speedrun:
- Most normal enemies have more HP. The generic trash still dies to 1 rocket or rider kick, but other things may need 2 hits; things that needed 2 now need 3.
- Most bosses take more hits the kill. The is most noticeable with midbosses and phase 1 of multi-phase bosses. The final boss phase of the stage has less of a boost, or none at all.
- Your energy regen is cut about in half during mech fights. It's no longer possible to finish fights with a flurry of offense; most mech fights require playing defensive to recharge.
- The final mech fight does not refill your health between phases, which is actually kind of a big deal coupled with the energy regen penalty above.
The last two points are the most important. While most of my mech fight strategies will still work, you'd have to spend time defending to recharge between offensive flurries; a LONG time recharging on the final fight. I wouldn't be surprised if this adds 3 minutes to the run on its own.
Of secondary importance are the other two points. More enemy HP means more backboosts while trying to rider kick through enemies, that's about all. More boss HP makes bosses take longer because at no time are you in danger during boss fights; it's just more time for no difficulty or style gain.
In general, Normal difficulty is "the same but takes longer". I personally feel Easy makes a cooler looking run even if you execute optimally in both difficulties. However, these differences make comparing runs between difficulties unfair.
For now I've added a difficulty field to the leaderboard so it's clearer. If someone besides me takes up running the game I'm more than willing to split the board into two categories.
Just noting this all for the record if anyone gets curious.
Enjoy this :)
Blast almost killed me 8 times in 2 seconds. Every one of those "Almost"s was a stack of guts. Then I walked up and tornadoed Deatharte for 400 ¤ 6 in one shot.
Blast can be okay sometimes! <3
This is mostly for my own notes for now but if anyone wants to pick up running this, I've sussed out four category ideas. I'll explain them briefly below and why I think they should be considered for running, or not considered, as it were.
I've put all four on the leaderboards and we'll just see if anyone cares to submit runs for them. I'll probably go Any% and All bosses, myself.
Any%: Kill Barius. Simple, straightforward. Duh :)
100%: Level 16 everyone, kill all bosses, get all power-ups. I actually don't like the idea of this as a run because... 1.) Some "Upgrades" are actually downgrades and it would significantly extend the run having to saddle one of your characters with that. For example, Jude's upgrade removes his attack's piercing. 2.) 100% requires running the entire game effectively 2-3 times. Some upgrades require severe back-tracking and you must always have a wall-breaker in your party as some upgrades are behind walls. Wing drops become mandatory and the run becomes luck based. 3.) Lots and lots of downtime.
Maxed Party: The party that goes to kill Barius must be maxed per 100% rules. The other 4 characters do not have to be. I prefer this as the "100%" category for the sole reason that you eliminate almost all the back-tracking and silly party management. You'll be powerful for the final fight, and routing becomes far more important than execution.
All Bosses: Any% with the requirement you also kill the other five bosses in the game. Far more strategy than Any% and killing bosses frequently gives you useful consumables so maybe even less drop luck. This one sounds fun. You also get a few more level-ups, but you'll need them :)
tl;dr: I'm re-organizing the categories to make the leaderboard cleaner. If you got a message that your run was rejected or deleted, don't panic! I'll be re-uploading everyone's runs EXACTLY as they are now. Nothing will change.
Just posting this here as a note before I start doing it: I'm going to reorganize things on the leaderboard. Right now there's like 12 main categories and all of those but 1 could be ILs and look neater. Here's how I'm planning to do it...
The main category will be Any%, which is where my 6hr run is. The IL categories will be moved to IL boards called for example "Ninja (Any%)" "Ninja (Pacifist)" "Ninja (Bad End)" etc. I will make the default leaderboard the IL board, since ILs are where most of the focus is.
I'll do all the work to do this migration. If you have a run in you don't have to do anything. You MAY receive a message that your run has been rejected, but I'll be re-uploading your runs on your behalf exactly as they are now.
If anyone has any objections please reply. I'll probably do this this weekend.
Posting here in hopes someone in the know follows the board and will get an alert :)
How's the Jormugandr 1F -> 12F skip done? I'm playing with possibly giving the game a casual run or three and can't find any data on how to pull that off. Judging by the video it could just be leaving and coming back, getting a certain amount of EXP, or some kind of menu manipulation I can't see.
Anyone out there able to shed some light on that? I'd appreciate it.
I decided to submit a request for a !bang command to DuckDuckGo (http://ddg.gg, https://duckduckgo.com/bang) since I use DDG as my search engine and am lazy and would like to just be able to type "!speedrun mario" in my browser to get the current Mario runs. However, the AJAX search bar won't do for this.
Is there some non-AJAX search page hidden in the site that I haven't found? To submit a !bang command, DDG needs something it can hit with the standard GET parameter format like http://www.speedrun.com/search?q=FOO.
Just curious. I'm a nerd who likes the tools they use and would like to have excuses to use them more. :)
