Okay so for starters credits to WordOfWind for finding this, or at least elaborate on this strat. (Video below showcasing it)

I'm making this post for the community to discuss their thoughts on this. Myself, WordOfWind and Glitchedd have been recently theorycrafting on re-routing the Any% NCW category with the newly found strat.

The strat consists in accessing the glitch menu, and with money manipulation, being able pull out (almost) any item from the game (excluding atla for now). This includes quest items where we usually get from atla events and are usually required to access boss fights and recruit goro.

If one decided to just pull these quest items, theoretically they could skip atla and by combining this with the Dungeon Floor Unlock glitch, they could just skip to the boss fights. Rendering the run very close to a "True NCW" or even a regular Any% run.

So with this knowledge, and after lenghty discussion we came to the conclusion that the best solution for this, while keeping the category somewhat uniquely intact, is to just add a rule that prevents players to grab any quest items (that would allow to progress through the game) by any derivative of the glitch menu.

Finally, I ask of you, the community for this game on your thoughts, should this rule be added? Are there any possible solutions/problems we might have overlooked? And does this require a category name change?

This is certainly a cool exploit. It’s is a drastic change to how NCW used to function, but it does make the category a bit more interesting than just “broken dagger and one shot everything to the end.” I believe this glitch should be allowed in some capacity for speedruns, however I am also OK with leaving any% NCW as it is and giving this item dupe/debug glitch its own category since this is a huge change to the run.

I don’t want categories to get excessive or overly confusing however, so coming up with a good name and ruleset will be very important. We value all community feedback from runners, so please post here with ideas and thoughts. If you are strongly against changes to any% NCW please let us know.

NCW used to be called Town% because it required building each town in it's minimum capacity to progress, but also had no precedent to add a rule explicitly stating that. So most people wouldn't know that skipping building the towns isn't allowed but that was always the rule, with a vote for an exception to unlocking dungeons allowing skipping Dark Heaven atla as it's not needed for a town. I think it could add an interesting dynamic to the run although I don't think this has been tested on console yet to see if there are crashing problems, so far don't see why there would be. But if this did get it's own category it'd need some rule to explicitly forbid unlocking locations on the map otherwise it'd just be pointless as the True NCW can do this and more faster. The current ruleset for NCW does need updated for more clarity as the rules are quite vague atm, as "any derivitive of skipping to the credits" has an unclear definition.

We were aware of the previous category, although not completely informed on its details so thanks for clarifying that closetowar. I personaly have done a lengthy test on this glitch on console (for the NTSC version at least), although there are still some situations that need testing, but overall it works with no problems and can actually be used. Our discussions prior to this post was to decide on how much of this new strat we intended to allow, without the need to create its own category and still keep NCW somewhat intact. Otherwise just like you said, it would render it a bit pointless and "True NCW" would just do the same but better. And that's why we decided on restricting the quest items specificaly so it wouldn't get too much out of control yet still remain an entertaining run. We also agree on updating the rules description for this category, but were unsure if we state specific actions to not be allowed, of keep it somewhat general to prevent future new strats to destroy the category without starting a discussion on it first, like we just did for this new strat.

We discussed making it a new category but we couldn't decide on a name that accurately defined the run. The closest we got was "Any% All Allies", but we were concerned that maybe adding restrictive rules to it wouldn't make sense because the name doesn't imply restrictions further than just getting all of the allies themselves and then credits warping/skipping everything else. If we can just call it something like Any% All Allies and still add the restrictions of no credits warping/no map unlocks, i think it would be nice

We also discussed the benefits of making this route into a new category, which would be that it would be a new and interesting way to play the game(?), and maybe even be a shorter run than NCW currently is. NCW should also get faster with the glitch menu dungeon item strat.

If it were Any% All Allies, map unlocking would be banned as well as whatever "derivatives of credits warp" are, i agree that needs to be more clearly defined.

With the aforementioned things banned, we would still have to collect the atla in the first half of DBC for Xiao/Gaffer, the first half of Shipwreck and Sun and Moon for Ruby/Ungaga, and all atla in Moon Sea, so we still couldnt use 100 floor skip until Dark Heaven, since that the skip removes all atla. With the map unlocking banned we'd also still need to get those atla/allies to progress so unless i'm missing something, everything that could turn the run into a meme should be covered.

The only thing that im indifferent about is this -- with the glitched dungeon item strat allowed in NCW and most of the same glitch bans in place for this potentially new category, would the two categories be too similar? The main differences would be that you just totally ignore collecting and placing georama stuff and viewing events for the majority of the new category, compared to having to do the Town% rules in place like collecting/placing necessary atla and viewing necessary events. Personally I think it's different enough, but I'd like to know what you guys think

Banning unlocking is definitely required if doing all allies since just getting Osmond unlocks all prior allies as well. I think having a new category is fine since it'd show off a new, routed out glitch in a run,though I have no interest in doing it as I've had enough runs crash from broken daggers.

We have came to a conclusion of creating the new category under the name of "Any% All Allies" and have also updated the NCW rules. The difference of the categories is the ability to get quest items from the glitch menu, which would be used in All Allies. In NCW getting quest items via glitch menu is prohibited.

Gate keys are not considered as quest items but rather as dungeon items, so therefore getting them from glitch menu and even duping them is fine in both categories.

Changes have been now made but the case isn't fully closed yet, in case someone has their valid criticism.