A very interesting run, most notable for having ZERO random Guiding Wand drops for the entire run, but still managing to keep pace thanks to "Swolepin"; a Chespin fed 6 Proteins. It's pretty uncommon to get that many Proteins in one run, and normally it might not be worth it to use that many when a lot of dungeons are coming up after Lively Town that benefit greatly from Guiding Wand spam. However, it definitely saved this run because I had to rely on a lot more split-up strats than normal, and Chespin was absolutely mowing down enemies with little to no trouble with all that extra Attack. Although, it did make the Dark Matter 2 fight pretty awkward, as each phase became a damage range for 2 OR 3 hits, breaking the strat and forcing some last-second improv. We actually needed even more Protein.

This is also the first WR to use Attack Looplet manip, Sylveon manip, and Iron Spikes. While technically the manips are slower than just randomly pulling Attack Looplet on the first shop and getting natural 2F Sylveon, they certainly helped a lot for consistency on the grind. The only big earlygame RNG check left was School Forest, and that alone forced a ton of resets, so I'm glad I didn't have to deal with more layered on top of that. Iron Spikes, however, for sure save time by granting strong allies some ranged attacks.

This run's pace never seemed particularly strong and I just barely kept it going most of the way for curiosity's sake, but I'm very glad it worked out and I got to reclaim the WR that I started speedrunning with, all owed to the burst of motivation I got from the huge PB on the 10th anniversary race.