The box number goes down regardless when someone uses a box. If you have 4 boxes and Aika uses one, it's going to show as 3 in the inventory when Drachma uses one whether it actually breaks when she uses it or not. That does not indicate that the box will break. That's just normal since you cannot use more boxes than you actually have. If you have 1 box left it wouldn't make sense that both Aika and Drachma could use that box. Box breaking is just RNG. No way to tell until the turns plays out.

Update to this after 2 years. The reason for the 4 Giant Monsters respawning has been determined thanks to Noseguy. We thank you for this! I'm just going to quote them below since they explain it better than I can probably lol

Quoted from Noseguy: "GIANT MONSTER RESPAWN GLITCH SOLVED

-If you run from a ship battle, it will set bit 1099, ShipBattleEscape. ShipBattleEscape’s value will persist – even through saving & loading. From what I’ve seen, ShipBattleEscape’s value will only reset after winning a Giant Monster ship battle, winning other ship battles will not reset it. This means if you run from a ship battle at any point in time, the next Giant Monster you face will respawn.

-Hundo runners would almost never run from a ship battle, which is why the glitch used to be so rare. Now that we know that the Number of Optional Ship Battles can be quickly increased by running & bridgehopping though, the glitch is a concern again.

-For Maario’s hundo run today, running from a sequence of Pyrynn Black Pirate fights (ending at 7 hours 28 minutes) caused Giant Looper to respawn after defeating it (at 15 hours 7 minutes) – ShipBattleEscape’s value persisted for nearly 8 hours from before Esparanza through past Yeligar, nothing in between reset its value.

-So, there are three main options for hundo routing then:

A) Defeat any ship battles before Giant Monsters normally, escape & bridgehop only from ship battles afterwards. B ) Save all 8 optional ship battles until all four Giant Monsters have been defeated, so that you can escape & bridgehop from all of them. C) Pick a Giant Monster that you want to defeat twice. Before you fight it, escape & bridgehop for your 8 optional ship battles.

-For option C, it should be noted that in my testing only Roc and Giant Looper immediately respawned after a bridgehop, making them the fastest choices. For Roc you could get two Gold Bullion for 20k Gold, while facing Giant Looper twice gives you two Captain’s Stripes, Thermal Greases, and Hex Shells.

-Final consideration: This can also be exploited to dupe Giant Monster drops for as long as you’re willing to sacrifice time. Because ShipBattleEscape only resets after Giant Monster ship battles, you can alternate between escaping from an optional ship battle and defeating a Giant Monster to keep them respawning as long as you want. The fastest choice for this would be Roc, who is placed right next to the North Ocean Black Pirates. You could alternate between escaping the NOBP and defeating Roc 4 or 5 times to get a few Gold Bullions while boosting your Number of Optional Ship Battles, if the time-investment-to-Gold-output works out to be beneficial."

You can certainly run any category you can come up with if you're not able to do a full run. But a leader board will not be made for such categories. Any% and 100% are the main categories. If a shorter category were to be made, it would be to reach a specific part of the game. Like defeat The Lynx or something like that. But it's never been agreed upon what a good stopping point would be for such a category and interest hasn't really been expressed for it. So, feel free to run any category you want outside of the main ones. It doesn't have to be tracked by a leader board to be a category.

I should also add that you can do a segmented Any% run if you are not able to do it in one sitting. There is a segmented Any% category for such runs. It was made to allow the old SDA segmented run to be added to the site but anyone can submit a segmented Any% run there.

It was brought to the attention of the community that the menu after selecting New Game that asks if you want to enable or disable rumble can be skipped if you use a controller that does not support the rumble feature. The menu simply does not come up at all after selecting new game. In order to attempt to keep things fair between both, we have decided to remove that text option menu from timing. As such, the rule has been changed as follows: "The timer starts after the last text box on the menu that asks if you want to enable or disable rumble after you select new game from the title menu. Make the selection and start timer after clearing the final text box before the intro scene starts. If you use a controller that skips the rumble menu, then you simply start timer on selecting new game."

This rule change does not impact the current runs on the leader board as the time difference is negligible. Just keep it in mind for future runs. Now, please note the following: -There is a small loading difference in the opening cutscene starting between new game and clearing the final text box on the rumble menu. If this matters to you, I would suggest using a rumble controller because the loading is slightly faster from the rumble menu versus new game from the title menu. The reason for this is more than likely because the game has to unload more things from the title menu. -The differences have been looked at on GC and Wii courtesy of Pandora. It's less than a second of loading difference but results are below for those interested. In the end, it's been determined the loading difference is not significant enough to cause a problem because the game has too many RNG related factors for it to matter. If two runs happen to be close enough in time, they would certainly be looked at to determine if this loading made a difference. This would be on a case by case basis.

• On GC: last rumble text box loads 0.7 seconds faster than New game
• On Wii: last rumble text box loads 0.6 seconds faster than New game

If any questions regarding this rule change, you may ask in the Discord or respond to this forum post. Thank you for reading and your cooperation.

Up until this point there were no restrictions on which version of Dolphin could be used for runs. However, from this point forward Dolphin 5.0 stable is banned for all categories. No action is going to be taken against runs already on the leader board using this version. Just keep it in mind going forward.

You can use one of the beta versions of Dolphin. The most recent beta version has been a good suggested version to use. However, there are others that work. Version 5.0-11229 has been confirmed to work fine as well. If you're not sure please ask in the Discord. Also, if you're experiencing issues with lag or performance in general with another version please let us know so we can try to assist. The point of this rule change is to make things more fair between console and emulator so we want everyone to be competing on an even playing field. Thank you for your cooperation on this.

This is a disclaimer regarding the 100% category as an issue has been found after a runner was unable to obtain the three secrets. The issue is related to the four giant monster battles. They can re-spawn and the game may not count them as completed. Research is being conducted now to determine what is causing this as it has not impacted every single runner. At this point we believe it to be related to doing another trigger after beating the monster battle such as getting into an encounter or sleeping at an inn. Just be advised of this issue for now. More information to be posted later once we know for certain. You may also check the Discord as well for more info.

Update: The issue with the giant monsters is not yet entirely figured out. Specifically with the current route, Obispo has re-spawned for more than one runner now. We do not know why this is happening but are still researching it. Obispo is the last giant monster fought in the run. It would be in your best interest to save and reset after defeating him to confirm that he has not re-spawned or it's been suggested that entering and exiting the bridge of the Delphinus can also confirm this. If you have issues getting the three secrets to appear and you are sure you have done everything, please check Obispo first to make sure he has not re-spawned.

The Skies of Arcadia community now has its own Discord server. Please click the Discord link below or on the main page. https://discord.gg/wMnXkhu

Yo, we appreciate the comment~ We're still working to make the run even better. Support is always appreciated!

I would agree that Elcian should not be required for a 100% run. It has no bearing on anything really as far as achieving "100%". It's just an arbitrary thing. And for all the reasons that Kinsei mentioned it just seems not worth including. He's more like a super boss that you can bash your face against honestly lol

Like requiring that to me is like saying you have to fight one of every enemy in the game or something. The game doesn't have an item or monster compendium though. You could get way down in the weeds when defining 100% but for this game I think what Kinsei has defined works well enough. The game itself doesn't have an official percentage tracker. But I think getting Vyse the Legend plus all three secrets is basically 100% Just my two cents though.

The 2500 kills is entirely the problem with 100%. Trying to keep your swashbuckler rating high enough and not running away too much are big things that would have to be figured out for that run. On average in a normal Any% run you kill over 200 enemies but under 300. You can check this at Hamachou Island. That's just to give you an idea of things. That's of course with running away from most fights. Either way you can see what I mean. No question, you would have to grind at some point in the run to get the 2500 kills. This would make you OP as heck though.

Most of the other requirements are not too bad as far as routing them out. Some discoveries may be annoying but overall not too bad. Ryu-kan is the main worry with the crew members. Optimizing the optional boss fights you would have to fight would be a thing of course. But yes, you would pretty much need the strength of the moons to get through a 100% run of this game. I'm not too focused on 100% until I get a time I want in Any%. I'll look more into it after that. Plus my time is kind of limited too right now.

The Discord channel is within Yagamoth's channel. PM Yagamoth on Twitch and I'm sure he'll invite you.

TikaTika is totally worth it. I can say from experience. I'm trying to remember a torpedo that missed after he was recruited in my last run. Torpedoes are your main damage output in ship battles anyways (not counting Moonstone Cannon). You can stack them up and they cost little SP to use. So, it makes total sense to get TikaTika at this point.

You need a Daring rank to recruit Ryu-kan and you'll never even get close to that in an Any% run. I tested picking all the right choices. Totally not feasible. Not sure that it even matters now because of Captain's Hat so yeah. It would be nice but the final fights are much easier now anyways. Ryu-kan's shop on Crescent Isle is nice though.

I'll be interested to know what plot points the game doesn't care about and what inventory items are not necessary as well to beat the game.

I'd like to request to be added as a mod to http://www.speedrun.com/Skies_of_Arcadia_Legends I'm more involved with the game at present and know the current route being used. The only mod right now is not really active.

Well, with your run ngBurns it did make TikaTika look viable. Either that or it was incredible luck. It did seem to help your torpedoes hit their mark more. I'll give it a shot in my next run. Time to reclaim that record!

For anyone wondering, the new WR run gets the Captain's Hat from the Rupee bounty fight. This helps considerably with the early game bosses and just in general throughout the game. The only thing it doesn't help with is ship battles because only your raw attack stat matters there. But that's what the Paranta Seeds are for which we'll be able to buy more of by getting a few more discoveries.

It's not as if it hasn't been thought about but yeah. It's kind of crazy. It could be done just expect a long run. I think everyone is focused on getting Any% to a good point right now.

The Japanese version is actually not faster because it runs at a lower frame rate. The US version runs at the highest frame rate. As far as I know anyways.