ok

To clarify something first, there's 3 different versions of this game. NTSC-U (North Americian), NTSC-J (Japanese), and EUR (European). Each being slightly different than each other.

1. There's a trick that's only available in the JP and EUR versions that skips 2/3 of a dungeon and the need for the Boss Key. As for the not wanting to spend too much money on a JP cart, they're usually fairy inexpensive being at around $25-$30 normally.

2. There's #tmc on the speedrunslive irc, or the TMC discord. Just ask quo or FalcoEagle for an invite to the discord

I know older versions of LiveSplit had an autosplitter for TMC that worked with VBA, doesn't seem to be in the current version though