hmmm i can try to beeline to the exit with liu bei on the run. It's strange that wasn't part of the easy unlock all % run. When i did my practice run i only ran past the southern base. I didn't go all the way up the last little exit nub. I'll try that with Liu Bei next time.
I think you might be onto something with the peasants. Maybe it's peasant units that trigger it?
Chang Ban stage deff has some RNG attached to it, like some troops start the stage a bit foward or back. The gist is to kill all main enemy officers (ignore sub officers) to trigger events and clear/maintain checkpoints as fast as possible, i think u can ignore the enemy supply bases in the middle/north side BUT sometimes i get the feeling there is some internal timer/conditions that make that stage faster e.g. fail the fire attack.
Cao Cao spawns on the 2min mark after Liu Bei starts moving towards Liu Qi/ says the line "We're next! We must all live to fight another day"
I don't know about Guan Ping being the slowest on Chang Ban, i cleared that stage in ~8min on Chaos while all other characters +12min. He replaces Guan Yu and makes it so Liu Bei doesn't stop at the center and goes straight to southwest.
That stage went like this: My troops cap southwest defense base - rush to meet Liu Bei - Zhuge Liang trigger fire attack - kill sub-officer Liu Yan in the fire area (this one usually rushes the center where Liu Bei likes to chill and i think it's a condition to make Liu Bei move from northeast area to center) - cap the south defense base to stall southern enemy reinforcements - block Zhuge Liang so he doesn't follow Liu Bei to center area - Fire attack fail - Zhang Fei retreats from bridge - Liu Qi's unit arrived - Zhao Yun meets Liu Bei where Guan Yu usually spawns - wait and kill Cao Cao.
Now i don't know if it was due to RNG or there is an internal condition/timer or just because this is Guan Ping's 1st stage. I also cannot remember the reason why i decided to block Zhuge Liang's pathing, run was 1 year ago...
If u're playing as Liu Bei u have to defeat Cao Cao regardless so u can leave him in the middle of the map iirc. In that scenario Liu Bei's line changes to "The navy's here! All units, move to counterattack!" Cao spawns at the 30sec mark.
Now keep in mind that this was all in Chaos difficulty, it might be that other difficulties have different timers, conditions should be the same though.
I just got a 5:43:58 on Hard mode for Unlock all Characters (pending review)
2 player mode on easy seems like it would also be the strat.
Can we clarify in the category rules if easy mode means "at least" easy mode or if it means "only" easy mode? 4th Weapons can only be unlocked on hard mode. I could actually see it making a difference to play Ma Chao on Hard mode exclusively to get his 4th weapon, or even ducking out after stage 1 just to pick it up in free mode before replaying the stage in his mosou mode. I also compared the Battle of Liang Province between my run and Bibi's easy mode run, Hard Mode gives more experience. So there's potential to get all characters as fast as possible in an Any% fashion could actually mean swapping between difficulties.
That's a good question, and congrats on completing a run.
I've always found the difficulty categories to be a little silly, because obviously you would play on easy for the fastest run, and no one will ever run on normal, etc. I kinda lean toward easy being "at least easy" and treating it more like an any% run. Again, I'm not a mod though.
Just raising a ping here because it seems like a few of use have runs pending for about a month now. Totally get that this is not a priority, but just trying to get a ping in case we need new moderators. Not trying to rush at all!!
umihime hows it going for your run ? any good attempts. saw that you got the run congrats. yeah i did like 20 runs somethiing and i got a lu xun pb .
Hi shredmachine, congrats on the lu xun pb.
waiting on moderators to approve the pending runs before i continue my unlock all grinds. I got a sub 4:56 on easy and a 5:43 on hard. I think both can drop ~10 mins with a little more grinding. But i wanna make sure the methods i used to drop times are officially good before i continue grinding.
I actually think easy mode sub 4:30 is possible which would actually be hype if we can get. I free moded to get an early 4th weapon on ma chao which added like 6 mins or something but it ends up recovering half of it on ma chao alone over having heavy 3rd weapon. But a light 3rd weapon pickup on battle liang could be close enough - id be interested in grinding for it just to see if free mode could be skipped if your rng is just insane enough
I really wanna see what veteran runners think about the run, cause i probably am missing rages and spending too much time item searching or am not using p1 efficiently.
The potential for the route to be optimized feels endless
Sorry, I've been kind of getting my butt kicked by work and some ongoing health issues. I'm finally in a healthier place and off the daily Ibuprofen strats, so I'm going to try to knock out a little at a time on what is currently pending.
As for the rules clarification on getting a 4th weapon while on Easy in either Free Mode or Musou Mode: I don't see an issue with that as long as the start of the run is from a new file. The Character Unlock category is weird in that you aren't really locked into a difficulty throughout an entire run like most video games. Heck, if you wanted you could probably do all Chaos and submit it under Easy since that is only making it harder on you.
I would say no to the vice versa situation though. For example, I wouldn't accept a submission for Character Unlock Normal if any Musou modes were done on Easy. I'm on the fence if I would allow any work done on Easy in Free Mode either for Normal or higher (like getting Red Hare, etc.)
completly understand health issues , hope you get better soon. my father got a stroke last month so im also pretty beaten up mentaly . dont know if hes gonna recover etc.
im intrested in an default any % where no unlockable characters is allowed . intrested what characters people would pick. but think we need at least 10 active players or at least 5- 7 and we dont have that in the moment.
Ya no worries, mate - I hope you feel better. My condolences Shred.
I think in regards to last option: My vote would be to make the category rule "You must play every stage on at least X difficulty", but I wouldn't argue against a different ruling. You're essentially balancing the Any% mentality inherent in the overall category against the desire for the challenge inherent in restricting the game to Hard/Chaos. Not a super clearcut decision, although I think I'd lean toward the restriction.
As someone who is looking at the Hard Mode route, thankfully, I don't think we're in danger of an easy mode freemode being worth it it in terms of being optimal anyways (at least on Hard, can't say for Chaos). Since the three unique items are all picked up on mosou modes that are required to unlock characters anyways, it would be unlikely, especially for Green Scroll and Red Hare to be faster to unlock on easy and then replay on hard, than just playing through on Hard.
There's potential that doing a easy freemode HuangZhong's first level on easy mode could be ever so slightly faster than doing it on Hard Huang Zhong, saving and quitting like the current route. Mostly because Ma Chao starts in a slightly better location and would have 4th weapon and would already have red hare, so I could see a possibility for it to be faster doing it twice, but I think it's unlikely and I wouldn't try to route it myself even w/o the restriction. It just seems too slow to me.
Then there's the potential of doing a quick freemode for stats gains that is always bumping around in my mind. There are certain levels where we could potentially grab a lot of items and stats quite quickly (Guan Yu's escape comes to mind). No idea if the additional stats and items would be worth the timeloss though, I kind of doubt it though. Even the importance of tiger amulet seems to fall off, so spending time grabbing ~ +30 attack at the the cost of a whole level just seems slow.
I also went through all the items to look to see if there were potentials for any other unique items when I was routing, but the only useful ones seemed to be Demon Band and Way of Mosou. Way of Mosou I actually tried routing it in, just doing it on Huang Zhong's mosou mode but ended up dropping it out of the route for not really being worth it by the time you can actually grab it. And then Demon Band just comes way too late since CaoCao, SunJian and LiuBei all have to be completed it looks like. And then the orbs are all on Hard anyways.
In regards to any% no unlockables - I think the optimal character would be Huang Zhong. It's the only mosou mode where you unlock a horse in their first stage.
UmiHime if ur going the hard mode route u should check ITT (internal time trick). U grab a bodyguard with Item trait and u can get a desired item, outside the unique ones that require certain conditions, at the end of the stage. The main issue with this is u need to complete a 5* difficulty stage on Hard as fast as possible, usually Chi Bi on Alliance side. This trick is very usefull for ppl that want to min max their weapons on certain characters where the uniques don't provide any attack stat.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/925558-dynasty-warriors-5/faqs/37006
Ooooo so there are manips in this game.... I see some issues with this in a new save playthough though. The first is that the procedure says we need a character with at least 40,000 experience? Is that just to improve consistency in how fast it takes to defeat a level? It also says we already need a bodyguard with Hire, Item or Find. If these are requirements I don't think this particular table would be relevant to speedrunning Any%.
However, I wonder if we can manip items picked up in a map but just have to spend some time mapping which items correlate with which times? Do we know if the RNG is only advancing at the end of levels? If so, this could lead to time saves on both Hard and Easy.
If we can somehow manip Battle of Liang to always give us a 3rd stage, light weapon, we might be able to skip getting the fourth weapon and save a few minutes on Easy mode, or make getting a 4th stage weapon easier on hard mode. And then maybe we can manip Battle of Tong Gate to always give us a decent (even if not level 20) tiger amulet. Assuming this manip could consistently work for in game pickups (and we just have to map out the times). Idr if the last level of Ma Chao's mosou mode is 5star difficulty, but I don't know if it would be worth waiting to get tiger amulet even if that was the case. I think it'd be better just to have tiger amulet ASAP, even a level 10 tiger amulet I think would be enough to be a huge improvement.
Do we know if this only works for Item/Find/Hire (the method, not the table)? Do we know what advances RNG for items picked up in battle? And do we know if experience of the character has any impact at all on the pickups? The thing I am confused about - is the guide says luck gives better items - but if this method is maniped by time alone, maybe Item/Find/Hire is treated completely differently than items picked up in the stage. I'm also curious if the length of time it takes to start a level or finish a level impacts this at all. Even on the second playthough, Tong Gate is not the most consistent level to finish at a specific time due to depth of field issues, but I'd obviously rather pick up an item then instead of waiting for Yi Ling (which is more consistent, but is one stage later). I think in theory it would make sense to try and manip both - one for Tiger Amulet, one for Horned Helm.
I am not sure about the 40k requirement. Bodyguards with hire/item/find are indeed a requirement reason why is it saves time detouring to get weapon/item crates as the manip is greatly influenced by how fast u complete a stage.
I don't think character experience influences item lvls. Luck stat, stage difficulty + overall difficulty does. E.g: On Free Mode Chi Bi allied forces is a 5* stage difficulty where u can pick from easy to chaos, the higher the difficulty the better item/weapons (might be the same between hard/chaos, not sure). The method is maniped by time/ stage difficulty and how fast u complete the stage (if too slow u wont get what u aiming for), outside of bodyguards wich u can farm on Easy everything else needs to be done on Hard.
Keep in mind one thing, Free Mode stages have set difficulties e.g: Chi Bi allied forces will always be a 5* stage BUT while running Musou Mode lets say the 3rd stage of a character is Chi Bi allied forces that stage will be treated as a 3* stage. Most characters in this game run 5 stage Musou campaigns, each stage 1* higher than the other.
On new save file i can deff see the problems: character overall attack to kill the main officer at a 5* hard difficulty stage (overall lvl stats + weapon/items equipped) , bodyguard with correct trait (u can manip this easily by advancing a stage where the bodyguard lvls up and if u dont get the correct trait, restart without saving and repeat), need Red Hare (must).
How bodyguard lvl up works: https://dynastywarriors.neoseeker.com/wiki/Bodyguards_DW5
oooof that's super unfortunate. If you make it to redhare w/o tiger amulet, you should just cut your losses on tiger amulet. Honestly, I wanna say at least a third of the time saved from Tiger amulet occurs during Ma Chao's Mosou Mode. After Ling Tong, 20 attack is really only the difference of one extra attack here or there. This is really useful info though, I am going to update my notes to remind me to keep an eye out for whether the BG gets that 1/8 chance of getting an ability during Battle of Yi Ling. Because it would definitely be worth not dropping him until after Ling Tong (rn i drop him after Ma Chao). I was actually planning on just skipping all but the extremely easy item boxes all together after Ling Tong or Xiahou Dun, tiger amulet or not. I haven't pinpointed exactly when it makes sense to stop trying, but it seems to be pretty early in the run.
I do kinda wanna investigate what it would take to RNG manip picked up weapons, just because a good weapon is maybe a 2-3 minute difference on Battle of Tong Gate (and given how easy tong gate can just fall, would really help runs actually finish), but it sounds like it'll take a lot of research. We might need to TAS Battle of Liang to get more insight to what factors we need to control for. I hope it's separate seed from animations or ai behavior, but it's possible it is if it is different than the ITT trick. Friday I plan on running a couple tests to at least try and find out when the item is determined. Like if it's determined at item pickup or at the end of a fight, maybe we can interim out and reset the clock and get a consistent outcome.
Also, in DW5, are stat drops sometimes doubled? Or is it fixed? I seem to remember if you killed an officer during an 8x juggle, they drop double stats (max 8) but i can't remember if that was this game or an earlier DW game. I want to mark out all the stat drops we get so I can route out which ones not to wait on. RN I just have it marked whether they drop +attacks period.
This game does have the double stat based off juggle/combo. The required combo is dependent on whether they would regularly drop a x1/x2/x4/x8/x16 though
Wait, they can drop +16?!
Do we know how much juggling is required for each?
Nvm, I found it in a forum somewhere. I'll have to verify it later if no one else has.
- normally +1 killed with an 8-hit combo drops +2
- normally +2 killed with an 16-hit combo drops +4
- normally +4 killed with an 24-hit combo drops +8
- normally +8 killed with an 32-hit combo drops +8
I think sometimes buffs are dropped in pre-determined locations (I noticed I consistently get a mosou full for 10 seconds on Battle of Jie Ting near Sima Yi and Xu Huang so you can use it to also kill the optional Xu Huang while also killing the required Sima Yi you can get an extra +8 w/o much time-loss). I'm gonna have to do a slow playthrough to check if there are any more of these predetermined Mousu Full for 10 seconds near +4 generals, especially early in the run.
Items on crates or soldiers are predetermined on each difficulty, attck/defense is a 50/50 (not 100% sure). But when it comes to Rage token and musou 10sec is always there
I did some testing on the RNG manip. I was able to verify that items and weapons are determined at time of pickup. So if you interim before picking up, they are re-rolled each scum and if you interim after pickup it stays the same. I also verified it does not matter when the crate is open, so you can pre-open crates. The place where save scumming weapons/items would probably be the most viable would definitely be Battle of Liang. I could see a strat where you wait to open the crates until after you almost defeat Dong Zhuo, then Interim before picking up the weapon. But honestly with the load times of resetting it might just be better to just reset the whole run if you're fishing for 5:25.
I tried to see if I could abuse ITT to get the same item over and over if I Interim before picking up the item over and over again (with the hope it was the same item, which would suggest maniping would be at least possible). I think there might be something to this, as I got the same 3 items with the same stats multiple times, but it might be too sensitive for human players to hit consistently or there might be some factor effecting it that I haven't been able to account for. Or my luck might have just been insane getting the same 3 items. It's hard to tell. We'll probably need to TAS to see if this is even theoretically possible.
Also the juggling amounts seem to be correct.
