No that sounds about right if u got the same item 3x times. On the accounts u didnt, u might have taken a couple extra seconds to complete the stage wich would jump u to the next time window and influence the final result on the item/weapon

So I don't think the time it takes to complete a stage has any impact on the weapons or items you picked up in the field like it does for the BG ITT trick. I tested this on Battle of Liang Province which has two items and a weapon. I Interimed after picking up the first solo item crate and weapon and pre-broke the second item crate to give me as much consistency on pickup after loading the interim as possible before picking up the second item. The item and weapon I picked up before Interim saving never changed once but the second item after did.

I suppose it's possible that for some reason the game's interim save process itself generates the item rolls and saves the results. It'd be difficult for a human to test that on console directly. I can say Interiming multiple times does not change items and weapons that were already picked up. But I think it's more likely that the item is just generated when you pickup the item in field. There might be some variation with when I picked it up, which is the hard thing to actually control for given the time it takes to load the game, get into the continue menu and collect the item.

We could test this on emulator though very easily. We would just need to pickup and item and then save state instead of interim saving. Then if we beat the level multiple times without the item changing, it's safe to say it is definitely rolled for on pickup, whereas if it does change it is safe to say it is rolled for while Interim saving. That actually would be useful information to know for sure.

I will say it's rolled on pickup based on ur internal machine time, follows the same logic as ITT. And if the item post save changed this means that ur internal clock keeps getting ahead/ went to the next time window.

So what i did is reset the internal clock to the same time before I loaded each attempt. So my thought is it is probably based on ITT at time of pickup, but either the window you have to pick it up are shorter (the window being two seconds or less) or there are other calls to RNG that are made in that time frame that are a little different each time. Like I could see there being calls to RNG during loading to determine the exact placement of troops loaded in or to determine ai behavior.

We'd need to have frame perfect control over loading times and and input timings to fully know which of the two it is. But I can say for sure that the ITT trick does not have the same consistency on field item pickups as it does with the BG trick.

Regarding the earlier topic of BGs and ITT and potential for just having ITEM to save time picking up items - I found out that the ITEM ability is apparently impossible to unlock at level 3 BodyGuard. It apparently only has a chance of unlocking at higher levels. sadge.

I was looking into Unlock All Characters % - Chaos mode and I suddenly realized it's impossible. Like per the rules of the category it's impossible, not like it's too hard. The game requires you to beat Lu Bu's Mosou mode to unlock Chaos mode.

I don't know of a way that we could tailor rules for the category in a way that would allow for that challenge while giving everyone an equal start for Chaos mode.

You can't give an equal start on Chaos, it would need to be smth like clear Lu Bu musou and then switch the rest of the run to Chaos. Even if u unlock the difficulty or had it available from a fresh file it is designed for end game/grinded characters and also doesn't allow OOB since interim save is disabled during musou mode.

Ya, the issue with that is that there is too great an incentive to play more of the game before the difficulty is increased. As good as the redhare is, it would end up being fastest to just do Lu Bu at the very end. Even if we force the least number of stages played to unlock, there would be an incentive to grind those levels on Hard.

I did test, and if you load from Xtreme legends it does unlock chaos mode, but it also unlocks every character. But it does leave items and XP at none. So I mean in theory we could just require beating all the same mosou modes on Chaos Mode you would have to on Hard mode. But then of course you are running on Xtreme Legends. Not really sure how much of the game changes. Also not sure at that point if it's better to have it under the Xtreme Legends leaderboard.

Alternatively, if we want to embrace the idea it's end game content, we could allow prep grinding on Hard mode but still require the same list of mosou modes to be totally completed on Chaos mode and require all Hard Mode grinding to be part of the overall time.

There's a small part of me that does kinda want to try it though. I'm not even sure I can do it all from Chaos, but there's gotta be some cheesy ways to grind fully on Chaos to make the game beatable. But for certain if the rules allowed it, grinding on hard mode would likely be faster.

For context, here's a list of all the mosou modes that need to be completed to unlock all characters.

• Huang Zhong
• Ma Chao
• Zhuge Liang
• Guan Yu
• Liu Bei
• Ling Tong
• Sun Quan
• Sun Ce
• Zhou Yun
• Sun Jian
• Xiahou Dun
• Cao Pi
• Pang De
• Any other 4th Wei Officer that isn't Cao Cao (currently Xu Huang is routed)
• Cao Cao
• Lu Bu
• Diao Chan
• Meng Huo

Updating Unlock All Characters category description for Start/End Time as there is no clarification in there and the two previous VODs on the board before Umi's are no longer available to confirm. I updated your time to match this new clarification Umi.

Time Starts on selecting "Start" on the first character level's Preparation Map Time Ends upon seeing Zuo Ci unlocked message

SRC is exploding and keeps giving me 503 errors so I'll try to get back and keep knocking these out when I can.

I love the time change! I just wanted to point out a potentially unintended consequence of the timing change in case it's relevant. After deleting your save when you start up the game for the first time, you can create a new save when you're doing all your menuing to turn off rumble and events. Under the previous timing rules (which were a bit vague) there was no benefit to saving until your OOBs with Huang Zhong.

But the first time you save the game it takes significantly longer, so saving before time starts saves you like idk i didn't time it but like 10 seconds or something when you do your first OOBs on Huang Zhong's first stage. Just wanted to mention it somewhere as I will be saving when I turn off events and rumble and stuff in future runs unless someone says not to.

Also wanted to revisit chaos mode. Chat's been asking for it. It's impossible to unlock all characters on Chaos mode.

I'd be open to:

1. Use XtremeLegend to unlock Chaos Mode and then require all mosou modes that would normally be required to unlock all characters be beaten totally on chaos mode.

2. Allow RTA grinding, but then still require all mosou modes that would normally be required to unlock all characters be beaten totally on chaos mode.

3. Just removing the chaos portion of the category since this is impossible to do.

I think 2 would be the easiest, but would necessitate you going back and replaying up to 4 mosou modes again on Chaos that you are already required to beat just to unlock chaos mode. Option 1 would be harder, but it's also essentially a different game altogether.

Interestingly, either let's you deviate from the Easy-Hard routes by a ton. Option 2 grinding means there are some stages that are better than others to grind out apart from just trying to get to Chaos as fast as possible, there are probably some high value stages to earn stats and stuff. Option 1 let's you pick whatever character you want to as a main. Like Lu Bu, or even make a custom character. But maybe it would fit better as an extended category for xtremelegends leaderboard?

Idk, I'm curious about people's thoughts. These two ways of doing it are so vastly different I kinda don't want to route it until we decide on one.