Hey Zimmy, or anyone else, I just had some questions for this game. I have been thinking of picking it up as a speed run potentially, but I also noticed the game is getting a re-release in about a week, so I have been holding off until the newer release drops.

However, I was curious if there was notes for the run, (if not that's ok, things may change, and/or I can just watch the run and make my own) and also I did skip around the vod a few times and noticed you spend a little over an hour farming and creating items, and was wondering if this is really needed? I notice this game requires elements to use certain abilities, so I assume you seem to use fire based attacks in the late/end game.

Does not doing the farm simply make it slower? Is the trade off better to not farm, even if fights take longer, would it still be faster than doing the farm to make them faster?

Or is it more of a risk you will die, and enemies are too hard at the point?

All in all I hope new life comes into this game, I noticed some negative reviews around it, and I hope people look into it more with the re-release, thanks!

I'm fairly certain I know enough about the game and the run to answer your questions, but keep in mind I never actually got around to running this game. It's important right of the bat to note that Zimmy's run uses a glitch/bug that is only found in the very first release on the xbox version of the game. This bug allows you to stack up stats as much as you want, and it is what makes the run as short as it is. This is the main reason I never got around to running it, without the glitch/bug the run will be substantially longer. The bug was fixed before the release on steam so there is no way to down-patch either, I looked into that.

As far as the farming goes, there is a part of the main story that requires a certain type of ammo. This ammo can only be obtained by farming, and it is the highest tier. You're only ever given the lowest tier of seed, and you essentially need to level up the plant. That's why it takes an hour, and there is no way around it really. The best option is probably to combine the farm grind with the level grind in some way. So while you wait for the plant to grow you go do a couple of battles. Never got far enough to start routing, so I have no idea how well that would actually work.

Safe to say a run on the current version, not to mention the re-release, will be very much different to Zimmy's run. You will need much more focus on grinding for levels, and the farm grind is probably not going to take up much time in comparison. Of course I have no idea what the re-release is going to be like, so I might be entirely wrong. Would be very interested to see a run of it though, even if I don't have the time to do it myself. So the best of luck to you ^^

Got Earthlock to 3:27:10 now. Glitch and skipless. The new version made it a lot better and the Taika abuse discovery really makes it a super fun, super high risk/reward run. Y'all should check it out if you're interested!