Nice run, never knew about this glitch! GGWP

Hey Tom, sorry, I happened to drop off speedrunning a bit about the time you messaged! (moved house, new job, no access to PS2 etc) but as you might have seen, there's now 3 WRs held by another player and on emulator! I'm happy to see the competition, and I'd encourage putting up your PBs on the boards if you can be bothered, getting those Silvers and Bronzes when I was chasing down Shafter's times gave me motivation and a way to measyre progress, even on the toughest stages.

Hope you're good mate, and if you need to boost any character's defence, may I recommend normal difficulty, Siege of He Fei Castle (Wei) quite a quick one for getting a few +4s and +8s!

Hi Tom, I'm not a mod but pretty sure as long as the emulator is running the game at normal speed it should be all good. I think some individual stage times on the board are on emulators here and there.

Good luck grinding! Getting good rolls by playing Wu Zhang on Hard is tough but could be decisive! Definitely recommend getting the golden saddle!

Looking forward to seeing some new times on the board :) Hodge

Yeah I think DBcade is right, the in game timer stops when cutscenes are playing. But the interruption of cutscenes in the middle of a fight can be really annoying, so I turn them off.

Hi Aphrah Ashe, welcome! Looking forward to seeing your runs on the board :) Shafter is definitely right that there are vulnerable times on the ILS board. My advice would be don't start with Tong Gate Allies or Surprise Attack (Liu Biao's forces) because those are one's I remember having to grind like crazy to get ;)

What I am very sure of is that there is some sort of adaptive/progressive difficulty scaling in this game. What I'm less sure of is how it works. I think that each stage has a difficulty rating (hidden in this game, in later DW games stages got a rating out of 5 for difficulty if I recall). In Musou mode there's a further difficulty variable based on how far into a character's story you have progressed.

For an illustration of what I'm trying to say, Chang Ban is generally an easier level than Wu Zhang Plains whatever settings you play on in free mode. However, if Chang Ban is a Shu Officer's first Musou mode stage (eg Zhao Yun) then the boss will be a lot easier to defeat than if you were to encounter Chang Ban at Stage 4 of Musou mode (can't remember if any Shu officers actually have stage 4 Chang Ban, but the point stands!) This is mostly clearly demonstrated if you run the New Game Musou Mode category, which is a bit of a breeze until stage 3 getting harder and stage 4 being a desperate struggle not to get KO'd.

But there's potentially more adaptive difficulty/enemy stat scaling which Shafter was getting at. I'm really not sure how it works at all, but some weird stuff happens when you grind stats up beyond a certain point and combine with 4th weapons. Cao Cao with 4th weapon, basic attack maxed and with +15 tiger amulet often feels underpowered when I'm running tougher stages. My theory was that I had increased his attack beyond the maximum and it had rolled over to +1 for a while. I'm not so sure of that now. I think Shafter's theory that higher HP = higher enemy stats could be right, or it could be higher attack = higher defence.

For this reason I have kept Xiao Qiao's stats fairly low, I think I gave her the benefit of a normal mode Musou run for a bit of buff. The thing is, she seems to do much more damage with basic attacks than a lot of the fully maxed characters I have. Not sure if I'm imagining it or reading the game wrong, but it works so I'll keep it that way!

Most of my characters have max attack and defence, but pretty standard HP and Musou which is mostly because when I was younger and originally playing this save I was too lazy to grind those stats. DW2 spoiled me with the easily exploitable Dong Zhuo's forces Hu Lao Gate where you could increase HP/Musou Max by 40+ at a time! I do have Nu Wa pretty much maxed, which was to try a musou spam strat that worked on a couple of stages.

Add me on Discord if you like, there's a pretty active DW speedrunning server where others might have better answers: Hodge#4323

Yeah dude, Tong Gate is short but hard as nails whichever side you play as. I think Ma Chao and Ma Dai get powered up to almost Lu Bu level!

I would be interested in attempting a short campaign no autobattle run.

Thanks @DBcade for setting out the rules for the New Game Musou Mode, I think you've done a great job with those :)

Congratulations @Jon_oh on the WR for New Game Musou! Didn't think it was possible to do it that way, seriously impressive record man.

I had a check just now, and at the start of the run before beginning the first stage, the runner should select equipment and show that they are Class 16 and have 0 points (there may be one or two exceptions to this eg Cao Cao has some points and a higher level as standard I think, but as he has a 10 stage musou that probably won't be a big problem). If there are points on the board beyond default (0 for most characters and ending in an even X000 for exceptions) then the run should be disqualified from New Game category and considered for Musou Mode Any% instead. That should theoretically keep an even playing field, as it will also show if the player has any items/weapons that someone starting a new game wouldn't have.

Tong gate definitely would be very efficient, and one of the reasons I was thinking about unlockable characters like Ma Chao. There's a lot of variability in levels for all characters, the only guarantee is two 30 minute stages and five 90 minute stages per character. In my experience one of the big considerations is where the 30 minute stages fall, to increase chance of receiving second and possible third weapons.

Today I learned that the European version of the game doesn't have character unlock cheats (unlike US and Japanese versions) so I suppose I'll be stuck with the default roster, possibly expanded to 15 if I can find my DW2 memory card...

Hey Jon_oh, I've been practising it with no save data, using only weapons and items unlocked on the run, and playing without memory card so nothing is stored after the run ends (either by game over or completing), so every run is literally like a first playthrough. Kind of like DBcade's new game run of Dynasty Warriors 2. Hoping to submit a run this week!

I was thinking about how a run could be done with an unlocked character. I reckon you could use character unlock cheats to get them on a no save data file and then complete a run from scratch that way, although I've been experimenting exclusively with the default 9.

Yes I think you are right, the time does show when you get defeated. Cool I will consider that, and maybe focus on getting clean no KO runs down first. Managed to complete Guan Yu new game today without KO, but needs a lot of polish haha. I'm not expecting my capture card to arrive until October so there's plenty of time for practice ;)

Thanks very much for compiling the rules and categories, it is so useful for people like me who are new! Hoping that if we get a few people running it we could get a bit of friendly competition going :)

Hi everybody,

I'm new to speedrunning and have been playing around with this category, hoping to get a run to submit completed in the next month or so.

I have a question re Game over during the run. If I complete a stage, save progress and then get KO on the second stage, can I reload my save at stage 2 or would I need to start the run from stage 1? Would the failed stage time be counted in the run results? Or would it just be the successful stages?

Would be good to get some rules decided for this category, I think it has some potential!

Thanks very much for the help.

Hodge