Nice run, I saw that goblin skip ;)

Keep going for sub 1 hour!

I could do a bit more testing and see how frequently Sandals show up for different characters, if it's really about a 1/10 chance that's not too bad, but I'm a little skeptical based on experience. It's worth noting that a 2H sword (or hand-and-a-half sword) is only important for Eowyn's run; Aragorn should use two 1H swords instead. With that in mind, I'd say the best thing to reroll for would be a 2H sword for Eowyn and Sandals for every other character, provided a 2H sword isn't obnoxiously rare.

As for actual viability doing runs, it's hard to say whether it would be worthwhile. It certainly could be, and I don't want to deter people from trying this, just want to share my thoughts on it. There are a couple things to consider from a competitive runner's perspective, particularly when it comes to Sandals:

1. Sandals are a very common early game drop, so you'll often end up finding a pair somewhere in the first few screens of the game anyways and it's hard to say whether the time it takes to move to and attack all the barrels/stumps can be made up by the extra speed before you would have gotten Sandals anyways. I found Sandals relatively early in all of my WR runs for the New Game categories.

2. The entire game is very RNG-heavy, so resetting numerous times to find Sandals immediately will by no means guarantee that the run will end up better than if you didn't worry about the barrel drops at the start. You might be starting with 10% faster movement speed, but if you don't also find a strong weapon you'll have trouble killing enemies quickly.

Neither of those points apply the same way when considering a 2H weapon for Eowyn, however. If you find one of those at the start of the run it will dramatically reduce the time it takes you to get through the early areas of the game and will be useful throughout the entirety of the run as well. If resetting for a 2H weapon is viable (i.e. not a terrible chance), I would consider attempting that for runs, but I don't think I would reset for Sandals personally. Of course if anybody else wants to do so, I don't think it's really a bad idea at all, so you should go for it!

Editing the leaderboards for this game https://www.speedrun.com/lord_of_the_rings_the_two_towers_gba

I've added categories to replace the variable (NG / NG+) that existed before. The fact it was a variable lead to issues such as LiveSplit considering NG and NG+ to be essentially the same run, which they are very different.

I'm just wondering the best way to go about removing the variable after I've manually moved all NG+ runs to the new categories? I don't want to end up hiding or losing any of the runs, since at the moment they all have to be assigned to either NG/NG+ variable, and it won't exist anymore.

EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out. Removing the variable just left all the runs in place.

@Liv Done! Thank you.

I'd like to request to moderate https://www.speedrun.com/lord_of_the_rings_the_two_towers_gba

I will be making speedrunning tutorials for this game with the help of some other LotR speedrunners to try and boost activity, and the current moderator has not logged on in at least a year.