Aand here's mine. I think they come in around the same, or close enough that It's all down to personal preference in the end. Once the run gets really optimised, then it'll matter more. As far as sloppiness goes, the first 90% of the stage is pretty lenient, with so much dialogue you can afford to take your time :)

And splits (Starting on Pressing X, ending on results): https://imgur.com/PLOiuuH

Yeah, the loads kind of skew things a little. The timer for full game RTA starts when you press X, so I gravitated towards that.

https://imgur.com/snY8rVG Using a stopwatch, I recorded a 9:01.2. That was from pressing Battle Start. Highlights (not seen here because I hate Windows 10) include Zoro deciding to fall to low hp for some bizarre reason, getting hit by phase 1 crocodile and whiffing on phase 3 because I attacked too early.

Aah, sorry. I completely misunderstood you. I started time upon pressing X after it finished loading. Apologies, I'll time a couple from Battle Start.

Will do. :)

Okay, video might be delayed because Windows 10 decided it wanted to update right now, of all times. I'll have the splits in about 10 minutes though

Edit: Yeah, laptop could take a while, but here’s some splits: https://imgur.com/a/8oA5J

One is the individual splits (please forgive the terrible naming), and the other is a series of level runs. (The red one is what happened when crocodile somehow took the damage but went ahead and used his super anyway. The one at the bottom is fujitora, I think. The rest are smoker)

That'd be really helpful, thanks ^_^ I'll film a smoker run for comparison :)

I used to use Ace, but my issue is that I use him in multiple stages, so I need a skill setup that will work across a variety of levels. My means of defeating crocodile with him was using his lv1 super which not only knocks Crocodile away, but generates the freeze-frame with the massive “DON!” sound effect. If there’s a better way with Ace, I’d love to hear it :)

My Ace skill setup is currently: .Warrior’s wisdom++ .Hero’s strength++ .Leadership++ .SSST enhancement++ .Battlefield charisma++ I could probably swap out battlefield charisma, since Ace doesn’t use kizuna rush. Possibly shipwright’s wisdom, because he really struggles to capture bases.

Smoker has a skill setup designed to maximise the damage of his R1 in a single level. It’s almost the same a Ace’s, but swaps out Warrior’s wisdom for R1 enchancement and Leader’s strength, and removes battlefield charisma in favour of Power to perceive one’s true form. His R1 keeps crocodile in place and immediately triggers his phase 3 power up animation/victory cutscene blackout the moment the hit connects.

There are a surprising amount of stages in which character move speed is irrelevant due to the amount of dialogue. I’m just trying to find where the largest timesaves are in these stages and find the right characters to exploit them.

Okay, so I was thinking about Alabasta, wondering if there was a faster way to complete it. Since the first 90% of it is on rails and it really doesn’t matter what character you use, it all comes down to crocodile. I wanted to find a character that would only be used in a single level so that I could equip the skill that lets you hit enemies in logia state, and would not need to use special attacks for damage. It also couldn’t be Zoro or sanji, since they both trigger a cutscene after defeating mr 1 and mr 2, respectively.

I went with Smoker because, oh boy. His SSST can one shot bosses, has great range, comes out quickly, and in some cases take an entire territory in one shot. His R1 comes out extremely fast, oneshots pirate captains and takes one of crocodile’s hp bars out. My Smoker is only lv55, so it didn’t quite get the last one, but even then, I still managed to gold split by a few seconds. At lv100 and/or the right skill setup, he might be a good pick.

When I’m timing individual level RTAs, I add about 30 seconds onto the final time, since that’s around the amount of time it takes to get from the end of one stage to fully loading the next. At least, that’s the time I recorded.

Thanks ^_^ I was shooting for the sub 4 hours, but I certainly wasn’t expecting that. I even shot past my sum of best splits at the time. As you say, next stop is 3:53:00. Hell, I lost 45 seconds on Drum Island alone because I didn’t kill Walpol fast enough. Had to sit through an entire conversation.

I can now safely say that I can recite the entire game dialogue from memory. Or at least everything up to and including Loguetown. I don’t even speak Japanese.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. If ever you need anything, I’m here :)

SUB 3:55:00 HYPE!!! https://splits.io/2g14

I have the video of it uploading as I type. Still no splits in video unfortunately, but I think it went rather well, mishaps aside. I think I choked on a couple of bosses, missing attacks and the like. I also triggered a lot of KO milestone messages, so that would have slowed the pace a little. Although now I know where they are, so perhaps they can be avoided.

I'm a little iffy about the morality of verifying my own runs, so if anyone wishes to dispute their validity, by all means do.

Best of luck :)

I just realised I didn’t even have leadership equipped to Fujitora because I was level grinding him, and I STILL made it faster. I’m sorry I ever doubted. ^_^

I’m going to record a no reset run today. Regardless of time, I’ve realised it’s a good idea to have something to reference. It’s easy to miss something when you’re playing that you might catch on watching it back. I think it’s also a good habit to not quit once it goes south, because you can better see where you claw back time.

I can’t remember when I started doing the Nami Escort instead, if there was a reason, it was probably the route I carried over from my NG runs. I’ve been meaning to practice the door route, I just wanted a consistent time on the Nami route to compare it to (totally not dodging the fact that I thought the Nami route was slightly faster).

Edit: Well, bugger. If I didn’t screw up the blueno fight, the gate route would’ve been a solid 30 or so seconds faster. Wow. I was way off mark.

Yeah, getting about 2 hours in only for the AI to decide "nope" is really disheartening.

Whenever I used Sanji on water 7, there was always one enemy that I missed, and then chopper/nami would spend the next few minutes chasing them. Play a stage enough, and you start finding ways to minimise the damage the AI can cause, be it through a flash of insight, or out of frustration.

I’ve been fiddling around with a few levels, namely ones where the character’s movement speed isn’t a factor (and there HAS to be a use for Fujitora’s insane crowd-clearing R1). I tried him on Water 7 and managed to sink my PB for the stage by a whole minute. He adds consistency to the escorts, which the run (and more specifically, my sanity) definitely needed. An uncharged R1 also conveniently takes out a whole slice of Blueno’s hp. Other stages I tried were Loguetown (I thought it was faster until I pulled off the exact same time with Ace straight afterwards), and Return to Sabaody (all fun and games until Pacifistas start juggling you and messing up your lock-on).

Also, in Water 7, leaving franky alone when he appears the second time doesn’t hinder chopper’s advance, and saves you having to beat him a third time.

In all honestly, Arlong Park baffles me. No matter what I do, Sanji always ends up at least 10 seconds slower than Usopp in RTA for me. Or for reasons unknown to me, I could be playing the level completely wrong :P

I used usopp because I'm fairly sure his mission at the start of the stage is faster than waiting for him to reach the switch as an AI. Flipside seemed pretty sure of it, at least. I don't think I tested the stage enough to get a definitive result, though. Against Arlong himself, I used a lv1 super as soon as you spawn into the arena, then his Unique action for the other two hp bars. Thankfully, Arlong doesn't have/use a hero power during the fight.

I've got all of the coins, it's just crew levels now.

I'll defer to you on that one. Ill look at different characters. Preferably ones that can take out sentomaru's last hp barrier in a single lv1 super :) in that case, I'll revisit along park, too. Maybe there's a faster non-Usopp route there.

Usopp isn’t bad, just... awkward. His unique action does a decent amount to enemies in the immediate surrounding. His attack strings are clunky and slow, however.

I should probably not jump to conclusions, I haven’t even levelled all relevant characters to max yet :/ nightmare log is such a slog, though. I’ll just take a day and do that. Shouldn’t take too long, right? sobs quietly I’m glad I don’t need to s rank it for platinum.

yeah, the run hits hard on the endurance front XD Although to me, it gets a lot more fun from Loguetown onwards. It might be the fact that out of all the stages, I've played the first 5 the most from the sheer volume of botched runs. And next to Arlong Park, anything is a step up XD.

I'm grinding out some of the later stages at the moment, and coming to the horrifying realisation that Usopp may, in fact, be the fastest character for 5-1. His SSSST flat-out pulverizes anything a mile in front of him. The only problem is Sentomaru, since with all of the pacifistas around, it's hard to get any combos in.

Also, i'm swapping out Sanji for Ace in Thriller Bark. Eliminating at least some of the Oars RNG with a lv2 super might not be faster, but it's sure as hell more consistent. And not risking missing Perona with a Kizuna finisher.

(Brief aside, it's just been confirmed that PW3 for the Switch is coming out in EU and NA in May. As if I needed any more reason to buy a switch :D)

My sum of best splits is at around 3hr56mins, but I'm making so many mistakes during every run that it's going to be difficult to reach that point.

I was recording a run, and then I lost it to the pacifistas in sabaody. Almost lured them, then they decided to jump all the way back. 2 minutes went by and I decided to cut the line there. I was almost a minute behind, too, so not much lost there. Attempt 2 after some lunch.

If you are able to record an RTA, that'd be great (or at least splits). I'm interested to see what you do differently, if anything :)

Thanks! I’ll try and record a run today, mostly to showcase how the route has “evolved” since my last recorded one. Hopefully this time I won’t whiff the SUPER skip, and one shot perona in thriller bark this time. Oars’ attack patterns can really waste time, too.

There’s a surprising amount of downtime during stages, waiting for dialogue to clear or for allies to reach destinations, so there’s definitely time to breathe.

I take it a full segmented run would use the combined IL times?

Full RTAs can be tiring, especially when during a lot of my runs, all the splits are red until Loguetown, but i’ve been using a different mobile run timer which shows gold splits and the sum of best splits, so seeing the potential is really motivating :)