During my no password grind, I took my time away from the usual any% route of entering in 10-20 passwords to appreciate the drop pool within the constraints of the player being forced to edit the deck from 815 to 757 DC (or lower) once before Bakura. Because your deck is subject to bricking massively, and because you're lacking resources compared to any% with passwords, suddenly a lot of cards you can gain in the slots become useful and outright improve your deck. This guide will be rather long, and will talk about my thought process behind my starting/editing the deck, what cards are worth ejecting.

Because my guide(s) are long, the Drop Guide will be a separate guide so that one is also easier to digest! The Drop Guide may be more useful, insightful and easier to follow for players looking to start playing no password any%.

This guide is based off my current any% no passwords of starting on the Yorkists side and editing the deck after Shadi. It is possible to edit your deck at any point between Tristan and Bakura, but waiting until after Shadi will allow you to potentially receive a second Dimensionhole before editing your deck. Because of this, it is also worth taking any good cards you see in the slots up until that point for you to modify your deck in order to increase your chances of playing into the second half of the game.

While it is true that taking extra time in the slots to gain cards loses you time, and also that a longer deck edit loses you time, it is possible that the addition of a card can mean the difference between a fast duel and a slow duel that costs you minutes. To contextualize, if you take an extra few seconds to add in one card, and it save you a full turn anywhere in the run, you outright gain time from having included that card.

Drawing your opening hand into a card that has 5SP or higher means you can not play it, which is quite a large problem. This means you will effectively open a hand of 4 cards or less, and continue to do so unless you conserve your SP which also slows you from cycling through your deck to potentially reach more useful cards. This becomes a problem across the run, but a good example is Grandpa where opening with a Great Mammoth means it is harder to get to your Dimensionhole, OR Blue-Eyed Silver Zombie/Shadow Ghoul combo. If you imagine a deck that has only 3 SP or less monsters, you would be able to draw through 5 cards every single turn. On the contrary, if you imagine a deck that consisted only of 5 SP or higher monsters, you would literally not be able to interact with a single card on your first turn.

My primary argument for not editing the deck until Shadi is of course, because if you edit the deck prior to him, and he drops a Dimensionhole, you will be forced to edit the deck a second time. You have to edit the deck once before Bakura, so editing it as late as possible means that the one deck edit you do, you will be able to add/remove cards based on what you have earned so far. If you consider having three Fake Traps and a Dancing Elf on most runs, and you remove Zanki, Skullbird, Gokibore, and any other monster in your deck with 4SP, and your deck cost will be much lower than 757. In this situation, one of these "Fake Traps" could be almost any useful card you obtain prior to the deck edit, which can outright improve your deck. Even a terrain changing card such as Root Water can be useful to get rid of Crush tiles that you can attack over, or Toon tiles so you can do more damage. Changing the terrain with a card such as this can also neutralize the opponents +500 advantage which allows you to attack over monsters easier on any given terrain that benefits the enemy and not your own monster (with the exception of using your Machine fusions).

This means that you can remove virtually any card and add any decent card you get across the run such as a Harpie Lady. As long as your deck cost is no higher than 757, it does not matter, however if you drop the deck cost substantially, you can also add some very strong cards you can obtain across the earlier duels that are useful in a speedrun such as Monster Reborn. Something else to consider with a deck cost 'buffer' removal option of taking out even one of your 4 SP monsters (which also has the benefit of you bricking less) is that you can add Power-Up (equip) cards instead of Fake Traps. These cards vary in usefulness, but for all intents and purposes, they are useful for everything that a Fake Trap does (zero SP, can be used for manip, do not lose you LP if the enemy attacks into, does not 'threaten' the enemy and force them to move away), but if drawn with a compatible card can grant you +500 damage. While the latter seems obvious when pointed out, if you consider you have deck cost to add these in instead of adding Fake Traps in your deck to replace higher cards you eject, these can mean the difference between your opponent being able to destroy your card and end your run. A prime example of this is opening with a Forest Fusion with an equip on Weevil. If you Add an Equip to Rose Spectre of Dunn on Weevil, he can not attack over it unless he plays two equips on his strongest Insect monster which is extremely unlikely compared to him just playing one Equip over his Kwagar Hercules or even a single equip on a Hunter Spider.

It is also worth writing here why I start on Yorkists in no passwords and why I think players should. a) Skullbird is VERY useful for Mai, and also good on Joey, and it is NOT good elsewhere. Zanki and Gokibore also are almost never useful in any situation (Gokibore isn't even a high enough attack to be fast on Weevil versus Forest Fusions) b) All of the first 6 duelists in Yorkists can drop you very good cards - even just having a Dancing Elf from Tea and a fake Trap already allows you to hit 757 deck cost and improves your deck (refer to the drop guide) c) If you start Lancastrians, you have to edit your deck before Necromancer anyways who is the one duelist that would consistently give you good drops. The only good duelist for drops otherwise is Rex who can potentially drop you Wasteland (provided you attack over it) and Mammoth Graveyard (provided either he dumps it to the graveyard, or you attack over it)

Starting Yorkists and collecting cards such as Dancing Elf, Kanan the Swordmistress, Harpie Lady, Monster Reborn, Kairyu-Shin, Roaring Ocean Snake, Baby Dragon, Dimensionhole, and a variety of useful equips, then editing your deck for the rest of the run is much much better than starting Red Rose and probably not getting anything.

While not all cards will save time over other 'lucky' draws, having your deck be more consistent will result in your duels overall being more consistent and fluid. This is why I usually would prioritize taking a few seconds to get certain drops from duelists, some more than others, and thinking about: a) Cards strong enough to carry duels on their own potentially b) Cards that improve your deck c) Cards that do not improve your deck

On the contrary, in your deck, there are definitely cards that honestly are not very good. While some of your higher deck cost/SP cards can be useful in certain situations, they also are subject to being drawn into while you have no Summoning Power to play them. This is one of the most notable differences in no passwords versus regular any%. Another thing is that where you have cards such as Witty Phantom that are useful enough to retain, replacing them with a lower SP, lower deck cost fiend, allows you to perform the same fusions. This isn't always the case though, as for example, Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast requires the Beast component of the fusion to have no less than 4 Summoning Points, meaning that if you replace a Lisark with a lower SP beast, you are less likely to perform this fusion. This means that some of your 'bricky' cards that lack damage may still potentially be useful to you, whereas others are best off ejecting.

So for this guide, I will discuss why I edit the deck when I do, talk about what cards you should look to eject for potential good drops (that will be covered in the Drop Guide), and also discuss reincarnation during a deck edit.

The main cards to consider ejecting before any others are specifically Skullbird, Zanki, and Gokibore. Skullbird and Zanki being removed and replaced with two cards that have 5 deck cost, will result in your deck cost being exactly 757. You always have the option to replace them both with Fake Traps, but its worth trying to get a Dancing Elf from Tea as one of these. Skullbird is a useful card where Mountain is, making it actually worth retaining for Mai and also useful on Joey, but otherwise this card does not accomplish much for you relative to how it takes up space in your hand and being difficult to play.

Zanki is probably even worse. at 32 deck cost, 5 SP for 1500 attack, pretty much the only time I like this card, is if you open with it and Dimensionhole on Mako as you can play it on Meadow, attack him for 3000 across two turns due to the movement boost on that specific tile. Apart from that, this card honestly sucks and its very very rare it does anything for you that any other 'half decent' card does for you. Even a Karbonala Warrior is better than it, and I literally NEVER would consider putting a Karbonala Warrior/Kojikocy in my deck. Gokibore also is a 1200 attack card that can not be used for any fusions and is strong only on Forest - a terrain which you don't have to deal with often, and when you do play on forest (Weevil primarily), you have Forest Fusions and you can also add in cards that make you more likely to draw into forest fusions, such as female cards. Any female card can be fused into an 1800+ fusion that is strong on forest or even other female fusions that are strong on other terrains.

My base deck edit advice would be to replace your Skullbird/Zanki with a Dancing Elf and Fake Trap (or two Fake Traps if you did not land them), and take out Gokibore for pretty much literally any decent usable card that has 26 deck cost or lower. Ideally you gain a Dimensionhole and remove Gokibore for it, but imo literally another Fake Trap or any equip, even one you're unlikely to ever use, is better. You will find that there are actually a handful of cards with 26 or lower deck cost that can replace Gokibore that will do more and also result in less bricking.

A quick note on removing another high DC/SP card is Great Mammoth of Goldfine. I actually remove this card, however there is an argument to keep it. It is still a very strong pairing if you open with it and a Dimensionhole. However when drawing into this card in a situation where it is not good, OR a situation where you are forced to play other monsters and cant get the SP for it, it can really cause problems. My main thought process behind removing it at the deck edit between Shadi and Grandpa is that it removes the possibility of opening with it on Grandpa in particular, which as you really need to cycle through your deck on Grandpa as fast as possible, it becomes a massive problem. I can say personally across my runs, while I did achieve World Record with it, I never ever missed the Great Mammoth during my other attempts, and not one time did I think "If only I had great mammoth of goldfine in my hand here". Imo, it is only a really good card if you draw into a Dimensionhole and Great Mammoth on something such as a Wasteland/Yami duel.

After this, it becomes important to assess your options of what to remove. Most cards with 3 SP or lower aren't worth replacing before 4 SP ones, because this way you can either replace your 4 SP cards with more useful 4 SP cards, OR replace your 4 SP cards with 3 SP or lower cards that do the same thing. Deck Cost is only really a problem if you cant get it low enough, but it DOES become a problem if you want to add a bunch of chunky cards back into the deck such as Harpie Lady, Kanan the Swordmistress etc as these do not drop your deck cost significantly. The only lower SP/DC cards I usually replace are Basic Insects and Kattapillar. These are low deck cost so they can only be replaced by low deck cost cards, but imo in almost 100% of runs you will not actually use these at all, and its better off having literally any equip card instead of Basic Insect, and even a Fake Trap or any 5 DC non-monster instead of Kattapillar.

I prefer to replace 4 SP monsters with lower SP/deck cost equivalents that do the same thing. I refer to these as 'Proxies'. You have three 4 SP Fiend monsters, two 4 SP Rock Monsters, and a few other cards with 4 SP: Lisark (Beast), Snakeyashi (Plant), Disk Magician (Machine), Dark Assailant (Zombie) and Lesser Dragon (Dragon).

Dark Assailant is not overly impressive, but for a zombie deck, it is still very useful for all of your Zombie Fusions. Primarily the difference between a one of the two materials of a zombie/plant fusion being 1000 or higher is that it always makes Pumpking. But even more importantly, Fusing a Warrior with a Zombie will make Zombie Warrior unless one of the components is 1200+, in which case it will make Armored Zombie. The extra 300 damage matters a lot, because in a situation where these monsters land successful direct attacks on Yami or Wasteland, Armored Zombie is a two hit kill whereas Zombie Warrior requires 3 attacks (or for you to just perform a 3rd attack with a different card, or the second attack with fusing something even stronger over the card, etc).

Lesser Dragon is similar - for a zombie deck, it is a way to bring out Dragon Zombie if you do not draw into it. This is actually a big difference maker as it is also a guaranteed two-tap when fused with any zombie on a duel where you attack directly twice on Yami/Wasteland. Even more so for a duel such as Bakura - you can NOT play dragons, but also if you open with Yami, due to his LP recovery leader ability, you want no less than a Dragon Zombie worth of attack on Yami to attack him twice. Lesser Dragon is also at the threshold to fuse with one of your rock monsters to make Stone D. This also is a fantastic option as you have either 2500 attack on Wasteland, which is a very meaningful and respectable threshold, or even just 2000 attack anywhere but toon which is 1/2 of your opponents Life Points, which comes in handy for all duels (apart from Bakura where you cannot play rocks).

Snakeyashi is a poor plant in the grand scheme of things, but plants themselves are very very useful fusion components. While 4 sp is bad, the threshold of 1000 attack means that it guarantees you a Pumpking when fused with any Zombie. Otherwise, SP is irrelevant with Plant fusions as even a Griggle from reincarnation does everything a Snakeyashi does EXCEPT guarantee Pumpking. And in a case where you have zombie + plant fusion attacking twice on Yami/Wasteland, Wood Remains with its flip effect is also two tap lethal. Consider your options when removing Snakeyashi. I personally sometimes remove it for a Griggle if i get one in reincarnation. You can take it or leave it.

Lisark is a similar case where other lower SP/deck cost beasts do everything that a Lisark does EXCEPT one particular interaction: When fusing Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast, you need the beast component to be no less than 4 SP (the Fiend does not matter). For all other purposes, if you get a lower SP beast at any point, even in reincarnation, you should consider replacing Lisark as this is one less 4 SP card you will draw into, and the other beast you draw into instead can still fuse to make all the other meaningful beast fusions, namely Nekogal #2 and Flower Wolf. It is also worth mentioning that you can still fuse into Flower Wolf into a Fiend to make Chimera anyways, but this card is only usually relevant in the Weevil duel or other situations where you just need 2100 damage. Nekogal #2 is a card you're likely to play in a no password speedrun as you usually add a Dancing Elf into your deck and it is also useful in every situation that Chimera is (with marginally lower damage), so ejecting Lisark before other cards is up to you. However, if you reincarnate and receive a low SP beast such as Burglar or even Milus Radiant, consider swapping Lisark out for one of those to reduce your chances of bricking.

Disk Magician is only really useful for attacking 1850 on Wasteland or fusing into Machine Fusions which deal 2k+ on Wasteland. You can fuse a Machine monster into a Dragon, Beast or Warrior to make Metal Dragon (1850 attack wind), Cyber Saurus (1800 attack earth), Dice Armadillo (1650 attack earth) or Cyber Soldier (1500 attack dark) respectively, which are all three taps on Wasteland. Apart from this, it has very little use, and also consider that for the Metal Dragon and Cyber Saurus fusions, your deck only includes one each card that can fuse with it to make those. Disk Magician is very poor on any duel that doesnt allow you to attack onto wasteland, and so I usually eject this in place of any card that is more useful. Please remember that you can actually create all these fusions with your Cyber Stein if you eject Disk Magician, and also consider that with the exception of the Beast+Machine fusion, all the other fusion components opposite the Machine in this paragraph also fuse into Zombies which are strong Wasteland in addition to Yami. (**Dinosaurs do not fuse into Zombies, but your only dinosaur is Mammoth Graveyard, which creates Great Mammoth of Goldfine when fused with a Zombie)

Your two 4 SP rock monsters are Stone Ghost, and Statue of Easter Island. Because rocks fuse with zombies into Stone Ghost, you must be careful to not chain queue a Statue of Easter Island with any Zombie if you plan on ending with a meaningful Zombie fusion. Otherwise, these two cards effectively are the same apart from one having 100 more attack if you actually use them to attack. The fusions you will make with a rock will be Stone D. (Rock combined with 1200+ attack Dragon), Mystical Sand (Rock combined with 4 SP Female), and the not-so-useful Minomushi Warrior (Rock combined with Warrior). Stone D. is generally only achievable with Lesser Dragon, however, most of the Dragon drops you will receive meet the threshold to make Stone D. Mystical Sand requires a 4 SP or higher Female card, so unless you include more female cards, the only possible way to make Mystical Sand in the base deck is by fusing a plant with a fiend to make Rose Spectre of Dunn then fused into a Rock monster. Because it may be rare to draw into Rock fusions where it matters, you may want to consider removing rocks. You absolutely should remove the Statue before the Stone Ghost if you were to remove one. A lot of runs, I eject Statue due to it being higher deck cost and also it removes the possibility of you ever accidentally fusing into Stone Ghost when you dont intend to. Because Rock Monsters are never the threshold in their fusions, it is heavily recommended that you replace either of these cards with a low SP/DC Rock Monster if you ever reincarnate into one, such as Haniwa. It is also worth mentioning that if you include 4 SP females into your deck, they fuse into Mystical Sand without needing to chain fuse something like a Plant + Female + Rock or Beast + Female + Rock to make it. This comes in handy if you come across 4 SP female cards that have versatility to them, and is relevant as these are some of the best early cards.

Now the three 4 SP fiends it gets a bit more complex. You have Trial of Nightmare, Crass Clown and Witty Phantom, with attack values of 1300/1350/1400 respectively. Fiends in particular are strong on Yami (which you have), are not reduced unless on Forest, and if you ARE on Forest, they fuse into a plant to make Rose Spectre of Dunn which is one of your best Forest fusions (for Weevil in particular) and also can fuse into a Rock to make Mystical Sand if on Wasteland. Fiends also fuse into 4 SP+ beasts to make Chimera. They are versatile, but having three 4 SP fiends is unnecessary - the main reason why, is that NONE of the fiend fusions require the Fiends to have any specific values!!! With the exception of Crass Clown's versatility fusing into Clown Zombie, these fiends can be replaced with literally any lower DC/SP Fiend cards and still have all the same usefulness with the exception of their attack values. Crass Clown and Witty Phantom are good for duels on Crush as they can contribute to a 3 tap instead of 4, but the duel where this matters the most is MFL Skull Knight, which weakens your Fiends by 500 anyways. Another duel where this is relevant is Yugi, as if you try to lead with a fiend and end up in a Scenario where you have your Fiend on Crush and try to attack him from there or move it onto Meadow, any strategy, it is outright worse than any other monster you could play that has an attack value between 900-1450. These are things to consider. I personally usually replace Trial of Nightmare with almost anything as you still have your two most useful fiends. If you also want to, you can replace Witty Phantom, before Crass Clown as Crass Clown has the Clown Zombie utility (allows you to equip Violet Crystal onto 1350 which makes it strong on wasteland also, and that combo means you have 2350 on Wasteland/Yami instead of 1350/1850 on Crass Clown with no equip). Replacing these with any lower SP/DC fiends just allows you to do all the fusions but your deck is less bricky. And remember, dropping the deck cost a lot also allows you to put in some niche higher DC cards that are actually worth including such as a Monster Reborn.

There are lower Deck Cost/SP cards you can consider removing. The prime suspects for me are Basic Insect and Kattapillar. They barely seem worth it to remove, but you can ALWAYS replace Basic Insect with any equip card and it will be more useful. Kattapillar can also be replaced with a Fake Trap. If you keep these consistent, you never have to worry about it bumping up your DC. If your DC is even 2 lower than 757, you can actually replace both these cards with any two equip cards. Even if you are unlikely to get use out of these equips, drawing into one where it can be used can mean the difference between a run dying, and also drawing into them INSTEAD of your poor insect cards means you can dump them for 0 SP instead of 1 or 2 SP which is actually very likely to matter in a no passwords speedrun, and also they are still useful for breaking up fusions so long as you don't use it to equip a monster that then ruins a fusion chain of cards after it.

Another lower SP/deck cost card I remove in almost all runs is Akakieisu. I remove this purely to reincarnate it! There is an argument to reincarnate a monster such as Gruesome Goo which also can provide a pool of cards that potentially include Terrain Cards (extremely unlikely), but I eject Akakisieu because in my opinion it is a very poor card. The two things it is useful for are a Magical Ghost fusion or potentially a Dark Elf fusion, but overall in the speedrun, spellcasters are very weak, and you can reincarnate Akakieisu into cards that will also provide a material for Zombie fusions that also have other uses.

REINCARNATION:

So when it comes to reincarnation in a deck edit, it is not possible unless you have clocked at least 5 duels total prior to going into the deck edit screen. On console, you also have to wait approximately 10 seconds to reincarnate, so prioritize editing all of your current trunk contents prior to going to reincarnation. On emulator however, it is instant, so you can reincarnate at the start, or later. You must have a full deck to reincarnate, which means if you want to reincarnate a card in your deck, you must replace it with another card when you eject it to your trunk.

Because I wait until Shadi to edit the deck, I am guaranteed to be able to reincarnate when I edit my deck. It takes approx 5-10 seconds to reincarnate, and again, the philosophy is if even one of those cards I draw allows me to do a duel fast enough, I gain that time back already. Sometimes you might not get any useful cards, but most of the time you will get at least one 'useful' card that is better than an Akakieisu which is my reincarnation target.

Across my runs I have tried reincarnating high deck cost cards, low ones, and in my opinion, reincarnating a monster around 18 deck cost works best for me. Reincarnation wise, it is also a good idea to reincarnate cards around 20/21 deck cost. Generally, if you want a card, it is best to reincarnate a card with 1 deck cost LOWER than the target you want. This is because when you reincarnate a card, the ceiling of the low range and the floor of the high range both possibly land on 1 DC higher than the card you reincarnate, so that you have a chance of getting that card no matter what numbers the reincarnation calculation hits. Reincarnating a card with 19 or higher deck cost also allows you a chance to get a Terrain card from reincarnation, however the chances are still very low, especially getting a terrain card that you can actually benefit from.

If you reincarnate a high deck cost card, something around 40-50 deck cost, most of the cards you get will be borderline unusable. If you consider cards such as Millennium Golem, most of the time you will get monsters with 5-7 SP and a very high deck cost which a) require you to eject other high DC cards to enter b) are unplayable unless you reserve SP for them c) are probably not any better than a card such as the already included Great Mammoth of Goldfine

For c) - if you consider any card with 2000-2500 attack that is strong either on Yami or Wasteland, it is basically a worse Great Mammoth unless it also has some form of potential utility such as a Toon Summoned Skull, however a card like this is ultimately not any more useful than Great Mammoth unless you draw into it when it matters on Pegasus. This same philosophy applies to a card such as Labyrinth Tank - while it is very useful for attacking over Labyrinth tiles, it doesnt clear Laybrinth, and also it does not have bonus movement on Labyrinth tiles making it a hard follow up. While these cards have potential use, it is important to know that outside of the vacuum of where they are the best card to draw, they often fall very short of having lower SP cards that are more useful in more situations. Consistency is key. In my opinion, the only card really worth it in the higher end of the reincarnation pool is a Roaring Ocean Snake. This card is still bricky and does have a high Deck Cost, but if you are close to the enemy deck leader and have the SP to summon it, it can virtually guarantee you a win if you understand your opponent well enough and do not attack into traps. If you open with a Dimensionhole, a Roaring Ocean Snake can solo most duels (exception being something like MFL Skull Knight where you are forced to play on Crush). However, because it is the only card I think is actually worth it in this area of the reincarnation pool, I generally avoid reincarnating for it and only use it if it is a slot drop from Mako.

If you reincarnate a really low DC card you are confident to eject and never use, such as Basic Insect, you run into a problem where the deck cost is so low that you can just reincarnate into redundant amounts of Fake Traps. I have tried to reincarnate Basic Insect on a few runs, and generally I get 1-2 fake traps and rarely do I get useful cards. I believe that Basic Insect is worth ejecting, but not reincarnating as you will almost never get a card from it that is usable.

If you reincarnate monsters around 20 deck cost, you have a large variety of useful cards. The WORST cards in the pool you can get are insects as they are not useful for fusions. But even if you reincarnate into some of the worst cards that are NOT an insect, you usually get something such as a 2 or 3 SP beast or warrior, they are useful for fusions and honestly most of those cards are still better than something such as Akakieisu or Basic Insect. Another idea is if you reincarnate into low SP fiends, to replace your higher SP fiends with them. This drops your Deck Cost as a buffer and also just reduces your overall average SP so you are less likely to brick. Even better and more consistent are Plant monsters you get from reincarnation. Griggle is rather common in my experience when reincarnating Akakieisu, and plants are versatile for the fact they consistently make two of the better Zombie Fusions in the game while also fusing with females, beasts or fiends for forest fusions. Even if you get one Griggle and two useless cards from reincarnating a card such as Akakieisu, and your Griggle is the replacement for the Akakieisu in the deck, you improved your deck. Don't forget you can also gain low SP/DC zombie cards such as Skull Servant and Bone Mouse which also are useful in your deck for more zombie fusion consistency.

It is possible if you reincarnate monsters around 19-22 deck cost that you can receive most of the former cards, but also in addition you can receive cards up to 30 deck cost which include the Terrain card pool. If you do not obtain a 19/20/21 deck cost card, you can eject Gruesome Goo for it. Also, your 19-22 deck cost cards you have obtained so far are probably worth including in the deck, particularly cards such as Baby Dragon and Root Water. You can also possibly get the terrain cards from reincarnating stuff closer to 30 deck cost, but you are a) less likely to get good low SP/DC monsters which overall are more consistent b) more likely to get high SP/DC monsters which are mostly unusable c) still extremely unlikely to get a usable terrain card regardless

For c), you are never really likely to get a usable terrain card, its just that if you reincarnate a monster with 19+ deck cost, it is at least a possibility.

Don't forget that it is possible to reincarnate into cards that are VERY strong. You should never ever realistically expect these, as they can be very rare, but it is ALWAYS a possibility. If you do enough runs, you will see some nice any% consistency cards such as Dragon Zombie or Armored Zombie. However, some cards can really be a massive boost to your deck such as Eyearmor, Greenkappa, and Muka Muka. The possibility of getting these already outweighs the possibility of getting something such as a Roaring Ocean Snake, Solomans Lawbook or Tremendous Fire in the higher reincarnation values. Even though they are much less likely, truthfully you are much more likely to get useful cards outside of the best possible returns.

Ultimately, knowing what fusions are might be your best ticket to understanding what is a good card for reincarnation, and your overall philosophy of how a speedrun works. If you know what are the most important values of a card, you will be able to maximize the cards you get from reincarnation. Again, rule of thumb is that insects are the worst because you can not achieve any meaningful fusions with them in any speedrun. Card such as plants and warriors are useful for fusions, especially as they consistently fuse with your zombie monsters to create zombies that achieve two-tap kills on opponents on Wasteland and Yami tiles.

General rule of thumb for what makes a good card: a) Extremely strong effects, if the card has any (Muka Muka, Eyearmor, Greenkappa) b) low SP monster useful for fusions (Mammoth Graveyard, Dragon Zombie, Armored Zombie, any low DC Plant/Warrior etc) c) high attack relative to its low SP/DC (Dragon Zombie, Armored Zombie)

Again, if you consider the any% run usually consists of entering in anywhere from 10-20 passwords at the start at the sacrifice of time loss in order to strengthen the deck, you also in no passwords can effectively do something similar, albeit less reliable, if you take a few extra seconds in the slots to gain cards, and also by taking a few extra seconds to reincarnate. Including anywhere from 3-10 useful cards you accrued over the run can make your deck far more consistent and likely to complete the rest of the game in a convincing fashion. Some duels such as Richard go from being one of the most difficult duels in the entire run to being one of the easiest if you just draw into one card that changes the terrain and allows you to attack over his cards in the earlier turns. You may even want to consider taking a few extra seconds in the duel to attack into a facedown card before delivering a lethal attack, for example Attacking the first non-trap facedown that Mai plays can possibly be a Monster Reborn which is one of the strongest and most versatile cards you can possibly obtain across the run. Assess that you can guarantee lethal before trying this, and if you are not confident or believe it is possible that the card will be a useful one, or it is possible that card can penalize you, it is usually better not to attack it.

Overall, I believe the player should keep an eye on good drops all the way from Tea to Shadi, so that they can edit the deck after Shadi. You must edit the deck once, so editing it after the duelist who can drop you a Dimensionhole means that you don't run into the issue of editing the deck more than once if he does drop it. Waiting until Shadi to edit the deck also means that you retain Skullbird for duels such as Mai and Joey where it is most useful, and even having Zanki on Mako if you open with dimensionhole and have the SP to play it on your 2nd turn, it is one of the only situations in the entire game where Zanki can realistically carry the duel. Because these cards have very little use outside those particular early set of duels, and brick up the hand and keep the deck cost of your deck high, I keep them in until then, when I am ready to eject them and replace them for better cards.

Also, if you play the game like this, you also know your exact deck until the point you edit your run, so you can practise the first 6 duels with the exact same starter deck contents as usual to get good at them. If you are several minutes off of a pace you want, you can afford to take even up to a minute of your deck edit and you will perhaps save an entire duel or a few minutes worth of time loss within a duel. And remember, the stronger your deck is at the point you edit your deck, the more likely you will be to finish a run in no passwords. And overall, the possibility of different drops being included into your deck each run makes no passwords a very fun run after this point as you get to run and play the game with different cards that you normally never run with in regular any%. You will also learn more about the game and what makes a good card and what cards are not as good as you'd expect, by running with them and playing with them, and overall expand your knowledge of the game.