Hi!
I made a guide for those who are interested in seeing how you can defeat the final bosses. I explain in detail why and what you need to do so that you understand the basics of what you are actually doing when following the actual (text guide).
I explain how to defeat all bosses from Mystery Man to Infinity (all in 40 minutes). So if you speedrun this part should only be around 30 minutes. I never felt satisfied knowing I could never defeat her. Now that I have both routes up I will start speedrunning this game for real!
Found some improvements for the Queen of Ice Route which might save the time grinding for more HP before Queen of Ice abolished.
There is a golem before Junk City (in the flower fields) called Prill Cotton
Prill Cotton (Lv 34)
- Cure Aid (Small Healing for 2 squares)
- High Barrier (50% damage reduction for 6 squares)
- Strong Up (50% damage increase for 6 squares)
- Aero Bolt (3 square ranged damage)
Prill Cotton can therefore replace Floresia entirely (she doesn't heal as good but we got the Ruby Butterfly for that and also higher damage buff). Before we used Ruby Butterfly's 25% damage increase (and also lose Butterfly's turn which could deal huge amounts of damage).
I was looking for ways to beat Queen of Ice without having to spend so much time grinding for HP (which took like 30 minutes extra altogether to gain). So this should make the less interesting parts of the run a bit faster as well.
Really loving this game and what it has to offer. I started looking into a few more obtainable golems which might be useful. There are some but we have to calculate for the time it takes to defeat them and how useful they are for the rest of the game. I will test out getting Odin instead of Valkyrie for the final battles. Odin should deal a lot more damage on paper, but I need to confirm this. Valkyrie is super-weak I think, but extremely durable (and fast).
I think Toya Route should be possible in 6 hours or maybe less with some of these improvements. There could be a potential big skip which could save 2 hours in the Desert after Junk City. By the bridge somewhere around there (if) you can do the airwalk glitch you can then enter the dungeon leading to Sage's Tower since we could bypass the junk that is later removed. If it is possible at all I don't know yet, but I hope it is one day.
Airwalk Glitch (which leads to out of bounds)
I saw all the rushed work I did in my Toya Route notes, so they will come with an updated version as soon as I have figured out the new strategies for both versions. It is looking very promising. It seems like some battles will be much easier with Prill Cotton present.
Could that same method be used for other spots to also do other huge skips?
I haven't spent time trying, but I doubt big skips can be found since the game only loads areas currently on screen. So even if you were able to do this you still have to enter a door with the confirm button (going past it won't help you load the next zone unless it's one of those automatic transitions). Fortunetly there is an automatic zone transition if you access the dungeon in the desert. So once someone figures out where you can go out of bounds in the BIG desert map, then it's done. The game will be over. You can pretty much skip 30% of the game if so.
So even if you walk into the Desert territory from Junk City it doesn't load the next area. I wonder if the automatic transition is loaded into the cave. If so then you could do that (but we cannot see anything because the terrain isn't loaded). I don't know if loading zones are still active for other maps. If it works it would only be a matter of finding a reliable setup from Junk City into the desert and into the cave. I don't think it's possible, but I'm not ruling it out entirely because I didn't test it.
So in other areas of the game you could only save a few minutes at best I believe (granting that this is possible on every map, but that's not likely). I think only a few maps have these glitches which allows for airwalk. I might do a video on the airwalks I found and also do more testing. My plan is to run this game this week.
If it works with loading zone transfers then I would advise for a setup like "run 42 seconds to the NORTH, then run 15 seconds to the RIGHT" I will do a test with the loaded terrain (and NO ENCOUNTERS) so I can see how far I need to run. There are two zones that can be loaded in there Swamplands (outside Kyoto) and Volcano Dungeon. So either one of these would still skip a big portion. One of them skips 30%, the other 10%.
Incredible advances have been made for Xbox runners! You can kill Queen of Ice and Infinity with world record low stats very reliably now! I decreased the coin requirement from 500K to 390K (which also saves time when converting coins into tablets).
I would say I save about 20 minutes or more compared to my first draft. It should be finalized and unless some skips are found I think these are as optimal as it can get for the forseeable future. It should be extra fun to speedrun this game now! Prill Cotton truly changed everything for the better!
I will work on the Toya Route next week, but I doubt it changes much from the Queen of Ice Route. Just less casino abuse and less tablets needed. I will run either on Sunday or next week. So expect a full run to show up sometime soon. ;)
Awesome news! I want to run it one day where it's more manageable and is there an estimate on load time saves for Xbox One compared to PS3/360?
