I managed to menu buffer over the Prison Cage fight trigger without the speed booster turned on. This skips both Prison Cage fights, all the walking around the crashed ship and the Baku fight.
Based on the first place run this saves up to 9 minutes straight away. The second thing this does is skip the trance activation. From my testing so far it stays deactivated, so no more losing time to trance animations. Vivi still trances in the Black Waltz 3 fight, but the trance bars don't appear afterwards.
To do the skip I have my Y button set to repeat 30 times a second, so I hold Y and up, then cancel out of the menu each time it pops up. Haven't managed to get it consistently though.
Adding on to this, I've now managed to skip the Maliris fight, as well as the Alexandria cutscene that follows after it. Done with the 4x speed booster on. Need to test if they can be skipped normally now. I've also managed to skip Tiamat, but i don't have a video of that one yet.
Lich skipped as well now, with boosters active. Skipped Deathguise in this video too, though that one was known about before, and learning that got me hunting for more.
Got an extra bell by fighting the black mage during Gizamalukes grotto and then skipped the moogle cutscene, whether that saves time or not I dunno, but it's something. This menu buffer skip could be used so many places, so many possibilities. Just need to find a way of making it consistent.
Amazing Ren
I'll also leave my Deathguise skip without boosters for the record:
This is really really interesting. It's pretty easy to do this skip of prison Cage, but I feel that may be the most meaningful time skip of the game. There are a couple of places I imagine you can skip, but it wouldn't be time efficient to do so.
It's established you can skip beyond the physical trigger of both dialogue and battles, it's just a matter of finding the ones worth skipping.
As you proved with your prison Cage vid, if you go back to the trigger point, you'll be able to still fight. What happens when you try to skip something you have to pass by several times, such as Zorn and thorn in burmecia?
I watched a run, and intend to go through the game testing places that I feel could be skippable and will update then.
I've tested up until Oeilvert. Prison cage is definitely the biggest save so far. Skipping the moogle cutscene is a small time save, but you need to do the extra battle to get the key, and I couldn't get the skip consistently so I don't feel its worth it yet. Madain Sari is almost skippable, can buffer through the Iifa tree barrier and get down to the bottom, but the trigger for Soulcage doesn't load and the game softlocks. The Hedgehog Pie minigame can be skipped easily. I couldn't get a skip of the Black Mage fight in Burmecia to work, but might be possible still. Other than that I haven't found anything else workable.
I was definitely curious about skipping Madain Sari 1, i figured the trigger for causing eiko to interact was just her needing to be in the party, regardless of going to MS first.
Hedgehog skip, you just immediately menu cancel entering that screen? I'm interested to learn that particular process.
Awesome work as usual dude, this is the leap that the game needed to decrease further, not to mention non-boostered runs.
Yeah Iifa tree plays out as normal if you go straight there, but there must be something that needs to be triggered in Madain Sari during the first visit for Soulcage to activate.
For Hedgehog Pie, when you get control of Cid you go left and buffer through the loading zone instead. Got it first try, but failing it isn't a big deal since it just moves you back a bit. Didn't try it un-boostered, but should be possible if the trigger doesn't extend too far, so that would be a huge save for normal any% run too.
So, today's realizations: You are able to skip the clowns at burmecia, but the trigger window is rather large. No time save here.
You cannot use menu buffering in order to get past the guard in Lindblum, you have to steal the guys clothes. You can get past the guard, but Garnet does not appear near the telescope.
You cannot bypass talking to people at the south gate and head directly for where Garnet changes clothes. It is, however, definitely worth it to try because the mess that happens is totally worth it.
The biggest bummer was finding out you cannot skip the iifa tree fmv, but also not Hilgigars.
From my testing, the best skips for saving time: Prison Cage Hedgehog Mini-Game Memoria: You are able to skip every fight aside from trance kuja and Necron. If you are careful, you can save around a minute and 15 seconds on Memoria alone. If you are immaculate in placement before buffering, I could see another 10-15 seconds added onto that.
It's a good 4 minutes or more time save thanks to these skips. So maybe 15 minutes or so in a normal run if consistent methods are found for non-booster buffering, my turbo settings weren't consistent when trying Prison Cage without boosters, and using scripts aren't allowed for it in runs I believe.
I figure around 1:45 on Prison Cage, another ~45 on hedgehog, and around 1:15 on memoria. I don't think with this alone we can break 4 minutes, but I know before a card game ruined a run, I was plus around 2:10 before the latter two skips.
is there a way to make it more consistent. i get this buffer on prison cage like 1 in 10. I try with 4x boost and without. I notice Record has with boost on so i dont know what steps i need to take or a proper position to be in. I use Y set to auto. hold Y and up and cancel the menue as it pops up. Is it my turbo is to fast or not fast enough?
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkFw1_MpfgSxWkDd9ywXvrV5G9k8N6Dxq Made some videos on the best setup for the buffers I could find here or by myself. The biggest change is that you only need half as many buffers if you have config set to walk (you have Cancel held during the buffer, so default walk means you run during it). This makes a lot of things suddenly worth it, at the cost of having to hold Cancel to run for 7 hours Also if you buffer by 'rolling' Menu, then Cancel, failing the buffer opens the menu once. If you buffer by 'rolling' Cancel, then Menu, failing the buffer doesn't open the menu at all, so you know immediately if you've got it when the menu opens, which is a small time save.
The ones not mentioned in the thread yet are: Plant Spiders in the Evil Forest (inconsistent & not worth it because you need the exp, might be in Booster% though) Steiner's scene on the deck of the Cargo Ship out of Dali Burmecia Black Mages is actually one of the shortest buffers in the game if you get the right angle Zorn & Thorn raising the gate when you exit Alexandria into Gargant Roo Skipping the mandatory ATE in Black Mage Village is literally a fraction of a second faster One of the scenes with Mikoto on the way through Terra Zidane & Dagger looking down at the boat in the storm in Memoria It's slightly faster to skip the scene with the burning planet 2 screens before Lich
