Here are some changes to the route that have made this run significantly faster (at the moment Gerrick has around a 42:40 time, 7 minutes faster than Hana's long standing record). Many of them were found by him, a couple found by me.
The changes from the existing route:
-To begin with, this game reads input from both a controller and a keyboard at the same time, allowing text to be mashed at a ridiculous speed if both buttons are rapidly pressed in an alternating rhythm. This speeds up several mashing cutscenes throughout the run, and certain fights are quicker to mash through now rather than use abilities.
-The ability Brave Wind is no longer used nearly as extensively. after Ape Princess, we basically just use sharpen and spam Multistrike for most bosses. Likewise, Combo Master is not as essential to the final fight, though it is preference.
-We've added some weapons to the route. In Providence shop (Before the Spaceship), we pick up a sword for Cthulhu and Sharpe, which allows them to clear bosses safer and several turns quicker. Sometimes it's also good to pick up Cthulhu's Sword in R'lyeh early on, if you are unlucky enough to lack the money to buy the Sword in Providence (which you should typically have enough for).
Likewise, the Volcanic Tome in the Volcano is useful for October's Magic (and it's not that far out of the way). In Innsmouth shop, we pick up the best sword for Sharpe, which again makes the final few bosses much quicker and safer.
Lastly, in the first screen of the Spaceship, we pick up a Trident for Umi, which increases her Agility (and her Str for Pawz too), allowing her to escape from fights earlier. It's like a 8-10 second detour and saves potentially up to a second from every encounter, so it's worth it.
-Finally, we cleared up a few more optimal movement paths in dungeons. You can watch Gerricks or my current PBs (mine is a 47:47 with plenty of room for improvement), I use some of his and some older ones.
There's still some room for optimization but an amazing run could likely reach 41:XX.
So I've since added a few new things to the route:
-Call Kraken (Umi+Cthulhu Unite Tech) is extremely useful in the first two dungeons. it's like flood that activates every turn and uses less menu time. -Dark Spiral (Cthulhu+October Unite Tech) DESTROYS entire mobs from the point where you get October on. In fact it may be slightly faster to kill enemies with this if you can reliably kill them in 1 turn than it is to run away up until you get the Warp Trident in the Spaceship, as Umi's Agility is pretty low until then. -The money to buy the 2 weapons in Providence should be 5400. You should always have 5400 if you: fight Ape Princess the first fight after Umi hits level 14, and then do 1 "fight" command encounter before providence. You do not need the Cthulhu Sword. -Did some revised movement - http://imgur.com/a/hXtnH for pictures. yellow line = faster, red = slower.
http://imgur.com/a/casl1 - Found some new movement optimizations. Apologies for poor picture editing, this PC only has paint.
Also I timed it to be about ~11 steps per second for your movement speed.
Hey there, 1st, thanks for all the work you did, that's awesome ^^
I have just a little information for the conveyers in the factory, I don't know if you knew that but : if you take a encounter on the conveyer, it won't get active until you work out the conveyer, delaying by the way further encounters.
That's not really useful for know, but maybe one day the run will manipulate RNG
I noticed that myself on one run, although like you said it doesn't seem useful.
Also if we ever found RNG manip I would probably hate any% because the influence of RNG is what makes it fun for me and would run with no manip anyways.
Thanks for making updated guides. I've wanted to speedrun this game for a few years, and I plan to start trying in the coming months.
