Alright, got a scouting run of Marriage% done in 1 hour, 48 minutes on the dot. There's definitely a good bit of room there for improvement because I did spend a bit of time doing extra stuff or being generally inefficient. I kind of want to do a cleaner run of it first, but it's also quite the lengthy run with more than a few potentially run-ending mistakes.

Out of the available routes, I tested it with Felicity given she's the only one whose favorite gift is easily gotten with Cooking Glitch. The fact her sidequest requires both a rainy non-holiday (as well as needing it to happen before a specific time in the run), and a non-rainy holiday (for the proposal) makes it a bit bothersome to line everything up. But, even given that, she's probably the fastest thanks to requiring no dungeons, we have the better gifts, and no other requirements than her questline.

The only thing is, I have to wonder if we're going to have a category for each bachelorette like RF3 or if we just keep it at just Marriage%. While in RF3 the marriage is required for completing the game by default and can have notable effects on the routing, here it's not and, well, arguably most of the runs wouldn't be that different.

Every run's going to spend until Summer 26th in the second year trying to make up that lumber cost for the house, and mostly consists of focusing on festival days for the most efficient amount of FP/LP gain possible.

Each of the routes do have some unique parts, though. Rosetta and Tabatha require at least Carmite Cave to be completed, Lara requires Toros (and less pass-out strats), Sharron requires Mt. Gigant, Lynette requires an Any% run done beforehand (the 8 FP across everyone isn't nearly as hard as you'd think).

(Melody and Bianca in theory just take a really long time, while Mei really isn't possible unless you've got two trade capable consoles. I've not tested if the trade is region-locked, but I imagine it is. I'm still entirely unsure of Mist's specific requirements, but her run also requires you to get at least a level 2 axe and a level 3 hammer, I believe.)

I guess it's all a matter of how we want to organize things and whether or not others will go in for the other routes.

Anyways, this does give me the opportunity to test the full extent of Cooking Glitch now so I'll be getting that done and readying a full glitch guide here soon.

Oh, and here's a fun thing I forgot to mention in the last post: you can use Teleport to escape your house during windstorms/snowstorms. Alas, nothing particularly interesting happens as far as I've explored. All NPCs are missing regardless of time of day. I never checked the caves, but I doubt it's the same for them given that the sleeping bag is a thing.

Although... what would happen if you slept in a cave and it storms the next day? You wouldn't be able to leave in theory, but you also couldn't sleep if you'd already used all your charges. Does the game prevent windstorms if you sleep inside a cave?

I'll have to check it out on one of my scouting runs.

Hey, back with an update on progress again. I've been doing some scouting runs and such for Marriage% categories and been making good progress on figuring out the specifics of certain mechanics.

The theory still remains that Felicity is the fastest category, with Mist being the possible second (though I've still yet to completely nail down what her requirements are.) I'll hopefully have a run to put up sometime here soon, but each run takes a while and I want to make sure I've nailed the main details for everything.

I do want to get around to routing All Bosses and especially Glitchless sometime though. I'd love to be able to play on my US copy again.

Sometime here soon I'll have a full guide up of all the glitches and tricks we know about. I've got a rather comprehensive guide for Marriage% in the works as well as some routing stuff for the other run categories in general.

I've also fully documented everything I can about the Cooking Glitch thus far, and well, while it produces interesting results, only one result can be considered potentially useful, a very high level Mystery Potion (600 HP heal).

The guides...

...have been updated.

An outline of what I did for Any%, a compiling of the two long outdated guides, and a brand new one covering everything about glitches and tricks and all those sorts of things.

Marriage% testing has gone well, and I think I've gotten a nice baseline of information regarding everything around to start it on. Some of the runs would likely be of just an unbearable length, but hey, Felicity's run's pretty snappy all things considered. Mist's is... well, less so and is kind of the second fastest. I've still yet to actually determine her requirement on game completion. I'll be cleaning it up and I'll have it up when I do finally get a better full run of it done. I want the one with my new routing to be the one I actually send up.

I've done some work for All Bosses and Glitchless on my side as well, mostly in the terms of Glitchless. I think I can bring some interesting routing to mix up that 6 year old category. The only problem is actually executing it all... I'm not that rusty at it, but playing the game underleveled and after all the reckless invuln glitching in Any%, it's going to be something else. Here's to hoping I don't muscle memory into trying to heal during Grimoire's thunderstrikes instead of the other way around.

Still, I'll be looking into the other games a bit soon. I have to wonder how my old RF2 route stands up to the new one, as well as seeing what I might be able to do for Frontier and Tides. 5 hour runs really aren't my specialty or preference, but they do open a lot of room for routing, and well, that's what I love doing.

(And after all, It'd be just great to drum up more interest in running these games!)

Phew, okay, All Bosses is still quite the tricky run so far. Clearing the bosses up to Misty Bloom as early as possible definitely seems to be the better plan thus far, because the field clearing otherwise is a major slowdown. Have to spend a little more time healing, but the level cannon really maintains you for quite a while in this run.

Still gotta test some things between Marriage% and All Bosses, but we'll see where it takes me. As a fix to a previous note, the thing I thought that was a mystery potion is not. It's a... Vitalizer, I think? Regardless, it restores like 80 RP so it makes progression rather smooth.

Oh, and another thing I've found is that at least for Toros, leaving the cave and re-entering respawns all the minable rocks. Sure wish I'd known that when playing the first time.

Back again with some routing scouting stuff I've discovered, haven't been on actually running much recently as my hands haven't been in the best of shape. I find the DS pad rather rough on my hands, and I really ought to find something else that I can run with an analog stick.

• The rune door in Kasimir Cave only requires one 3x3 patch of vegetables grown to open. Presumably, the one in Danaan is the same way.

• For All Bosses and Glitchless, you want to complete the caves up to Misty Bloom as fast as possible as dealing with the wild field growth is incredibly slow otherwise. It's best to minimize it.

• For Misty Bloom, it's a bit of luck whether or not you can till all 100 tiles inside without an axe. It's not that slow to have to go back for upgrading one after the boss if you do happen to be unlucky, but in theory you can do it before too many stumps spawn.

• A powerful, viable weapon for Glitchless is in fact the watering can. When upgraded to Lion Waterpot (silver level) and at full charge, it easily does 100 - 250 damage to enemies based on their defenses and your level. It can also stunlock well, if needed.

• I still cannot say what the exact requirement for Mist is, but goodness is tilling that field immensely slow. Occasionally I've noted a visual bug that appears to till and water the entire field, but it is purely visual and doesn't seem to count.

Well, WR, I held you for a month and a half, which was a new record in and of itself. Can't be too bummed though, because this is pretty rad.

I always joked to myself that the time wouldn't get any lower until we got a credits warp, and well, this is pretty much that. @suittyo, holy heck, you legend, I'd never thought I'd actually see it. I might as well play around with it on my own side to at least document it for the guide, but I already told myself I wasn't running Any% again and I'll stick to that.

Just figures it's the cooking glitch again, though. This thing's single-handedly sliced most of the time off this game at this point. Unfortunately for me, I never did like having to use the stylus or do the odd finger acrobatics for it, and well, this is now a lot of that.

I'll get around to that Marriage% run, having fully determined that every route but Felicity's is painfully sleepy, but I've no idea if my thumb will tolerate the ODS d-pad enough for finishing routing on All Bosses/Glitchless- at the very least, I'll put up my notes on them.

(Been looking into things I can run with analog sticks or a Switch Pro, since those are nicer on my hands by a mile.)

Still looking forward to seeing how much more nonsense the cooking glitch can create.