I just completed a 16 hour igt prctice/discovery run and wanted to share my findings for what got me through it. to start off with there seems to be no major difference between optimal dashing and just running. if anything running seemed faster. there are some sinereos where dashing is better such as when a high level enemy aggroes you or a group of enemies aggro you at once so your teammates can take agro and you avoid dying. for super early game overclock buster on a dazed enemy appears to be the fastest method of dealing damage and saving it for the right time is key. after you get flash fencer, smash damage and launch chain attacks will probably be the best way to deal damage until you unlock ouroboros orders. after that sena on a launch with lanz linking the damage on combos up skill should carry you to chapter 5. the only thing to note is that colony lambda can't be launched but can be toppled. thankfully ashera only needs a quick fight in orfer to be recruited to the party but her class isn't unlocked until a few fights later. it will probably be faster to not complete the quest and just use her as the hero. she may get switched out for riku and manana after you unlock the talent art unlimited sword since you might want the extra break chance. there is a break broach from a UM in the hovering reefs near alcamoth called blazing karlos that isn't too far out of the way but probably isn't faster in the long run. this is the only break broach location so any other locations would be much apricated. I didn't test Juniper because i hate playing as that class but it has potential with it's launch and bleed buffs to do a lot of damage in chain attacks. ashera is very useful for launching and allowing that bonus to be used in chain attacks. you unlock monica vandam as a hero but she is basically useless despite having a smash art since you only have her for 5 minutes during the shaniah escort and need to complete a decently long quest to get her class. after skipping some cutscenes in the city, you can sail on the erythia sea and complete more story quests you might want to grab fiona early in order to better deal with the agnus fights. there is an alternate way to get into the fortress where the prison info is held via rail grinding but i didn't test it out yet. either way you want to run around the right of the back of the building in order to avoid the unique monster inside and the one patrolling the left. you can de agro on the nearby ladder if you get it. the prison labour segment of the run is going to be fairly tedious with all the fetchquests involved. after some boss fights you finally unlock the lucky 7 and the fun begins. you pretty much want to topple lock using sena and riku and probably run 2 heavy guards in order to get consistent topples and rack up that smash damage. you NEED to run Noah on flash fencer to get almost instant unlimited sword for the rest of the run. if for some reason a fight lasts longer than 90 secconds or noah gets low on health, you can switch to Ouroborous to freeze the timer and also get origin blade on the lower interlink levels although you want to save it for the end of the auroborous guage so you get the skill bonus for longer heat guage and because you can only do one until you almost max out your chart. You need to keep noah alive throughout all the rest of the fights so he can use his smash art and pass buffs to the party to buff eunie's auroborous also, origin blade is one of the few debuffs that doesn't fail most of the time so taion's skill is actually useful with it. just complete the story from here until the origin shard quest. thereis one origin shard near colony iota and Zain's talon. there are two ways to get there. one is through colony Iota after you beat alexanria's hero quest and one through the north that opens up right after you unlock flash fencer. the flash fencer way can give 3 extra levels in the early game to help a bit with early game fights. on the other hand Alexandria is a good attacker with a break art, you might be able to pair two break arts on the same slot for an extra chance at breaking in a chain attack plus her crit skills. only time will tell what is optimal long term. you don't actually need to get zeon in order to get back to the tutorial area since you can just skip travel there after a certan point. you might have to skydive from right outside colony omega to unlock it but I didn't test it so i have no clue. origin should be more of the same but my god is z a painful fight. bring noah with something other than flash fencer because unlimited sword cant carry you there. any thoughts/ opinions on this semi guide semi rant.