Arcuz Glitchless Any% Guide

Introduction

Speedrunning Arcuz requires both pinpoint execution as well as detailed knowledge of the game in general to get a good time. Provided a flawless execution, the time you get largely depends on the rng you are given by the game and your ability to salvage it. This guide is split into 4 chapters.

It is recommended to read them in order going from the big picture to the small details:

1. Theoretical routing considerations

2. Farming locations and storyline progression

3. Battle execution

4. Accidental glitchuse and prevention thereof

1. Theoretical routing considerations

This chapter will cover the general longterm considerations that shape the route of this speedrun.

Considerations for a reset point

A lot of speedgames out there have a reset point, meaning your run dies if you don’t get a specific thing done in the game. In a game like Arcuz that is so heavily rng-reliant, identifying a reset point involves balancing out 3 aspects. Reset efficiency (aka how fast can you try again if you fail), likeliness (how often will you get what you need) and timegain (how much time do you gain if you succeed vs. when you do not). And in Arcuz this single rng event is easy enough to find. To fight effectively, you need to be able to use your skills. For this you need SP to use them, which normally is a scarce resource, which needs to be carefully managed. This makes the SP on kill compose modification by far the most effective single tool of timegain, at least as long as you don’t have too much of it, as it loses much of it’s value with that. Within the drop-tables of the game, there are two ways to obtain this: You can either obtain an armor item from a blue chest, that happens to already possess the effect, or you can get the materials needed to craft it and then craft the effect on an armor item. For the first case, there are no secondary considerations to make note of, if you get it you get it and that's that. For the second case however you need to head back to the village to compose at susan’s shop and you’ll also need an armor item to compose the effect on. It is also important to keep in mind that no skill using SP unlocks before level 5, making this the earliest level you could benefit from the effect. It would also be desirable to have an armor item with a decent stat baseline, so that you don’t need to compromise your defence lateron with a low-level item. With all these things in mind, the best opportunity to do this is after doing the main quest, that requires you to fight 20 level 7 wolfs. You will do this at level 6, so you’d only not have the mass-use of SP for going from level 5 to 6 by missing the compose, which is a reasonable compromise. The quest awards you with a decent glove, that you can compose the effect on, and since you need to refill on potions after doing the quest, as well as accept the next main quest and a sidequest, you need to head to the village anyway, so you can get potential crafting done at this time.

Playing up to the reset point (Level 1-6)

The main weapon type of this speedrun are swords. After the tutorial you buy the 5 small SP potions, the attack potion, and the berserk potion from susan. In the following list the optimal stat spread for the earlygame up to the reset point is given after reaching and investing on each level. Agility is not listed as it is never increased. The extra points you get in the tutorial are listed too.

Levelup/Quest Strength Constitution Luck Skills

Level 2 6 3 5 Sword Prof 1

Level-up & Skill Point 6 3 10

Level 3 10 3 11 Sword Prof 2

Level 4 10 7 12

Level 5 10 12 12 Sword Prof 3, Berserk 1, Hurricane I 1

Strength is important for base damage and having enough weight capacity to carry the loot you get dropped. The strength investment here is designed to specifically allow you to reliably 2-hit lv.1 slimes at level 2 and 1-hit them at level 3, which makes these early levels much faster, while giving you enough carry weight to rarely ever need to drop anything due to overweight issues. Constitution is important for your total SP, which also influences how much regeneration SP potions give you, while also giving you more total health. With the investment listed here you will be able to use berserk once via the skill and once via the berserk potion before level 6. Once you reach level 6, you will heal for 66 total SP, which together with 3 small SP potions for 18 SP each, will allow you to use berserk 3 times for 40 SP each. If you invest the levelup for 17 constitution and use 4 potions, you will be able to use berserk 4 times. This together with the attack potion you bought at the start will allow you to kill the 20 wolfs and complete the quest. After that you go to the village to restock on potions and accept the next main quest and a sidequest and craft your SP on kill, if you passed the reset point in this way. Luck is chiefly important to increase your drop rate and since specific drops are what you reset for the other two stats are compromised as much as possible, while not losing lots of time, and reallocated to luck to improve reset efficiency. It should be mentioned that while it is possible to play past this point without any SP on kill effect, it results in considerable timeloss on average.

Playing up to Holy Light (Level 6-20)

The next logical segment of the run is until you reach level 20 to unlock Holy Light. Holy Light will double your health and SP and revive you if you die at no penalty other than losing the Holy Light effect. It is basically required to safely deal with the very strong enemies later in the game, but there is a catch to it. It costs 180 SP to use. Depending on the items you obtain, there are 3 ways to satisfy this requirement, due to an effect called SP-Bonus. A sidequest will award you with a helmet with SP on kill lv.1 and SP-Bonus lv.1. Since the SP on kill makes this helmet desirable, you will usually also have some SP-Bonus equipped as a byproduct. It is however possible to randomly get an even better helmet with no SP-Bonus, while it is also possible to get an other armor-item with some SP-Bonus on it. This leads to 3 possible situations:

Number of SP-Bonus Composes Constitution Total SP

0 27 181

1 22 182

2 17 181

It is important to remember that bonus effects like this will only be calculated when an item is newly equipped so it is necessary to reequip the items with the SP-Bonus composes to actually meet these thresholds at level 20. Since the first segment leaves us with just 12 constitution, we will need to get some more constitution before level 20. And however this is done, all the remaining stat points should be allocated into strength to increase your damage. It is however not only levelups and their 5 investable free stat points that factor into this, but also skill points, because at level 20 the All Stat Up skill unlocks, which gives 5 points to each of the main stats per skillpoint spent. This means it is technically possible to never invest constitution from levelups and instead save enough skillpoints to compensate for this. How many skillpoints are available to you at this point then? Well, it’s 21, since there is an optional quest, that gives you one, that is very quick to complete and you have 19 levelups and more point from the tutorial. Of these points 13 go into active skills, all of which are hard required to be able to progress fast. The remaining points could go into either weapon proficiency or be saved for all stat up. The 7th and 8th point in weapon proficiency unlock at level 13 and 15 respectively. It is important to note, that you gain access to more skills at level 15 and also acquire the aforementioned helmet at level 16 to accommodate the increased skilluse with more SP on kill. This means that once you reach level 15 not leveling weapon proficiency will not affect your overall damage as much as cutting a point on level 13 or below would. This means that you can realistically only save 1 point for All Stat Up. Furthermore, if you would increase constitution from levelups, doing so early would be better, since the increased SP pool would increase the healing from SP potions and in turn allow you to use more skills with however many potions you are given by the game. So with all these things in mind, what is the best way to proceed here? There is one important pointer for this question. By the time you decide whether to obtain and invest the extra skillpoint, you have reached level 15, and immediately after you will get the helmet mentioned before. This means, if you haven’t gotten a better helmet until then, you can just choose to commit to the helmet from the quest and commit to your stat and skillpoint investment accordingly. This means that in any case it is advisable to immediately increase constitution to 17 when you reach level 6 to get the benefit of bigger potion heals. If you get an additional sp-bonus from a random drop before level 15, you invest the extra skillpoint at level 15 into lv.8 weapon proficiency. If you get no relevant gear drops, you save the extra skillpoint and don’t get lv.8 weapon proficiency. And if you get a better helmet before level 15, you save the skillpoint and invest a single levelup into consitution. This pattern gives you the biggest reasonable potionheals as early as you can, while still keeping your constitution low enough to accommodate for all 3 possibilities optimally. Beyond these extensive considerations for Holy Light, from a practical point of view a second randomly obtained sp on kill upgrade can still provide good timegain, which would make the aforementioned helmet the third, unless you had obtained a composed helmet prior. Getting more even SP on kill is excessive and if materials for crafting it come up, it is reasonable to not craft them and save the materials for more useful crafts later on. Furthermore a main quest will give you a bracelet with a health regeneration and a drop rate compose. During this segment you will likely start to see more composition materials slowly accumulate in your inventory. Unless you get a better randomly dropped accessory, you should aim to craft this bracelet up to lv.2 % attack bonus. This compose provides the most timegain out of all composes for the remainder of the run and since a free level 3 compose is coming up soon having a lv.2 to be able to craft the level 3 immediately should be a priority.

Finishing the run (Level 20-End)

If you accepted the sidequest from anna in chapter 2, you will revisit the area for it at level 18, by which time the quest is an easy finish and gives you a soul stone. A bit later you will also complete a quest which rewards you with one of each of the big crystals, which results in an immediate free lv.3 % attack bonus compose, if you have managed to get any accessory to lv. 2 prior. You will also get good boots from a quest pretty earlyon in this segment, so if you still feel like you need more SP on kill, this is what you craft it on. In general it is important to note that boots, helmets and gloves do not have a high base armor stat, while body armor and shields do. This means you want to keep replacing your body armor and shields repeatedly during the run to get those bigger base stats. For the other 3 the gains are not as big and the 3 quest items for these types of gear have good base stats, so it is natural to just stick with them. After leveling a bit in this segment, you will obtain a very powerful sword from a main quest, which will be your main weapon for the rest of the game. In terms of composition you should try to stack up % attack composes as best you can on your accessories and, once you obtain it from the quest, also your sword. Beyond that you could also consider crafting crit rate on stuff, if rng favours giving you those materials more. From levelups you just invest full on in strength and after learning all relevant active skills at level 25, proceed to max out All Stat Up and if you still have even more points go back to weapon proficiency. The overall goal in all of this is just simply to boost your raw damage as much as you possibly can.

2. Farming locations and storyline progression

This chapter will establish the actual route you take throughout the game.

Character Stats, Abilities and Quests

Throughout the game you will complete a variety of quests and gain new character points and ability points to spend from levelups and questrewards. For simplicity’s sake this guide will first give you tables for these, but be aware that character stats and learned abilities can vary according to the considerations covered in Chapter 1. Review the tables as needed when reading through the progression explanation afterwards.

Level Strength Agility Constitution Luck Additional Remarks/Skills learned

2 6 3 3 5 Sword Proficency. lv.1

3 10 3 3 11 CP from Questreward, Sword Prof. lv.2

4 10 3 7 12

5 10 3 12 12 Sword Proficency lv.3, Berserk lv.1, Hurricane I lv.1

6 10 3 17 12

7 15 3 17 12 Sword Proficency lv.4

8 20 3 17 12

9 25 3 17 12 Sword Proficency lv.5

10 30 3 17 12 Berserk lv.2, Speedup lv.1

11 35 3 17 12 Sword Proficency lv.6

12 40 3 17 12

13 45 3 17 12 Sword Proficency lv.7

14 50 3 17 12

15 55 3 17 12 Berserk lv.3, Hurricane I lv.3, Hurricane II lv. 1

16 60 3 17 12 Speedup lv.2

17 65 3 17 12

18 70 3 17 12 Obtain AP from Quest Chemistry Lesson

19 75 3 17 12

20 85 8 22 17 All Stat Up lv.1, Holy Light lv.3, Speedup lv.3

21 95 8 22 17 CP from Questreward, Hurricane II lv. 2

22 100 8 22 17 Hurricane II lv. 3

23 105 8 22 17

24 110 8 22 17

25 115 8 22 17 Blade Storm lv.3

26 125 13 27 22 All Stat Up lv.2

27 135 18 32 27 All Stat Up lv.3

28 145 23 37 32 All Stat Up lv.4

29 155 28 42 37 All Stat Up lv.5

30 165 33 47 42 All Stat Up lv.6

31 180 38 52 47 All Stat Up lv.7 and the CP from Questreward

32 190 43 57 52 All Stat Up lv.8

33 205 53 67 62 All Stat Up lv.10 with the AP from Questreward

34 210 53 67 62 Sword Proficency lv.8

If you have a lot of SP on kill you can raise Hurricane I to level 3 sooner to boost your damage output. And make sure to obtain the additional skillpoint from the QuestChemistry Lesson before setting out from the village after reaching level 18, since you will need it at level 20.If you obtain additional points from tomes, adjust your sequence accordingly.

Quest Villager Accepted when Additional Remarks

Equip a Weapon Wayne Immediately

Kill 3 lv. 1 Slime Wayne Immediately

Kill 10 lv. 1 Slimes Wayne Immediately

Level-up & Skill Point Wayne Immediately

Weapon Composition Wayne Immediately

Don't be Proud Paul Immediately

Robbed Goods Chung Immediately

Teddy Bear Anna Delayed Complete Don't be Proud prior

Bet between Two Men Kimura Immediately

Susan's Honey Susan Immediately

Chemistry Lesson Susan Immediately Complete before level 20

Horn of Courage Kimura Immediately

Purpose Of Saving Chung Never Don‘t talk to him, if you are over 3k gold.

Flickering Ironstone Gran Never

Missing of Anna Wayne Immediately

End-result of Anna's Heart Anna Immediately

Gran's Effort Gran Never

Regain Courage Kimura Immediately

Re-see Brightness Susan Immediately

Rest of the Soul Paul Immediately

Zack's Letter Paul Immediately

The Old Scroll Paul Immediately

The Truth Paul Immediately

Smash the Evil Paul Immediately

Song of the Valley Paul Immediately

3 sidequests are never done since they do not provide enough value for doing them. Accepting the sidequest Teddy Bear is intentionally delayed, since doing so makes Don't be Proud easier to complete immediately prior, but don’t forget accepting it before completing Susan's Honey or else you will miss Teddy Bear.

Leveling Progression

Since you need to stay close to your opponents level in order to deal decent damage to them, you can not just rush through the main story line as quick as movement would allow you to, you need to pause to train repeatedly throughout the run. Finding the correct spots for this along the path you must naturally take to complete the games main quests is what dictates the timing and duration of these training segments. Since you need enemies to respawn to train on them as much as you want, there are 2 ways for an area to qualify for a training area. If an area transition is nearby you can move through it to respawn enemies. The second way requires you to use a portal scroll to go to the village and back to reload the area and thus respawn enemies. Since doing this repeatedly is expensive, it is only an option later in the game, when money is more readily available, since you will also repeatedly buy and use attack potions to further increase your damage. From level 25 onward this can be combined with save and quit in between to reset Blade Storm’s cooldown. Furthermore it can be valuable to kill enemies along the way to better farming areas, but for the sake of shortness, the following explanation will not cover that; watch speedruns to see these adaptations. You should also buy potions at Susan’s Shop as necessary whenever you are in the village. Since main quests need to be completed in order, you generally want to always get the next one, if you hand one in. Sidequests should be accepted as soon as possible, unless stated otherwise.

Level 1-3

Kill 13 slimes during the tutorials, then as you leave the village, head towards the South Mountain. Kill all slimes in the first, second and fifth room you pass through and also kill 2 slimes in the fourth, which will be along your path in that room. This will net you level 3.

Level 4-6

Use the transition zone between Plain Arcuz and South Mountain to farm the first room of South Mountain.

Level 7-8

Use the transition zone between South Mountain and Silent Hill to farm the first and second room of Silent Hill. After completingDon't be Proud,use a scroll to get back to the village or save and quit, if you didn’t get one dropped, to complete the quest and accept Teddy Bear and Susan's Honey. Then return and farm the first room of Silent Hill and last room of South Mountain.

Level 9-10

Go back a room from the transition zone of Silent Hill and South Mountain and farm the hornets in the second to last room of South Mountain. Return to the village after and go to the Rose Forest to complete Susan’s Honey.

Level 11-12

Head for the transition zone between Gino Mountain and North Forest and farm the first room of North Forest.

Level 13-18

Head for the transition zone between North Forest and Mystery Cave and farm the first room of Mystery Cave till level 14, but beware of the level 19 slimes in the back of the room. Only farm the 4 level 13 slimes close to the entrance. Farm the last room of North Forest till level 16, but be careful with the level 17 wolf, it does a lot of damage if it hits you with an elemental hit. Go complete the boss for Robbed Goods two rooms to your right and one up and scroll to the village to hand in the quest. Return to via the portal and go back to the transition zone and farm till level 18, then return to the village. If you haven't completed Chemistry Lesson yet, do so now, buy the materials as needed.

Level 19-20

Head for the transition zone between Silent Hill and Sadness Forest and farm the last room of Silent Hill till level 20. Go to the Goethe Grass and go right, up, left. The room you are in and immediately to your left have lots of centaurs. Scrollfarm both rooms until you get all the centaur horns for Horn of Courage. Scroll to get your next main quest. Do that one and the next main quest afterwards immediately.

Level 21-23

Head into the Guilty Forest and Scrollfarm the third Room until you are almost level 23 than head to the main quests boss room. Make sure to have enough experience to reach level 23 after the first wave of enemies, before the boss spawns in.

Level 24-26

Head into the Rest Valley and go north at the junction. Scrollfarm the rooms of the northern path that only have level 23 goblins and level 25 skeletons, but be careful of the skeletons potentially huge damage output. Scroll back to the village. Head into the Centaur Forest to do the next main quest. Be very careful not to die during this and also do not scroll back to the village during this. After the boss fight save and quit to the menu. Load back in, get the next main quest and use the teleport from earlier to get back to the Rest Valley. Go into the bossroom and scrollfarm the first wave of skeletons until you reach level 26, then finish the bossfight.

Level 27-32

Get the first main quest done in the village and accept the second. Head into the Abandoned Mine and go right, right, up, up, right. Scrollfarm this room until you are close to level 31. Scroll back to the village. Head into the Magic Cave to do the next main quest. Be very careful not to die during this and also do not scroll back to the village during this. After the boss fight save and quit to the menu. Load back in, get the next main quest done in the village and accept the one after and use the teleport from earlier to get back to the Abandoned Mine. Head towards the boss room until you see a group of 3 level 31 centaurs. Scrollfarm them till level 32 without resetting blade storm in between, then go finish the bossfight.

Level 33-34

Get the final main quest and head to the final part of Rest Valley. Clear out all rooms to get to the final boss, but do a bit of additional scrollfarming in the area atop that to make sure to enter the final boss with level 34. Fighting him at level 33 is just not feasible, whereas going all the way to level 35 would lose more time farming than it gains back during the bossfight.

3. Battle execution

This chapter will be entirely dedicated to how you conduct yourself in battle.

Animation Cancelling

In order to effectively battle it is very important to make full use of animation cancelling. What is animation cancelling? When you hit comma on the keyboard, this opens the game’s menu, with the soundbar, save and quit prompt and a few other things. While it is open any an all actions ingame are paused with a pause timer specific to the game’s menu. It is discontinued immediately after the menu is closed. So far so simple, right? Not quite. Because the menu pause timer overwrites all other exists pause timers, which would cause delays ingame. This means that any and all animations that cause the player or an enemy to be stuck in delaying animation, can be cancelled. For example if a wolf wants to jump at you and you menu while he is crouched down, it will return to a standing state and the impending attack will have been disabled altogether. On the other hand the player is also briefly immobilized, if you do an aerial downsmash attack. There is also a brief delay after every fourth consecutive melee attack. In these two cases you can force these delays to end early by quickly opening and closing the menu. This means animation cancelling is both an effective tool to speed up your own attacks and movement and to deny enemies the opportunity to attack.

Effective Fighting

In order to fight efficiently grouping enemies together and using repeated aerial downsmashes on them is by far the best way to kill lots of enemies quickly and safely. Using Hurricane I and II synergizes well with this tactic, since they hit enemies all around you. If there are individual strong enemies, such as bosses, Speedup is by far the most effective tool of dealing with them, since it doubles your attack speed, giving you a massive increase in damage output for it’s duration. Just mash attacks into your opponent till they drop. Later in the game, you get access to Blade Storm, which damages all enemies around you constantly, rendering them completely helpless, while you can still move at reduced speed. It is important to note, that Hurricane I, II and Blade Storm give you damage immunity while their animations are taking place. The only way this can get beaten is if you are affected and stunned by thunder damage. This means that you still need to tread carefully around thunder enemies later in the game, especially thunder centaurs.

Money as a fighting resource

There are a variety of ways to improve your ability to fight with money. Prior to getting the good weapon from the quest, you can buy new swords at level 6, 11, 16 and 21 for bigger base damage. Using scrolls to get back to the village to buy a new scroll, an attack potion and SP Potions to use more skills at higher damage, is a very effective but expensive tool to speed up your level grinding. You can also sometimes buy useful compose materials from Susan, but this is random. In general you should adapt your use of scrolls and attack potions to your money situation. If you have lots of money use it to constantly farm with an active attack potion, if you don’t have enough money for it, restrict yourself to only farm with the berserk skill and your SP on kill and small SP potions.

4. Accidental glitchuse and prevention thereof

This Chapter will cover glitches can easily happen and invalidate a run.

Problematic glitches

Since this guide is specifically designed to instruct on the glitchless any% category it is necessary to cover glitches that a player ignorant of them might accidentally trigger, which would cause a run to be invalidated for the glitchless category.

Buying items from a shop repeatedly

If you buy an item from the shop via drag and drop and then close and open the shop, that individual item will be on offer again. Careful examination of this behaviour has shown it to be a variation of an item duping glitch, which is why it is not allowed to be abused in glitchless runs. To legitimately force a shop to restock you must reload the village, either by leaving it via portal or the main gate at the bottom or with a save and quit.

Glitched cooldowns

If you increase the level of any active skill, this will increase it’s cooldown and improve it’s effect. However this increased cooldown does not update until you also reassign that skill anew to your skill hotbar, but the improved effect is still applied. This is why you are required to update any active skill in your hotbar by putting it into it from your skillpanel, every time you increase it’s level before you are allowed to use this skill again.

Potion Stacking

If you have any potion active, that boosts a stat visible in your character panel and then open the character panel to show the increased stat, while you have unspent character points, and than press the accept button after the boosting potion has run out, the boost will be permanently applied to you until you save and quit. This applies to attack potions, magic defence potions, defence potions and archangel potions. And since you level up quite a few times and invest stats during the run and also use boosting potions quite a lot, this glitch can happen quite easily, if you are not careful. This can also happen with the Holy Light skill, which is also not allowed, though boosting potions are far more likely to invalidate a run by mistake via this glitch.

Explicitly allowed glitches or exploits

There are also some glitches or exploits in the game that are accepted in the glitchless category.

Animation Cancelling

Using the pause menu to cancel animations is one such exploit, it is certainly an unintended piece of game design, but it also makes the speedruns far more consistent and enjoyable to play and also adds a healthy amount of practical skill to the run, which is why the community has allowed it.

Delayed compose boosts

As mentioned in regards to the Holy Light SP requirement at level 20 in Chapter 1 of this guide, compose bonuses that give % base increase of any stat are only calculated whenever the composed item is newly equipped. This means if you increase the base value of any stat afterwards, you also need to reequip the compose effect’s item to get the correct bonus value from it. Since not doing this, whenever you increase your base stats will only hurt you and cost you stats that you would otherwise have and since forcing the player to do so would lead to a lot of additional inventory management, the community has allowed not doing this and you may reapply such bonuses at your leisure, though it is recommended you regularly do so for % attack composes, so as to have all the damage you can and for the level 20 SP threshold for Holy Light.

Bugged Ghosts

Ghosts will sometimes bug out, while they split up, which can cause the sealed rooms in the final area of the game to be unclearable. If this happens you just need to scroll and try the room again. Since there is no way to reliably prevent or fix this, you may continue a run where it happens, in which case it is just unlucky timeloss.