EnglandManaged to finish a good run yesterday 4:15 IGT 4:30:27RT took me an hour and 20mins to get a tornado to spawn and as a result my shooting was a bit off for the first few mission but all in all a good run. I know I can save a min or 2 in the first 2 hours of the run with better shooting and I may be able to route a few mins off in the last 2 and a half hour.
For now I’m happy and TBH I’m pretty fatigued with the game because of the tornado resets so I’ll wait until there are others actively running again so I have some more motivation to play again. Sub 4:30 RT remains the goal then from there it is min by min again.
I half heartedly went through the last part of the game to find anything glaring obvious to save time and the only thing I found was in Red Asphalt. You can shoot Donny instead of beating him shoot him with one bullet wait for the whole animation to end then shoot once again repeat until checkpoint is reached not sure how much time is saved but it seems quicker I’ll time it sometime soon. There are a few missions where infinite sprint will save 30 or so sec as well.
I’m planning to do some runs on Saturday see how far from 4:30 RT the run is then I’ll go through the second half of the game in more depth.
Put in a few hours over the last couple of weeks on the first 2 hours of the game (up to waste not want not) just looking for the small improvements. What I have found is:
The early Tornado is a 1m 40s time saves.
The difference in respect can be bridged with 3 tags though it can be very close so the 4th tag may be needed if you get unlucky.
Taunting kills is a good way to get extra respect in the early game only if it doesn’t waste time to do so.
Mayhem can be as quick as mid 2 mins if you get lucky with which areas you get but as much as high 3min if you get the worse possible pattern.
When picking up the kobras I pick up one flashbang from the weapons cache for Veteran Child.
During strip club stronghold you can evade the stun gun if you stand to the far right or left of the door when opening it.
Infinite sprint saves time in Prison break.
During Science Museum stronghold when you go in the glass room taking the stairs to the right is quicker.
During Museum Pier stronghold there are 3 rocket launcher gang member spawns, 2 on top of the pillars in the first part and the last on is the guy next to the car on the left as you go down to the docks as you destroy the 5 boats. They are worth picking up for later missions.
Infinite sprint saves time in both the saint’s stronghold and brotherhood 1. Use 1 rocket in Sommerset Apartments stronghold to destroy the moving drug lab.
Infinite sprint saves time in waste not want not.
I did a practice run up to that point and all in all this saves about 5 min over my PB up to waste not want not (from 2:01-1:56 IGT) though I suspect another min IGT is there as I had a dodgy Waste not want not. Another 4 mins over the next 2 and a half hours would mean sub 4:30 RT and with some mission that Infinite sprint will definitely help and with missions being less autoscroller based later on it may be viable.
That Infinite sprint glitch seems to be indefinite from the small amount of testing I did with it, if it is confirmed to be permanent, the start will be:
Take appointed defender - get the tattoo – drive to the police station and listen to the wiretaps (even with the mission running this is possible I have tested it) get the tornado – call Dex to get the marker on the map (again possible with the mission running) then finish the mission in the tornado – instead of doing the races, as you will not be able as you would lose the heli, do the first level of fuzz nearby which is quicker in the tornado then do Down Payment flying back in the tornado saving it after and going to Insurance fraud from there during the first level jump out the tornado control the fall so it is a single damage hit of 30k so you don’t pass but you get adrenaline then save and load warp back to the safe house, collect money from cache get the tornado again and do the mayhem that is close to the safe house even when I do badly it only takes 3 IGT mins which is equal to my best ever Insurance fraud. From there fly to Revelations and continue as normal.
I did some timing on the riskier earlier tornado strat and basically came to the conclusion you have to be in the tornado with 40secs to go at the latest to realistically have time to fly there land safely and make it to the marker. If you get a good car and drive flawlessly you have a 20 sec cushion in which you can do the spin strat if you get a bad car crashing once will make it impossible to get there in time and even if you do you will need a first spawn to make it in time.
I would still say go for it the reset wouldn’t be that big a difference to making it and the tornado not being there.
One other thing switching the races for 1 level of fuzz leaves us down 1500 or so respect for the 1st Samedi mission there is 3 viable options to replace this
- Do a second level of fuzz
- Do a forth level of mayhem
- Get 3 tags - there are 5 obvious one 2 on the inside during Down Payment the 2 outside of the HQ and 1 at the end of Revelations.
I’m leaning towards the tags as the quickest way taking the one outside the HQ after the save warp from Insurance Fraud either of the 2 inside during Down Payment and the one at the end of Revelations
This is the video that gave me the idea for the spinning strat. Where he is at 2:39 is where I stand facing the door on the outside of the building and instead of running around like him just spinning the camera is sufficient to reroll the spawn.
Just when I think I have it down getting the tornado 3 or 4 times in a row I then go 3 or 4 not getting it to spawn. Even so I think this is the way to go resetting every 5mins is far more viable that every 15.
The benefit of extended sprint basically means that 3 level of Insurance fraud will always be in the route unless a better way of conserving sprint than bunny hopping is found it is a shame this is the only SR game that tapping sprint doesn’t extend stamina.
Just ran the safe strat 4 times listening to the wire taps then going to tornado: first 2 I got the tornado using the spin strat, so there is something in that strat, 1 I parked where the police car spawns in fuzz so lost the heli one I crashed it at forgive and for forget. The third time I couldn't get the heli to spawn but the fourth time I got the Tornado after 2 spins and finished up to the end of Down payment without taking too many risks flying or landing and with no flash bangs for the shanties in 17 IGT mins. 1 level of fuzz was enough respect, there is an option to get 4 flash bangs so I think 16 IGT mins is possible maybe high 15 with a perfectly done start and the riskier strats.
It is quicker than the old strat with the shorter drive to the police station, no return flight to the safe house, fuzz instead of races and the heli for travel minus the extra time for flying to Tee N Ay it is possibly as much as 2mins difference. Another little benefit is that when taking the tornado as it is so early you only get 2 starts wanted level so no other tornados shooting you down.
I have some time on Sunday so I'll work on this then move on to other mission to see what I can find.
Yer that is what is needs to be done. What I want to test is:
How consistent the spinning strat is and at what point is the reset rather than continuing (that is an upside that resets will be 5mins in rather that 15mins in)
If without the driving from the court to the forgive and forget and then to Gats house will the respect be enough from just one level of fuzz
If no will 2 levels of fuzz get us 2 levels of respect so after Down Payment we do Revelation then save warp and do insurance fraud possibly saving a level 6 activity later in the run
Is there a place to fit in Flash Bangs or will the lack them be too much of an issue an alternative could be the Satchel Charge in Jailbreak if they can be take out of the mission.
The bulk of my testing time has gone into the following 2 things:
There is a theoretical route that could be a decent time save if it is possible which could be done either in a risky way or a slightly slower risk free way. Take appointed defender - get the tattoo – drive to the police station and listen to the wiretaps (even with the mission running this is possible I have tested it) get the tornado – call Dex to get the marker on the map (again possible with the mission running) then finish the mission in the tornado – instead of doing the races, as you will not be able as you would lose the heli, do the first level of fuzz nearby which is quicker in the tornado then do Down Payment flying back in the tornado saving it after and going to Insurance fraud from there.
(The riskier way would be to go to Tee “N” ay before the police station but this would put a time limit on getting to the next part)
I was messing around with the riskier route and after listening to the wiretaps and seeing the heli was not there I was messing about while I thought of what to do next. While I was thinking what to do next I faced the unopened door and was spinning the camera around, as there was a strat I found doing something similar with the oppressor that work moderately well but was time consuming, and to my surprise after 20 or so revolutions the tornado spawned second before the time to get to the next objective run out.
I have repeated the spinning of the camera to test if this is the solution to our tornado issues but it is horrible inconsistent. What I found is that if it doesn’t spawn in the first 25 revolutions it doesn’t at all and of the 5 time I tried it only spawned twice, it did spawn a third time but I ran into the station to the point it shows the switching of the districts and when I came back it was there.
If you could also test the spinning method or have any thoughts on it, it would be helpful if we could get the spawn down even to an increased chance it makes the game more runnable and even raceable.
Not sure who is left active in this game but I am coming back round to routing/running this game as I have finished with SR1 for now. I'm happy with the mission order we have got so I am going to concentrate on finding the little individual mission strats breaking the game down mission by mission to see if I can find way to make them both quicker and more consistent and the driving routes we take which we’ve neglected due to the amount we use the heli.
If there is anything you want me to test or if there is anything you have found that will save me some time it would be much appreciated.
With mission order there seems to be a straight choice between a slightly quicker intertwining of the 3 arcs that will result in more pushbacks with less control over them or doing them 1 gang at a time and having less pushbacks with a higher degree of control where they spawn and total control of when they spawn.
I tend to prefer the later as the time lost doing a pushback can be considerable if the wrong ones are spawned and I believe that the time lose doing extras over the 3 in this route will be far greater than what is gained in the slightly better travel.
Los Carnales is locked in as the first part and I have that section taking me 1h 17 mins with the saints prologue missions included in that. I am leaning to doing the Vice king missions after as that is seemingly the faster way but that may change.
The Blue and Cyan line has an increased chance for the Attrazione while Green and lime have a better chance for temptress/vortex.
The Lime route will only have a better chance over Green of getting temptress/vortex or Attrazione due to it being longer (upto 40 plus secs longer) I would advise learning the bridge jump in the green route in any case for runs that have a slow start it maybe the difference between a reset or not.
On average Pink route is 15ish secs quicker and I also find it to be easier as traffic isn't as dense.
http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/saintsrowmap3.jpg.html?o=5
The green line is a new Party time route this is a good 20-30 second improvement there is a part where you can take the stunt jump or take the road if the road is clear that is the better route but often there is quite a bit of traffic so taking the jump is better.
The pink line is the return to steelport route this is a new route which is better than the older one used
The red line is a new route going to kenzi’s guardian angel did some timing the Heli takes 1min15sec, the peacemaker take 1min 11 sec if driven pretty well but the vortex and temptress take 1min and 3 sec if driven well so between the peacemaker and Heli it is preference but if you get a temptress or vortex driving is the better option
The yellow line is a new gangbang driving route not only is it 15 secs quick it is far safer as less road blocks spawn and it is basically straight lines. Another little improvement I have found for that mission is that when you go to the police car instead of going through the doors leading outside go to the corner of the room just to the right of the doors and you can clip through the wall into the car.
The blue line is a new route for my name is Cyrus Temple it is a good 20secs plus quicker and like the new gangbang route it is safer as you don’t need to make turns in areas with quite a bit of traffic.
The purple marks on the map are areas with heli spawns I try using them but they are always slower overall as getting to them often means going away from the destination and their speed isn’t quick enough to make up for it
http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/saints%20row%20map%20Genki.jpg.html?o=0
Here are the 4 possible routes to Genki activity
The fastest is the brighter green line though it does involve a bit of a risk as you have to drop from the freeway to the bridge below, it will take a few attempts to get a reference point but it is very consistent and far quicker.
The next best is the blue line this also involves a bridge drop but is far more forgiving as there is no risk of driving into the sea.
The lime and cyan lines are the safe variance of the 2 above the cyan is faster but if you are seeking to get a decent time the green and blue routes are the way to go.
I’ve come back round to routing this game and have made some progress by basically tearing up the old route and starting over in order to solve some of the problems that were plaguing the old route.
Rather than interweaving activities, needed to get respect, in-between missions and using them as a way to travel between missions I have moved them so 95% of the respect is gained in a single block as soon as you are free to roam after the first 2 enforced missions. While this loses small amounts of time gained not travelling between missions it reduces the amount of time there is for pushbacks to occur. Previously I expected to get 6 or 7 plus whereas now 3 seems to be what I am consistently getting so a time save overall.
Another big this is a change up in money management at the start to allow $500 to be spent on tattoos getting the 10% bonus respect earlier and subsequently getting 15% for all but 2 activities and while this is only an extra half a level it is still some time saved.
Mission order is the next thing I’ll work on but that should only take a couple of hours to solve so hopefully I can get a sub 5:15 run in the near future.
Planned to do a quick bad ending% run today, luckily, I checked my timer during the unskippable cut scene and saw I was 4mins up on my PB, that had a poor start, and 2mins faster than I have ever been at that stage of a run so an impromptu full run came of it.
Everything seemed to click into place, dealt with the clones in A Game of Clones quickly, all the rescues went well, got the quick fire buff kill on the inside aliens in The Girl Who Hates the 50s- He Lives and while the end of that mission could have been better I was happy with it, I didn’t get trolled much by the zin in Keymaster-Batteries Not Included which is rare for a solo run and I got the Zinyak stuck glitch in the final fight. So all in all I’m very happy with the run.
http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/100_4897.jpg.html?sort=3&o=4 3:42IGT 3:55:48 according to my timer. There may be another 4 or so mins to get on this current route solo maybe sub 3:50 at a push but I doubt I’ll try much more for now to get them as I’m pretty happy with this time and I’d rather put the time into SR1 or 2 than chasing 4 mins that is mostly be down to RNG with them not interrupting animations and getting good warden fights.
HoboWithAShotgun You’ll properly want to change your segmented run target. 3:38 or there or there about is probably possible for a Segmented run if you’re willing to put in the time grinding the segments getting good warden fights.
About the pushback’s, though I have never tested it, I was under the impression that the ultor cutscene will not appear if there are pushback’s on the map. This was the case in SR1 so I assumed that it would also be the case for SR2 that will go on the list of what is needed to be tested.
Did a de-rust run this morning and somehow, after not touching the game for a month or so, it came out to be a PB of 3:52 IGT.
After the run I was messing about and found something that could possibly be used. If you mash jump and cancel (A & Y on X Box 360) you can end up stuck in the fall animation which puts you in a state of levitation. You can move about but it is not fast enough to be an alternate form of travel, even with the fact no sprint energy is used, and you can also not jump when in this state. The main thing I have found to do with it is if you go into a body of water, due to lazy programming, there is often a world hole that can put you under the map. If you fall enough it will place you back in the overworld next to the nuclear plant so a possible OOB warp but I have not thought of where this warp is useful. Possibly 100% runs could use it.
The other thing is once under you can call in the void and fly under the map. Due to solid floors this can’t be use to travel but something that is interesting. If you go to where the Saint’s Penthouse from SR3 is and drop down you can find the space ship where your homies reside. This opens the question are there other points under the map where other places physical locaions are? If so some potential wrong warps and mission skip are there to be found. The unlikely possibility of finding the final battle area of Zinyak and triggering it could make the game sub 40mins.
Changed the SR 2, 3 & 4 boards to include IGT as well as RT and added the IGTs that I know to the previous entries on the leader boards. For now records are still RTA owing to the fact savewarping is used in all 3 of these categories the downtime between these save and reloads will not be reflected so a route with many more unnecessary savewarps that are time losses in RT will not be fairly reflected in IGT.
Also added co-op categories for 3 & 4 as there was an indicated want for them, 2 will also be added should the same want for them arise.
Another quick question is there any objections to me adding my IGT records with the maximum RT to the boards?
The starting 2 missions are interchangeable there is no time lost by doing one mission first over another. The only thing that changes by doing Revelation first is that you get the 30% boost on Three Kings and as you are only ever going to miss out on the final level of respect by a hundred or so respect the 30% boost make it 99% consistent you will get the respect without having to do tags so the overall time save is from the lack of tags needed to get the extra level.
The Vehicle spawning and despawning is weird basically there are times where if you just used the heli in a mission that warps you back to the safe house at the end, Eternal Sunshine for example, the Tornado will not return to the heli menu as it hasn’t yet despawned from the previous location. The way to get over this normally would be to reload an auto save to bring it back to the menu. The mission rearrangement I have done means that we cut out 1 extra reload after Eternal Sunshine by putting a mission, Good D, in after. As it is a mission that doesn’t need the tornado it acts as a way to despawn the heli and put it back in your heli menu for Assault on Precinct 31.
As for practice if I was to break it into sections I would break it up into sections like this:
1 start to end of fuzz (45mins) 2 end of fuzz to RS Amberbrook Museum Pier (40mins) 3 Veteran Child to Waste Not Want Not (35mins) 4 Imperial Square Pagodas to Stilwater University Student Union/ demo derby (40mins) 5 Sunnyvale Gardens Fishing Dock to Room Service (40mins) 6 Showdown to One Man's Junk... (45mins) 7 U Cutscene to ...and a Better Life (20mins)
Finished a run last night that ended as a 4:24 IGT http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/sellz4/media/100_4899.jpg.html?sort=3&o=3 which came out to a 4:39:06 according to the timer on my phone.
The run was very solid, no major time loses that I can think of with respect going perfectly having the correct amount at all times without having to take any tags.
A couple of strats that I came up with on the fly that seemed to help save a few secs but need looking into:
During Waste Not Want Not: when you buy the Geiger counter you have the money to buy 3 rockets which can be used later on in the run such as on the car for a quick kill during Burning Down the House which takes 3 rockets to do.
Also on Waste Not Want Not: On the heli pad while you are waiting you can either kill the first bunch of guards that come to kill you then wait at the far corner of the pad from the stairs where they rarely are able to path to you and take a quick break or if you need respect you can grab guards and throw them off the side. You get 3 silver stars each time you throw one which is 150ish respect each time so you can comfortable get an extra 1k respect in what is dead time anyways that is the equivalent of 2 tags.
In Assault on Precinct 31: when the doors to the heli pad open kill all the guards and move the heli closer to the door while Shaundi is hacking so she doesn’t have to run as far.
And finally small route tweaks I’ll change the main route post later to avoid confusion.
I have come to the conclusion that the best start is U0 Revelation buy 2 bikes, SR4 Three Kings then S1 Got Dust, Will Travel. This is for respect reasons ensuring you hit that final level every time.
And the end is tweaked to
S8 Riot Control, S9 Eternal Sunshine, R10 Good D, S10 Assault on Precinct 31, S11 The Shopping Maul then R11 One Man's Junk... This is due to making sure the tornado returns to the heli menu without the need to reload a save.
