Yeah, that's fair. Everyone has their preferred categories :)

My single run of NG+ pegged in at about 4 hours 10 minutes with lots of room to improve (I used Sanji for the return to sabaody and had my face kicked about by Perona for a good while, never making that mistake again XD)

Once you exit out of the load screen, it’ll prompt you to make a new save. Say yes, then cancel out. You can then proceed without saving. Then, just disable auto save once you make it to the options menu.

My current record for NG is 4:52:20.61 (screenshot of splits: https://imgur.com/KEnObr1 ). Since there’s no video proof I can’t justify submitting it. I’m working on recording some runs, I’m just having problems with both my laptop and capture card (it’s an avermedia livegamer portable, and apparently I bought the wrong SD card so I need to try and reformat it to the right format.)

Good luck, and have fun, it’s a whole different beast to NG+, and it’s an interesting run ^_^

I didn’t know that! Although, the special takes so long that it might just be faster to use a different character.

I’m messing around with Tashigi, since her movement speed is rather fast, and she has her spammy quick dash (alternating between her unique action and dash cancel). It’s a little unwieldy, but if it can be mastered, it might lead to some interesting runs.

That sounds about right. My go-to loadout is pirate alliance, leadership, battlefield charisma, hero’s strength and [insert specific move] boost. The last two sometimes swapped out for a 2-slot skill, depending on character and stage.

Out of interest, what was your skill setup for Zoro?

That’s pretty neat. I’ll see if I can get it to work in NG, maybe by mashing Krieg with a kizuna rush. That’d chop a lot of time off the stage :)

I’m messing around with Post timeskip Usopp for some stages (I say some, it’s alabasta for now), since his R1 has a decent radius and damage, and his run speed is rather fast, if I’m correct. On normal, sanji’s kizuna finisher doesn’t one-shot Tashigi in Alabasta, so I’m trying to find alternatives.

NG+ doesn’t really need kizuna rush, maybe for Dressrosa but that’s about it.

Speaking of kizuna rush, on NG you need to use it sparingly, since you don’t have access to battlefield charisma, you use it to deal with problem enemies, then R2 out of it. A good example is Loguetown. As Luffy, you have 3 kizuna allies in Usopp, Sanji, and Zoro. Usopp leaves right before the Smoker fight at the end, so any Kizuna Rushes you use during the stage come from him. So then you have zoro and sanji full for the smoker fight. With more practice, I could probably take down smoker before the first rush runs out, meaning I could use Usopp on Tashigi and sanji on Buggy, but the second is there for safety at the moment.

That’s pretty much how I run rta arlong park lol. The run is pretty straightforward without specials. It’s just knowing where to go at what time. Although I tend to find long pieces of dialogue in which to activate kizuna rush and, in the case of sanji levels involving female enemies, using kizuna finishers so that the chain of text isn’t interrupted.

Good idea. RTAs take mental preparation. NG especially. Your Segmented is pretty damn solid, my attempts still fall about Half a minute short XD

It hadn’t occurred to me since I do a lot of RTAs and avoid specials like the plague :P

Okay, how did I not notice that specials freeze the In-level timer??? Now everything makes sense! I was wondering why my arlong park runs were off by about 50 seconds XD

Yeah, there are other characters around the same speed, they just don’t put out the damage in a timely manner(Marco) or are just plain naff (looking at you, Buggy).

In NG I use luffy until I hit level 20, at which point I switch to sanji for most stages he’s in (barring punk hazard, Monet is a nightmare and kizuna attacks don’t one shot her)

NG+ is sanji almost all the way :)

Right, I completely forgot about that one! I usually play Sanji there XD

Oh, and one last thing: dialogue boxes. Using supers/kizuna finishers and activating kizuna rush delays any further text boxes, meaning it could take longer for allies to start moving to destinations and for missions to finish. In NG+, this is less of an issue since supers one shot just about anything. However, in NG, supers do little enough damage that it’s often not worth using them.

Also, text boxes are produced every 500KOs, so keep an eye on that. The most obvious example is right before captain Morgan spawns at the end of romance Dawn. You’ll probably have 1000-1500 by then. These text boxes are low priority, so they get tacked on at the end of dialogue chains and take about 5 seconds to finish, so keep that in mind.

HI all,

I thought it might be a good idea to have a place to put anything you've discovered to help the community out. I've been practicing Any% NG a fair amount, and with any luck, my capture card should arrive soon and if my laptop can handle it, I should be able to start posting runs, employing the strategies below.

I'll start with a few since I don't have much time right now, i'll update as and when I can. Feel free to add your own and to start discussions :)

Any% Legend Mode Normal

(For buttons, I will be using the default PS4 configuration, as that is the version I am using. S=Square, T=Triangle, etc.)

General: Luffy's special action (Gum Gum Pistol, R1 on PS4) is exceptional as it can stagger bosses out of their attack charge animations, takes out a chunk of their hyper meter, and in kizuna rush, deals a fair amount of damage. Used on Buggy and Crocodile, it can cancel their super when they're charging it after they jump to the centre of the arena.

I've found a good level to be is Level 20 by the time you Hit Skypiea. Sanji's SSST Is stupidly good. If not, Luffy can clear the stage fine. You’ll be level 20 by Water 7 anyway.

Sanji can juggle and kill officers efficiently using ST, R1, X, TTSS. This is especially useful during post-enies lobby to deal with Franky after stunning him.

Learn your allies' routes during escorts and take out base captains and officers in their way. I've also found that if you're in view of them, thy'll try and kill every peon they see before moving on. They seem to move easier if you leave them be (Citation needed, I may just be going crazy). If there's more than one character to escort, PRIORITISE NAMI. Especially on Loguetown. I've gained more than a few grey hairs trying to get her to move.

On most bosses with three sections to their health bar, you can bypass one of the partitions by activating kizuna rush at the start of the fight. This will cause the boss to do the same, removing the first partition in their health bar. This is useful, because you then don't need to break up your combo and wait for them to power up again. Exceptions to this are: Morgan, Buggy (Orange town), Arlong, Crocodile, Lucci, Magellan, Caesar(maybe, I forget), Doflamingo.

Stage-specific:

Syrup Village: After Kuro shows up, you're told to capture three bases. You actually only need to capture two.The left and centre ones are the fastest, starting with the left. After the seconds base is captured, kuro opens the gates above the centre base.

Water 7: Don't use Luffy. He has to fight Usopp right at the start. Picking anyone else skips it.

Thriller Bark:

Oars was a huge stumbling block to begin with, however, the fastest way I've found to deal with him is to use Luffy's TTSS, followed by Franky's Square-based Kizuna attack. This takes a massive chunk of HP out and, if you don't charge luffy's combo, comes out just fast enough to dodge Moria's interference.

Marineford 2: Using Luffy ends the stage at Akainu. There's a very long section after it that other characters have to play through. Luffy skips it.

Any% NG+

Return to Sabaody: For the love of god, don't use Sanji unless you're certain you can get your kizuna gauge to max quickly and even then, make sure it can one-shot Perona, otherwise you're going to lose a lot of time. I learned that one that hard way.

Yeah, i'm working on the platinum trophy (since I made the switch from ps3 to ps4 on a different psn account), moslty for the skills (making territories easier to capture, etc.) The little things :)

Thank you for the warm welcome and the rules clarification. I look forward to running more and hopefully start posting runs when I can :)

Hi there,

I recently decided to pick this game up for speedrunning, as it is one that I enjoy immensely and am quite passionate about. I believe this game has the potential to be an interesting speedrun, and i'd love to see how far we can take it ^_^

While I currently don't possess any sort of streaming or recording equipment (not counting ps4 share since it pauses on every cutscene), I have timed a few legend mode any% normal runs using the speedrun assistant app for IOS, and have a current personal best of 5 hours, 25 minutes with still some time to save.

I am not the greatest at taking notes (since most of them end up as a disjointed stream of consciousness), but I am currently trying to compile a list of strategies and routes that might help. I may start a thread with the things I have for now, then update it when necessary.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to working with you to make this game as fast as possible. ^_^

Finally, a question: are there any specific rules for Any% NG+?