Yeah it's pretty much no one's done it is all. I'm more than happy to make a category for it if a run gets laid down.

Nope, no different endings. I forget what I had in mind with that verbage but 100% should be all lips and finish all the stages including the post-game ones.

A lot of this is news to me. I use wings for the power wine quest and that's it. Using them for a cheap heal is probably worth it. I cannot understate how much healing items and money seems like a barrier in glitchless.

Definitely save scrolls for later stuff. You'll probably need more gear checkpoints than a duping run though. We ignore most gear checkpoints by getting drunk-- then again you're using magic almost exclusively. I suspect in a DW run the play will be to never get hit. Not easy though.

FourthHorn uses the shoe in Goblin Fort and I use the robe in Wizari for cash influxes if we need them. I think you've got most of the good guaranteed cash sources here.

I set up the Glitchless category. Hopefully I didn't bust anything in the process of doing so (:

Glitchless is a neat idea. With the easy Power Wine and duping accessible, every class basically gets boiled down to "Do SOMETHING to get to boat, dupe wine, melee everything til win". The main reason I didn't do much with it myself is just how much money and consumable farming matters in a glitchless playthrough. I dupe healing items even when I play casually now. It just smooths the game over so much.

Off the top of my head I'd say a glitchless run would forbid duping, Camille dialogue skip (not that that's RTA viable...), and clone herb glitch.

My DW run on the board dupes SP items but otherwise is glitchless. Course the SP items would account for a lot of time :)

Anyway if you put down a run I'll put together a category for it. Would be neat to see more people experiment with SS2.

Super interested to see how it turns out. My wrist wasn't happy with 200 STR, 300+ is an RSI waiting to happen. :P

Khananaphone found during the Big20 that you can save maybe a second on the final boss by screen-wrapping an attack during the spawn-in. While the boss is flashing he apparently has a hitbox at the back of his sprite.

Between this and the two cycle statues (which may not be RTA viable) you can probably save a couple more seconds in an ideal run. I don't plan to go for it any time soon, so I figured I'd document it before it's forgotten.

With clone fight one-shots no longer a worry thanks to healing item cheese, there's no mechanical reason to limit STR duping. We could go all the way to 500 if we wanted... though I suspect diminishing returns set in pretty quick.

I just did a few runs going to 200. I'm pretty trash at duping, especially extended duping like the Power Wine dupe, but I was still able to pull in a 1:39 with a fairly rough run. It has me wondering what optimal STR target would be.

I chose 200-225 for the specific reason that it allows you to destroy everything but 'heavy' enemies like Golems with one Claw flurry up until Chaos Castle. After that you need to resort to knife spins. 250+ STR may let you claw flurry everything there too, but I don't personally feel it's worthwhile.

200 STR also lets you kill the first two limbs of Vatali in one cycle without Guts, kill two balls on the Dryazhek snake in one knife spin, and two-cycle Dark Mistress.

I guess I just feel like these are all breakpoints that'd need significant more STR to surpass, and then you're moving into diminishing returns.

Maybe we need to do some Math here D: Anyone have thoughts?

I don't remember why I timed on character control. Habit I guess? I see no strong case for one way or the other so I'm fine with whatever takes consensus.

Important question: Do we call this the Aldriel skip or "Just jump straight up, dumbass" :P

Yeah I can replicate that too. It's not in the WR so I'm inclined to believe it's new.

1.) I removed Shiden's runs as his twitch account seems to have gone foom, taking the video proof with it :( He's welcome to re-submit. His runs were Easy mode, 10m45s and 11m42s.

2.) I retimed my Normal WR to 9m36s. I timed from character control but all other remaining runners in the game time from start screen. So I'm adjusting to their consensus :) If you pick up the game please time from start.

I did a run of this as a joke, then realized it's actually pretty fun. Here's my somewhat decent PB. I may try to grind it lower. Can we get a category for it?

Deln just approved the runs. Sorry if I sounded pushy on twitter, Deln; twitter isn't good for being eloquent :(

Same.

Though no one runs this I thought I'd document a finding, just in case :)

While trying to find a marathon safe route for the Handheld Heroes marathon I stumbled onto a new glitch that can be used to develop at the very least a race-safe route that eliminates the need for 75% of health drops my WR route uses.

I call this glitch skill swapping, or in the specific case I use for safety strats "Shieldswap". It does what it says on the tin: swaps Lane's 50% damage shield to another hero so I can do another character's damage while using the damage mitigation usually only available to Lane.

The way it works is simple. If you press select to open the character select menu the frame after you use a B-skill, that skill will remain in effect after the swap. Usually this just results in a hilarious glitched out animation like skillswapping Pit's bomb to Kyle results in exploding skeletons. Lane's shield is, so far, the only useful use of the glitch I've found.

I've built a marathon route based on this. It's exactly the same as the WR route except if you don't get a tear from Bat Boss, you take Lane and Kyle and on the hand boss use Lane to start the fight until she's one hit from death, then use Shieldswap to protect Kyle. When his HP runs out, swap to the Hero to finish the fight; you should need zero healing items.

You can then use Shieldswap on Knight but you have to wait until he's about to hit you to get any use out of it. If done right you can beat Knight with only two potions instead of four.

Finally you can Shieldswap on Barius to beat him with zero healing items if you start with Zold, switch to Lane, and shieldswap just before his first volley hits you. If done right you will shield two cycles, giving Zold enough HP to finish the fight with no healing needed.

All in all this drops the healing item requirement for a run from 10 potions to 2-3. Unfortunately the time you waste getting Lane and juggling her MP means it's not WR-viable without a major reroute, but it'd be good for new runners, people who don't want to reset on bad drops, and races.

That's a shame, but legit.

Honestly they're on a time crunch. They already expanded the marathon from 2 days to 3, so there's a good chance my NG run will get bopped because it's 2 hours of a wolf stabbing things. NG+ has a better chance, so go for it :)

Yeah, it'd probably have to be the folks who have sub-2. The marathon people said they want close-ish PBs. :(

I saw this when you posted it and poked at trying to replicate it. It may be something specific to Beast Mountain since it's "Special". Though I've seen some weird stuff with boss cutscenes and music glitches, and sometimes cutscenes taking longer to start and end-- it wouldn't shock me if the game code to do cutscenes and boss loading is buggy.

No idea how to trigger any of this on purpose though.

I submitted Any% Normal Brawler for the Handheld Heroes marathon. If anyone else is up for seeing if they can make it a race, throw in a submssion :)

http://www.speedrun.com/Handheld_Heroes/thread/vaoy5

Edit: I'd even be cool with Brawler VS Ninja if Fon wanted to throw in Ninja. We'd just call it "Any% Normal" then obviously ;) That would actually be a pretty sweet thing to watch.

I've done some testing of the differences between the two difficulties (first option in the options menu, defaults to Normal, can be flipped to Easy).

Here's what's different on Normal that's notable to a speedrun:

• Most normal enemies have more HP. The generic trash still dies to 1 rocket or rider kick, but other things may need 2 hits; things that needed 2 now need 3.
• Most bosses take more hits the kill. The is most noticeable with midbosses and phase 1 of multi-phase bosses. The final boss phase of the stage has less of a boost, or none at all.
• Your energy regen is cut about in half during mech fights. It's no longer possible to finish fights with a flurry of offense; most mech fights require playing defensive to recharge.
• The final mech fight does not refill your health between phases, which is actually kind of a big deal coupled with the energy regen penalty above.

The last two points are the most important. While most of my mech fight strategies will still work, you'd have to spend time defending to recharge between offensive flurries; a LONG time recharging on the final fight. I wouldn't be surprised if this adds 3 minutes to the run on its own.

Of secondary importance are the other two points. More enemy HP means more backboosts while trying to rider kick through enemies, that's about all. More boss HP makes bosses take longer because at no time are you in danger during boss fights; it's just more time for no difficulty or style gain.

In general, Normal difficulty is "the same but takes longer". I personally feel Easy makes a cooler looking run even if you execute optimally in both difficulties. However, these differences make comparing runs between difficulties unfair.

For now I've added a difficulty field to the leaderboard so it's clearer. If someone besides me takes up running the game I'm more than willing to split the board into two categories.

Just noting this all for the record if anyone gets curious.