Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll just unfollow for a year and see how the notifications look then.

Could somebody please explain what are some of the most interesting/important drops in speedrunning the game and what to expect from the dropmod runs?

It would be interesting to see some challenge mods that make the game harder also. Like, there was this mod that doubles or triples each enemy in the game. What is the highest enemy multiplier that has been completed? I wonder how far you could push it with the enemy multiplier and still finish the game.

Please make it so that the dropmod runs are not shown as WR if the time is slower than regular WR.

Notifications are messed up when WR is announced that is slower than current nodropmod WR.

For less clutter maybe just combine the leaderboards and mark the "dropmod" in the route bracket.

Dropmod is tool-assisted speedrunning, so it should always be faster than regular speedrunning or not posted at all.

What is the kill count in the any% run? 1?

Are you planning to host 288 different speedrun categories for this game?

6 x main categories x 2 hardware choices x 2 playable characters x 3 skill levels x 4 endings = 288 categories.

Why not just any% and 100%?

any% = complete the game as fast as possible

100% = complete the game as fully as possible as fast as possible

Good luck with any runs, anyway!

The runs posted in March 7th are casual gameplay videos and are not world record times. Please remove them to make the timeline consistent.

any% and 100% are the only categories in this game.

Is this trick useful for some clipping:

"In the dining room, if you kill a zombie and, soon after, rest the pot of soup on the table, his body will not disappear."

Is the zombie body solid so you can push it around or maybe you can align the zombie near a wall before killing it?

Yes. I tried all boots, but maybe I am just a bad gamer so I fail to grab the rope, so it would be nice to confirm with some GOOD player that the shorcut does not work on Dynastic Hero version. XD

There is some interest in tasing the game by some people but current situation is that nobody understands the RNG behavior well enough to make a TAS with confidence.

If you or somebody you know is interested in deciphering RNG behavior in games, feel free to carry the torch.

The Dynamic Hero version has two damage boost skips in the ice world.

The first one skips the statues. Snow ape can throw ice block or jump at you, so you can get on the ledge. It is 4 blocks high, which may be the maximum height possible in the game. I tried to do it in Genesis version but failed.

The second damage skip is just before Pygmy Boots, again from snow ape.

I was not able to do the platform skip before Demon King even when changing boots. Please confirm if it is possible or not, because I do not understand how it works at all.

Speedrunners doing this version would be really cool to see, because you can take a risk and try the ape skip and save maybe 8 seconds. If Sphinx gives you worst possible quiz then you lose exactly that amount of time anyway. LOL.

Route II (5 Hearts, Get Return)

• Buy Leather Boots.

• Buy Small Spear. (80 gold)

• Buy Marine Boots. (300 gold)

• Visit dwarf village inn.

• Death warp to dwarf village.

• Refill elixir from the jungle temple.

• Buy Ladder Boots & Potion. (100 gold)

• Visit Purapril inn.

• Get Pygmy Sword.

• Get 3x Thunder Magic from the ocean. (Takes about 500 frames and will be saved back later.)

• Get Water Temple Heart. (Takes only about 5 seconds.)

• Get Return.

• Use Return to Purapril inn.

• Sleep to refill Return magic.

• Equip: Potion, Thunder

• Use 2x Thunder on water monster before the pyramid.

• Use 1x Thunder on big mummies.

• Defeat Sphinx with shortest possible quizz.

(It takes a long time to get the Thunder magic reward, so it may be better to answer 4/5 questions correctly. I don't know the question lenghts in the Dynastic Hero, ENG/JPN.)

• Get Bracelet from Dragon Village.

• Use Return to Purapril inn.

• Sleep to refill Return magic.

Equip: Sword (for grey blocks and block clip)?

Equip also: Firestorm? Thunder?

• Do 1 or 2 block clips?

(Get health refill from chest before ice world? It takes some seconds so almost all block clip timesave is lost there.)

• Must have at least 2 full hearts available to make a damage boost skip near the Pygmy Boots. (This means we can take damage from penguins only once. That is good, because it greatly reduces the complexity of the network of all possible timelines.)

• Use 1x Power magic on one of the minibosses, but which one?

• Use 1x Power magic on Ice World boss?

• Buy Ceramic Boots.

• Return to Purapril inn.

• Sleep to refill Return magic.

• Get Pygmy Armor.

• Return to Purapril inn.

• Sleep to refill Return magic.

Volcano

• Get 2x Power magic.

• Use 2x Power on tyrant dragon.

• Talk to blacksmith.

• Talk to Dragon Village elder.

• Get Legendary Sword from blacksmith.

• Return to Purapril inn.

• Sleep to quickly restore full-sized body.

Dark Castle

• Equip: Legendary Sword

(Also equip: Firestorm for enemy manipulation? Power Magic should be already equipped on the right hand? You can switch magic spells while switching boots, which allows perfect enemy manipulation with correct spells. Equipping to left hand is 2 frames faster, so better to keep more permanent items on the right hand.)

• Get Legendary Armor, to survive final boss cutscene. (Is there another option for this? Probably not because Legendary Armor is directly on the route?)

• Use 2x Thunder magic on water monsters.

• (Use 1x Power magic on Demon King?)

Space Ship and Final Boss

• (Use ~9x Firestorm to manipulate enemy movements?)

• (Use ~8x Thunder to manipulate enemy movements?)

• Use 1x Thunder on Myconid refight. (Saves about 1 second.)

• (Use 1x Power magic on final boss, first form? Pobably not because this form has very short invulnerability period, so better to use Power on Demon King?)

• Use 2x Power magic on final boss, final form.

Thank you for the info, master TAS man CoolHandMike!

Apparently there are some hidden doors in the game:

https://tcrf.net/Wonder_Boy_in_Monster_World

They do not say where the doors are located, other than that they are "deep in the game" which probably means they are far in the out of bounds areas? But where are these doors located exactly?

The most promising "big glitch potential" is clipping into the wall before the ice world. The height of the blocks is 4 layers, so we can clip in 3 different heights depending on which layer of blocks we stand on. The player wraps around the screen after a very long time, but I have no tools for verifying that we can't activate some trigger or door from the out of bounds area. Can somebody investiage this, so we can be sure about it? I don't know how to read memory to see if the out of bounds area has doors or chests or other triggers.

Here is also an interesting challenge:

What is the highest amount of lag you can make in the game? This could be useful for glitching the game, if we can get super high lag. My best attempt is using firestorm while Ice Bomber is dying. The money bags, coins and firestorm cause lots of lag. Another place is the jungle temple: Dwarf digs for coins to cause lag, then we destroy lots of grey blocks, we use firestorm to attack enemies while enemies drop coins. This will make lots of lag, but I don't know how to maximise 100% lag.

Maybe an interesting route for the Japanese TAS, and some ideas may apply to real-time speedrun also:

Visit inn in Alsedo.

Buy Small Spear. (80 gold)

Buy Ladder Boots & Potion. (100 gold)

Buy Marine Boots. (300 gold)

After Gragg & Glagg, death warp back to Alsedo.

Get Heart and Pygmy Armor.

Defeat Sphinx.

Visit inn in Begonia, the dragon village.

Get Pygmy Sword while traveling to Ice World.

Finish Ice World normally.

Buy Ceramic Boots. (No worries, we have lots of gold.)

Use penguin to death warp back to Begonia.

Defeat tyrant dragon and use death warp again to return to Begonia.

Finish the rest of the game.

The Return Spell is skipped, and this route should save lots of time because Pygmy Sword and Ice World are done in one trip. The route feels strange, so maybe it will not work. There are so many possible routes! :D

I tried to find Japanese text dump for the game but was not able to do it, so could you help make a byte count list for the Japanese version, because it would be nice to know the exact length of each Sphinx question in Japanese also:

Which of these items is not sold at the Wanderer weapon shop? (61)

After defeating Gragg & Glagg, what did you receive? (52)

What’s the name of the queen in the elf village? (48)

What item helped you to traverse Maugham Desert? (48)

Which of these monsters did you battle first? (45)

Which of these stores does not sell weapons? (44)

What’s the first type of magic you acquired? (44)

Which key do you need to enter the Pyramid? (43)

What’s the name of the dwarf village? (37)

How much does a charmstone cost? (32)

Is this route viable for the Japanese version:

Visit inn in Alsedo.

After Gragg & Glagg, death warp back to Alsedo.

Get heart and pygmy armor in Alsedo Ocean, and come back to Purapril from the door that is near the start of the game.

This makes short route to pygmy armor and heart, but can't use cannibal death warp.

One idea I had is to push monsters with the Shield Magic.

Because Shield Magic does not damage monsters. So you can push them to surprising places.

For example, in the jungle temple near the heart container: Activate grey blocks. Then go around and use Shield Magic to push tiny skeleton down. Now tiny skeleton can clip you inside grey blocks. It is useless at this location, but demonstrates the surprising use case for Shield Magic.

edit : i was wrong, the blue snake doesn't drop you hearts

LOL! I almost had a "HEART" attack. :D

I can almost clip into wall in the quicksand cave before the pyramid. You kill the bats to make the platforms appear. Then you can stand on the top platform and use Potion to increase player Y-coordinate. Now you can almost go inside the wall, but player gets pushed out. I have not tested it much, so maybe some clip can happen there if you have better timing/position.

Thanks, I did not know magic damage increases with hearts. This game is so cool. :D

Yes, Knight Sword is probably best for human speedrun, but in a TAS it takes too much time to collect 250 gold and equip the sword compared to just making a few more hits on Gragg & Glagg with Small Spear.

i don't get the X/Y position

When moving platform is going downwards, just use elixir and you can see that player position is moved by about 2 pixels upwards because the platform will keep moving down while player is stopped. (It is more difficult to notice when platform moves upwards, because then player is pushed 1-2 pixels downward relative to the platform.) You can also do it in elevators in the ice world: When elevator is coming up or down, just hold Potion to use it immediately when elevator stops. Now your Y-coordinate is shifted by about 1 pixel, so you do not fit into the door. You need to jump to reset your Y-coordinate to the ground level. This is useless in itself, but often the combination of two useless tricks can lead to useful discovery.

I have never played the Japanese version, so I wonder what the best TAS route is there? Can you use death warp to inns to save time? For example: Visit Lilypad inn, then die after rescuing the dwarf to death warp back to Lilypad inn. Maybe saves a few seconds in the Japanese version?

I know Japanese version gives 3x thunder after Sphinx. Is there maybe some other small difference? Are monster gold drops the same in each version?

Some drops seem very rare, so I wonder if there is possibility that scorpion or blue snake can drop small hearts in the desert?

TL;DR The gold plan above is actually short of about 456 gold because it is better to take wind boosts instead of gold from flying ice monsters.

Accually, I forgot two details about the Ceramic Boots Early Route:

Since we need to use sword in the block clips, and then kill penguins with Trident, we must make one extra weapon switch. This will lose time.

Another thing is that if we kill all the flying monsters, then we will lose time because we could use their wind boosts instead. Old TAS gets 1 wind boost, but we could manipulate monsters better to get maybe 3 boosts. So now we are short on money by about 3 x 152 = 456. If we can get even more wind boosts, then those will probably save more time than what the gold is worth in buying Ceramic Boots.

It really looks like the Ceramic Boots Early route is not good.

The only chance I see now is if the big fish can drop 2000 or more gold? Or maybe there is another rare high-value drop on the route? Then there is a small chance, because we can take all wind boosts we want and still get enough money for Ceramic Boots.