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!

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?

TL;DR Here is a list of known time saves compared to old TAS of 42:10. Then an estimate for hypothetical gold plan for Ceramic Boots Early Route. Please update info about maximum gold drops, if you have better knowledge.

Note: This applies to English version only, so probably need to do all from scratch for the Japanese version, which is apparently faster anyway.

• Known Timesaves

Each inn visit saves about 150 frames, if you answer "do not continue adventure in the morning" so you are forced into the main menu and you can then select "continue" there, so you skip the inn's lullaby music. This saves a total of about 600 frames (10 seconds) compared to the old TAS.

Block clips before ice world save a few seconds.

Maybe it saves time to use Power magic on the miniboss before Ice Bomber? Also Ice Bomber can have strat where you get behing the boss and hit it to the back of the head, which may be faster. Easy to test both routes to save 1-2 seconds maybe.

Last castle shortcut saves about 20 seconds.

Myconid refight dies to thunder or quake magic instantly. Saves 1 second unless the magic is better used elsewhere. (Thunder has no lag so it saves more time than quake.)

Get Thunder Magic from ocean after getting Pygmy Sword. Probably saves 1-180 frames. (This could be used on the water enemies before the pyramid to save about 8 seconds. It is again a very close call. The benefit almost cancels out perfectly. It takes about 500 frames to collect the extra Thunder Magic x3. The old TAS probably did not bother because it seemed unlikely that it could save any significant time anywhere. But we gain almost all the lost time back before the pyramid, because we save about 480 frames by not needing to kill the water monsters with the Trident. In addition we can probably use Thunder Magic elsewhere to save some frames, or at least about 1 second at the Myconid refight, so it seems that getting the Thunder Magic is worth it by some frames at least.)

Old TAS uses 3x Power magic on the Demon King and 1x Power magic on the final boss. We could use 2x Power magic on both to save some frames, maybe. In any case the old TAS was carefree about the final boss, because 9 hits are used when 8 hits are enough.

Some frames here and there can be saved with more precise movements.

New TAS time could be sub 41:30. Overall, it is not a hard game to optimize, especially if you can bot the gold drops.

• Gold Route for Ceramic Boots Early

Assume maximum gold gained. Probably impossible, but gives the absolute theoretical upper limit for gold route.

30 gold is used for Leather Boots. After that the gold route depends on whether we get Small Spear and/or Ceramic Boots early.

Blue snake = 9

13 crabs = 13 x 6 = 78 (Total = 87)

Secret coins = 2 x 6 = 12 (Total 99)

Small Spear -80 gold (Total = 19)

Then we have 11 mushroom monsters, 6 gold each = 11 x 6 = 66 gold. (Total = 85)

BOSS 1

The old TAS gets 281 gold.

New best is 311?

Total = 396

(Interestingly, skipping 1-2 small coins can lead to better value overall, because big coin RNG is much more important than small coins.)

(Myconid gold value 311 may be unrealistic, but is good enough for route estimation.)

Secret coins at the tree = 6 x 9 = max 54 (It wasted about 140 frames.)

Total so far = 450

(Knight Sword -250 ??? Probably too expensive to be useful.)

(Potion -50 & Ladder Boots -50 = -100 gold. It is faster to buy these later because we have faster boots then, and Ladder Boots would save little time in the temple, and most importantly we get 100 gold for free from the 2nd boss fight, so we do not need to lose any frames on manipulating gold to buy this stuff early.)

We have 5 firestorm left, so we could use them to get about 5 x 6 = 30 gold without any time loss. The rest of the gold must be manipulated with some time loss.

Marine Boots -300

Assuming no Ceramic Boots Early Route, the total should be = 0

Our total = 150

It definitely looks like we can easily get extra 80 gold compared to old TAS to buy the Small Spear!

BOSS 2

Assuming we do the Ceramic Boots Early Route, we now continue from the point after buying Marine Boots, and we have the maximum possible 150 gold left.

(If you want to improve the gold route estimations, you can insert gold from spiders, cannibals and temple monsters here.)

Gragg&Glagg = 300? (Total = 450)

Potion and Ladder Boots -100. (Total = 350)

(Big fish = 1199 gold? Probably too slow.)

Pyramid:

(ghost, small mummy = 42 gold, slow to get)

Depending on Sphinx question RNG we could get great value from 2 big mummies x 94 = 188 (Total = 538)

Flying ice monsters 8 x 152 = 1216

23 penguins x 92 = 2116

Gold gained from penguins and flying monsters = 3332 (Total = 3870)

Oh, I forgot: Before pyramid we can kill water monster x2 to get: 2 x 72 = 144

Total before Ceramic Boots item shop: 4014.

That is more than Ceramic Boots price of 4000.