Totally didn't see this forum post. Version 1.3.0 is out that fixes an issue with some flash carts not behaving correctly leading to counselors ending up in incorrect houses. (We still don't know why this is happening, since it shouldn't be happening based on the assembly, but whatever) The new version now completely bypasses the programatic setup of Jason's and the counselors' starting locations and instead just tells the game "put Jason and the counselors here, here, and here." The end result is identical to the previous versions, so none of the current runs should be invalidated from having used an old version. All remaining assembly and logic for the game remains untouched, minus the title screens' text changes and the health bar palette swap.

I'm glad you all like the romhack and I'm glad to have provided this headache relief from constant resets. :D

-Yes, literally everything in the game has an element of randomness to it: random encounter chance, which enemy encounters you get, chance of landing a critical hit, random drops, etc.

-Lightning-based weapons that can drop from bosses are useful against a few bosses and other enemies, an enemy in Cavern of the Stolen Fayth can drop an armor that has No Encounters on it which prevents random encounters for the rest of the run saving you time, etc.

-You don't HAVE to manipulate, but manipulating will easily allow you to get the abovementioned No Encounters armor and lightning weapons, once you learn how to manipulate the RNG, saving you a good chunk of time. If you don't care about going for WR, then I wouldn't feel pressured to learn manipulation.

I know rule 1 says "No using stash/artisans/vendors", does that include repairing? I'm goofing around on Master NG for fun and my items have broken, so that's why I was wondering.

It seems that v0.15.1 doesn't really hinder our runs as a community, considering MM4005 just got WR with the new version. Perhaps as our times improve more and get closer to our sums of best, newer updates may impact our times more. But for now, I guess this isn't a big concern, but we may want to definitely keep the thought in our minds.

With v0.15.1, a few changes occurred, namely even more increased air control. Another thing I noticed while playing v0.15.1 is that the strafe jumping seems to be fixed. Either the strafe jumping or the overall max height for jumping has been decreased, because I can no longer jump as far as I used to be able to. The increased air control is a much welcomed update, but if my observations are correct, in my opinion that makes version differences pretty important to distinguish. Granted, Clustertruck is in alpha, but if speedrunners continue to run it in its alpha stage, maybe we as a community should decide how we're going to handle these potentially largely affecting updates. Thoughts?