Story Speedrun

[Manocheese]

Which battles are intentional losses? The first Orochi battle was mentioned earlier in the thread, but I think there are a few more you can lose. I know that if you lose "Protect the Death Crystal" at Kou's Home, you can get the Death Crystal back in a battle at the Construction Zone where the only enemy is Death Arc. IIRC, if you do that battle, you don't have to do the Tama battle at Little Hill.

EDIT: I took a look at your run and it seems you found a faster way to do it: lose the Sho and Yuji battle at the Pit to avoid getting the Death Crystal in the first place. It looks like I was wrong about the Tama battle at Little Hill, though; you have to do it anyway.

I also skimmed through some of the other battles. It looks like you can save a ton of time by using Samurai Shogun, especially against slower borgs like tanks and fortresses.

[Deleted]

Thanks for checking it out, Manocheese.

Almost every fight that I quit out of in that run is an intentional loss. There is one case where I enter the wrong fight by accident and quit.

What about samurai shogun would be faster than a dragon? If it takes down fortress borgs faster, I can see it being good, but would samurai be able to kill most borgs as they appear like the dragon can? If you have burst, of course you could, but otherwise, I'm not sure what you would do. In the missions where you fight both fortress borgs and smaller borgs such as some of the fights with Tama, I would imagine that the dragons are faster due to being able to damage the fortresses while killing everything else as it appears.

[Carigun]

id Vamp Knight the fort borg fight (the one where you are with met)

[njayhuang]

As awesome as Vamp Knight is against large immobile enemies, I don't think he can out-DPS a dragon.

[Manocheese]

May 28, 2013 21:50:30 GMT @iongravirei said:

Almost every fight that I quit out of in that run is an intentional loss. There is one case where I enter the wrong fight by accident and quit.

Can you list them? It would make it easier for us to see if you missed any. Also, while skimming through the run, I saw a couple cases where you entered the wrong fight: the first Sho Battle and the Usagi training battle immediately afterward. Both can be ignored.

May 28, 2013 21:50:30 GMT @iongravirei said:

What about samurai shogun would be faster than a dragon? If it takes down fortress borgs faster, I can see it being good, but would samurai be able to kill most borgs as they appear like the dragon can? If you have burst, of course you could, but otherwise, I'm not sure what you would do. In the missions where you fight both fortress borgs and smaller borgs such as some of the fights with Tama, I would imagine that the dragons are faster due to being able to damage the fortresses while killing everything else as it appears.

Dragons are typically faster than Samurai Shogun, but there were some battles where you didn't use either. Before you reach 1000 GF, you can't afford any dragons worth using, but you can afford Samurai Shogun. He's probably quite a bit faster than G Black against the Flame Dragon, and he might save time in some of the other battles before then. In the Tama satellite mission, two Death ICBMs and a Samurai Shogun would be much faster and more reliable than two Death ICBMs and a Hammer Robot. Also, Samurai Shogun might be able to beat levels like the ICBM Tank battle more consistently than a small dragon and more quickly than G Black.

You can probably save some time by using the 20th force glitch to get a gold G Black. He has extra ammo, which should speed things up. For the same reason, you should use a gold Neo G Red for the first six missions. Just put him in the upper left corner of the box and you'll use him instead of regular Neo G Red.

[Deleted]

I didn't know that gold borgs had extra ammo. That would definitely help! I'll give Samurai Shogun a try in a few missions.
Vampire Knight is unfortunately slower, sorry, Carigun.

The missions I intentionally go into to quit out:
Battle with Sho!! (EDIT: Just skipped this on a play higher than 1. I did my testing on play 1, so either you can't skip in in that, or I messed up. ty Manocheese for letting me know about this!)
Defeat the Death Force bodyguards! (twice)
The Death Commander Orochi Appears!
Battle with Sho & Yuji (both fights)

Anything else in that run was a mistake.

[Carigun]

May 29, 2013 2:52:18 GMT @iongravirei said:

I didn't know that gold borgs had extra ammo. That would definitely help! I'll give Samurai Shogun a try in a few missions.
Vampire Knight is unfortunately slower, sorry, Carigun.

Gold Borgs are lvl 7 borgs. for the vamp knight part i thought it woudld be quicker but i did not think about the damage output which might be why its slower.

[Deleted]

I got a new game run with 3:52 pretty much just used Garuda the entire time. I think there are a few more battles that I can skip since I finished with 2190 GF Energy and in your run you finished with 2150. Other than that what borgs should I use? I was thinking of using Beam Gunner and Garuda since I consistly can get them with the 20th force glitch.

[Deleted]

May 28, 2013 7:24:27 GMT @iongravirei said:

The run definitely isn't good enough to upload anywhere, so here's the archive from my stream:

www.twitch.tv/iongravirei/c/2342834

It's a good start. Ten minutes could be saved easily by not messing up with menus and with no unintentional losses. More can be saved by better play.

I was watching the run and around 20:20 you battled Sho and intentionally lost. I'm not sure if going into the battle was intentional or not but you can just skip that fight altogether and just go on to the next one. Saves a little bit of time.

[Deleted]

Just recorded a run and got 3:32

[Manocheese]

I found another optional battle: the Copy Man Unit.

EDIT: At least I think it's optional. If you don't do it, you can still get "Cooperate with Sho to Defeat Orochi" to appear.

[Deleted]

Jun 3, 2013 19:27:54 GMT Manocheese said:

I found another optional battle: the Copy Man Unit.

EDIT: At least I think it's optional. If you don't do it, you can still get "Cooperate with Sho to Defeat Orochi" to appear.

Yeah in my recent run I was able to skip over it and go on to the "Cooperate with Sho to Defeat Orochi" but I think I had to do the battle a little later one the battle never went away.

[Manocheese]

Some new discoveries in this 20th force glitch topic are relevant to Story Mode speed running. With the glitch, you can change a borg's level to something well outside the usual range. Doing so causes the borg's ammo amounts, refill speeds, and HP to reflect those of a different borg. For example, changing Flame Dragon to level 70 gold gives it 4000 HP and 8 X ammo, letting you use the breath attack more often. Level 112 gold gives 670 HP and 1 X ammo, but the X ammo refills fast enough that you can use the breath attack constantly. The key to successfully performing the glitch on Flame Dragon is filling your Warehouse with borgs. Apparently, during the glitch, the game pulls data from the Warehouse. If there's no borg where it tries to pull data from, the game crashes. But if the Warehouse is full, you'll typically be fine. The glitch should definitely be used to create "mutant" dragons (and potentially other borgs) for a new game plus run. Unfortunately, the game will probably crash if you try to do this in a new game run, since the Warehouse will be mostly empty.

[Stove]

Thaddie, that's what speedrunners do. They time it all.

That aside, I need to watch that guy's stream; it'd give me a lot of ideas.

[Deleted]

In terms of Borg usage during a Speed Run of Play 1, what would be the norm? G-Red leading with a Normal Ninja at back? Then once you get the power up to Neo, use that? I mean, it's kind of hard to plan since the Borgs you obtain are random.

Is Dragon's Den optional and if so, would it be worth it to go through it just to have the chance of being able to get a dragon, which is a good cleaner for this kind of run.

In addition, would the run be only single segment or would save-abusing be allowed? I don't really see a use for it if saving chips off time from the timer, but if it doesn't, being able to retry missions to abuse on crystals could be a good strategy, so you can get something like a Shogun at midgame.

[Carigun]

Jan 16, 2014 13:59:34 GMT @chaos11011 said:

In terms of Borg usage during a Speed Run of Play 1, what would be the norm? G-Red leading with a Normal Ninja at back? Then once you get the power up to Neo, use that? I mean, it's kind of hard to plan since the Borgs you obtain are random.

Or luck

I obtained a flame ninja in just 2 fights on play 2, the hot battle and orochi braking in to your home

[Stove]

May 27, 2013 4:22:58 GMT njayhuang said:

I know someone mentioned using large dragons to take down GE. No idea if it would be faster though.

That'd be me. It works. FAST.

[Stove]

Most of the speedrunners seem gone, and this may not even be effective for anything, but you can skip in-battle cutscenes.

[pokespecial]

Just did my first run last week. I got 3:10 for a New Game run

[pokespecial]

YEEEEES! I just destroyed my first run with my second one! New Game time of 3:01 in game time. link
Sub 3 hours is totally possible. I am so hyped to beat it