Toothache

This trick has nothing to do with the staff use at all, and everything to do with the secondary RNG that is used to determine desert items. The amount of time you have to spend in the item screen is different every time, so you can't rely on this method to do it. There's a guaranteed method for FE6 that involves resetting, checking a character's stat screen once, then you get the item, since the stat screen check advances the secondary RNG a fixed number each time.

Now that this is finished, I can mention the TAS project I hinted at earlier in the chapter. So, while a 0% growths TAS would be basically a much faster version of what dondon has done (not much in the way of improvement via strategy, at least), I figured it may be far more worthy of a TAS if I were to add a SS Rank requirement into the mix as well. Makes things entirely different, for sure, also means that critting everything isn't necessarily the best way to go. Not something I think anyone has attempted yet, but I think for a TAS it makes sense to do as having access to easy RNG manipulation makes things 'too easy' in some ways, with a ranked run the complication would come more from the strategy rather than the manipulation. At least, that's the theory. I expect to lose a few turns compared to dondon, for reasons of pushing the requirements, also by being more limited on boots purchasing to meet the Funds rank. I actually wanted to start this a while ago, but I figured I would wait for dondon's playthrough to finish so I can compare, and use some of the ideas here as a basis for the strategies I will use. Going to be a different kettle of fish, for sure, but part of the reason the normal TAS took 3 years to complete was that you can only plan certain things from a completed playthrough as a basis (stuff like weapon ranks, supports etc).

You will need an updated VBA version, or you can use BizHawk, both of which have Lua support. http://tasvideos.org/BizHawk/ReleaseHistory.html https://vba-rerecording.googlecode.com/files/vba-v24m-svn-r480.7z As for the scripts themselves, I have a bunch I could probably upload somewhere. I know Vykan12 and Rolanmen1 will likely have a handful too given the work on the TASes of FE7 and FE8 they did.

Plus there's the whole issue of what changes happen if you reset prior to starting a turn, seems you can get different enemy actions, might help to find out what is happening behind the scenes there.

Not hard to expand that so you can see more ahead, definitely had a similar issue with the GBA script when TASing, although the GBA screen has a more limited room to use than a SNES.

You could probably make some Lua scripts, there's been a few done already, sitting in the TASvideos thread waiting to be used. Shouldn't take long to find the right addresses, that way you can get some comparable scripts to the ones developed for the GBA games

It's funny you should mention TAS, I may be working on something special once this is done.

I'm curious to see how the CEG is used for LTC. It was used in the TASes well to some degree, but I'm sure there are better approaches, and 0% makes things more interesting strategically.

That wasn't a TAS, btw, was a well disguised hack (left in combat animation to disguise the change), if you're talking about beamcrash's videos. The strats themselves are worth looking at, at least, but never be fooled by them.

Ross at least has the availability to turn into something useful without being too much of a time sink compared to the others

I'm aware that Holland, where it has been legal for many years, has such restrictions, you can smoke at home or in coffee shops but not in public. Tobacco conversely is not allowed to be smoked with cannabis anymore there too. I can eventually see such restrictions happening sometime in the future. On the subject of prisoners who were arrested for cannabis possession or supply, what will happen to those in jail in places where it has become legal? I assume nothing, which is a huge waste, legalisation alone isn't enough imo but the whole punishment side of things has to be dealt with as well.

This is from my discontinued 0% growths run, where I do clear the first chapter in 4 turns. Roy doesn't really need to be in much danger if he's dropped at around this position in turn 3, and even if Marcus hadn't critted that fighter, Alan was in range to finish it off so it wouldn't be in the way. Sure, I used a lot of RN knowledge to game the RNG, hitting with two Javelin hits among other unlikely stuff like the archer missing ferrying Lance, and pulling off an Alan crit in turn 2, but even without this a bit of testing could produce the same result, given the fixed RN starting position. Later on I manage a 7 turn clear of Ch3 which grabs the Halberd chest, proving that was indeed possible. Kind of wish I'd had the time to continue this, real life always likes to get in the way, but it was fun to do, and makes for a nice comparison to what dondon is doing with a more reasonable approach in terms of RN manipulation.

You can save yourself a lot of effort by not having to put in unit growths etc, anything you can already find on the site, for example, and just focus more on the story and gameplay. PS Always good to meet another Alisia Dragoon fan! I currently have the real time speedrun record and working on improving the TAS :)

http://serenesforest.net/fe4/holyblood.htm Aha found it. Not exactly the most intuitive place, and to be fair, you shouldn't be expected to have it rote memorised, I'm not as familiar with FE4 as I am with the GBA or Tellius games for example, and I forget things there all the time and have to double check them. While the info pages are great, they aren't always laid out the best when it comes to presenting that info in a straightforward and intuitive manner, but I guess that is down to how the game was made.

Is it me, or is the info section of the site missing which units pass down improvements to base weapon ranks? Can't seem to find that anywhere.

http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13270 If you're interested in examing the game as it is played, someone made a couple of Lua scripts that can help with the combat RNG, as well as love growths. Handy to use if you want to go that route.

Not just talking about turn count when it comes to time, I'm talking in terms of real time. Plus, it would be more accurate to say that total level ups, not experience is the determining factor for one of the ranks (have to be specific here, as for example FE6 tracks both, and FE7 tracks exp gain on specific units for several alternate routes). On that point, you have to gain 1000 experience levels across all units to gain the A rank. From everyone's base levels, you start with a total across all recruitable units (not counting units which have alternate recruitment like Johan/Johalva), in Gen 1, you have 114 base levels across 24 units, so you could potentially gain 606 levels across those units, well over half the total needed. Of course, some units like Cuan and Arden are incredibly difficult to level efficiently to the max of 30, the former as he leaves after Chapter 3 so faces lower level enemies, and the latter because of his movement rate making it harder for him to see combat. In Gen 2, it doesn't matter which of the children/fixed characters you gain, as all the options start at the same base levels, so you have there 131 base levels across 23 units (not counting Fin, as he appears in the 1st gen calculation), leaving 559 levels to gain on those non-Fin units in Gen 2, or a total of 1165 levels across all units. From here, you can look at the staff users, as they can easily gain levels to reach the maximum, and spread the remaining possible levels across all the combat units. Not every unit will need to reach L30 in order to get the ranking, although you will likely need to get most units in the high 20s to be sure. Any unit with a holy weapon will be easier for combat too, and most if not all should be reaching their max rank (Cuan being an obvious exception, would be very inefficient to farm him to L30, better to aim for about L24-26). You can be flexible with units, is what I'm saying, as long as you consider what bonus cushion of levels you have to play with. Considering all this, and getting back to your original idea of farming for an early selection of 50+ kill Critical weapons, first of all, you have to consider whether you even NEED Critical to defeat most units. Sigurd gets a Silver Sword in the prologue, and he can basically use that to destroy almost every basic foot unit alone, and to be fair, many bosses fall in a single round of combat too with SSS. Of course, the SSS has it's own problems too, not least of which it is a 1 range weapon, and only a limited number of units can use it. As for something in the B/C class weapon range, sure, it would help a lot to units who don't get multiple attacks, or those who have trouble in combat in other ways (Arden has trouble reaching combat, for example, so giving him a Critical Slim Sword to make any combat he faces more likely to get kills means he can be fed exp easier, especially nice when he gets the Pursuit ring in Ch2, although that actually lessens the benefit of the critical sword as he can one-round more units with Pursuit than just relying on Critical weaponry). A bigger problem of doing all the farming early, which is something that hasn't been considered, is the effect of the cost of repairing the weapons you are using to get to Critical in the first place. While it isn't much (Slim Sword being 100 g per use, for example), that cost adds up when you are considering all the weapon uses you are devoting to this in the first place, setting up kills and so on. Anything that takes gold away, means reducing the number of units that can take benefit from the Elite Ring. While it is easy to get units in the Elite cycle once they have the 40k required (selling the Elite Ring plus the total gained from the Arena of 37500, which almost pays for itself and basically does once you count end of chapter gold), getting there in the first place, and keeping that if you are farming for critical weapons becomes that much harder, depending on the number of Critical weapons you do decide to generate. And that's not keeping in mind that each weapon can be used on one unit at a time, meaning you having to choose carefully who does get the benefit of a single weapon. It may make one unit better, sure, but it is an opportunity for that unit which won't benefit another one, and overall, it will be losing more resources, time and turns as it would to gain in the first place, if you consider everything.

Is it easy to farm the early weapons for 50+ kills. Sure? Is it efficient? Far from it. All that prep work to get the crit weapons are a huge time sink, and therefore the very opposite of efficient, even with the obvious benefit it provides.

There's also the problem of the RNG rounding wrong, so it is even possible (though stupidly rare) to miss on 100 hit. The RNG is a 4 digit hex value, so you have 65,536 possibilities, but somewhere they rounded it so the value is the hex number divided by 655, converted to decimal, rather than dividing by 655.36 (which would be more exact, and something they fixed for FE7/8). That slight difference, combined with the generally lower hit rates of most weapons means that FE6 hit overall is much lower.

I prefer to deal with audio and video seperately when encoding anyway, and sync and mux them at the end.

It has been mentioned before, but there are times when a chapter by chapter tier list will be a good thing to compare to. The Alance vs Zealot debate is a good example of where this would help. I could even kick things off for the first few chapters: Chapter 1: Marcus Alan Lance Roy Wolt Bors Pretty straightforward here. Marcus is obviously invincible here,so he gets top spot. Alan and Lance can sword chip away at the majority axe users. Wolt's chip damage is minor, and Bors is basically dead weight facing WTD. Chapter 2 Marcus Dieck Lot Ward Alan Lance Thany Roy Wolt Bors Ellen Here's where things get more tricky. Again, Marcus has the power to dominate most anything. Even with WTD Dieck can destroy enemies, and both the fighters have great advantage over the soldiers as well as using the forts to their advantage. Alance have to travel a lot in order to see significant combat, which is why they are so low in comparison. Thany ain't gonna do much for combat, but she can ferry Roy across as well as a conduit for the Armorslayer. As for Ellen, she'll get to heal maybe once or twice. Chapter 3 Marcus Alan Lance Dieck Lot Ward Thany Roy Ellen Wolt Bors Chad Lugh Here is where Alance's increased movement pays off as they can support Marcus in reaching the boss quickly. Most of the foot units end up getting left behind in order to clear up the enemies there, so they have a role to play. Chad can come along in order to reach a chest or two if you like. Lugh is pretty far out of the way so you'll likely grab him in the last turn. Ellen gets more use as the foot units move along with her. Thany can ferry as well as contribute some minor chip damage. Roy can even help with the few cavaliers near the throne, although he is likely stuck being ferried for most of the chapter. Thinking about it, this might be better in a new thread, and feel free to debate how wrong my initial assumptions are, as that way we can get a better tier list overall as we can compare it to these individual contribution per chapter lists.

On the subject of Thany C Roy, it is indeed possible in a speedrun situation with a bit of planning. I think by the time I activated it, which was the start of Ch 18 Ilia, was precisely the time I needed it, as it actually gave me crit rates again on the boss, and is needed to be able to crit the last few bosses without crit-boosting weaponry. I think I got about 61 or 62 turns together overall before starting the support, and it needs 59, so it is indeed viable if Thany is the one ferrying all the time. That is not counting extra turns from gaiden chapters, as I skipped all of those, so it might even happen earlier, maybe around Ch16.

To be fair, I don't know anything about assembly language or how to disassemble games, at least not yet. There are bits of understanding about the AI and other things that are starting to come to light through observation, because they are often subtle they haven't been noticed right away, but observation can only go so far, now it will help for us to get into the guts of the game and really examine what is going on there.

I think the way to test this is to have both a low HP unit in range, and one with high HP but a low use weapon, and see which grabs their attention more.

On the subject of Fa, you have to remember to put her in the right deployment slot for the AI to be even more encouraged than normal to go for her over other units with seige tomes and ranged staves. Helps to keep her at a low level too. Best part is you have complete control over this in preps, it is just a good habit to get into if you want to use Fa for the purpose of soaking up staves and magic attacks.