Shameless self promotion plug.
Now that that's out of the way, let me just quickly note down what this is. As most of you know (or don't), I've been working on speedrunning Wild ARMS 4 for almost 4 years now, if not more. Since I am aiming for a SDA worthy level submission, I've been revisiting tactics along with other things to get a good quality run. SDA also requires me to have comments ready if the run is accepted. So, this is my text dump, thought process and other crap that would be associated with that. I figure some of you may also be interested in reading this though (dn, if you browse the boards! Other WA4 players) so yeah.
Segment 1 -
First let me explain what some of the key goals were going into this run. I am aiming for mainly three things:
1) Better menu speed. I don't know how much time I lose on adjusting my abilities and equipment, but I figure if the FE10 run optimized for it, I should at least try for this as well. As such, later segments tend to have better menu set up time, as that is when I decided to aim for a SDA level run. This also means I try to do some setting up in advance or for several fights in a row to avoid going back and forth into the menu.
2) Fewer segments. While this increases the random variance (and requires more and more retries on certain segments), saves take time. Each load is approximately 10 seconds long. Therefore, I aim to cut down on fewer segments to reduce the loading time. I also only keep 1 active save so saving time is reduced. In case you don't know, WA4's saving time takes longer if you have more WA4 data on the memory card. Only if its absolutely necessary for a save due to some very specific things needing to happen or the level of random variance is absolutely too high, do I make a save/second save.
3) Refine better strats and routes. Some items I think should be skippable (Elder Record), but others may be actually worthwhile to get (Fighter Badge). Certain boss strats were also completely reworked or being in the process of reworking as the original strat was something I was either not satisfied with, or we discovered something new along the way.
I save time on other things (mainly better execution on some action segments) but for the most part, these were the three main things I originally aimed for. Therefore, right off the bat, segment 1 took around 20+ tries. I set up a few things in the Configurations in order to optimize time. Speech text for NPCs is reduced to 0 as some of them have very long death quotes (Earthbound Dead). Battle movies are also turned off so summons and other combo skills are reduced in animation length. Finally, the battle camera is set to Simple and Fixed. This allows me to view the whole field at all times and avoids the close ups the game sometimes likes doing when characters use Originals/Items. The actual segment itself isn't too bad, but does require a bit of practice. The hardest part is avoiding the guard when Jude first sneaks inside the camp. All it takes though is decent timing to sneak past him right when his back is turned. Save right before going back to Ciel Village.
Segment 2 -
Accelerator isn't available yet so the only form of random monster control I have is by Double Jumping. One of the mechanics of WA4 is that random battles cannot occur if Jude is in midair or if Accelerator is active. Therefore, by combining these two things together, it is actually possible to reduce random battles to nearly 0. There are three forced fights along the way, and the best way to take care of each of these is to hit enemy HEXes if they are grouped together (you do more overall damage). Arnaud is key here though as he is the only one capable of one shotting the enemies as long as he is on the Water HEX. About only 1 in 15 tries will I manage to get a run that is random free. The 3 screen area after the boss fight isn't as bad though as I finally do get Accelerator at that point. A forced fight with a bunch of jelly blobs occur shortly after our escape. While the game suggests that you use Material to kill all of them, you don't have the FP for it. This means it is actually faster to have Arnaud cast Blast and then kill the rest with Gems. I do manage to end up with a few gems extra, which turned out for the best. Once I get Raquel, I move out back on to the map immediately (the shop doesn't get goodies until after the first dungeon) and save before starting Culane Temple.
The boss fight is fairly simple. Again, the main goal is to target groups. Arnaud stays on a non-elemental HEX as everything in the boss fight resists elemental damage. Tony's position is randomized, so I eventually settle on this run, which is pretty good. Note that it is important to keep Arnaud and Jude on separate HEXes as Tony occasionally counters. This run is notable for a few things, mainly Arnaud managing to get a max boosted elemental hit on Tony (this requires a lot of set up). This, along with a counter from Jude, pushes the fight to end quicker than normal.
Segment 3 -
This was originally a two segment dungeon. I've reduced it down to one since getting from Turasque to Tony 2 can be controlled relatively well. There aren't any particular notable problems other than the fact that holding onto a tool in WA4 means you can't Jump. So I use a lot of Accelerator metre during the parts where I am forced to carry the Sword. Speaking of Accelerator, you'll notice that I often run into the little floating coins as well while it's active. This is very important because cash is very tight and without gella runs in the early parts of the game, you can't buy weapons for Raquel (critical for damage) or armor for the rest of the party (critical to not dying in a hit). As WA4 defense and magic defense are *very* notable stats, it is key to hit as many gella runs as possible so you can build up cash without needing to fight enemies or getting items to sell. I have a separate item route in the situation where I don't have enough cash saved by the end of Wunderwaltrum but it takes like a minute to complete so this is far more efficient and less time consuming.
Neither Tony or Turasque are particular problems, but I do end up settling for a lesser segment when everything else has gone right and Tony decides to *dodge* Jude's phantom line. This resulted in an extra attack being needed from Arnaud, which costs about 4 seconds. For Turasque, there is a key decision here as passing the kill to Yulie and having her live through Tony 2 gives you access to Sanctify, which helps a ton against Earthbound Dead. However, this decision takes around 12 seconds longer and the benefit is only for a single fight. I decided at the time that it wasn't worth it, but it had other repercussions later down the line (see later segments). On the whole, I'm not sure if this move is "wrong" however. I do end up with another fringe benefit that I otherwise might not have, so it may not have been a bad decision overall.
Segment 4 -
I skip a whole bunch of chests since most of them don't contain anything of value. This entire segment is mainly due to Earthbound Dead who is random as far as random bosses can go. Normally, having Sanctify here helps as it allows Yulie to damage it without needing her to move or putting her at risk of dying. However, seeing as I don't have that here, I am forced to keep her beside Earthbound Dead unless I want one PC not doing anything at all.
It is absolutely crucial that Earthbound Dead move into the Water HEX without Sanctify. Otherwise, it is not possible for Yulie to deal much damage at all and you'll be more or less short a PC. It's pretty hard to avoid eating Slow Down counters as his counter rate is about 56%. When you need to take multiple actions in order to kill him, he's very likely to sling one. I do however, counter Slow Down him as this limits the number of turns that he gets. When my team gets to move, everyone attacks with their best damage at all times (Jude - Phantom Line, Raquel - Attack, Arnaud/Yulie - Boosted Fire gems) and hope he doesn't counter. Keeping everyone alive makes this doubly hard as it means he has to spread his attacks out over your characters instead of focus firing. Oh and just to spite you, when he dies, he may still launch into his death quote which takes about 5 seconds. Aren't you glad that I adjusted the NPC speech text at the very beginning?
I have to make another save here, as Jeremy 1 is insane and is one of the hardest fights in the game. As a side note, the fight in this segment ended up being a few seconds faster than my previous run time, so I was quite happy with it despite several counters going off.
Segment 5 -
There is a hole in the side of wall which is where your first bomb throw should go. It's a blind toss, but not hard to hit. Doing so avoids having to walk all the way around with the bomb, which slows you down considerably. I avoid the Break point as carrying a second bomb to hit the switch is pretty self defeating in terms of saving time. In the room with the statues, I further save a few seconds by tossing the bomb instead of planting it. The biggest screw up is the Great Wall where I fell off from doing jumps on the stairs. I make up for this by using an increased stair climbing speed (by holding down X), but it looks sloppy and I lose around 5 seconds here. Doing the Great Wall in the same segment as Jeremy 1 does save 10 seconds though via Saving. I also lose a couple of seconds here on bad menu set up but I do end up keeping the segment because the boss fight went really well.
Speaking of, here's Jeremy 1. So to give you a rough approximation of how badass he is, Jeremy is about 388% average speed (in a game where your fastest PC is 139% so he's triple turning the fastest character), can take a hit, and he 2HKOs everyone, including the physical tanks in your team. This basically translates to massive overkill on you if you can't down him in a hurry. There is no real strategy as it all comes down to how Jeremy decides to distribute his damage (hence the extra save). If he decides to split his attacks up between the whole team, then the fight is pretty quick as it doesn't drop your damage output. However, if he focus fires on Raquel and she dies, the entire fight is an uphill climb and very often a loss as the rest of the team doesn't have the damage to down him. Only Arnaud really has a chance then, but the fight would take ages to finish (we're talking about 3 minutes instead of approximately 1). In this run, he does split up his damage and no one ends up dying (a very rare occurrence). As a result, I save about 6-8 seconds compared to my previous run and keep it.
Oh, I do grab my first treasure chest item so far in this run during this segment. The Gunstar Sign boosts crit rate (Tal estimates it's 2.5x crit chances), which may seem like a weird pick up. But as there are a few strategies later down the line which are completely dependent on crits, getting the Gunstar Sign improves the chances of them happening and it doesn't take very long anyway.
Segment 6 -
And here is where the insanity takes off (and you thought the last two segments were bad). Thanks to living through all the fights so far, I am able to get Jude Joint Struggle. You'll be seeing this move a lot in this run as it is not only his strongest damaging move, but also the team's strongest damaging move for a while. It beats out Raquel in terms of damage per turn and it doesn't burn FP. The big problem with this thing is that you need to group 2 other allies or more with Jude before the damage starts becoming good, so it needs a lot of set up. Also, since everyone is grouped together, the defense of the team is reduced, especially since you won't be casting defensive spells a lot. Arnaud also gets Jump and Act a fight earlier (he normally doesn't get it until Jeremy 2) thanks to him getting the kills on the last few bosses.
The dungeon itself, again isn't too bad (Double Jump Accelerator to the rescue), but the boss fight is really where shit starts getting real. So what's the problem? Stone Bullet Counters. They trigger about 45% of the time (probably actually 50%) and because Miscreation is on top of that Wind HEX, it deals massive amounts of damage. We're talking about near OHKO level, so on any run where it goes off, it pretty much means someone will die. The strategy itself is simple: Attack as few times as possible while causing the maximum amount of damage. This pretty much means Joint Struggle abuse. Following this plan means we reduce the procs on his counters and kill it relatively quick. The actual segment itself took more than 70 tries before I eventually got this gem. No counters! I do end up taking an extra second longer since I thought Raq would have enough power to kill it (she didn't), so instead I defend and pass the turn to Jude instead. I save overall about another 6-10 seconds here compared to my previous run.
Segment 7 -
Another save here before tackling Jeremy 2 as Miscreation is huge headache and the Jeremy 2 strat isn't much better. We're still going for a Joint Struggle approach, but this time, it is made harder because of Jeremy's innate ability to double act. Slow Down is once again key because without it, Jeremy will likely kill team members before you get anywhere near close to grouping together. We do have another problem in terms of FP, but it is solvable. Just that your odds aren't very good. The big problem I kept running into was that I never have enough FP to pull off Jump and Intrude back to back. This is a huge because it gives Jeremy a turn to hit my PCs twice. And given his level of damage, this means people die when it happens. In my original attempts, I took this to mean that a Joint Struggle approach wasn't possible.
Revisiting this again, I come up with this new plan, which is pretty insane, but also hilarious when it works. There are two ways in which you can get that FP. Either Defender kicks in and Jeremy attacks the 3 man HEX again OR Jeremy attacks the 3 man HEX once and Raquel crits on her first hit during the Intrude chain. The odds themselves are pretty bad, but at least there are two possibilities. When one of them happens, you'll get enough FP to Intrude again and then Jump with the 3 man group of Arnaud, Jude and Yulie into Raquel's HEX. This allows you to unleash holy hell on Jeremy with a boosted gem hit and a 4 man Joint Struggle right after, killing him off. Save after this of course. The next segment is also heavily luck dependent.
Segment 8-
Due to not giving Yulie kills in the run thus far, she ends up being one level short of getting FP Advantage. This is an immediate problem as the strat for the boss requires FP Advantage. Without it, it's not possible to get everyone together into the centre in the first two moves, which becomes quite crucial for not only finishing that battle quickly but also safely. As such, I am forced to fight a random battle to get Yulie to level 9. Ideally, you shouldn't have to wander around aimlessly to force a fight. However, because action heavy rooms are random-free, I often end up having to run around searching for randoms, wasting even more time. This doesn't happen on this segment, which is very ideal!
Second problem: Yulie has to receive the kill multiplier, otherwise she won't get enough EXP to get to level 9 in one fight. There are also only certain enemies that will get Yulie the needed experience to reach level 9. The formation with the 3 Inspectors never generates enough EXP for example unless there are crates. Naturally, trying to kill them all one by one is horribly slow. Yet at the same time, without FP, it's not possible to MT wipe the randoms. So after countless segments, I eventually find one where I am able to finish it quickly and give Yulie the kill. The trick is to find ways to gain FP quickly (often done by KOing enemy groups) and then defending and waiting for Yulie to cast material. On a very rare chance, gems are also possible. However, it's worthwhile to kill it with Material because the gem you get can help speed up fights later on. I get a Wind gem out of this, which sees use immediately against Incubator.
Third, this segment is heavily action orientated, which means that there is always the chance of execution errors. The worst spots being in the third room with the poles and the room with the 1900-2200 gella run. In fact, I only manage to hit 1700 this time, but thankfully, this turned out to be enough cash, so it didn't end up mattering too much. This gella run is huge, but also very easy to screw up and is typically a segment killer. The poles along with the Accelerator segments require practice and are also always viable to screw ups.
Finally, we get Incubator himself. Jude has to move into the centre to bait physicals from Incubator. If he decides to use Stone Bullet on the group at the beginning and not Jude, it is typically a reset because Yulie will not have enough HP left to take another hit. If he decides to Stone Bullet Jude/attack Jude, then the rest of the plan unfolds itself like such (with Yulie either defending or Healing). And don't tell me that healing wasn't necessary! In this case, Jude survives with just 17 HP. It is important to note that Incubator has an AI script that forces him to summon his cronies if there isn't one on the field. With Joint Struggle + Raq offense, it's possible to take them out as they are summoned. Slow Down keeps the battle in place, otherwise the drones may get turns and rip me apart. The Wind gem from the random battle lets Arnaud kill Incubator safely instead of missing it with Blast and saves a few seconds as a result.
The other forced fight with the soldiers can also be problematic depending on the behavior of the sword soldier. If he decides to move into another HEX (and not the top right), it ends up taking longer because Yulie doesn't have enough FP to summon material and one shot the shield soldier.
Note that I don't buy anything from the shop other than a new sword for Raquel; the armor upgrades here are too short lived to waste precious money on.
Note: I'll get more details on this segment once I review this part. There are so many various factors that needed to be considered. It was the segment of hell.
Segment 9-
You get initiative in this battle before Scythe gets to move once. I started digging around for a way to take better advantage of this. In the past, I always just settled for 5 attacks on Scythe to win. But I decided, this wasn't good enough because using 5 attacks to win means Scythe will get a turn, which also gives us a cut scene. So no, can't go that route. However, I can't Joint Struggle in one maneuver and Yulie is pretty much dead weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second crit strategy of this run. With a max powered variance crit, Raquel hits 4500 damage, which is enough combined with hits from Jude and Arnaud. Technically, its possible for Arnaud to not attack at all and still hit 9k damage. However, this requires a two max variance hits from Raq (one on the crit) and a high variance hit from Jude, which is a whole lot more effort for very little gain. Arnaud attacking basically removes the variance involved. So all together, we need 4 attacks to hit of which Raq must crit once. The total chance of this happening is (67%)^4 * 8% or roughly 1.6% chance altogether. I do eventually get it after much resetting, saving a little over a minute from this.
Segment 10
A one minute clip that takes about 2 to 3 hours. Thanks to Snow for this tip, which is what really set into motion the later runs. A Tiny Flower can be picked up as a drop in Wunderwaltrum, which sets up many many fights to come in the run. The chances of getting this is not high and as it is a drop, I do have to kill enemies in order to find out whether or not I'll get one. Combining multiple PCs into the same HEX raises my chances, so it's just a matter of going through the grind. An important note is that depending on the gems you have at the end of this segment, it will vastly change up your strategy in the next one.