Mini-Contest Idea

By the way, for the Offering challenge, delete all files except the .srm and the .smc file.

Yes, the run ends as soon as you receive the Offering.

While I was worried about the luck-reliance beforehand, I feel the results somewhat disprove what you are saying. Jackimus fought the most Veldt encounters (excluding Cecil), yet still beat your time by over a minute. No amount of tweaking to your strat there would have made up a minute of time, despite the fact that you never fought any useless battles. From that, I feel as though the run was very much about the routing, and luck was not the main part of the challenge.

How you manipulate the luck may be a cold algorithm, but you still can't pick your cards. The challenge comes from doing well with the cards you can find, seeing the potential in certain circumstances, and planning your route. None of that is algorithmic. If it was, everybody likely would have had a similar route (although it would be unlikely to be the same). Of course, luck does play a factor, but it also plays no less of a factor when, say, fighting a five minute battle without seeing Net once, after getting a 25-50% chance of Stealing something.

I already said that i stopped before trying to do better, finding 3 encounters, with the last one with a single weak monster in the veldt, would have make me avoid to travel to north would have make me save a ton of time, i haven't even planned a decent way to use drinkable items... i had the suspect that revivify could had to create a significant advantage, but i submitted and stopped much more time ago... all that was surely more than one minute.

But that's not the point: i don't care about the gap of results, and the problem i told you is that the luck is not a true factor, because after you find the perfect load save, all the encounters are already enstablished, if you load a savestate(done right after loading the save file).
What i said is that this strategy kills the luck factor at 100% and all you have to do is just to focus on that fixed route and pratice until you score a perfect(more or less) run...
You can imagine the encounter choice like a tree structure: after you can decide the best tree, and you discover the value of each node and leaf(monster formations inside a determined room of the game), you just have to follow the cheapest path, in terms of time.

If, with "picking your cards", you meant deciding exactly which formations to encounter and to fight, well... you can pick your cards for real.

The only way to avoid that is to include as extra rule to record even the moment in which you load the save file.


The way in which you set your strategy in battle and the inventory/drinks managent is good, that's what i judged positive about your task.

PS. why you mention my task, if we already discussed about its flaws? >.> anyway it's you that have decided to follow that risky path(despite you had success), based on luck for real, in battle it's impossible to manipulate the luck, since any combination changes after one istant
No matter how much i tried, i've always been netted at least 5 times each battle, just to say...

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. You're saying that luck-reliance is the problem with the task, but also that there is no luck because it is possible to manipulate encounters. Also, I'll draw your attention back to one of my earlier posts.

And no, you cannot use any emulator functions (cheat codes, save states, slowdown, etc.) except for fast-forward. This isn't a TASing community, so I don't think it makes sense to allow any of it. If you want to make a TAS for kicks and giggles after the contest is over though, by all means.

So your save-state manipulation method isn't a factor here, although this is still feasible without them.

Now that you make remember me... that restriction was already existent
Even if that's still feasible, it becomes really time consuming to apply that without savestates, so it should be ok now... i believe.

PS. my point was that the more the encounter formation randomness has a relevant part, the more is efficient applying that trick, even without savestates. In other words, the encounter formation randomness is a fake luck.

Once again i've done a perfect run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B_43bi4...e=youtu.be

That guy must have a thing for me, or something

Um...I'm not sure if you know the answer to this question or not, but is running away from battles or using the Moogle Charm barred? I couldn't find the answer to my question in the rules...

Edit: I guess I'm an Imp now. Moving up in the world XD

You're allowed to do both the options, since he didn't say they were banned this time.

Aaaaaand, here's the next results video. Sorry it was a little slow getting out (and that I didn't give a seven day warning as per the usual), I wasn't paying quite enough attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2-qQjlhTXw

Hopefully the next challenge should be out in a week or so. I've got a lot of stuff to do in that time though.

Finally, here's the next challenge. I had a lot of things to get sorted, so it was a long time coming.

3D Escape

I'm sorry, but you will not have to wear 3D glasses for this challenge. I know, you were all looking forward to that.

Sabin and the gang have just defeated Kefka ;[, the God of Magic, and are now ready to go home and grab some Pizza. Hooray for the player, as they have just won the game!

But not so fast! Of course, as Kefka ;[ is defeated, Kefka's Tower begins to collapse! This is horrible! Delaying the munching of Pizza is always a serious crime! And to make matters worse, Sabin (who else?) got sucked into a vortex of darkness that spawned from Kefka's ;[ dead corpse. But on his arrival at the other side, Sabin discovers an important fact; he can jump between dimensions using the vortex! Sabin has been injured by a flying piece of rubble, and cannot fight himself. He must rely upon his chosen party to ferry him outside of the Tower.

Sabin discovers, upon experimentation, that while he cannot reach his original reality, there are three dimensions to choose from. The choice is his!

Group One: These guys know all the spells. All of them. Except Ultima, of course, because that would skyrocket the boringness level of this challenge to the top of the Fanatics Tower. Being Mages, they have high Magic Power and MP, with a little Stamina in the interest of keeping them alive (*cough* I'm giving them some of a useless stat so they aren't broken *cough*). However, their armor selection is fairly poor, but at least it is magically oriented. And Items? Why bother bringing Items when you have Magic?

Group Two: These guys are the manliest of men. These beefcakes have a great deal of HP/Vigor, and can really dish out some damage with their weapons. And speaking of weapons, these guys are pretty much connoisseurs. They have every single one! And I do mean every, no exceptions. These guys have a practical set of Items. Not a great deal, but enough to tank it out with their high Defense/HP. They should probably have one more decent helmet, but there is no need for head protection as people with so much brute force don't need silly things like intelligence.

Group Three: These guys are versatile and crazy prepared. They have more Items than any other team, and definitely the best Relic selection. They aren't quite as powerful in a fight, but excel in avoiding fights with their Charm Bangle. They are also the sole owners of Relics like Sprint Shoes, the Gale Hairpin, and the Back Guard. This team is just overflowing with options in combat, being able to use just about every command that the other teams probably won't care much for. Except Tools, as they don't have any. And as for their stat boosts, I pumped pure Speed.

Your teams are all level 41. This is a reasonable endgame level, so you shouldn't have any issues on that front. And at least one of the teams should fit your playstyle.

Things that are banned:

-Warping out of the Tower. Duh...
-Running from encounters. Otherwise this would be pretty boring.
-Summoning Espers. You can equip them, for what it's worth (important for the Vigor team. You haven't learned any spells, so weapons cannot auto-crit unless you equip them).

One thing to note about this challenge is that you will need to patch the ROM to correct a small detail. Kefka's Tower is inescapable by walking if the ROM isn't patched. One entrance has been modified to bring you somewhere different. There is absolutely nothing else changed. Patching instructions are included with the package if you download it. The saves for each group should be clearly labeled

Here's the link:

https://www.mediafir...2il0d2bmcfiy2ug

Oh dear, this looks like a mess. And I was hoping for some Phantom rushing as well... So it's 3 saves, with 3 different replays, and it's the sum of all those times? Or am I way off? Or will it all become clear once I download, patch, and play it?