Mini-Contest Idea

Nice choice of BG music, I think Crystal Chronicles was the only FF spinoff I ever played(and enjoyed).

There was so much packed into this experience for me that I've kinda been dying to share...

My initial reactions were really really positive, it seemed like you needed to have a good working knowledge of what items were where so you could minimize your prep-time. My very first run involved grabbing the Ice Shield from Mt. Zozo and Bum Rush then heading to the Dragon. I realized pretty quickly stopping for Sprint Shoes was didn't make up for the time it took to get them and the other things I could buy just didn't make enough of a difference to warrant stopping in-town. Ice Shield was enough to keep Sabin up 3 turns and it wouldn't take much support from other members to kill the Dragon from there... But as I learned what the Dragon did, I learned I could get away without using the Ice Shield and have Celes Runic on the appropriate turns... At that point I thought that Bum Rush was the only prep I needed cause I could kill the Dragon fast enough that he couldn't kill me first. But when poking around in FF3usME I found the dragon was immune to mute and it was a small skip there to realize I could just use Phantom to protect me from physical/counter attacks. TBH I felt a little let down when I realized you didn't need any prep for the fight. The whole of the challenge was reduced to only a few small factors. From there I just streamlined a bit, I figured I wouldn't need to heal before battle, I discovered you almost ALWAYS get exactly 8 random encounters (tho I had one really lucky 6-encounter run that failed to record properly ) on the way to the Dragon, setting the cursor to memory shaved seconds off of every fight... there wasn't much else to really consider.

All that being said, it did end up taking a fair amount of knowledge to get to that point. The run got revised so many times I lost count (Lockirby can attest to how many PMs I sent him about the challenge). I was definitely happy with the overall nature of the challenge and Lockirby did a great job putting it together. It was definitely well thought out and included several points where the player had distinct choices. Also, the walking path was just long enough to not be boring but at the same time remove MOST random variance (with 8 encounters in almost every run), mitigating how much luck played a factor, even if it couldn't be removed completely. Even if, this time around, it turned out prep for the battle wasn't necessary, I am very much looking forward to the next challenge. Cheers, Lockirby, excellent job.

In future challenges I would like to see a few more distinct choices (like choosing from a handful of potential party members) or being sure that there is some level of necessary intermediate step before moving on to the final objective.

As for comments on the video. I think the Chocobo and walking were comparable, but the Choco stable was more consistent. I averaged 1-2 encounters walking to the Airship whereas I could get 0 with the Choco. I figured it only saved a few seconds at best. Thunen also didn't do any menu work before starting his descent, but it was still a hair faster. However, when you ran the challenge as many times as I did, the consistency really helps with your sanity.

Also with Tenk and I working our way through Narshe: Tenk still only had 8 encounters, even if one of them was in the snow maze. The extra walking up to the Dragon didn't make a huge difference. I think the big difference was a combination of the extra menu time (window settings, cure), the extra seconds from having to find warp every battle, and the extra buffing time during the fight. Tho I will say it definitely sucked when I would have a great run while recording and would find the dragon hiding at the top of the map. I had one run where I chased him around for 2 1/2 minutes cause he kept dodging me. Had I kept all my videos I would have made a compilation chase video using this background music.

Great job everybody, can't wait to do more.