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.