The path to sub 2:30. New route, New tech, New discoveries. Here's how we get there:

[RedHairGreenEyes]

Hello all!

I'm very pleased to announce, the year of the sub 2:30 speedrun has begun!
I've recently been rerouting my run for Lunar and have had very promising results. Since I feel this will be my true, final push into Lunar: The Silver Star, if even just for my future-reference, I thought I would be as transparent here as possible on the new tech, the new ideas and just...try to freely document the whole process for the community.

I'll probably end up posting a lot of this stuff elsewhere afterwards (like in the speedrun.com's guides pages, etc), but I thought I would debut it here.
Hopefully some Lunar fans will be interested to see the process.

I'm planning on posting images, detailed breakdowns, and answering any questions or comments I get in here. It will mostly be a log of what it took to change the current 2:38 world record into a 2:29.

I'm excited to share this stuff and my knowledge. Once I grab that sub 2:30 ill truly have reached my final spedrunning stretch goal.
If this speedrun is going to have any future after that point, I feel obligated to do my part to share my arcane knowledge.

Anyways, keep checking back over the next bit. I'll be sure to post some goodness in here soon!

[Kizyr]

Apologies if you've already answered (I haven't had time to check the 2:40 video), but do these speedruns require anything like glitch exploitation or major skips? Curious also if there are differences involved in localization that are used to do any exploits (basically like how the Lemina Bug is only possible in the US Lunar 2).

[RedHairGreenEyes]

Heya Kizyr,

So there are some big version differences, but not HUGE

English version removes Black Dragon Boss fight's full-party breath attack (helpful)

But

Buffs 6 Boss Monsters' HP (including blk dragon) compared to their NTSC-J boss versions

The biggest one though is that you can only get 1 level-up per experience event.

So you have a couple stretches in the NTSC-J version where you need to quickly fight a bunch of low exp battles to catch Alex up. Otherwise his "To Next Level" Stat will stay at 0 for several level-ups in a row before climbing again.
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That said, glitch wise, I've found almost nothing in the game.

The Kyle Weapon Swap Glitch:

For some reason Kyle can equip the Pixie Bow. If you equip him with the Pixie Bow AND a normal one of his weapons at the same time (yes, you can), Kyle can utilize BOTH weapons in battle AND can swap them each round by selecting the desired weapon in Kyle's item menu MID BATTLE!

........kinda completely useless except for ultra niche situations though...

The AutoScroll Glitch

When you walk into a shop(?), run up to the shopkeeper AND talk to them all frame-perfectly(?) After entry...it breaks the game's menus.

From then on, the game will want to automatically scroll any menu selector downward with no known way of fixing the Glitch...

...all this one does is make me take an extra second to talk to shopkeeper in game now...kinda stinks.

I think that's about everything for those categories. I'll add more to here later if not.

[RedHairGreenEyes]

Within the first hour after the 1 year anniversary of my latest WR, I've just finished confirming the *cough* Final, New route!
Things are now possible that were not before. Things, in fact, went SO well, that I have to put some extra time into testing the latest stuff before more actual runs can start.
I was hoping to play for the anniversary etc, but the new discoveries were more important than an arbitrary date.
While I gather the notes as I do the final phase of this route testing, I'll post some great in-depth info in this thread.
But for now, here's just a quick grab-bag of the new stuff that's been developed for the route:

- Initial Meribia shopping is WAY different
- Alex's early equipment is completely different leading to NEW STRATS in the Bronze Dogs boss
- Cool new weapon swapping/fight tech for Lizards boss
- Much more difficult steproute after Lizards (have to react to mobs instead of memorizing them)
- With new tech ahead, at Meribia Shopping 2 we can guarantee only needing 3 Wind Essences (and we route for 2 fewer Cascade Rings now too).
- NEW / Completely different Giant Root Manip (Alex no longer strong enough to kill Plants)
- New GIGANTIC steproute that eliminates a 35+ second Save+Quit. Takes us from Myght's Lab > Pao > Grizmol > Dark Cave > Blk Drg 1 > Talon
- New leveling tech starting with Alex gaining 8-9 levels en route to Talon (instead of 3-4)
- New final sell-off done EARLY - we get WAY fewer Seeds of Vigor now (so watch Alex's MP!)
- Black Dragon TAMED! This fight is easy, consistent, AND only uses 2 Holy Flutes now!
- Knight Tank fight turned from WEIRDEST boss strats to WEIRDER boss strats! Now, we utilize Kyle's (glitched(?)) ability to equip the Pixie Bow to help force a victory with only Alex and Kyle surviving
- NEW dragon Angels fight (strats) - Alex has MUCH higher MP now...
- BORN READY TO SAVE THE WORLD - NO use of Ramus' shop AT ALL! We go STRAIGHT to the Grindery now!
- Much higher levels on average in end game, but much MUCH tighter resources. We might end up with only 7 Seeds of Vigor to play with throughout the final 4 bosses+ so...it gets intense!

[RedHairGreenEyes]

Hahahahaha!!!

No wayyy!

I can't believe it!

I decided to re-check the traditional 'speedrun route'through the final dungeon and, lo and behold, it wasn't the fastest way through!

Time for the first strat update in Ghaleon's Palace in 15 years!

(I had always just assumed Elijah miller's original speedrun was using the fastest path. Close, but not quite in the end. New route saves probably like 30 steps.)

[Kizyr]

Hey a request, just for convenience, could you link where the top times/routes are posted?

I actually don't know the best place to go for them, I just know (from watching YouTube/Twitch streamers) that something like that exists because I see people bringing it up a lot.

Thanks!

[RedHairGreenEyes]

https://www.speedrun.com/lunar_the_silv ... x=mke5omjk

Good idea!


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I'm finishing up a new save and quit skip atm. With full testing of it like 70%, I'm hoping to post the first section of the 'walkthrough' pretty soon.

[Kizyr]

Oh neat y'all also linked to the YouTube videos in the notes. Thanks; this will be interesting to watch!

I don't think I'd try to ever go for a record myself, even for something like an RPG that might not need the kind of pixel-/frame-perfect precision that like platformers might need, but it would be really interesting to see that walkthrough and maybe try to follow it some myself when that's done.

[Alunissage]

I'll have to sometime too. I verified Elijah's original run for SDA, but that was a LONG time ago.

[RedHairGreenEyes]

I ended up getting Snatcher ok'd as a speedrun in an upcoming event and needed to take some time to route that for a bit. I'll be back to Lunar soon though. The early game, let's say 50% is fully set at this point though for reference.

[RedHairGreenEyes]

So I was going to originally post lots of images and text explaining the new route, but among being logged out for a few months and not being able to get back in to today, I decided to take another route.
I'm documenting the entire reroute on YouTube. If you're ever interested, here are the first six episodes that make up the first loop of the reroute process:

[youtube]https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7bL ... XB4y3Unky_[/youtube]

I stream every Monday night for over an hour, usually around 8/830pm eastern. I'm sure I'll be going for at least another 4-6 weeks.

Live at: http://www.twitch.tv/thedoanezone

[Kizyr]

Ok I'm actually curious about Snatcher too! It's one of my favorite SCD games.

Are there any notable skips though? Or is it just a matter of knowing the exact minimum number of menu items to select and beelining through that?

[RedHairGreenEyes]

It's pretty much streamlining inputs, but there are several screens where you expect to have to do x y and z and you just have to spam anything 6-7x.
Here's the latest wr - https://youtu.be/ttFGFSkLfHE?si=fAQMbWBSXgR1Eqvb
Im toying with pushing for sub 3:15. The TAS gets sub 3, but I've watched it and it's mostly timesave from instant frame perfect inputting (non human viable)