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Speedrun Routing (Eirika Path, JP)


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Hey SF users, I want to speedrun fire emblem: sacred stones, but there's only a route for JP FE8 for ephraim's route (the WR by dxsteve is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As5gE-aa7Ck )

There's currently no JP route for eirika's route, which is significantly different and is its own category, so I decided to start working on this. I've been collaborating with a few FE speedrunners (gwimpage and dxsteve primarily) for help, since I've never worked on a GBA FE seriously. Since this is a GBA FE, of course this entire run is RNG manipulated.

Here's the WIP playlist of the route so far - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pBMjeS6rYj58h2QO52hnhZxtjqjG1yZ

The main idea is to train vanessa while abusing seth in earlygame, then promote her using the Ch8 elysian whip into wyvern knight (that shouldn't be new to LTCers lol). This costs a few minutes in earlygame but will hopefully pay off and make using her worth it over myrrh (she's used in the english route, currently for lategame). I'm starting on routing midgame through this week, where things will get more interesting (and awesome music too), but also a lot more slowly since they're less straightforward than earlygame.

I sorta want to have a general route laid out first to get a better picture of what we need. After I finish this route, I'm definitely going to redo everything here with better optimizations and such (especially inventory) and repost those videos.

If anyone has any feedback on the videos here, that would be great. There's plenty of experienced LTCers here, so it'd be great to get feedback and/or advice. Thanks!

Current Progress: Finished up to Ch13. Oh man, Ch14 time...

Ch8 Elysian Whip IGT vs Not getting the whip:

I'm not sure if getting the Ch8 elysian whip is worth it or not, so I want to make direct comparisons between my route videos.

These are the in-game time at the save shown at the end of each chapter, from Ch8-Ch15 which is where strats would significantly differ. The left times below is the route that gets the Ch8 whip, and the right time is with the route that forgoes the whip (and would promote Vanessa in Ch15 instead). I'm not really looking for second-by-second comparisons since obviously these times and strats can be improved to shave off seconds here and there, but I'm looking for general overall time saves between each route.

Ch7 ends on 16:59 IGT

Ch8: 22:55 vs 20:20 - Route 1 behind by ~2:35

Ch9: 28:22 vs 26:38 - Route 1 behind by ~1:44

Ch10: 30:03 vs 28:13 - Route 1 behind by ~1:50 (mistakes/inventory stuff, shouldn't matter aside from level-ups)

Ch11: 35:34 vs 33:37 - Route 1 behind by ~1:57 (mistakes/inventory stuff, shouldn't matter aside from level-ups)

Ch12: 42:11 vs 40:33 - Route 1 behind by ~1:38

TL;DR Route 1 loses significant time on Ch8, but saves a bit of time on Ch9 and Ch12. Need to see how Ch14 and Ch15 go...

Current route: http://www.speedrun.com/run/9mepnr3y

Edited by kirbymastah
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Are Vykan's TAS runs not applicable to your speedrun perchance? I believe he did take the Eirika route.

Some quick thoughts that I entertained while watching your videos:

1. Vanessa doesn't always proc strength on her level-ups (I imagine because of the astoundingly restrained RN burning taking place); don't you fear you will regret it later?

2. You could've seized 3 or so minutes earlier in chapter 8 by foregoing the whip for Vanessa. I know for a fact beamcrash didn't consider taking an extra turn to get the whip at all, and his fliers still walloped unpromoted. Then again, if you don't get the C8 whip, the C14Eir one might just have a comparable opportunity cost (lots of enemies running around all parts of the map), all until the C15 Master Seal village. But still man, it's like 3 minutes lost, what the hell - are +1 mov, a good amount of con, some stats and higher Pierce chances really worth so many precious frames lost?

3. Eirika at lv. 2 sounds trouble. There's a reason to neglect her on an Ephraim route run, but you might be more interested in her participation more here, so I dunno if I'd ignore her right from the Prologue. On the other hand, you really don't have much of a reason to let Ephraim counterkill those cav reinforcements in chapter 8 as you likely won't use him ever again.

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1. In part yeah, the amount of RN manipulation makes it difficult. There isn't really any reasonable way for her to proc strength in Ch7 since on that same turn, she has to rig a 4% crit on the boss. Ch8 could be redone with more str proc's (IIRC she missed two str proc's there?), so that's a spot for improvement in her level ups

2. Yeah that's something I brought up with gwimpage, since the whip costs so much time to get :/ I'm not regretting it too much when I'm routing ch9 though since she can barely reach the boss in 2 turns with 8 mov and kill him by turn 2 EP. It's something to think about down the road though. Also, if she's unpromoted, she'll level up a lot more often before promoting, then gain a lot more level ups after promotion, wasting time. For now, I'm getting the whip early and getting a baseline route first, then we can think about if skipping it is worth it.

3. Eirika won't see any combat use from midgame and on so there's no reason to train her (IIRC vykan's old run doesn't bother with putting any exp into her at all). As for ephraim killing the cavs, it's something gwimpage came up with and the options are either that or move franz+forde+ephraim to the right and deal with the center enemies, along with losing time to the 3 cavs moving every EP.

Edited by kirbymastah
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I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

Out of curiosity, as far as speedrunning goes, what are the differences in English vs Japanese and Eirika vs Ephraim?

Primarily enemy stat differences and the final boss too. According to DXSteve, resetting is faster in JP too. This is particularly helpful when doing the torch glitch since if you hold start while soft resetting, you automatically go back to the game instead of having to manually select the file (which I didn't know until after I put up Ch6... I guess i'll redo that video)

Anyways:

Chapter 9: Who's Amelia? Shoutouts to Kyle for getting a kill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW7zHnnupeI

Chapter 10: 2 turn yay. Shoutouts to Tana for getting a kill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YBfWIkGqnY

Gwimpage suggested possibly working on a 3 turn for Chapter 9, so I'm looking into that. It'd require bringing someone behind Seth to take care of the mercenary & mage reinforcements at the top-left corner, and also vanessa killing the boss with a javelin (so the shaman won't be in the way), but if I can't make it work, it won't be a big deal since it's only 4 extra reinforcements on turn 4.

Edited by kirbymastah
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I'm not to privy on speedrunning, but how to the lategame chapters work? Would it be worth it for someone like Saleh to sit around and spam barrier for a bunch of turns so he could just warp people in the last couple of chapters to cut down on enemy phase combat? Normal mode has less enemies too, so it's probably still better to just fly Vanessa to bosses or something. Although with buyable energy rings, warp might be slightly faster, especially on chapter like 16.

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Saleh having C staves really sucks, so yeah grinding him to warp really would not be worth it especially considering how short this game is. Grinding to B for rescue, mayyyyyyyyyyyybe? (doubtful)

For routing Ch11, it's likely best to have vanessa go down the left path, Seth go through the building, and Innes take care of the treasure room enemies (Innes hype). What I'm wondering is if it'd be worth promoting Gerik, since he'd likely help with the two route chapters coming up; a possible replacement is dozla but I'm not sure if he can double the monsters he needs to (but he's a berserker so maybe that's not necessary). I believe vykan's run and the TAS promote gerik.

Edited by kirbymastah
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Let's see... You don't really need Warp until C16, where it's more helpful to have than not. You don't get Barrier until chapter 12, and Hammerne until chapter 14.

To get from staff rank C to A, you need 110 staff wexp. If you use 1 Hammerne to repair the Barrier staff, that's 1 Hammerne use and 26 Barrier uses (or 25 Barriers and 1 Mend). A good time to do it could be the end of chapter 15 when you've routed the whole map save, say, the Troubadour - just have Saleh use the staff and skip until your turn. You could measure how much time that takes in the end, and whether it is compensated by the time saved in chapter 16 and onward (this could be measured accurately enough in Vykan's video I should think).

It could still be in your best interest to try to get Saleh some mag level-ups, too.

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no, staff grinding is almost always pointless in a speedrun. if a character doesn't start at A, don't bother.

for an analogy, saul in FE6 starts 1 rank + promo away from warp, and 1 rank in FE6 is about as much as C > A in FE8. saul isn't worth using in a speedrun even though he exists in a longer game with bigger maps (although niime exists too but 2 warpers still saves time).

also in chapter 15 there's a huge group of reinforcements that appears several turns in so it's not like grinding there is the best idea.

Edited by dondon151
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Let's see... You don't really need Warp until C16, where it's more helpful to have than not. You don't get Barrier until chapter 12, and Hammerne until chapter 14.

To get from staff rank C to A, you need 110 staff wexp. If you use 1 Hammerne to repair the Barrier staff, that's 1 Hammerne use and 26 Barrier uses (or 25 Barriers and 1 Mend). A good time to do it could be the end of chapter 15 when you've routed the whole map save, say, the Troubadour - just have Saleh use the staff and skip until your turn. You could measure how much time that takes in the end, and whether it is compensated by the time saved in chapter 16 and onward (this could be measured accurately enough in Vykan's video I should think).

It could still be in your best interest to try to get Saleh some mag level-ups, too.

That's 26 uses of barrier with saleh, which I'm sure we can squeeze in but I estimate that each barrier use costs like ~5 seconds each, not including the time it takes to deploy him and a target to spam barrier on (though of course, without barrier spam, he'll be useful in a few maps). That's about 2 minutes lost to the barrier animation alone, not including the extra level ups he would get from this nor the time it takes to get and use hammerne on barrier. Not saying that's necessarily slower (though my gut feeling tells me it's not worth it) but it's something that certainly adds up to a lot of time :/ I might try looking into it when i get there but (shrugs)

Edited by kirbymastah
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Saleh having C staves really sucks, so yeah grinding him to warp really would not be worth it especially considering how short this game is. Grinding to B for rescue, mayyyyyyyyyyyybe? (doubtful)

Is there any situation in which you'd have a seize chapter with all enemies cleared, where you could just Barrier/EndTurn/Barrier/EndTurn (since there's no Enemy/Ally phase to worry about)

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Yeah, I have a feeling that it's waiting for your next turn that will take at least twice as long as the action itself... Not worth it, as dondon says, though, unlike Saul in FE6, Saleh actually has a good mag score at base (something that differentiates him from Moulder who starts with the same staff rank many, many chapters earlier).

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Is there any situation in which you'd have a seize chapter with all enemies cleared, where you could just Barrier/EndTurn/Barrier/EndTurn (since there's no Enemy/Ally phase to worry about)

Maybe Ch14 but still, you're wasting time with the player phase animation.

Ch12 - route chapter, Saleh can use barrier here, but he has better things to do

Ch13 - planning to 1 turn this

Ch14 - Possible to grind out barrier here? Can also use unlock on the doors

Ch15 - route chapter, like ch12 it's viable for him to spam barrier but he has better things to do

Ch16 - this is where you'd want him to hit A rank staffs, since this is the first chapter where warp saves significant time

Not looking viable atm honestly. I'll keep going on routing without taking warp into account; my priority is to get a baseline route down with vanessa, compare that with the myrrh route, then look into improvements (most importantly, not getting the elysian whip in ch8).

Just from Ch9+10, I already saved ~1.5 minutes over vykan12's RTA run that uses myrrh (granted obviously I used savestates and execution is better, but still).

Edited by kirbymastah
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Yeah, I have a feeling that it's waiting for your next turn that will take at least twice as long as the action itself... Not worth it, as dondon says, though, unlike Saul in FE6, Saleh actually has a good mag score at base (something that differentiates him from Moulder who starts with the same staff rank many, many chapters earlier).

base + promo saul has the same staff range as base saleh and you can rig mag on all of saul's level ups.

even warping through walls in chapters 16 and 16x isn't worth it.

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You can't grind your staff rank in Chapter 14 because there's a few waves of cavalier reinforcements at the starting position after like turn 7-10. Unfortunately Warp isn't happening because Saleh starts too far away from A rank staves and FE8 is too short of a game to justify slowing down for it.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the midgame timesaves though.

Edited by Gwimpage
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You can't grind your staff rank in Chapter 14 because there's a few waves of cavalier reinforcements at the starting position after like turn 7-10. Unfortunately Warp isn't happening because Saleh starts too far away from A rank staves and FE8 is too short game to justify slowing down for it.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the midgame timesaves though.

Speaking of which, anyone have any suggestions on promoting Gerik? Promotion costs a loooot of time, and I'm wondering if we can just fulfill his role using dozla instead? Gerik shouldn't be needed at all in Ch11 (thanks vanessa & innes!), hopefully we can get by without using him at all (or maybe using him unpromoted with a killing edge?)

Tonight after work & dinner i'll probably try to get a 3 turn Ch9 working while waiting on people's opinions on Gerik.

Edited by kirbymastah
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Chapter 11: (currently uploading at the time of this post, so it won't work for some time)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC73JvGKE8c

Pretty straightforward. Vanessa down the left side because of the forests, Seth takes care of the inside of the building. Innes kills a few enemies in the chest room because of his 1337 2-range. Completed in 4 turns. Saved a lot of time over vykan's RTA run thanks to not using Gerik at all.

Would be a bit faster if Seth had +1 str or +2spd (screw that, that means proc'ing speed every level up to this point <_< ) at this point so he can ORKO two of the dogs, but it's not a big deal and doesn't change the overall strat. I'll look into the minor improvements after I finish the route.

I am NOT looking forward to Ch12...

Edited by kirbymastah
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Chapter 9 without getting the early elysian whip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_lIvuA2Yxw

A lot more convoluted than with wyvern knight vanessa, but still a 4 turn and reasonably fast. Was talking with vykan and he said he'd help with making the RN burning more optimized.

(Too lazy to work on Chapter 12, and I plan on doing routes for midgame without the whip so we can have a direct comparison of how much time it costs/saves)

Edited by kirbymastah
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Finished Chapter 10-13 for no-whip route.

Chapter 10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcLB10baVeo

Chapter 11:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lk1izw9ypo

Chapter 12 could use improvement. I basically followed Vykan's tas; he suggested Saleh and Dozla could swap spots but Saleh has trouble surviving/dodging, and I'm already RN manipualting vanessa to survive/dodge/kill the darn spiders...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XqoOq0ws_8

Chapter 13 = bye cormag :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdoY-nr7s0M

Will finish Chapter 12+13 for whip route.

Also anyone know how to make these videos NOT embedded? they eat up a lot of forum space and are kinda obnoxious...

Edited by kirbymastah
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  • 1 year later...

Topic revival, figured I'd share here, but I completely redid the speedrun route for eirika (and eprahim actually):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pBMjeS6rYgBNyVyeF2ttljOVNIGZ7yC

I even did a speedrun of it a few days ago so I can say I've done a run for marathon submissions :P

http://www.speedrun.com/run/9mepnr3y

Let me know what rooms for improvement there are!

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Hm... something happened with Twitch on my end, so I didn't get to see to the end of the relevant chapter, but a challenge run I'm considering offers an idea. If you want the Chapter 8 Whip, why not get one of the Chest Keys from 5x, and use that and the Door Key from this chapter instead of bringing Colm?

Like I said, couldn't see the full strategy myself due to an error, but it might work (or at least inspire some ideas)

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