Legaia 2 Speedrunning (this thread was bound to happen)

[Nightshade]

Anyway, I'm working on trying to get the WR for Legaia 2 down a little bit lower.

It turns out that this game is about two hours faster than Legaia 1, mostly because there's a lot of cheese strategies available and a far more broken set of mechanics, specifically with regard to item creation. Also, Mystic and Variable Arts are very broken as well.

It's a few minutes slower than the WR (mid 5:47), but here's my current best run through of Duel Saga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fod8JpQOnkk

The biggest mistakes happen with not handling the AP gain fights pre- and post- Storm Idol, and getting Lang killed on that boss fight. Thankfully, new strategies have negated some of the risk, since I can use the Unassailable Pill on Lang during Storm Idol to prevent dying there; HP Boost 3 on the Fugitive Necklace means that Kazan should almost never be in danger of dying on Raynof (he can go into the fight at 920 health instead of 740).

The route itself is pretty solid I think. The biggest time saves I see are in faster menuing and battle optimizations. I'd like to see if there's any way to make the arbitrage / item crafting sections go any faster as well. With that said, because of the open-ended nature of item crafting and customization in this game, I'm far less confident in its being optimized compared with the run of Legaia 1. So let's have at it. How to make this run better/faster/more optimized?

[K73SK]

As always, impressive job. Can't wait to play the game again and see how well I can do lol.

[Nightshade]

The big exploits are:

1) Buying and selling 100 individual items at the start of the game in order to get the Revival Bottle, Big Child's Bed, and Handwoven Carpet, which together sell for 89,000 G. This allows you to charge up the Point Card enough to deal with Crab, Elfin, and Balken, along with setting yourself up with Leather Chests for...

2) Crafting Leather Chests into Gorgeous Jackets in Darakin 1, which sell for 1,900 each. This allows you to convert about 20,000 G worth of stuff into another 100,000 G for the midgame, getting restoratives and Flags of Retreat for Mt. Gabel, along with stockpiling money for:

3) During Darakin 2, we use that money to buy 2 Poison Rings, 4 Venom Rings, 7 Eagle Rings, 11 Black Rings, and 2 Barricade Rings, which are used to craft a Fugitive Necklace, Power Necklace, and two Banshee Bangles. The Fugitive Necklace gains HP Boost 3 at 20 EXP and Encounter Down at 50 EXP, Power Necklace gets No Surprises at 20 EXP and Art Attack Up at 50 EXP, and the Banshee Bangles gain Pole Position at 20 EXP. It turns out that by taking a selective few fights in the Sewers, we set up to get 50 EXP for Encounter Down within an encounter or two after Zoan Stoara. We also use junk equips from the junk shop to equip minimal-weight armors so we can equip more accessories.

4) The combination of Strong Men Weak Walls, Art Attack Up, Tiger Jewel, High/Full Power, Kazan Curry, and other buffs, when stacked with Variable Arts and Mystic Arts, allows us to one-shot most bosses in the game, with the exception of the final boss's third form, which needs a little extra help. We are quite literally dealing 300,000+ damage to Avalon Phase 2 and 3 with a single Mystic Art.

Using Attack Transformers to negate AP consumption and allow for Mystic Art spamming is vital as well.

5) The final piece of the puzzle is using the arbitrage exploit of Earth Dragon Wings -> Sun Faulds to gain massive amounts of money for the endgame, to charge the Point Card up to maximum, as well as get a number of Transparent Pills to craft into Invincibility Pills. We also buy a few Sage's Handbooks along the way to get Sharon some extra levels; we ideally want her to reach L48 or so for Avalon if possible.

Oh, and I finally got the WR yesterday, beating the game in 5:44:49

[Nitwit]

Amazing dude!