Legend of Legaia Speedrunning.

[Jackimus]

I've recently been routing this game and I think the route i came up with is (rng permitting, of course) possibly sub 8 hours. I did a playtest of the route yesterday with admitedlly gratuitous food/smoke/bathroom/note taking/correcting breaks, and several unnecessary revists due to slight misplanning, so i can't give an accurate estimate of what a serious run would be right now though. I do plan on running it sometime soon in the future, should be good times.

For DriftingSkies (nightshade i'm assuming on here, from reading the thread?) here's a rough outline if you still have future interest in running the game, as i did watch and use elements from your existing runs when planning the last hour-ish so I owe you there.

I did do and submit a zeto% run about a week ago to speedrun.com with a time of 2:01, which is remarkable due to losing 2 minutes right away to bad rng and also 2 deaths/reloads at caruban. Main time saves over existing route are skipping mei's pendant, 3/4 caruban fight (assuming you get it first try >_<) less levelling pre-voz (3 on gala is fine) and a straight up OHKO on songi. For this category i'm reasonably sure an optimized time would be comfortably under 1:50, but i'm not a reset-forever kind of guy.

Sebucus is dealt with exclusively through the points card. this means more slots, making this a pretty execution heavy run for a jrpg- which honestly suits me fine but may not be for everyone. On top of the much faster boss fights, a couple minutes (or more) is saved from ignoring getting Orb completely- it is not required at all. Due to the extra slots however, time difference at this point between my route and the existing WR route is likely a wash, but it should pull ahead comfortably throughout Karisto. I'm also fairly certain this method was considered at one point in previous routing, and likely discarded due to potential unreliability, but for my run I am banking (you see what I did there!) heavily on my slot skills.

Encounters don't exist post Sol so i skip the chicken king. I am also debating skipping the speed chain as there are really only a couple battles where go first heals or final blows are a must- and not guaranteed due to higher boss SPD- but that is kind of scary for me right now. This is a theoretical ~5minute time save that i may fool around with during my next warm-up run before i do it seriously.

Points and Juggernaut handle everything up to Jette, where the existing strategy of elixirs becomes more practical due to boss high HPs and "low" single turn output by those two methods of attack. At this point, the millions of G required to not-even-insta-kill is certainly slower to acquire than building up Noa during the encounters themselves.

I have the game routed down to each purchase, item sold, menu instance, incense use, navigational directions, and combat round. I'm more than willing to type out the short novel i wrote down at a later time too, but figured i'd just introduce myself for now and gauge interest of a run of this great game, since basically every thread i've seen about it across the internet is dead right now.

[GoldenPower89]

So, the point card is used on most of the bosses in your run? It might work quickly, depending on your skill at the slots. Have you tried a full run yet? If so, What time did you get?

[Nightshade]

The biggest thing to note is that gaining G with the Vidna slots is a lot more time consuming than when you get to Sol. The best item you can buy repeatedly at Vidna is the Phoenix, which costs 50 coins and sells for 800, a conversion rate of 1 coin = 16 G. It's worth noting that the lures have higher conversion rates (1 coin = 20G for heavy, 30G for medium, and 50G for light), but the time spent buying each item individually and reselling them is nontrivial.

The five Sebucus bosses - Berserker (5,000), Xain (9,511), Songi 2 (12,888), Saryu (13,245), and Dohati (17,200) have a total of 57,844 HP, meaning you would need that many points to kill them all. By buying and re-selling items repeatedly, you can get a conversion rate of 10 G = 1 point. Combining this with the above means you'd need around 56,000 points worth of phoenixes just to make the bare minimum, and you'll need some items for healing and should pick up a few pieces of armor - leg armor especially to help with run chances.

Probably the best way to get the roughly 600,000 G you'll need is by buying 99 phoenixes and each of the three lures, and repeating the process five times. This lowers the number of coins down to 48,015, but you probably need upwards of 10 more minutes to buy all these extra items compared with just buying phoenixes.

With that said, I do think it's probably worth getting a few thousand more coins to use Point Card + Juggernaut to take out both forms of Gaza since by now you have access to Soru Bread (1 coin = 30 G) and Vitality Rings (1 coin = 25 G, but 10 times faster with the buy & sell); you'll need 6,000 coins to be able to do 8,000 to Gaza 1 and 9,999 to Gaza 2 with the Point Card. However, you'd save 18 power elixirs, which reduces the total additional points needed to just under 5,000, or about two bonus games' worth. Almost certainly, this is a 4-5 minute time save over the current route.

Also, skipping the Chicken King is foolish unless you are going to incense your way through the entire second half of the game. Given that you already have half encounter rate from the Evil Talisman, I do not believe this is justified. Speed Chain is imperative as well unless you plan to do the same.

Also, of note: Juggernaut animation is extremely long. There's a reason why I don't use it very much. The elixir strategy is much faster. I do need to test out an elixir strategy for Koru; that's a three minute time save.

I think the route I use gets to about 600 points for Songi 1. Getting the Life Water and Phoenix from the Drake Castle blockings and selling the Survival Club is probably the ideal way to get up to 888 points to one shot Songi 1. That has the potential to save about 1:30, encounter luck cooperating.

[Jackimus]

So, the point card is used on most of the bosses in your run? It might work quickly, depending on your skill at the slots. Have you tried a full run yet? If so, What time did you get?

By in game my practice/routing run was 10:36 with the aforementioned _many_ breaks. it's not a good estimate at all for that reason.

However I did try another offline practice run today which was ultimately killed by a power surge cuz there's blizzards n stuff going on >_<. Last menu/time I clearly remember was a 3:52 post dohati, and my game exploded on my way up Sol tower. I did have abnormally good slots in this run, but that was probably equalized by bad luck getting nighto earlier on - only had 1 for viguros which obviously led to a longer, trickier fight. Of course, the in game timer is not the greatest indicator of pace as far as RTA goes so the run was clearly not under 4 hours at this point.

condensed

Yeah, well honestly it's not even the less favorable C - G ratio, it's the whole.. one... at... a... time.... that really hurts it. The lures seemingly hurt the time even more because it's not so much the trip to the store and back that sucks, it's the trading for 99 items that sucks. Pity the war soul isn't infinitely repeatable >_<

Actually have it mapped out for Sebucus at 45240 coins (including items not used until waaaay later) so your estimate of 56000 is a bit much. key is to resell a lot of purchases for efficiency. I am using the gear from under-octam up until Sol, and yea you are right any speed boost is huge at this stage of the game for running away odds.

Gaza 1 actually is better to beat pure points card due to the 12,000 hp. Gaza 2 fits nicely at 15,000 which is a one round 9999 + juggz. but yeah, in the case of these two fights, unquestionably a stack of bread beats 2 5 minute power-uppy battles.

I am burning incense the entire remainder of the game, so skipping chicken king is perfectly justified. Trust me ^_^

I agree that the juggernaut animation is long. I do think it is justifiable until Jette and beyond though, because of either time investment to load extra points, or time investment to buff Noa.

53 seconds = ~5500 damage is a pretty respectable baseline for the spell, I think, but naturally I am far less experienced than you at this game so I may be wrong. lemme get a run in and we'll see where I end up I guess!!

For Songi 1, i skip the survival club, and those very time consuming canyon chests- the key is to sell the Ivory Book (2500G). Assuming you're running pure points on sebucus, orb is not necessary so after the Vozes, neither is the book. 890 pts is not too tough to get with treasure that is mostly on the path. Also, if pure points card sebucus ends up not being great, this is still optimal for a Zeto% run, cutting both a Theeder animation & the batlle to get same (rng permitting!)

Thanks for the prompt replies, and lets shorten this run even further!

[Nightshade]

My times for the last three boss battles in Sebucus:

Songi 2: Start at 3:25:25, End at 3:31:00 (5:35)

Saryu: Start at 3:42:39, End at 3:48:31 (5:52)

Dohati: Start at 3:59:33, End at 4:05:23 (5:50)

We'll say, for the sake of argument, that with two point card uses each, those three bosses will take 1 minute each. And we'll assume that you can save 3 minutes by skipping Orb.

This means that you'd have to get enough points to kill all three of them in about 17:30 - let's round up to 18.

I use 8 Elixirs on the first two of those and 9 on Dohati - that's 21 elixirs, or 1680 coins.

By repeatedly buying & selling, I can turn 10G = 1 point. Because of the time cost of alternating between the buy & sell menu, and because there's things such as the Dark Jewels that I actually need to keep, I'll increase that to 12G = 1 point (remember, this includes buying and reselling immediately to get half the G back)

I need 43,333 points - round up to 44,000 because I'll probably overshoot by a few points on each boss. I therefore need 528,000 G beyond what I need to kill Xain and Berserker. That's 33,000 points with the point card. If I can average 1 bonus game per minute and get 2,000 coins each cycle, that's going to take me 15 minutes right there. I still have to buy my phoenixes one at a time and make six trips to the vendor as well.

This is most assuredly TAS viable and optimal, but I'm just not seeing the numbers work out for killing the three Sebucus bosses this way without assuming better skill on the slots than I think is reasonable to assume.

As of warping to Jeremi (to get the Miracle Water) post-Dohati, my 8:36 run has an IGT of 3:42:3X and a real time of about 4:10.

I might be wrong, but if you're getting a 3:52 with 'abnormally good slots luck', I'm just not seeing the improvement with your route. The numbers just aren't working out in the theorycrafting stage for me to justify the change to the route. Probably the lowest-hanging fruit is Point Card / Juggernaut on Gaza 1 and 2, and then having a better shop route planned out so it's not so ad hoc and the execution can be improved justly.

-- Sun Nov 27, 2016 8:19 pm --

One other route change is Elixirs on Koru.

Not sure exactly what the strategy looks like, but if you assume something like:

Noa: Mettle Gem / Power Ring / War Soul
Gala with Speed Chain

Now your strategy is:

Turn 1: 2x Elixir on Noa + Fury Boost on Noa
Turn 2 & 3: Gala heals, 2x Elixir on Noa
Turn 4: Gala uses elixir on Noa, Noa attacks with Super Tempest, Vahn uses Fury Boost on Noa (remember, Koru charges, so it's unnecessary to heal here)
Turn 5: Gala uses elixir on Noa, Noa uses Super Tempest, Vahn maybe can get an attack off for chip damage with Burning Flare or Fire Blow?

You're relying on Noa entering the fight with at least 52 AP, which is probably a reasonable assumption to make.

Should test whether that consistently does at least 20,000 damage. If so, that's probably your best strategy for the fight.

[Nightshade]

Here's a shop route which gets the canyon chests and saves the Ivory Book:

Shop Route

Rim Elm:

Sell: 2x Healing Leaf
Buy: Survival Knife, Warrior Boots (points = 30)

Drake Castle:
Sell: Survival Knife, Shield Elixir, Scarlet Jewel, Wisdom Water (3,090 G)
Buy: Defender Chain x3, Electric Shoes (cost = 4160, points = 208, total = 238)

Biron Monastery (after Mist)
Sell: Azure Jewel, Phoenix x1, Life Water, Power Elixir, Shield Elixir, Magic Amulet, Cure Amulet, Earth Jewel, Survival Club (total = 8,880 G)
Buy: Healing Leaf x59 Deep Sea Jewel x2 (cost = 9,900 points = 495, total = 733)
Sell: Healing Leaf x55 (get 2,750 G)
Buy: Savior Clothes (points = 90, total = 823)
Sell: Hunter Clothes (get 550 G)
Buy: Power Shoes (points = 65, total = 888)

[Jackimus]

I'll get to the previous post in a moment but right now here's the money route I am using through Drake kingdom, for comparison:

Rim Elm: Sell hunter clothes, buy survival knife, warrior boots, 3 healing leaf

Drake: Sell wisdom, guardian, swift waters, shield/speed elixir (honestly forget which one you get on Rikuroa) scarlet jewel
Buy: 3 defense chain 11 healing leaf nail glove & electric shoes

Biron: Sell Earth jewel, azure jewel, deep sea jewel, magic armlet, noa feral, power elixir, shield elixir, ivory book, guardian water, magic leaf
Buy: 3 deep sea jewel, crimson nails, iron boots, saviour clothes, power shoes = 890 pts.

The route you suggested clearly works also, but does have a couple extra scenes for the canyon chests, although this might be equalised by (likely) not having any random battles walking to biron. the extra chests in the forests _will_ cause additional unwanted battles though- but assuming decent runaway luck, should still be faster than getting a theeder & the turn spent casting it on songi. From the looks of it, it does allow for extra water consumption though which is obviously safer.

A way to keep the book in my route would be to not sell/buy a deep sea jewel, sell the phoenix found in biron and do some buy/sell shenanigans with heal leaves to make up the missing 100pts. of course, not having that phoenix can make the zeto fight a little risky if your luck is bad.

I still dont think its necessary to keep the book/get orb, but now addressing the prior post (thanks for going so in-depth, by the way) i think I have a better, hybrid route through sebucus:

bsk/xain dealth with as normal with points card. songi/saryu also, but fight dohati with the elixirs.

If done this way, i can cut an extra 3 rounds of phoenix buying and ~14000 coins from my route, which for a human, is almost certainly slower than the estimated 5:50 battle vs dohati. orb is still not needed as the 2 heal fruits available pre-dohati are plenty for what is, lets face it, the easiest of the sebucus bosses, and with songi/saryu not existing past noa on turn 2 healing isnt needed in those battles. can still sell the ivory book for a fast 888 (890 in my case) pts for songi 1. and i do still think it's faster to pts card away songi/saryu, looking over my route under construction i only needed 2 stacks of phoenix over whats needed for bsk/xain, which (your mileage may vary) is a little faster on average (or a lot with good slots) than the combined estimated 11:30 minutes of fighting and 3-ish minutes on average for Orb.

Also, elixirs vs koru is an interesting strategy but obviously risky with the turn limit. i'm pretty comfortable just going juggs/points/juggs for the 20k damage, though with the long animation from juggs i could see that 5 turn battle being a couple seconds faster than my 2 turn battle. do you offhand know how reliable that strat is? it would be pretty swell, actually, to save an extra 9999 points for one of the berserkers in rogue's tower.

Also another idea i had recently but is absolutely completely untested, was a pit stop at hunter's spring/drake castle before the final battle. You can sell a handful of pricey treasures found from conkram onwards, all your characters equipped gear (minus helmets) and also can keep the gold book longer for some bonus money from 8 boss fights (carbuan 2 through songi 2). this would be a minor timesave at best- if it even is- as youd need to generate enough points to justify the 2 minute shopping trip to save a handful of elixir uses, probably a cool 30K points. I'm also not positive the HP threshold where cort 2 starts using doomsday whenever he feels like it, so this may also be suicidal. just a random idea.

[Nightshade]

"the 2 heal fruits available pre-dohati are plenty for what is, lets face it, the easiest of the sebucus bosses, and with songi/saryu not existing past noa on turn 2 healing isnt needed in those battles."

The problem is that you need a way to heal Venom / Toxic on multiple characters due to Chaos Breath shenanigans, or you will run the risk of getting one-shot from full HP. Without Orb to cure that up, you're looking at an extra minute or two in safety on that fight.


"Also, elixirs vs koru is an interesting strategy but obviously risky with the turn limit. i'm pretty comfortable just going juggs/points/juggs for the 20k damage, though with the long animation from juggs i could see that 5 turn battle being a couple seconds faster than my 2 turn battle. do you offhand know how reliable that strat is? "

Nope. I know that an elixir strategy CAN work on Koru; I'm not sure if that one in particular will, though.

"to save an extra 9999 points for one of the berserkers in rogue's tower."

Probably best to instead use the points on Rogue itself.

Can use strategy of:
Gala (with Evil Talisman / Spirit Jewel / Speed Chain): Juggs
Noa (with Speed Ring): Point Card
Vahn: Magic Fruit on Gala

repeat on turn 2, and you can skip Rogue's rather long animations by dealing 30,000 damage to it before it gets its attack off.

It would be nice to use a Noa Miracle Art to do the damage instead, but that strategy will fail if Rogue switches to Wind element (1/3 chance), since it will probably not take 2,400 damage from Noa's Miracle Art, even with Power Ring and a Power Elixir equipped. That needs to be tested.

"I'm also not positive the HP threshold where cort 2 starts using doomsday whenever he feels like it, so this may also be suicidal. just a random idea."

Half health - after he takes 32,768 damage.

The thing about elixirs, is that the damage gets multiplied by 1.2x every time you use it, so dealing 30,000 damage with the point card means that instead of needing 16 elixirs, you still need 13 elixirs, which is a waste of time - you don't benefit from this strategy since you need just as many turns.

[Jackimus]

huh, i did forget about the poisoning. that does complicate things. there are a few spare accessory slots so maybe cure amulets as a safety strat in this case? could be bought in lieu of something else during points gathering in a couple places. im also pretty sure he doesnt use chaos breath unless you deal damage, so could just use medecines after turn 1 and try to blitz him once powered up, or even use a few extra elixirs and go for a OHKO. ill try fooling around with that fight next time i'm working on things for the run.

that actually _is_ the exact fight I do against rogue, so in the case of an elixir'd fight against koru for my route that is straight up extra points for the zerkers (or some less coins/bread maybe). miracle art or super tempest instead of a second juggernaut is a nice timesave idea though, since rogue is likely down to about 2k HP after a juggs and 19998.

i kind of figured the elixirs worked that way, but confirmation is nice. so that endgame idea is tossed already.

[Nightshade]

Just throwing out a basic coin route, assuming you use points on Berserker, Xain, Gaza 1, Gaza 2, Deliliases, and Rogue, and elixirs on other bosses; I get a total points requirement of 40,500 + however many points you need for incense.

18300 coins = War Soul, Spirit Jewel, Guardian Ring, 85 P. Elixirs, 5 S. Elixirs, 79+99 Phoenix
* 85 Power Elixirs = 9 for Songi 2, Saryu, Dohati; 8 for Koru; 10 for Zora, Jette, Cort 1, Songi 3, JuggerCort

79+99 phoenix is enough to get the points for Xain and Berserker along with money collected en route from items.

Points needed:
12,000 for Gaza 1
09,999 for Gaza 2
29,997 for Che, Lu, Gi
19,998 for Rogue

= 71,994 points
You have ~108,000 G from forced fights from Songi 2 on.
Can sell:
Mettle Gem, Rainbow Jewel, Warrior Icon, Magic Grail, Wonder Amulet x2, Golden Book, War Soul, E. God Icon
G. L. Bell, Wisdom Ring

Total: 232,500 (round down to 220,000 for safety)

Have 338,000 G (10,000 G for Swimsuit victory)

You need about 800,000 G

462,000 G after forced encounters & items

But, you also need some items such as Sol Armor (~200,000G) and some other assorted healing items (~100,000G)
Can sell Octam armor set (22,450G) + obsolete upper-floor stuff (17,750G) - net of 260000G (13,000 points)

This means you need another 130,000 G - 600,000 G for simplicity (can go a bit lower)

99 bread + 99 bread is close enough, requiring 19,800 coins

alternately, 99 bread + 12 Vitality Ring = 21,900 coins. Given the saving of one trip + not buying an extra 87 items, this is probably slightly faster.

300 coins for Chicken King

22,200 + 18,300 = 40,500

However, you'd also need some incense.

You're also forgoing the Soren Camp weapons & armor with that number; it may be wise to go a bit higher just to make sure. Alternately, with 2x Juggernaut blasts, you only need about 18,000 points on Rogue, so you can be a little lax there.

-- Wed Nov 30, 2016 5:54 pm --

One other route change is Elixirs on Koru.

Not sure exactly what the strategy looks like, but if you assume something like:

Noa: Mettle Gem / Power Ring / War Soul
Gala with Speed Chain

Now your strategy is:

Turn 1: 2x Elixir on Noa + Fury Boost on Noa
Turn 2 & 3: Gala heals, 2x Elixir on Noa
Turn 4: Gala uses elixir on Noa, Noa attacks with Super Tempest, Vahn uses Fury Boost on Noa (remember, Koru charges, so it's unnecessary to heal here)
Turn 5: Gala uses elixir on Noa, Noa uses Super Tempest, Vahn maybe can get an attack off for chip damage with Burning Flare or Fire Blow?

You're relying on Noa entering the fight with at least 52 AP, which is probably a reasonable assumption to make.

Should test whether that consistently does at least 20,000 damage. If so, that's probably your best strategy for the fight.

That did 25,000 damage (roughly) if you use Super Tempest both turns.

In other words, completely safe. I did not use the War Soul, assuming I would not have it.

Noa's base power is 116, and her total ATK is 320 including weapons, armor, and the Power Ring.

However, the problem is that Noa may not have enough Art Blocks. I only had 190 AGL, and it's possible she doesn't have enough art blocks to use Super Tempest

If Noa only has 8 Art Blocks, instead:

Turn 4: Noa uses Frost Breath -> Tempest Break instead of Super Tempest
Turn 5:
Gala uses Evil Seru Magic, Noa uses the same combo, and Vahn uses Fire Blow.

This gets about 21,500 damage, but requires 1 cast of ESM. Not much risk involved.

I didn't test with a War Soul, since there is a chance I will have sold mine.