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Introduction

If you prefer audio commentary, check out my Twitch highlight of this run:
http://www.twitch.tv/iicrowii/v/17954363

Secret of Mana has several speedrun categories these days. This run is the most "natural" category, where one player picks up a controller and completes the game as fast as possible. There is also a category for multiple players, for multiple controllers despite having only one person playing, for playing without glitches, and for arbitrarily conjuring up the "The End" screen.

The most popular run category at present is one player using multiple controllers. Compared to that run, this one has to complete more dungeons, interacts with both enemy and allied AI more often, and generally has to work harder to pull off each of the various glitches.

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Run Notes

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Potos Area

The early game centers on getting the Boy and the Sprite's weapon experience levels up to 2 as quickly as possible in order to do the Weapon Charge Glitch. I get the Sword up to level 1 before cannoning off to Gaia's Navel.

The Mantis Ant is one of the most manipulateable bosses in the game. It turns out, however, that in most cases the fastest course of action is to simply trade hits with him from the front. If you are too close to an enemy, your sword will sometimes do a stabbing attack, which is very slow and has short range; in cases where it seems likely my next hit will not come out in time to trade, I'll use a "safer" strategy until I've caught up.

In the Water Palace, I save then reset and reload the new save file when Luka offers. When this game saves, it remembers where the player entered the current map, not where the player was when the save was made, so this places me at the bottom of all those slow staircases. I make more thorough use of this game feature later on to skip a couple dungeons.

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Gaia's Navel

Rather than rush to the Dwarf Village, I first visit Neko in the east side to do some shopping glitches.

When opening an item selling ring at a shop, the game tries to start the selling cursor at the most recent item the party's item ring selected. However, the reverse is not true: the game does not update the main item ring's cursor based on any changes to the inventory during the selling process.

The upshot of this is that if you select item slot 2 outside of the shop, then you sell all your items, the game will fail to notice your inventory is empty the next time you enter the selling ring. I give the game some icons to remember from Neko's buying ring, then I return to the selling ring to sell.. well, nothing, which the game calls Blat and gives a price tag of nearly 30k GP. Selling a multiple of 8 Blats will return the item to being nothing again. I sell 7 Blats from each of item slots 1 and 2, leaving a couple corrupted items in my inventory to set up to get myself multiple walnut slots.

With item slots 1 and 2 occupied, the first Walnuts I buy go into slot 3. Later, I sell the last Blat in slot 2, but because the item is corrupt, the game fails to reorganize the inventory like normal and leaves a blank item slot in front of my previous Walnut. This blank slot takes the next Walnuts I buy. I repeat this once more to get Walnuts in each of slots 1, 2, and 3.

In the Dwarf Village, I overpurchase equipment so I can use it for the equipment trashing glitch. When a character trashes a piece of equipment that character has equipped, the game mistakenly tries to unequip that item after it no longer exists. The position of the memory it begins its search is for some reason determined by the horizontal position of the icon of the trashcan on the screen.

The usual speedrun application of this bug is to refill consumable items. If there is only 2 of an item left, and the Boy trashes his equipment while standing at an appropriate spot on the screen, the game will subtract 2 from the amount of that item, resulting in 0 of that item.

In practice, 0 of an item functions as though it were 8 of that item, so I can restock 6 extra instances of an item at a time, virtually anywhere, so long as the Boy is alive and I don't let my quantity of any item drop below 2.

I set the Boy's AI action grid to a position where, when the Boy is AI controlled, he will get +2 attack rather than -1 attack. It turns out that the game applies those AI stat bonuses much more often than it is supposed to, so this will mean that during the exit from Gaia's Navel through Spikey Tiger, the Boy will just have 3 more attack than he would if I did not move the action grid that way.

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The Haunted Forest

On the way out from Gaia's Navel, because the Boy has some levels but the Sprite does not, Lullabuds grant the Sprite full weapon experience, which gets 50% experience to the Boy, whereas if the Boy kills those Lullabuds, it would grant him 50% experience while the Sprite would get 25%. So, the Sprite takes those kills.

Once I have level 2 experience with the sword, I can use the Weapon Charge Glitch (or the WCG for short). If a character somehow has a higher current weapon charge level than the supposed maximum, the game will grant an additional charge level constantly, up to a maximum of 255. To put this in perspective, the highest charge level ordinarily possible is level 8.

In a single player run, this glitch is abused by getting an AI to level 2 charge, then telling them to only charge up to level 1. I then wait until the attack is charged enough to deal maximum damage, and then I either use the targeting command to get him to use the attack on a particular enemy, or I press select to take control of him, which releases the attack immediately.

After charge level 127, the damage on the WCG resets. This puts a rather short time limit on how long the character has to release the attack.

Most of what Spikey Tiger does is very disruptive. However, a barreled character is invulnerable to his eating attack, so the plan is to barrel the Sprite and let Spikey gnaw on him until the first WCG is done. In this run, Spikey chooses to jump to the high ground instead, but he comes back down and cooperates before too long.

After that fight, taking both the Whip and the 50 GP chest lets Elinee teleport the party out of the castle.

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Undine and the Fire Gigas

After one-shotting the Tonpole (which prevents it from becoming the Biting Lizard boss), I use the magic rope as I talk to Undine. The Boy is always the character who uses the rope, so by using a different character, I can trigger other events and have them overlap with the Magic Rope's teleport. This saves a couple seconds, but mainly it looks funny.

The Fire Gigas is not reasonable to defeat with the one controller version of the WCG; he will just disappear and make the Boy stop charging before I can get the attack ready. Also, I want to level up Freeze anyway. So, I cast 8 Freezes on him and prepare a level 2 charge attack from the Boy in case that's not enough damage.

... or, at least, that's the plan. In this run, I jumped the gun on using the Preemptive MP Usage glitch. I'm supposed to do 3 casts, then 4, then one last cast in the brief period between when the Sprite gets his MP and when the green numbers show up that stun him as he celebrates for that recovery. However, I did the premptive MP usage during the second set of spells, which meant I wouldn't have had enough time to do one more cast before Fire Gigas would disappear. So, I took a risk and just hoped my damage rolls were high enough to finish him off with a level 2 sword attack. Thankfully, they were.

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Pandora and the stolen Water Seed

As I leave the Underground Palace, I upgrade the Axe so the Sprite can work toward getting level 2 experience with it. Starting with Boreal Face, I will sometimes use the Sprite as well as the Boy for WCG attacks. I also need the Girl to have level 1 Whip experience in time for the Fire Palace ramp climb.

Wall Face is the first boss that can evade attacks. About 40% of the time (going down to 30% by the end of the game), enemies who can evade will just ignore your attacks for no apparent reason. So, since I need to level up Gnome to deal with Springbeak anyway, I use magic against it instead of the WCG.

Kilroy can evade attacks, and he can turn the party into moogles. I use a Barrel so that the Girl can keep the targeted hammer attacks away from the Boy, but spinning attacks can still hit him.

The Stone Saber cast before Jabberwocky was a recent route change, and I almost forgot to do it, hence the sub-optimal placement of where I cast that spell.

Jabberwocky can also evade attacks, and he has enough HP that if the WCG gets a low damage roll, it will fail to kill him. I use Slow Down from the Sprite to let the Boy charge up in peace, then I use a trick we call "charge retention", where I swap control from the Sprite to the Boy and press B at about the same time, so that the Boy releases his attack but keeps his charge level to try again a second time. In this run, the first attack misses, but a standup attack (which applies your charge level) plus a second charge attack was enough to finish him off without needing to cast more Speed Downs.

However, the Sprite died at the end of the fight and I did not react in time with a Cup of Wishes. This meant that the Sprite was short on experience; I need him to be at level 13 in time for the Great Viper fight. So, I had to kill some extra monsters in the Upper Lands and the Matango Cave.

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The Upper Lands

In the Upper Land forest, I kill Silktails, Water Thugs, and Nemesis Owls via Stone Saber. This levels up the Sprite so he can cast 3 Thunderbolts per spell cycle against the Great Viper, and it gives both the Girl and the Sprite the weapon experience they need.

At Matango, the player is supposed to get King Truffle's permission before rescuing Flammie. However, if the camera is in the correct position, then by mashing the select button, I can pass through the guard that is supposed to block the path. What's technically going on here is that each time the game swaps character control, there is 1 frame of motion where the game uses AI movement rules instead of how a player moves. In maps where weapons are not out, AIs can walk through NPCs.

The two Freeze casts after Matango were to ensure that Mech Rider would die in 2 batches of spell casts. If he survives, which was likely since the Sprite didn't level up during the Great Viper fight, then that boss starts running around the screen and shooting missiles and generally being a time wasting nuisance.

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The stolen Fire Seed - or not!

The next subplot is supposed to revolve around sealing the Fire Seed which was stolen from the Fire Palace. However, it turns out that the game only causes the seed to become stolen once the party enters a particular room in the basement of the Fire Palace - by climbing the exit ramp, that room can be avoided. I still need Salamando to deal with some Crystal Orbs, so I still need to visit the Ice Country, but Santa will have to wait for some new cute forest animal to save Christmas this time; I'm not dealing with him.

The 1 player Fire Palace ramp climb is the hardest trick of all the Secret of Mana speedrun categories. The general idea is that I use weapon attacks to override the downward slope and get one character up the ramp at a time. However, all AIs that are currently at the top of the ramp will run back down if they can while I try to get the next one up. I therefore use curing actions to stun the characters at the top for as long as possible, but I still have a short time limit for climbing the ramp, which means I must use a charged sword attack which covers a lot of distance, but that means I need a Robin Foot enemy near the ramp (but not attacking!) so that I can get the AIs to charge.

Apart from having to try twice to get the Robin Foot into position at the start, the trick went great.

Afterward, I use a whip pole to walk through walls rather than going the long way around the central room. Whip poles require the game to pause and process what we call an "event" as it considers whether your party should gather and jump across the chasm, and during that pause, the game preemptively allows your party to walk through walls - in preparation for the possibility that you are going to jump.

By having an AI target an enemy, the AI will meander generally toward its target, walking through walls as it does so when I strike the whip pole.

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The Empire

At Southtown, you're supposed to give the password Mara tells you to a guard. By traveling correctly, however, the player can dodge the event that puts the guard into position. I still need to get the password from Mara, otherwise she won't give the Gold Isle tower key later.

Vampire is a hard boss for the multiple controller categories, because they have not leveled up any magic, so if Vampire chooses to stay in the air, he is invincible as far as that category is concerned. In a one player run like this one, simply casting Freeze makes the fight easy.

The bosses in the castle are defeated with a mixture of spells and WCG. Both the bosses have only slightly more than one WCG's worth of HP, and their behavior makes scoring more than one WCG hit rather difficult.

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Flying with Flammie

Ordinarily, until the Tasnica subplot is cleared, there are stalagmites blocking the entrance to Joch's test. Talking to "Jehk" gathers your party to talk to him. However, if a character is doing a charged attack that involves motion, that motion will continue as the party gathers, ignoring walls as it does so.

This lets me complete Joch's test and therefore unlock the Tree Palace without completing either the Tasnica subplot or the Moon Palace. I still need to collect Shade and Lumina to deal with Crystal Orbs, and since this brings me close to those seeds, I go ahead and seal them for the additional damage bonus.

Before that, though, I make a corrupted save at Neko's Frosty Forest shop. A save made in the same screen that Flammie landed does not correctly mark where you entered the room, so that a soft reset (L+R+Select+Start) held for a second will allow that file to load into whatever map the aborted game had most recently entered. I use this to skip the Sunken Continent and the Subway dungeons later on.

I also pick up the Midge Mallet. A pygmied character casts magic much more quickly than normal, which is helpful in many fights, and positively essential against the Thunder Gigas.

Once I arrive at the Palace of Darkness, I do the Wall Glitch. When someone in your party kills a unit, you gain the amount of experience points that unit has. Ordinarily, the things you kill are enemies. However, if an enemy has the Wall spell active, a reflected spell can cause a party member to kill a member of the team - and this results in being awarded the total amount of experience that character has ever obtained - mod 65536, anyway.

The Palace of Darkness is another opportunity to use a whip pole to walk through walls - the alternative is to use the Magic Rope to backtrack to the opened door.

I have a setup which lets me consistently and quickly kill the Boy, which greatly helps both the Girl and the Sprite with their magic. Unfortunately, after the mandatory room reset (the Dark Knight only has level 4 Wall, which only gives 6 reflections), everything got messed up because the central Dark Knight dropped a treasure chest - he's not supposed to respawn. I probably should have just opened the chest rather than try to deal with the badly positioned second life of that Dark Knight, which ultimately moved the Dark Knight I actually care about out of position.

The way I deal with the Shadow X clones is in fact the way the game intends you to beat that fight. However, getting killed by "your fears" is hard in a casual run since you should have such good armor at that point. So, a good solution is to use the Midge Mallet to reduce your defense by 75%.

In the Gold Tower, Blue Spike works very similarly to Spikey Tiger, and my game plan is the same. I land 2 WCG hits, then finish him off with magic - trying to kill him with physical attacks tends to softlock the game.

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The Grand Palace

Aegagropilon, or "Watermelon" as we call it, has very low magic defense but casts Wall on itself. It tuns out that with proper timing, it can be defeated with magic before it casts Wall. This is faster than using the rather awkward WCG setup of yesteryear - both for the fight itself and also because it practices magic to be used in the Purelands.

After raising the sunken continent, I make a second corrupted save. I use these two files to mix and match sunken and risen versions of the Tree Palace exterior map, which allows me to reach the Grand Palace entrance without dealing with the two preceding dungeons.

Because I skip the Moon Palace, I use a combination of whip pole glitches to get through the last room of the Grand Palace. For this to work I need the Doom Sword to spawn, which in practice means the Heck Hound must die before it summons any reinforcements. The only reliable way to do this I have found is with Stone Saber on a ranged weapon.

Unfortunately, this skip was a disaster. I failed to prevent the first reinforcement call by the Heck Hound, which led to the Doom Sword not spawning. Then, during my next attempt, not only did I not get a Stone Saber proc to prevent a reinforcement, but when the Doom Sword appeared, it was not on its stand like it was supposed to be. This meant the Girl was unwilling to get onto the platform I needed her to go to, and she would instead stop short and attack. Also, since the current route does not give the Sprite any levels in Salamando, I had no realistic way to kill with the Turtlance which managed to get on top of the party as I tried to get the Girl somewhere useful.

Once I finally got the party onto the platform, the second phase of the skip - where I have the AI run away rather than walk toward the sword - worked on the first try.

Hexas behaved completely differently than usual in this run. She's supposed to squirm around, which lets me push her if my AIs get into a bad position. Since she didn't, it was quite difficult to recover once both my AIs chose to walk into range of her tail. Between the Doom Sword disaster and the bad Hexas fight, I lost 5 minutes compared to my usual performance.

The Mech Rider bosses try to move down to the same level as your party before dashing toward the target. However, Mech Rider 3's arena allows the party to reach a place further downward than he can go. This lets my party set up for WCG hits in safety. Managing the AI is actually rather frustrating here - they will release their attacks early if the enemy is too close, which will sometimes happen as he moves back and forth.

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The Purelands

The Sprite keeps the Lazuri Ring after the Tree Palace Neko shopping because it improves Intelligence. Later, he will trade with the Girl, who will benefit because it also increases Wisdom.

Throughout the Purelands, the Girl takes advantage of the time the Sprite spends casting spells in order to level up Lumina in preparation for the Mana Fortress. This is much faster than grinding Freeze to level 7 to defeat Buffy and Thanatos - it takes fewer useless casts, the useless casts cost only menu time and no in-game time, and once the Girl reaches level 3 Lumina, her spells are stronger against those bosses than anything the Sprite can ever cast.

The Snow Dragon fight is extrely dangerous. Since I no longer fight Frost Gigas, I no longer have enough good opportunities to level up Salamando, so I have to beat him using the WCG. The big threat is that if he ever chooses to move, he will generally leave the arena and be untargetable for more than a minute - the longest individual retreat I've seen was about 3 minutes long. A combination of Slow Down casts, charge-retained WCG hit, and Lucid Barrier help reduce the likelihood that will happen.

The first hit against the Thunder Gigas must begin before he starts his first action, or else he will periodically vanish, which in practice costs about 1.5 minutes. To do this, the Sprite must already be in pygmied form going into the fight - simply using the mallet then entering the room like usual is too slow.

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The Mana Fortress

I give the Girl the Unicorn Helm and the Lazuri Ring to increase her magic damage output against Buffy and Thanatos.

The Dread Slime fight requires a precise setup to prevent the party from splitting apart, which makes the AIs stop charging. A quick visit to the action grid can make the game forget the level up messages which otherwise delay the end of the fight. (I also try this trick after Thanatos, but I don't wait in the action grid long enough for it to work that time.)

The Mana Sword is nice because it has a 100% hit rate. It ordinarily vanishes after a while though, and there's an annoyingly long cutscene as it is revived. I eliminate the cutscene by triggering it as the screen is fading out to the next room, and I make the game forget to downgrade the Mana Sword back to the Broad Sword by casting an elemental saber on it. I cast the Light Saber on the whole party, since the small damage boost will help the Sprite sometimes.

I use Acid Storm to reduce the defense of the Mana Beast, which increases the per-attack damage cap. I almost pulled off a 3 cycle fight, but I miscounted my Dispels during the second cycle due to some trouble with menuing, so the third cycle's Acid Storm got reflected. Instead, I killed the Mana Beast as it left to do its cinematic attacks, which meant it had to go through almost a minute of meaningless animations before it was able to explode.

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Other Info

Final time: 2:59:14 by SRL timing rules.

Here is a list of some people who run this game that you can follow on Twitch:

iiCrowii - 1 Player, occasionally Glitchless
StingerPA - All categories
Yagamoth - All categories
Falexxx1 - Glitchless
Overfiendvip - magic% (i.e. game end glitch)
Zaenzer - 1p2c
IncroyableBB - 1p2c
LeonPowPow - 1p2c

No author's comments provided.

Introduction

This category, known by many as "Magic%", involves 'beating the game' by performing specific actions that allow a glitched version of the menu to be accessed from the Cannon Travel outside Potos by landing a frame-perfect input exactly nine frames after the "barreled!" status message disappears. The original and completely accidental discovery of the glitched menu by bjw made this category possible, and thanks to the efforts of HHS and others, this category was proven to be humanly possible.

The reason I use the Japanese version of the game, also known as "Seiken Densetsu 2", is because it is faster than the English version for this category for a couple of reasons. To give some approximate figures, the Japanese version saves 5s on the introductory cutscene (waterfall included - although this is not part of the SDA timing of this run), 3s on the sword cutscene, 3s on the cutscene before Mantis Ant, 3s on the cutscene after Mantis Ant, and 0.5s on the glitched menu prompt, but loses 0.5s on Dyluck's soldier's dialogue and 4s on the Neko sequence primarily because Japanese has more sluggish menus. The Japanese version can also save a few seconds on the glitched menu inputs because the series of inputs performed to access The End screen are able to be performed faster than those on English.

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Run Notes

The first three minutes of the run basically involves mashing through some text and performing some dashes. All of the face buttons and both of the trigger buttons can be used to mash through text. The text in the introductory cutscene (before the waterfall) and the sword cutscene progresses automatically, so mashing is not performed there.

It is best to go down stairs by moving off of their sides instead of moving directly down their steps. Moving directly down their steps will cause you to step down each stair, whereas moving off of the side will skip that.

Sometimes, the Rabite that spawns along the narrow path leading to the exit of the first Rabite area will not spawn, which saves around a second.

I made two obvious movement errors on my way to Potos involving a Rabite and some stairs that cost a little over a second combined.

Mantis Ant fight details:

- Mantis Ant has 150 health.

- When you swing with full stamina, the game will determine whether you roll high (18) or roll low (14). Rolling low more than three times during the fight will make Mantis Ant require an additional (tenth) hit to kill. A crit can also roll high (36) or low (28). Each crit you receive will save around two seconds; however, crits are around a 2% chance per swing, so even receiving one during the fight in a speedrun is unlikely.

- If you swing too early, then you won't swing with full stamina as it won't have refilled in time from the previous swing, and if you swing too late, then you can be blocked or you can be struck before unleashing the swing.

- If Mantis Ant puts his guard is up, he cannot be damaged, and can sometimes attack immediately out of a guard animation. Depending on the circumstances and how long he guards for, a guard can waste up to three seconds.

- It helps to stand away from him whenever possible because not only is he more likely to guard the closer you are to him, but if you are in close proximity of him, the game causes you to have a ~50% chance to stab him instead of slash him. Stabs have a slower animation, making it almost guaranteed that, unless you block his incoming attack, that you will not be able to damage him with your stab attack before taking damage.

In general, the game plan with Mantis Ant is to slash as soon as your stamina is full while staying at the appropriate distance away from him. If you dodge any of his attacks, you can move left to try to drag him left before your next attack. This will give you more space behind you in case he continues to move forward during the fight. If you get backed against the wall, you may receive stab animations and possibly have him guard, which you want to avoid.

As unlikely as crits may be, I managed to receive one in this run, which helped counteract the time loss from the mistakes I made earlier.

After being banished from Potos, some glitched menu setup is performed involving Neko and the second soldier of Dyluck's army. Along the way, a few Lullabud despawns are attempted, which helps maximize dash efficiency.

At Neko's shop, the blat glitch, also known as the money glitch, is performed to be able to afford a barrel, which costs a steep 900 GP.

The steps for the blat glitch, as shown during the run, are as follows:

- Purchase 1x Candy and 1x Chocolate from Neko, then exit Neko's menus.

- Open the inventory and shift the cursor onto Chocolate, then close the menu.

- Sell the Chocolate and Candy back to Neko, then open Neko's buy menu and close it.

- Open Neko's sell menu again, this time selling the "Chocolate" (which is actually now "Blat") once.

- Purchase 1x Barrel from Neko, then exit Neko's menus.

Afterward, more setup for the glitched menu is performed by opening the save game menu via Neko. The game does not have to be saved; the menu merely needs to be accessed once. During many of these dialog confirmations, A ("yes") or B ("no") can be held as the text is appearing to instantaneously confirm one of the choices.

Next, I visit a soldier of Dyluck's army. Speaking to the soldier causes the Cannon Travel service to charge money. This means that, when I speak to the Cannon Traveler at the end, its first bit of dialogue will prompt the smaller text box to appear - the one that normally shows how much gold you have - which is another requirement for accessing the glitched menu. I try to dash as close to the Rabite as possible without touching it when I dash towards the army's location.

Despawning the first Lullabud is guaranteed with the dash performed after leaving the army's location. The second is a bit less common, and seems to be primarily determined by my vertical positioning as I dash towards its location. Basically, I try to dash as close to the Mushboom as possible when I pass by for a better chance at the despawn. In the event the second Lullabud spawns (which it did), I simply bait out an attack from it and keep going. It's very minor.

To access the glitched menu, I use the barrel I purchased on myself and then attempt to speak to the Cannon Traveler exactly nine frames after the "Barreled!" message disappears. As a visual cue, I watch the barrel's shaking animation to have an idea of when to perform the input. The barrel has two different shaking animations that it can perform, and I have about a second after realizing which of the two it is to prepare myself for timing the input accordingly.

I wait until the "Barrel" text appears before using it. If I did not do this, then if I managed to hit the input, I would be given a different version of the menu than what is used to access "The End", effectively ending the run.

Once the glitched menu is accessed, the inputs performed to produce "The End" screen are Left x1, B x1, Left x1, B x1, Left x1, B x1, Left x1, B x1, Left x26, B x1. Every first and second Left input of a series causes the game to pause for close to a second, meaning that the ones which do not lag are the last 24 Left inputs of the series of 26. Because of this, I can mash those inputs as quickly as I reasonably can.

I believe it is humanly possible to improve this run by around a second if a Mantis Ant crit does not occur, but up to 3s if one would occur.

I hope you found enjoyment from this ridiculous run.

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Special Thanks

Thanks to Yagamoth and StingerPA for helping me learn how to play, bjw for discovering the glitch this category revolves around, HHS for his tool-assisted work, and those who watched during the streams of attempts.

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Additional

bjw discovery - https://www.twitch.tv/bjw/v/47511917

HHS TAS - http://tasvideos.org/2739M.html

Technical information - http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=425&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=648

More of the above - https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/secret_of_mana_1021.html

Even more of the above - http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/588646-secret-of-mana/69150657?page=16