Wild ARMs has never been a mainstream series as a whole. Personally, I haven't been a fan of the series until the 3rd instalment. However, it was Wild ARMs 4 that really got me hooked, and I invested a lot of time in. The battle system is simply excellent, the character interaction is great and even the plot, flawed as it is, provides fantastic symbolism and imagery through the writing at times. I eventually began speed running it during a time when I had just finished doing a segmented run of another Wild ARMs entry. We joked and said that the game would probably only take 3 hours because one of the common criticisms about it is its short length. As a goal, I aimed for the run to be about 6 and a half hours since, at the time, it was the fastest time I was aware of done on a new game plus done by TalaysenFBW.

Many hours later (and about 100 more playthroughs), here we are now. We now know the run will nowhere be anywhere close to 3 hours. There are simply way too many unskippable cutscenes and the game is linear – no section-skipping for you. No section skipping glitches have been found either. On the other hand? We're also well aware that the game can be done much faster than 6 hours. From my first attempt till now, the game's optimal running time has been improved by over a full hour. That's pretty awesome when so few people can help you out with this to begin with.

If you're reading this, then my run got accepted. Thus, I proudly present to you my Wild ARMS 4 run, which I've been working on for almost 5 years now. This run alone took at least a year and half to put together. This would be the 4th time I've done a complete segmented run of Wild ARMS 4 from start to finish, and it contains pretty much every trick in the book I know, pushing the time down from my previous run (5:24:09) by 19 minutes and 15 seconds, clocking in at 5:04:54. Sit back and enjoy the show!

Basic Mechanics -

For your viewing and understanding pleasure, I'm going to do as brief of an explanation as I can about the game's central mechanics. Again, since it's not widely played, I think this would be quite helpful. Especially for those of you in the audience who decided to watch but have never even played the game before.

Wild ARMS 4 battles take place over a 7 Hexagon grid using a turn based system. It utilizes CT, similar to FFX and FFT, where turns are dictated by speed. Like every RPG, battles are typically won when an enemy's HP is reduced to zero. Notable mechanics are as follows:

• Actions performed in the game often target a space (or a 'HEX'), meaning everyone standing inside that space gets effected.
• Moving and acting is typically restricted, outside of a couple of cases, so relocating to a new position means you have to use up your turn.
• You cannot move on a HEX or past a HEX that is occupied by an enemy and vice versa.
• While random encounters normally have randomized starting positions and formations, for fixed encounters like boss fights, the HEX grid layout and character positions are always fixed. Furthermore, unlike random battles, fixed fights will have all playable characters (PCs) and boss enemies start at (or close to) zero CT.

Note that all actions in Wild ARMs 4 consume about 4 seconds. This applies to both PCs and enemies. There are some that are shorter (defending) and some that are longer (Joint Struggle), but for the most part, this is the general rule. A fight's success can usually be measured by how many action it takes.

Speedrunning Tricks and Tactics:

The CG graph – Stands for "Character Growth" graph. All PCs in WA4 have one and it shows the order in which they learn their skills and abilities. The unique thing about the CG graph is that you can spend points to get access to skills before they are learnt permanently. Each level increases the character's permanent investment towards all of his or her accessible skills by 1. Each level also increases the amount of distributable points by 1. In short, the maximum accessible reach in skills is always the character's level x 2.

Let's take a look at an example. When Arnaud hits level 9, abilities that require 9 points or less (such as Gemstone) will have been already learned because their investment costs would have been reached. He will also have 9 distributable points to temporarily access abilities he normally doesn't have. Jump and Act and Slow Down are normally learned at levels 12 and 14 respectively. So if I want access to both, I can spend 3 points on Jump and Act (9+3) and 5 points on Slow Down (9+5). This will leave him with 1 point, which he can use for something else. Distributable points that are not used increase base HP/MP. The amount of the increase varies by character and can be found at the hyperlink posted above.

As you can probably tell, utilizing this graph is key in terms of strategies employed and why it becomes important to keep PCs alive for battles. It gives them access or options that are otherwise not available and allows us to pull off some off-the-wall approaches to win fights quickly.

Class Levels – Levels in WA4 influence stats, but not by as much as you would think. Every level increases all stats by 1 and HP/MP in varied amounts based on the PC. To get access to more stats, all PCs have 10 of what the game calls "Class Levels". 1 class level equals to +10 in all stats and +100 in HP.

While it still doesn't sound like a lot, for a few stats those 10 points can make a huge difference. The most important stats that are influenced by class levels are HIT, EVA and RFX.

The formula for determining if physical attacks hit is attacker's HIT - target's EVA. As such, +10 to HIT and EVA translate literally to +10% accuracy and +10% evade. For RFX, the effect is even more pronounced as it is quadratic. The formula for determining how much faster/slow someone is (Target's RFX/PC's RFX)^2. Remember how for fixed fights, starting CT is either zero or very close to zero. There's a small amount of randomness but generally speaking, even 2 points of RFX will make a difference on who goes first. When the turn order needs to line up in specific ways, manipulating class levels gives me some control over it, so they are quite important.

Because they improve other stats as well, if PCs can afford it, it's generally better for them to invest in Class levels to improve their performance if there's nothing else they need in terms of abilities.

Default Turn Order - Wild ARMs 4 PCs fall into four tiers of speed Fast (Jude), Above average (Arnaud), Below average (Yulie) and Slow (Raquel). For a less vague reference, when RFX is averaged and the PCs' speeds are compared to the average, here's where they typically stand:

• Jude – 135-139% of average
• Arnaud – 110-114% of average
• Yulie – 89-91% of average
• Raquel – 63-67% of average

The default turn order when CT is at zero therefore looks like this:

Jude -> Arnaud -> Yulie -> Jude -> Raquel -> Arnaud -> Jude ->Yulie -> Arnaud -> Jude

Each tier of speed is typically separated by about 25 points in RFX. Keep these speed tiers in mind as you watch the run. In particular, because Jude and Arnaud have speeds that are faster than average, they can sometimes combine this with the Detonation effect (see below) from the Tiny Flower to go first. When comboed with the Full Carrot, it allows us to starts fights off with 100 FP, which lets us unload a ton of offense. For reference, the table below shows the approximate speeds of most of the bosses in the game. The fraction beside the numer indicates the turn ratio, with the first number belonging to the boss and the second to the party average:

Some of the speeds vary as the average does change depending on the class levels of the party at the time when the boss is fought.

FP - Stands for Force points. Needed to perform actions that consume Force points instead of MP. FP is gained from pretty much everything in battle. Taking a normal action or getting hit by any attack that does damage results in +4 FP. Kills give +10 FP. Evading an attack results in +12 FP. Crits and Counters are about +10 FP. Note that this is FP gained for each PC that is effected, so if an enemy uses an attack and all 4 PCs dodge, it will result in a massive +48 FP. And yes, having metre is very important as you'll soon see below...

Detonation - An effect that kicks in at the beginning of battle. While it is in effect, the PC in question receives +100 to all their stats sans HP/MP, resulting in much better battle performance. The Tiny Flower (TF) badge provides this effect for exactly 1 turn. Because of the huge boost to RFX (about +56.25%), you will see this being paired on every PC at least once, because it almost guarantees them going first. Detonation can happen on enemies as well, but only in randoms. Note that by default, all fixed encounters do not feature the Detonation effect.

Double Jump Accelerator - Applies to on field only. An interesting mechanic to note in WA4 is that while Accelerator is active, no random encounters will take place. Furthermore, due to the platforming nature, random encounters cannot kick in while Jude is airborne. The only time you are vulnerable to an encounter after jumping is during the frames when Jude is about to land. Thus by staying airbone and tapping accelerator when Jude is about to land, it is possible to completely avoid all random encounters.

Break points - Break points are area markers where, after they are activated, you can turn off random encounters. Most of these are not worth going out of the way for because they either take up way too much with the puzzle required, or the effect of having no encounters (outside of Double Jump Accelerator) is too short lived to be helpful.

Characters and notable abilities:

This speed run for Wild ARMS 4 is rather interesting because it utilizes many abilities from each of the PCs to create a faster time. A brief description of them below:

Jude

For the most part, Jude's main contribution is Joint Struggle and FP building. His speed means he gets lots of turns and has a natural double over Raquel. He lacks supporting options but gets situational offence which I exploit whenever possible. His magic related stats are all very poor but he's decent physically.

Mystic - Costs 25 FP. Spreads an item's effect to become multi-target. Sees some definite use, even its attack variants despite how poor Jude's raw MAG is.

Joint Struggle - Learnt at Level 16 and can be purchased at level 8. It increases in strength as there are more allies in the same HEX as Jude. It is really powerful early, less so late. Generally, it's Jude's strongest attack command as long as there are 3 or more allies in the same HEX. Beats out Weakness hitting originals when 4 people are around. Abused like hell during most of the run.

Arnaud

Arnaud is very important in the run because he has lots and lots of support options that lay the path for quick kills. He's decently quick, meaning he's often capable of casting a critical support spell that has a huge impact afterwards. He also has the strongest magic attack for gem use and plenty of evasion for FP building. Hates getting hit physically, which becomes more of an issue late game when his armor gets outdated.

Jump (and Act) - Costs 25 FP. Arnaud and allies in the same HEX warps to any HEX not occupied by an enemy. With the Jump and Act passive, he is capable of immediately taking a turn after Jumping. This is the only real way to move and act at the same time. In addition, because of the ability to transport all allies with him, it allows me to use Arnaud as a ferry when I need to transport PCs into specific locations or for grouping. Very powerful and used a lot in the run for movement and repositioning purposes.

Gems - Not an actual ability, but are basically attack items generated from Arnaud and Yulie when they kill enemies with their elemental magic attacks. Gems are very useful because the elemental property it has allows them to be strengthened on damage. Gems used on it's opposing affinity HEX results in 1.5x more damage. If the Gem is used inside its opposing affinity HEX, then it also deals 1.5x the damage. As an example, if you used a Fire gem inside a Water HEX, the damage of the Fire gem is boosted. If you used a Fire gem on a target standing on a Water HEX, it will also get boosted. Of course, since they are elemental, they share other similar strengths and weaknesses (can hit weakness for double damage, can run into immunity or absorption).

Slow Down - A support spell that adds -100 RFX to the targeted HEX. It reduces anybody inside the HEX's speed to about 43.75% of their base. So yes, this spell is amazing. Even more so since bosses are so fast. Slowing them down means less of their actions, meaning less time wasted watching them attack along with drastically cutting their offence down.

Illusion - A support spell that adds -100 HIT to the targeted HEX. Basically anyone attacking under the effect of Illusion with a physical will very likely miss. Great at some points to generate FP quickly and keeps everyone safe.

Reinforce - A support spell that doubles FP gain rates. Used a couple of times to super generate FP as Illusion isn't enough.

Hyper - A late game support spell that multiplies the end damage of any physical by 2. Needless to say, this is absolutely brutal when used on the right PC.

Yulie

While Arnaud has lots of offensive support, Yulie has lots of defensive support. A lot of those skills don't get put to use, but you may still see them go off once or twice. Yulie is very frail physically but her magic defence is nuts. She's useful mainly for positioning purposes and her FP Advantage passive, which starts us off in every fight with 25 FP.

Material - Costs 25 FP. Performs a multi-target attack spell based on the elemental HEX Yulie is standing on at the time. If she is on a colourless HEX, the attack heals the party instead.

Turn Shift - Deceptively good, but one that I avoid spamming to avoid time loss. Takes Yulie's CT (which will be a 100) and swaps it with the next PC in the turn order. Doesn't matter if there are 10 enemy turns afterwards. That PC basically gets an instant turn. As a further bonus, Yulie receives a+100 RFX boost (about +56.25%) until her next turn. The effect goes away when she performs any other action

Replace - Swaps positions with anybody on the selected HEX. It can be used on enemies or allies alike. Used mainly for repositioning.

Gather - Pulls all allies into the same HEX as Yulie, even if they were surrounded by enemies before. Used mainly for offensive repositioning. You'll see this being combined a lot with Jump for easy 4-man Joint Struggle.

Raquel

She has by far the most damage out of all the PCs in most scenarios. Not only that, but she's decently evasive, and very durable physically and passable magically. Raquel's main weakness? Speed. There are various fights where it is all about getting Raquel her first turn and how to do it since with her level of offence, things die rather quickly.

Red Zone - Refers to Raquel's passive ability that grants her a turn the moment she enters crisis (20% of a PC's max HP)

Intrude - Costs 25 FP. Allows Raquel to take an immediate turn after this one. This is basically FF style Quick...but stackable. And it is available at the beginning of the game. Do you see why FP gain is so important?

Genocide Edge - Costs 50 FP. Requires Arnaud and Raquel to be in the same HEX. Performs a multi-target physical attack that also adds Instant death to the targets it hits. Since it's a physical, it also is affected by HIT. Used only on the train.

Segment 1 -
First let me explain what some of the key goals were going into this run. I am aiming for mainly three things:

1) Better menu speed. I don't know how much time I lose on adjusting my abilities and equipment, but I figure if the Fire Emblem 10 run optimized for it, I should at least try for this as well. As such, I often practice menu set ups to avoid huge delays when setting up abilities. This also means I try to do some setting up in advance or for several fights in a row to avoid going back and forth into the menu. It's not always perfect, but I'm always conscious of how long I take.

2) Fewer segments. While this increases the random variance (and requires more and more retries on certain segments), saves take time. Each load is approximately 10 seconds long. Therefore, I aim to cut down on fewer segments to reduce the loading time. I also only keep 1 active save for most of the run so saving time is reduced. In case you don't know, WA4's saving time takes longer if you have more WA4 data on the memory card. Only if its absolutely necessary for a save due to some very specific things needing to happen or the level of random variance is absolutely too high, do I make a save/second save.

3) Refine better strategies and routes. There's some changes to which items are gotten (most notably, the Fighter Badge). Certain boss strats were also completely reworked as the original strat was something I was either not satisfied with, or we discovered something new along the way.

I save time on other things (mainly better execution on some action segments) but for the most part, these were the three main things I originally aimed for. I set up a few things in the Configurations in order to optimize time. Speech text for NPCs is reduced to 0 as some of them have very long death quotes (Earthbound Dead). Battle movies are also turned off so summons and other combo skills are reduced in animation length. Finally, the battle camera is set to Simple and Fixed. This allows me to view the whole field at all times and avoids the close ups the game sometimes likes doing when characters use Originals/Items. The actual segment itself isn't too bad, but does require a bit of practice. The hardest part is avoiding the guard when Jude first sneaks inside the camp. All it takes though is decent timing to sneak past him right when his back is turned. Save right before going back to Ciel Village.

Segment 2 -
Accelerator isn't available yet so the only form of random monster control I have is by Double Jumping. There are three forced fights along the way, and the best way to take care of each of these is to hit enemy HEXes if they are grouped together (you do more overall damage). Arnaud is key here though as he is the only one capable of one shotting the enemies as long as he is on the Water HEX. About only 1 in 15 tries will I manage to get a run that is random-free. The 3 screen area after the boss fight isn't as bad as I finally get Accelerator at that point. A forced fight with a bunch of jelly blobs occur shortly after our escape. While the game suggests that you use Material to kill all of them, you don't have the FP for it. This means it is actually faster to have Arnaud cast Blast and then kill the rest with Gems. I do manage to end up with a few gems extra, which turned out for the best. Once I get Raquel, I move out back on to the map immediately (the shop doesn't get goodies until after the first dungeon) and save before starting Culane Temple.

The boss fight is fairly simple. Again, the main goal is to target groups. Arnaud stays on a non-elemental HEX as everything in the boss fight resists elemental damage. Tony's position is randomized, so I eventually settle on this run, which is pretty good. Note that it is important to keep Arnaud and Jude on separate HEXes as Tony occasionally counters. This run is notable for a few things, mainly Arnaud managing to get a max boosted elemental hit on Tony (this requires a lot of set up). This, along with a counter from Jude, pushes the fight to end quicker than normal.

Segment 3 -
This was originally a two segment dungeon. I've reduced it down to one since getting from Turasque to Tony 2 can be controlled relatively well. There aren't any particular notable problems other than the fact that holding onto a tool in WA4 means you can't Jump. So I use a lot of Accelerator metre during the parts where I am forced to carry the Sword. Speaking of Accelerator, you'll notice that I often run into the little floating coins as well while it's active. This is very important because cash is very tight and without gella runs in the early parts of the game, you can't buy weapons for Raquel (critical for damage) or armor for the rest of the party (critical to not dying in a hit). As WA4 defense and magic defense are *very* notable stats, it is key to hit as many gella runs as possible so you can build up cash without needing to fight enemies or getting items to sell. I have a separate item route in the situation where I don't have enough cash saved by the end of Wunderwaltrum but it takes like a minute to complete so this is far more efficient and less time consuming.

Neither Tony or Turasque are particular problems, but I do end up settling for a lesser segment when everything else has gone right and Tony decides to *dodge* Jude's phantom line. This resulted in an extra attack being needed from Arnaud, which costs about 4 seconds.

There is a nasty mistake against Turasque, which I did not realize until a year and a half *later* and only after analyzing and reviewing the run several times. By having Arnaud take the kill, Yulie will end up short on EXP for Incubator and will not have enough EXP to gain a level to learn Sanctify for Earthbound Dead. While Sanctify is only used for that one fight (and Yulie has a back up), she won't be able to learn FP Advance in time for Incubator, resulting in needing to hunt for a random battle and taking an additional 30 seconds or so. Arnaud does learn Jump and Act earlier, but without FP Advance, its use is limited and actually not used against Miscreation (which is the one fight it could really make a difference on). The net effect of the mistake is about 18 seconds or so; probably the biggest mistake in the run unfortunately.

Segment 4 -
I skip a whole bunch of chests since most of them don't contain anything of value. This entire segment is mainly due to Earthbound Dead who is random as far as random bosses can go. Normally, having Sanctify here helps as it allows Yulie to damage it without needing her to move or putting her at risk of dying. However, seeing as I don't have that here, I am forced to keep her beside Earthbound Dead unless I want one PC not doing anything at all.

It is absolutely crucial that Earthbound Dead move into the Water HEX without Sanctify. Otherwise, it is not possible for Yulie to deal much damage at all and you'll be more or less short a PC. It's pretty hard to avoid eating Slow Down counters as his counter rate is about 56%. When you need to take multiple actions in order to kill him, he's very likely to sling one. I do however, counter Slow Down him as this limits the number of turns that he gets. When my team gets to move, everyone attacks with their best damage at all times (Jude - Phantom Line, Raquel - Attack, Arnaud/Yulie - Boosted Fire gems) and hope he doesn't counter. Keeping everyone alive makes this doubly hard as it means he has to spread his attacks out over your characters instead of focus firing. Oh and just to spite you, when he dies, he may still launch into his death quote which takes about 5 seconds.

I have to make another save here, as Jeremy 1 is insane and is one of the hardest fights in the game. As a side note, the fight in this segment ended up being a few seconds faster than my previous run time, so I was quite happy with it despite several counters going off.

Segment 5 -
There is a hole in the side of wall which is where your first bomb throw should go. It's a blind toss, and the angle is a little weird. But doing so avoids having to walk all the way around with the bomb, which slows you down considerably so its worth learning. I avoid the Break point as carrying a second bomb to hit the switch is pretty self defeating in terms of saving time. In the room with the statues, I further save a few seconds by tossing the bomb instead of planting it. The biggest screw up is the Great Wall where I fell off from doing jumps on the stairs. I make up for this by using an increased stair climbing speed (by holding down X), but it looks sloppy and I lose around 5 seconds here. Doing the Great Wall in the same segment as Jeremy 1 does save 10 seconds though via saving. I also lose a couple of seconds here on bad menu set up but I do end up keeping the segment because the boss fight went really well.

Speaking of, here's Jeremy 1. So to give you a rough approximation of how badass he is, Jeremy is about 388% average speed (in a game where your fastest PC is 139% so he's triple turning the fastest character), can take a hit, and he 2HKOs everyone, including the physical tanks in your team. This basically translates to massive overkill on you if you can't down him in a hurry. There is no real strategy as it all comes down to how Jeremy decides to distribute his damage (hence the extra save). If he decides to split his attacks up between the whole team, then the fight is pretty quick as it doesn't drop your damage output. However, if he focus fires on Raquel and she dies, the entire fight is an uphill climb and very often a loss as the rest of the team doesn't have the damage to down him. Only Arnaud really has a chance then, but the fight would take ages to finish (we're talking about 3 minutes instead of approximately 1). In this run, he does split up his damage and no one ends up dying (a very rare occurrence). As a result, I save about 6-8 seconds compared to my previous run and keep it.

Oh, I do grab my first treasure chest item so far in this run during this segment. The Gunstar Sign boosts crit rate (Tal estimates it's 2.5x crit chances), which may seem like a weird pick up. But as there are a few strategies later down the line which are completely dependent on crits, getting the Gunstar Sign improves the chances of them happening and it doesn't take very long anyway.

Segment 6 -
And here is where the insanity takes off (and you thought the last two segments were bad). Thanks to living through all the fights so far, I am able to get Jude Joint Struggle. You'll be seeing this move a lot in this run as it is not only his strongest damaging move, but also the team's strongest damaging move for a while. It beats out Raquel in terms of damage per turn and it doesn't burn FP. The big problem with this thing is that you need to group 2 other allies or more with Jude before the damage starts becoming good. Also, since everyone is grouped together, I am more prone to dying since any attack now hits all PCs. Arnaud also gets Jump and Act a fight earlier (he normally doesn't get it until Jeremy 2) thanks to him getting the kills on the last few bosses, letting him Jump and cast Slow Down on the first turn.

The dungeon itself, again isn't too bad (Double Jump Accelerator to the rescue), but the boss fight is really where shit starts getting real. So what's the problem? Stone Bullet Counters. They trigger about 45% of the time (probably actually 50%) and because Miscreation is on top of that Wind HEX, it deals massive amounts of damage. Remember how gems can be boosted? Well, so can spells. We're talking about near OHKO level damage on any PC not named Yulie, so on any run where it goes off, it is pretty much a reset. The strategy itself is simple: Attack as few times as possible while causing the maximum amount of damage. This pretty much means Joint Struggle abuse. Following this plan means we reduce the chances of him countering and kill it relatively quick. The actual segment itself took more than 70 tries before I eventually got this gem. No counters! I do end up taking an extra second longer since I thought Raq would have enough power to kill it (she didn't), so instead I defend and pass the turn to Jude instead. I save overall about another 6-10 seconds here compared to my previous run.

Segment 7 -
Another save here before tackling Jeremy 2. Miscreation was a huge headache and sadly, Jeremy 2 isn't much better. The good news: he's slower (only 170% average speed this time!). The bad news: he has about the same level of offense as before. The ugly news: we're going for a Joint Struggle approach, but this time, it's a lot harder as Jeremy now double acts. Slow Down is once again key because without it, Jeremy will likely kill team members before you get anywhere near close to grouping together. We do have another problem in terms of FP, but it is solvable. Just that your odds aren't very good. The big problem I kept running into was that I never have enough FP to pull off Jump and Intrude back to back. This is a huge because it gives Jeremy a turn to hit my PCs twice. And given his level of damage, this means people die when it happens. In my original attempts, I took this to mean that a Joint Struggle approach wasn't possible.

Revisiting this again, I come up with this new plan, which is pretty insane, but also hilarious when it works. There are two ways in which you can get that FP. Either Defender kicks in and Jeremy attacks the 3 man HEX again OR Jeremy attacks the 3 man HEX once and Raquel crits on her first hit during the Intrude chain. The odds themselves are pretty bad, but at least there are two possibilities. When one of them happens, you'll get enough FP to Intrude again and then Jump with the 3 man group of Arnaud, Jude and Yulie into Raquel's HEX. This allows you to unleash holy hell on Jeremy with a boosted gem hit and a 4 man Joint Struggle right after, killing him off. Save after this of course. The next segment is also heavily luck dependent.

Segment 8-
Due to not giving Yulie kills in the run thus far, she ends up being one level short of getting FP Advantage. This is an immediate problem as the strat for Incubator requires FP Advantage. Without it, it's not possible to get everyone together into the centre in the first two moves, which becomes quite crucial for not only finishing that battle quickly but also safely. As such, I am forced to fight a random battle to get Yulie to level 9. Ideally, you shouldn't have to wander around aimlessly to force a fight. However, because action heavy rooms are random-free, I often end up having to run around searching for randoms, wasting even more time. This doesn't happen on this segment, which is very ideal!

Second problem: Yulie has to receive the kill multiplier. Otherwise, she won't get enough EXP to get to level 9 in one fight. There are also only certain enemies that will get Yulie the needed experience to reach level 9. The formation with the 3 Inspectors never generates enough EXP for example unless there are crates. Naturally, trying to kill them all one by one is horribly slow. Yet at the same time, without FP, it's not possible to MT kill the randoms. So after countless segments, I eventually find one where I am able to finish it quickly and give Yulie the kill. The trick is to find ways to gain FP quickly (often done by KOing enemy groups) and then defending and waiting for Yulie to cast material. On a very rare chance, gems are also possible. However, it's worthwhile to kill it with Material because the gem you get can help speed up fights later on. I get a Wind gem out of this, which sees use immediately against Incubator.

Third, this segment is heavily action orientated, which means that there is always the chance of execution errors. The worst spots being in the third room with the poles and the room with the 1900-2200 gella run. In fact, I only manage to hit 1700 this time, but thankfully, this turned out to be enough cash, so it didn't end up mattering too much. This gella run is huge, but also very easy to screw up and is typically a segment killer. The poles along with the Accelerator segments require practice and are also always viable to screw ups.

Finally, we get Incubator himself. Jude has to move into the centre to bait physicals from Incubator. If he decides to use Stone Bullet on the group at the beginning and not Jude, it is typically a reset because Yulie will not have enough HP left to take another hit. If he decides to Stone Bullet Jude/attack Jude, then the rest of the plan unfolds itself like such (with Yulie either defending or Healing depending on your condition). That psychic Heal lets Jude survive with just 17 HP. It is important to note that Incubator has an AI script that heavily favours him summoning his cronies if there isn't one on the field. With Joint Struggle + Raq offense, it's possible to take them out as they are summoned. Slow Down keeps the battle in place, otherwise the drones may get turns and rip me apart. The Wind gem from the random battle lets Arnaud kill Incubator safely instead of missing it with Blast and saves a few seconds as a result.

The other forced fight with the soldiers can also be problematic depending on the behavior of the sword soldier. If he decides to move into another HEX (and not the top right), it ends up taking longer because Yulie doesn't have enough FP to summon material and one shot the shield soldier.

Note that I don't buy anything from the shop other than a new sword for Raquel; the armor upgrades here are too short lived to waste precious money on.

Segment 9
You get initiative in this battle before Scythe gets to move once. Scythe has a passive ability that lets him auto-evade any attack at a 33% chance. I started digging around for a way to take better advantage of this. In the past, I always just settled for 5 attacks on Scythe to win. But I decided this wasn't good enough because using 5 attacks to win means Scythe will get a turn, which also gives us a cut scene. So no, can't go that route. However, I can't Joint Struggle in one maneuver and Yulie is pretty much dead weight.

So what's the solution? Well, with a max powered variance crit, Raquel hits 4500 damage, which is enough combined with hits from Jude and Arnaud. Technically, it's possible for Arnaud to *not* attack at all and still hit 9k damage. However, this requires two max variance hits from Raquel (with one on the crit) and a high variance hit from Jude, which is a whole lot more effort for very little gain. Arnaud attacking basically removes the variance involved. So all together, we need 4 attacks to hit of which Raquel must crit once. The total chance of this happening is (67%)^4 * 8% or roughly 1.6%. I do eventually get it after much resetting, saving a little over a minute from this.

Segment 10
A one minute clip that takes about 2 to 3 hours to actually complete correctly and record. Thanks to Jo'ou Ranbu for this tip, which is what really set into motion the later runs. A Tiny Flower can be picked up as a drop in Wunderwaltrum, which sets up many, many fights to come in the run. The chances of getting this is not high and as it is a drop, I do have to kill enemies in order to find out whether or not I'll get one. Combining multiple PCs into the same HEX raises my chances, so it's just a matter of going through the grind. An important note is that depending on the gems you have at the end of this segment, it will vastly change up your strategy in the next one.

Segment 11
Wunderwaltrum is super important for racking up gella as there are LOTS of gella runs all over the place (around 4.7k). So it's important to hit all of them to make sure there is enough cash at the next shop. I do a lot of fancy platform hoping. Each of these jumps require Jude to be right near the tip before taking off. More often than not, I fall and kill a segment. I do eventually get them all with enough practice though. The forced fight here is a joke and more to show off the power of the Tiny Flower. Initiative Yulie, MT summon to instantly kill everything in 4 seconds flat. Make a save here because the two Belial fights are going to be tricky.

Segment 12
Belial is the first boss who really makes you work for your victory. She has the standard Wild ARMS 4 boss package (very high speed, plenty of offense) but comes with a couple of tricks. The first being 4D Pocket. This move removes a PC from the field temporarily. However, Belial is capable of holding on this PC for as long as she wants (we've seen her hold PCs for longer than 20 turns) and when she uses it, it's obviously bad, because now I'm short a PC who can help inflict damage. The second is her spatial distortion. When she uses it, it creates a shield that blocks all direct physical and magic attacks. It doesn't moves that full MT or indirect attacks though. This is what we end up abusing to win the fight quickly.

The former Belial 1 strategy used Turn Shift due to a lack of Freeze gems. With two of them, I re-modify the strategy to pull out something similar to my Belial 2 strat. This ends up speeding up the run by about 30 seconds, so it's pretty significant. The key issue of course, is whether Belial decides to use 4D Pocket. The activation of this move means that it will typically be slower as someone who needs to take an action won't be there and it screws up the CTB order (which has to go exactly as shown).

Belial 2 strat isn't new, but how frustrating this is really depends on what gems you have. If you have a Break gem, Arnaud can kill the Distortion by himself without Yulie needing to act and without any high variance hits. Without...you will need two hits and Jude pretty much needs to deal 3500 minimum. If he doesn't, it's a reset. If he does, you still need to luck out on variance with both Arnaud and Yulie. Belial 2 isn't as trigger happy regarding 4D Pocket, so as long as you can bring down the Distortion as planned, she dies pretty quick with this CTB order.

Segment 13
Only shopping needs to be done here. It could stand to be faster, but still a decent enough segment with around a 2 second improvement or so.

Segment 14
Crits actually don't speed this up. Raquel doesn't deal anywhere near as much damage as Arnaud. Arnaud is once again, the man. Between Slow Down and hitting 4x weakness on Grabboid, he wipes out Grabboid really quick. Stone Bullet counters here hurt, but they are much rarer (around 16%), which means most of the time, its possible to get a counter free segment. Illusion on the centre HEX is usually a reset, although this depends on how much damage has been done and whether or not gems can finish it off. Boss Kresnik is uh...boss Kresnik. No strategy required.

Segment 15 -
This is a really frustrating segment. I've had lots of good runs that ended up being lost due to mistakes either by myself or bad luck. The most annoying part about this segment is the forced fight after lighting the switch. The ideal strategy is as follows:

1) Tiny Flower Yulie, Material. Ideally no counters go off to save a few seconds
2) Jude Phantom Lines down the middle, kills one soldier
3) Enemy Incendiary goes, hits Raquel. Must trigger Red Zone
4) Raquel goes, kills 2 soldiers
5) Arnaud goes, boosted Fire gem to kill the last 2.

The laundry list of problems are as such:

1) Yulie must hit high variance on the enemies to be killed by Arnaud and Jude. She must deal somewhere between 2700 to 3000 at least.
2) Jude must hit high variance on Phantom Line (1900+). The lower Yulie deals, the higher he must hit.
3) Red Zone doesn't always trigger. To force it to occur more frequently, I have to downgrade Raquel's armor to her initial armor, not get a Class level and adjust her HP to 2000
4) Arnaud must hit high variance on his gem hit. He has to do it *twice* as their are two soldiers beside him.

Needless to say, there were about 300 resets if not more, trying to align all the pieces together. This isn't even getting into the room with the two lava-launched platforms or the room where you have to get the Fire into the pot. Both of these room have increased encounter rates, which I am forced to spam Accelerator to avoid randoms. Even then, I've lost multiple segments to them occurring. In the same room where I have to get the fire, sometimes, my timing doesn't always line up and I am forced to wait for the flames to jump back up. I've also lost segments by getting hit by the fire as I am running back with the pot too.

So eventually, I settled with this. I hit the required variance, but Jude decides to be an ass and misses his kill by about 75 HP (damnation). Thankfully, that soldier acted pretty retarded and decided not to attack, which would've used more time and instead just walked right beside everyone on my team. So I even got to use the fast option of shooting him right afterwards for only a small loss in seconds.

The 3 screen field map after this is a bit of a joke and has never really been a problem (gee can you tell?). This segment is pretty good overall. Everything else went perfect except for the fight, which could be faster by around 4 seconds is my guess.

Current run time is faster than prior run by 8 minutes and 45 seconds.

Segment 16-
The Marcus Garb is picked up to pump up Arnaud's MAG, which will be needed for several parts in the game. Revisiting this at the completion of the run, it is probably something that can be cut out in future segments as its use is quite short lived.

This segment should really just be called Segment Kraken because this entire segment is pretty much about him. The parts with the switches and the clockwise switches aren't problems at all. So what makes Kraken such a huge headache? The combination of unevadable Isolate physicals and Slumber Fog. Slumber Fog's chance of success is 37.5% or so, but it has a widespread effect. So any adjacent HEX occupied by a PC also gets hit. And when you need it to not hit 4 characters bunched up together multiple times, it becomes a huge issue because even one person getting temporarily slept leads to issues. The Isolate physicals randomly displaces the targeted PC to another HEX, which I have absolutely no control over. These two factors combined together creates tons of randomness as it is literally impossible to determine which PCs will be available at any time and where they will be.

After hundred and hundreds of resets, it basically comes down to this. Ultimately, the goal is still to try and utilize Joint Struggle because it deals too much damage to ignore (almost 5k if everyone is together). But due to the variety of factors PLUS everyone being spread out at the beginning of the fight, it is incredibly difficult to capitalize on this or holding a 4 man formation for long. How well the fight goes can pretty much be determined based on the number of times Jude is able to get a 3-4 man Joint Struggle off. In this run, no one gets slept and all the actions are pretty much ideal given the situation. It features largely 3 man Joint Struggles from Jude, a couple of Wind Blasts from Arnaud and about 4 hits or so from Raquel. Turn Shift sees use to pre-empt Kraken from trying to screw us over. This is pretty much the second best solution to the fight so I'm pretty happy with this.

FYI, the probability for the optimum scenario is about 0.0536%. It requires Kraken to use his physical on Arnaud or Raquel and moving them into specified HEXes (about 4.2%), followed by a Hydro Pressure (33%) and then his last action must either be a Hydro Pressure or a Slumber Fog that misses everyone (about 48%). And yes, these actions have to go in order. Raquel must also crit at least once (8%) for the optimum strategy to work.

Segment 17 -
Pretty simple segment, which means of course, everything that can go wrong can while recording. I had about 8% counter chances come up like three times in a row. The actual recording doesn't seem to have evident flaws off hand outside of possible faster menu speed, but it is fine as is.

I do finally max the HP tweaking for all PCs here as Hugo is just way too damaging. With completely maxed HP, a full HP Arnaud can take 2 Magic Bow Gandivas and be in critical range, allowing crisis evade to kick in. Whereas without, there's a good chance he gets 2HKO'd by it. Similar cases apply to other PCs (Jude can take an extra physical hit with this, same with Raquel). Raq's HP will likely need to be tweaked as needed for Red Zone though.

Speaking of Hugo, he also has a passive ability translated from plot. System Chronos lets Hugo automatically move to another HEX against any attack that would damage him. You never see it here though because Talaysen concocted this hilarious strategy during the early stages when I was running it for the first or second time. By surrounding Hugo in such a fashion, he'll be trapped by a wall of PCs. Due to the way the mechanics work (go back to the top if you need a refresher), this means that once this trap is set, he will no longer be able to evade at all the HEXes he can reach are occupied by a PC. His HP falls really quickly once this happens. I pass the kill to Arnaud as he really does need experience to keep accessing the options that I need.

I make an effort to grab the Fighter Badge here. I've been playing with some ideas in my head and re-modify strategies requires me to play around with PC speed tiers. It does pay off, as you'll see later.

Segment 18 -
I somehow manage to gain a whopping 27-30 second lead on this segment. The basic gist is to steal a Full Carrot from a Ranunculus. This enemy only appears about 20% of the time and steal is a tier 1 steal, meaning that it's rare. You have maybe about a 10-15% chance of getting it on a successful steal. Ultimately, you want to steal then leave immediately. However, because the enemies will act, it helps to have the other characters (namely Arnaud and Raquel) to kill off all the enemies other than the frogs so that they don't keep getting turns and slowing things down. In this run, I still only get the steal on the second frog, but placing greater priority on running away instead of killing enemies with my better positioning helps quite a bit.

Segment 19 -
This is a massive segment because of my decision to combine 4 segments into 1. The good news is that most of the segment is relatively straightforward and doesn't have a lot of variation (which is why 4 in 1 is possible). The bad news is that its long and one of the boss fights I don't have a whole lot of control over. Let's go over the route changes from previous run;

Based on my discussion with NEB in chat, I need 3 Gella cards. From Autumn River and before hitting Port Rosalia again, there are only 3 Gella Cards that can be used on bosses freely. This in turn, means I have to grab every one and one of them is here. Luckily, the card is directly on the way, so this isn't a big issue. Second, I learn a couple of extra short cuts from precision jumping which allows you to avoid grabbing the mesh wires at certain points. This is advantageous because the mesh wires are a) slow and b) sometimes weird because Jude needs to take a second after grabbing them before being able to pull himself up. Smash square too early and he'll fail and you'll lose a second or two. Finally, I take the exit at the back of Buckeye instead of heading back out to the front as this exit is actually shorter.

Boss fights...the first one features the party split up and then rejoining for the last set of enemies. You basically want Tiny Flower Jude because Tiny Flower Raquel doesn't have enough FP to work with on her first turn against Spriggan. If you delay that turn and let Jude do some work, he'll gather more FP and more people taking damage = more FP gain. This means the opening round in the chain fight is always Jude Phantom Line, Arnaud Jump and cast (Fire) Blast and then Jude finishes with Phantom Line. As a result of this, Raquel is shy 924 EXP to reach level 20 before fighting the next boss.

Sadly, this level is very important. It helps stabilize the damage she needs to do against them per swing (4500 per). Without this extra level, variance plays too much of a part in whether or not you get the kill and more often than not, Raquel will fall short, which is not acceptable.

To get Raquel to level 20 then, she needs at least a 0.4 EXP multiplier bonus plus the killing blow (which gives x0.7). This is best done by giving her all the kills as it is easier to plan around then having to rely on her dodging or scoring crits.

This leads to the following situation. Raquel only takes two turns to enter the fight, but Jude's higher speed makes his three-turn clear still put him ahead in the turn order a fair ways. When the turn finally comes for them to appear in the fight, TF Jude leads the turn order looking like this:

Jude --> Spriggan A --> Jude --> Yulie --> Mini Spriggans

Jude should Phantom Line as it is faster than Joint Struggle. You ultimately want Raquel to get the kill, so JS is pointless. One Phantom Line is all it takes to put the Mini Spriggans into killing range. After his TF turn, the new turn order looks like this:

Yulie -> Mini Spriggans -> Jude -> Raquel

While Yulie can turn shift to Jude, again, you want to leave the kills to Raq. So instead her action is to either Defend with Protect up or to heal herself depending on how much damage she has taken. Arnaud joins somewhere in between, but a 6 turn turnaround time and starting at 0 CT means he'll never see a turn in this fight if all goes well. Jude's second turn should be another Phantom Line, and when Raq's turn comes around, Intrude x3 + 3 physicals can end it. She should deal enough damage to off Spriggan in 2 physicals with Jude having previously used Phantom Line twice. The alternative is for Jude to defend after using Joint Struggle once and Raquel to Intrude 4x + physical x4. This is more FP intensive (and not necessarily faster due to extra Intrude activation, swing and Joint Struggle taking longer), so the former is usually better.

Dolls go down in the usual fashion. They have a really powerful magic attack that can be used on the centre as long as the two of them are on opposite sides of the field. Raquel says, "lolno" and proceeds to one chain them with Intrude. With Power Charge and 3 Class Levels to stabilize her damage, she easily makes the required damage per swing to make this work. During the initial Intrude build up, she should use her first attack on the other doll not hit by Jude's Joint Struggle (which should deal around 4800-5100) as this powered up swing should help void any remaining variance.

I got a couple of lucky breaks in this run as Spriggan's Isolate helped move a Mini-Spriggan into the exact position that I want. Second, Raquel ended up getting a decisive crit near the end for the kill, saving me an extra turn or two.

Buckeye's stores features selling everything to avoid clutter in the equipment category and buying armors for Jude, Yulie and Raquel. Arnaud is going to get his final armor in the next dungeon, so don't bother buying anything for him.

Segment 20 -
Etemananki is always a hard segment. It's a 15 minute romp through the dungeon (more or less) with no saves in between, tricky platforming and a boss who is fairly unpredictable. I beat my old run here by a full minute by mainly utilizing a better Guardian Chimera strat, a better treasure chest strat and faster menu speed/executions.

For the most part, the platforming time is roughly the same. The chest strat got better because I save menu time from needing to de-equip Raq and then equipping Arnaud. The Guardian Chimera strat...well, it was something I had concocted after my last run and thought more about. In theory, it works out good. Does it work in practice? More or less. Guardian Chimera isn't always cooperative (it seems to have Move as a higher priority on its script more than other bosses), but in general, the goal is for him to attack the entire party and miss with his physical. There is no Slow Down, so if he hits and then attacks with an offensive Material, it's a reset. If he uses Material and then Material again, that's another reset. Ideally, he just uses physicals but will consistently miss because of Illusion. This in turn generates a massive amounts of FP (even without Reinforce), which helps Raquel one chain him to death when she gets her first turn.

I'm satisfied with the segment overall, but that second room with the springs can still be improved on. I miss the jump initially due to hitting the ceiling, but still manage to complete this room faster than my old run by 2-3 seconds where I took the time to be safe (which is why I decided to keep it in the end). This room is filled with lots of grief and resetting because you can't see the third to last jump you are making. You have to approximate Jude's position and yes, you have to be at the very tip of that jump. So just in case this segment wasn't tough enough, you have a Kaizo-esque jump there to make things harder.

Segment 21 -
Enil herself remains more or less the same. She spawns clones where if the PC attacks a clone who is not his or herself, the damage inflicted is also dealt back to that PC. Since Jude's MAG is so bad, Mystic Gem time! Raquel with the Tiny Flower then gets a follow up turn right after to mop up.

In practice, it is actually better if you can pass the kill to Arnaud because he'll need the level for the next segment. I get "unlucky" in the sense that Raquel actually crits (twice) and finishes this fight in record time. I don't bother resetting though because this fight took about 200+ resets before I was able to learn Genocide Edge. Genocide Edge is absolutely needed on the train and since this is the last battle before it...well, have fun.

Note that the Full Carrot is absolutely necessary to learn the dual tech and to provide Raquel with enough FP to Intrude after.

The first battle on the train got grouped together as well. I'm taking a risk with that Genocide Edge casting because the ID rate isn't perfect, and it can miss the Dreadnaught. Doing so means you have to take even longer to kill him. Luckily, he got killed, which made for a pretty quick segment altogether.

Segment 22 -
Fun segment. The entire thing is just a string of battles. Thanks to the Full Carrot and Tiny Flower, I get to pull some wacky hi-jinx on the enemies. The segment I kept pretty much has everything on the train dying before getting an actual turn.

I did some revisions based on doing test runs and level differences from my previous runs. This resulted in the following major changes:

Fight 1 - No longer has Raquel move to the middle. She instead moves down and to where Arnaud and Jude are, then uses Genocide Edge. This saves time as Raquel no longer needs an extra attack (3 actions as opposed to 4) and reduces the chances of crits, which cause minor slow downs (the game readjusts the enemies are aligned when the number of soldiers changes inside a HEX). On the off chance ID is not perfect, Arnaud gets a follow up turn after the enemies to wipe them out.

Fight 2 - Instead of Phantom Line across, changes to Mystic Hi-Break. If Genocide Edge is not perfect, Arnaud and Yulie can take care of the rest. Usually, Arnaud himself is enough as 3 of the 4 soldiers bite it to Genocide Edge like 95% of the time.

Fight 3 - The biggest change. The old strat had a menu swap and gave Jude TF and changed the attacks to Jude -> boosted 4 man JS, followed by Arnaud with Jump and boosted Hi-Break to kill both soldiers. The problem? Well Arnaud being lower levelled means his MAG is lower by 11 points, which means he needs to hit max variance to kill both in a single shot. Horrible horrible pain at trying to get this to happen. So instead, I go with Genocide Edge Raquel on the second move, with 2 Intrudes before hand, saving them in case ID fails. There's no other way around this. Even with the former method, more than 80% of the time, Arnaud will fail at either killing one or both and you eat two counters anyway. Genocide Edge Raquel at least has a chance to kill everything in one attack. The silver lining to this is that you save menu time from setting up for the fight, then resetting back to the way it originally was for the remaining train battles.

I tried an alternative where Jude uses the Fighter Badge into a Joint Struggle. If that worked, Arnaud could jump and cast something like Fragile to give Raquel slightly increased damage to push her into kill range, which would prevent counters altogether. This failed pretty badly (we're talking about the damage variance nowhere near close), so Genocide Edge Raquel it is.

Balgaine and Tank Vehicle both go down as planned. Tank Vehicle doesn't deserve much of a mention. No Hi-Counter, but I do get a crit, which saves a turn. So that's good. As for Balgaine...well his gimmick is that he will charge up for 1 turn before unleashing a guaranteed kill attack the next. After 2 cycles, he'll move to the centre if possible and kill everyone if he gets another turn. He also has a passive ability that ignores all magic cast on him (even those that don't do damage). Act surprised when I tell you that gems bypass this immunity. I mean, it's not first time this has happened!

Because it takes him time to wind up for his swing, he never even attacks once. I just gang up on him en masse with all the offense I can throw at him. A 4-Man Joint Struggle is stronger than Short Circuit from testing, so I have Arnaud under Detonation ferry the entire team across the field. This saves everyone from moving and lets me pump out offense on turn one allowing us to kill him before the first cycle. I also Gella Card here for the money needed at the last store and pass the kill to Arnaud so his levels remain up to speed.

I originally intended to get into the Forbidden City at just under 3:03; I do better by saving an entire minute thanks to Raquel getting perfect ID rates across 5/6 battles. Assuming my math is correct, the chances of this happening (getting ID to hit on 17 of the necessary targets perfectly at a 75% chance) is about a 0.75% chance. It will be even faster if she got a counter on Tank vehicle, but between getting that or the perfect ID rates, since the current Tank Vehicle battle isn't slower by much anyway thanks to the crit. Improved menu handling across the fights (and no menu handling for fight 3) speeds things up too.

Segment 23 -
This is a battle free segment; doesn't mean that there aren't problems or things to watch out for though. You can't bypass the first Light staff room. No amount of delaying the jump or changing the jump lets Jude make it across. However, all the traps the game throws at you can be completely bypassed with tricky platforming. Skipping the flame jet traps is pretty cool, but the biggest time saver of the segment is completely ignoring the second Light staff, which shaves a cool 17-18 seconds. It is extremely hard because the jump in the room right next door requires exact precision without said staff. With practice though, I can get it maybe 50% of the time. There's also no real way to get around the room with the fan. Using jump-accelerator lets me manipulate the location of the fan slightly when I get there, but you still have to wait for it to swing in the proper place to not get hit by it as you slide under. Rest of the segment is pretty self explanatory. I take the back exit in this segment instead of the side exit since of course, it's faster.

Segment 24 -
I do this segment often enough to learn how to get past the first laser grid room without accelerator. The second laser grid room is best handled with occasional accelerator because it gets the final spinning grid into positional without needing to wait too long. This applies to the room with the spring and pole as well. In theory, it is possible to double jump up, but the laser spins again don't always line up properly, so sometimes its just faster to move up the pole and around the laser beam. Rest of the segment is handled with Accelerator.

Reviewing my old run, I ran a quick calculation and confirmed that it is entirely possible to OHKO Tony 3. However, this requires Raquel to score a counter crit and the chances of that are slim. In theory, the counter should come out at around 34% due to the Macha Brand and Tiny Flower boost. However, in practice, this rate was much, much lower. I did this segment at least 100+ times, and in all those attempts, Raquel only triggered a counter on three runs. That's less than 5%. The crit rate of 60%+ on a counter (after factoring in all the boosts) is pretty accurate though! Anyway, enjoy the 6 second boss battle. This is the fastest fight in the entire run.

Segment 25 -
Raquel takes about 1300 damage from Super Soldier's elemental Blasts. So, if we adjust her HP to about 2900-3000, she'll always enter Red Zone after getting hit twice by it. This lets her move to the centre very quickly, which is key to ending this fight in under a minute. You do not want Tiny Flower on her though, because Raquel getting a turn before everyone is hit twice means she has less FP to work with, and you can't one round Super Soldier. So instead, equip the Tiny Flower on Jude. This works out perfectly because it stops Jude from having to make a survival roll and he gets to hit Super Soldier with a boosted Phantom Line, allowing Raquel to spend her last attack on Evil Blossom instead of another Dragon Edge. That Evil Blossom bleeds over into the remaining soldier, who becomes easy pickings for Arnaud (who normally doesn't have enough power without a leypoint to score a kill).

Nothing else is remarkable about this segment. However, I made an extra save for this due to Red Zone and needing things like Magic Blocker to not kick in. Another save afterwards because Prototype Gear. Not much time saved here; although I'm not surprised since the entire segment is a) unchanged and b) the strategy is also unchanged.

Segment 26 -
Pretty easy segment sans Prototype Gear, who is of course a bastard. No reason otherwise for this segment to exist on its own. There are a handful of problems, and I only get to pick and choose which ones I want to eliminate. For starters, Prototype Gear carries the first instant death attack in the game. The odds aren't great (about 37.5%), but when he's double turning you, hitting more than one character at a time, those odds work against you quickly. Next, this boss is durable. Raquel only deals about 3300 damage a swing. Arnaud's Hi-Blast doesn't fare much better due to Prototype Gear resisting all elements and thanks to the above risk of instant death, Joint Struggle is usually a bad idea. Finally, he also hits like a train. His regular physical is a 2 hit attack that 2HKOs even Jude and Raquel if it hits *clean*. Guess what this does to the mages.

Thankfully though, there is a save point beside him, which lets us do the following. As much of a pain as he is, Prototype Gear's raw HP isn't that great. This means, that if we get past his defenses, he can actually be killed without too much trouble. Unfortunately, there are only two ways to do this. The first is to equip Raquel's unique swords (found only as a drop by random monsters). The second is to utilize Penetrator, which ignores defense on a crit. Of course, relying on *one* swing to crit would be horrible given all the above problems, so to optimize this, we need to give her more swings, which means more FP. The only real reliable way for this is Reinforce. By delaying Raquel's turn and having Arnaud cast Reinforce first thing, I can build up to 75 FP pretty quick, which gives Raq 4 swings to score a crit at about a 33% chance. She manages to do this on the first swing of the Intrude swing, which greatly helps. Of course, it would help even more if that Counter was a crit, but can't win 'em all. This is faster than the old strategy of isolating everyone and ganging up on Prototype Gear by about 20%. The original fight took 56 seconds; this refined strat kills him in about 46 secs. Better menu handling time provides some other time saves to boot.

Segment 27 -
Long segment. There is lots of randomness needing to be worked out although the actual segment itself isn't that difficult. I clear Garra De Leon and make it all the way to the entrance of Forbidden Valley. This means, going through both Augst fights, passing Dragon Fossil Mine and finishing plot related stuff in Halim. Seems easy since the two fights are fights you literally cannot lose and there's not a whole lot of action. In practice, the random encounters and variance on Assault Buster has killed way too many runs to count.

As a boss, Augst really doesn't deserve a terribly huge mention in terms of actual strategy as he literally has a 0% chance to actually kill you. I am dead serious regarding this. However, because he poses absolutely no threat at all, he's a good chance to rack up extra money AND extra experience. To do this, I need to manipulate the turn order and damage to exactly what I want since most of my stats are right on the cusp where my intended strategy will fail. I've had a fair share of resets with Assault Buster failing to OHKO or the predicted turn order not going the way I want as the RFX difference between the PCs is literally only 2 points or so.

So time, for some detailed speed manipulation breakdown. Remember the speed tier list I had at the top? Well, with the Fighter Badge, I am able to manipulate a PC down a tier of speed. So by equipping it on Jude, I am able to get him to around Arnaud's speed tier. With manipulation of class levels then, I have some control over who goes first. Everyone starts off in the same HEX in the first Augst fight, so the optimal solution of getting two actions before Jude OHKOs, is to make Jude slower than Arnaud and have either Raquel or Yulie take the Tiny Flower for a boosted first turn speed. This is the easy part.

The second fight is trickier. Now everyone is spread out and Jude doesn't have a clean OHKO. To secure the KO, I need to have him boost one of Assault Buster's variables. In this case, Speed is perfect since he stands on a Wind HEX. To get the Lucky Card boost to everyone, I am forced to manipulate Jude's speed such that he is slower than Arnaud on base. This results in Arnaud having enough residual speed to out speed him after he receives the Wind HEX's speed boost. The final result looks like this:

Arnaud -> Jude -> Yulie -> Arnaud -> Jude.

Dragon Fossil Mine features an important pick up as does Halim. I now have a Cat's Paw, an extra Tiny Flower and Jude's armor for the final dungeon. I almost panicked when buying the armor since I saw the cursor went up to 2 and immediately cancelled the purchase. This used up an extra second, but I can live as this is otherwise a pretty clean segment.

Segment 28 -
I make the decision to take the segment from Valley of Oblivion all the way until just before Jeremy. This makes it a very long segment, with more than a few areas for easy mistakes. But I manage through pretty well. The puzzles in Valley of Oblivion went pretty much spotlessly. You may be able to do the puzzles on the right hand side a little faster; I'm not sure. But this is fast as I know in terms of finishing it.

Boss strategy is still the same as the prior run. Kasaran Pasaran spawns clones of itself and every time a clone is killed it deals damage equivalent to 25% of that character's Max HP. Nothing else he does really matters because Arnaud ferries Yulie who gets everyone into an offensive position, killing it really quick. For those of you that are wondering, Slow Down > Hyper for this fight, as with Slow Down, you end up seeing fewer enemy turns, which results in a faster victory time. Goldrake has a Wind Weakness and starts on an Earth HEX. You can imagine what happens when we combine this with a Wind Gem and a skill that then doubles weakness damage. Not only is this method more reliable than fishing for random critical hits from Raquel, it is also actually quicker (yes, I timed it FYI). There's unfortunately no way to actually OHKO Goldrake though (it will require 3 Tiny Flowers or some other combinations), but the fight is still one of the fastest. When we get back to Frontier Halim, I forge a Hi-Freeze gem with the 2 basic Freeze gems we have on hand. This turned out to be unnecessary in the end since I ended up adopting a new and faster strategy for the final fight and costs about 10 seconds.

In the three map screen, there's a set of chests I grab at the end, which contain a Goat Doll and 4x Mega Berries. Those Berries are all we need to finish the game in terms of healing. The Goat Doll will be used at least once and also serves as a safety shield in the last fight as it requires everyone alive. Since I have no Revive Fruits, and we're grabbing the berries anyway, might as well take it. Finally, in the store in Port Rosalia, I grab the Great Sword and Raq and Yulie's final armors. The combined cost, I mapped out earlier and is the reason for using all those Gella cards before hand. You'll see my ending balance is barely enough to cover for it (+1500 gella or so). Doing this on the first go prevents us from having to backtrack and grab them after the Jeremy fights, which will save about a whole minute. Worth going slightly out of the way in other segments for sure.

Segment 29 -
Bog-standard Jeremy strat. Which is to say, set up Raquel for massive first turn damage, then just hope Jeremy waltzes in beside one of the  HEXes next to her. He does even better on this recording because he manages to trigger Hi-Counter on his first attack action, wiping him out in record time. Second fight is more or less the same. Raq with initiative and metre so Jeremy gets massacred. No crit though, which would've saved some time.

Three screen map segment afterwards, with nothing to be picked up this time. I do manage to save over a minute in this segment though do to better planning and having enough Gella before hand to grab everything we need to finish the game (so no backtracking)

Segment 30
The real obstacle of this segment is Gawn. The 17000 EXP he leaves behind is important due to us wanting the levels for more options/stats and the like. Without randoms, that's a ton of EXP so it's worth gearing up and working this battle through. Sadly, the only way to do this is pure luck along with the Goat Doll. Gawn's first action is always a 1/2 MHP attack. However, after that, every actual turn he takes, he will 99.9% of the time kill a PC. If he's attacking as a counter (which he always does when attacked), then he hits back with fairly weak damage but also cancels your action. The important thing to note is that because the action hasn't resolved, Tiny Flower's boost doesn't go away. But because the attack has occurred, the game flags attack actions so Rapid Attack's effect will kick in. This results in this neat little set up which lets Gawn only get off 1-2 attacks. The success rate of this strategy is about 31.25%. Not very high odds, but certainly not as low as some of the other stuff I've gotten to occur in this entire run. As long as he hits Raquel with one of his actual turns, we're in the clear. If he hits Jude/Yulie though, it's a reset.

Jane Does are absolutely terrible, even normally. Once I learned they used GATHER on one of their first actions, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do here. Pretty much ALL the time saved is from better menu handling. I do some fancy swings with Light staff to get through the room quicker, but none of this is a new discovery.

Segment 31

The first jump I make is a little tricky, but you can definitely cross the gap with some precision. Doing so saves a couple of seconds instead of having to go all the way around. Inside the final dungeon, you have to throw the sword at the switch to be able to advance. The easiest way to do this is to hold L1 so Jude "locks" on to the object before throwing. Otherwise, the throw-hit detection is just too wonky to rely on. I skip grabbing the second sword since you only need it for Castle Wall, which I've written off since the third attempt. The lasers are similar to the flame traps back in the forgotten city. Just aim Jude a little bit out towards the pit and the hit will launch him backwards on the platform with a second of invincibility or so. Doing so allows you to skip the entire spinning lasers instead of needing to carry a shield around, so it's faster.

As for the bosses...well Farmel isn't hard. She is annoying though. Her gimmick is that until you move her out of the centre, she will continue to spam an invincible move that also lets her auto-counter for 9999 damage. There are only two ways to move her out: Isolate or Replace. In earlier runs, I've always used Isolate because using Replace triggers an algorithm where Farmel will occasionally cast Replace herself. This can become really annoying if she casts it immediately after you move her off the centre, because then she goes back to spamming her invincibility move. However, because her casting Replace isn't guaranteed (simply introduced), I fumble around with the RNG and used a modified strategy compared to the old run. Without Isolate, Arnaud can spend his first turn casting Hyper. This is important because it allows Raquel to OHKO, where normally she cannot. Therefore, the goal is simply just to wait until Yulie casts Replace and Farmel to drop herself into the magical immunity stance, then have Raquel OHKO. This took a long while before all the pieces finally lined up.

The other boss in this segment isn't much better. Reclaimer is a standard Wild ARMS 4 random boss, which means he hits like a tank and is crazy fast. Oh and just for fun, he also has widespread Slumber Fog. My initial strategy was to use the standard Jump/Gather opening, then have Arnaud casts Illusion to generate FP and have Raquel one chain once she gets a turn. On the actual recording, I instead cast Hyper because Hyper'd Raquel 2HKOs without issue so you spend less time activating Intrude. It didn't work out as well as I had hoped since I miscalculated the FP I would have. Reclaimer helps me though by putting characters to sleep so I don't end up having to take an actual action with them. End result is a time that is somehow faster than my old run by about 10 seconds. In comparison to my other strategy, I think it would end in roughly the exact same amount of time. The key there is that you have to tank about 4 Reclaimer actions regardless, so even though it looks a bit cleaner, it's not necessarily faster. It's also riskier too, since it gives Reclaimer one less space to target.

Segment 32

I set up Yulie and Raquel for Erytheon since there's no menu access before him. Luckily the same set up works for Reinseige, who is terrible. Raquel normally 2HKOs, but in this case, I make sure she *doesn't* by hitting low variance. In retrospect, I should've reset for the 2HKO. I originally did this because it secures Arnaud level at the final boss to be at 42. However, this ended up being not as important with the final strategy decided since it didn't rely on needing both Hi-Blast and Hyper at the same time anyway. The alternative is to get him up to 43, but I'm not sure where you would be able to find the EXP for that outside of randoms and that's a not a favourable option.

Jude and Kresnik auto-learn Gadget Crush due to plot. This move deals triple the damage against any enemy that has the Wild ARM attribute. It's also full MT so I just have Jude blast all the bugs in the first fight with it. The trickiest part on the field is definitely the springs. You cannot reach the next spring platform if it is rising in comparison to the one you are currently on. This explains the delay I have at the last jump since if I tried to jump across any earlier, it will result in a failure. I've tried making that jump early too many times to count.

Against Cyanoides, both Jude and Kresnik don't really need accessories. Winning this fight quickly is all about capturing that Water HEX as soon as possible because it helps reduce Cyanoides' Hydro Pressure. His AI will consistently spam this move even if you move beside him, so if he takes control of that HEX first, it is going to be a long fight. Jude's magic defence is *so* bad at this point that after boosting he'll take about 80-90% of his HP, which means the only thing he can do without risking death is healing himself. Luckily, he usually doesn't because Hydro Pressure is capable of targeting any HEX on the field. With the HEX captured, the rest of the fight is simple. Have Kresnik cast Adrenaline Rush to boost speed and magic defense, then have him and Jude go on offense at all points until one of their HP gets too low. If 50 FP is available, Jude should always activate Gadget Crush as Kresnik has access to Apoptosis. It's basically better for damage per turn as Apoptosis lets Kresnik deal triple damage anyway, so the boost in damage is much greater when Jude does it.

New strategy for Erytheon which works exactly planned. Yulie starts on a Water HEX and Erytheon is weak to water. I'm sure you can guess what that plan is. On rare occasions, Raquel can OHKOs Erytheon with an Exploit Weakness Dragon Edge. Most of the time she doesn't though, so Arnaud gets to mop up. It also helps him reach level 42 (which didn't end up being as important as I thought, but more levels for him is always good).

Segment 33

I make a separate save here because Divine Weapon's third form is way too randomized for me to manage. It took me a while to learn how to make it through the disappearing platforms in one shot. In fact, it still does because those platforms disappear so fast that the timing of when you enter accelerator can mess up the appearance of the last set of platforms.

As for Lambda, I have never, in all my attempts across the 4 segmented speedruns, seen Raquel fail to 2HKO. She did repeatedly when I was doing this, which just made things all the more worse. Lambda's gimmick is his passive ability known as Blue Destiny. Anything within his field of vision has a 75% chance of getting nullified to zero damage. It is critical that Raquel kill him ASAP otherwise this fight takes forever due to this. If you're wondering how I bypass Blue Destiny, pay attention to Lambda's facing when Jude starts moving. You'll notice that he keeps his attention focused on him as he runs to the upper corner. In fact, this is whole purpose of Jude needing to go first. Otherwise, his attention will be focused on Raquel when she moves forward, and we don't want that. Lambda not saying his death quote made this all the better.

Segment 34

This is a bit of a long story. The strategy I eventually used ended up being completely different then the one I had planned. In my original set up, I had Arnaud with a Hi-Blast/Hyper and 5 Class levels, while Jude went for Class levels only, totalling to 6. This resulted in a time of about 4 minutes and 30 seconds on Divine Weapon. I was pretty happy with this, but then decided to fool around some more. What if I shifted the turn order so that Arnaud could go first? See, under Detonation and Hyper, Jude deals about 35000 damage on average since Divine Weapon is a Wild ARM specie. In other words, if I can capitalize on that first turn, I would not have to burn as much FP on Intrude. This is very important since the last phase's plot kill requires you to have 100 FP. Spending less not only means you use less time activating it, but also less time building metre back up. I was motivated by this idea after watching how phase two pans out in my first strategy so I decided to give it a go. Lo and behold, this crazy bull-in-china shop approach works. It is about twenty times more risky, but when it works, it really pays dividends. Using this new revised approach, I save 48 seconds on the final battle.

Due to Arnaud being stuck at level 42 (and not 43), my options are somewhat limited. I cannot use Hi-Blast because that would cause too much of a RFX penalty hit via not enough class levels to get him to become faster than Jude. However, I also cannot just get Hi-Blast with the class level because then I don't have enough for Hyper. If I get both Hi-Blast and Hyper, then I don't have enough for the added badge slot needed to make this crazy idea work. I had to drop something and I settled with Hi-Blast in the end. It was the easiest portion of the strategy to revise. Removing Hyper was out of the question since that gets rid of the whole point of making Arnaud faster than Jude. Not getting the badge slot means I can't start the fight with 100 FP, which is needed to make this all sort of work together.

To get Jude to be slower, I can't just equip the Fighter badge on him. Instead, I also have to downgrade his class levels by 2. He's stuck at 4 class levels, which is really bad at this point. Having basically -55 HIT compared to a normal game also means he has accuracy issues (about a 1 in 3 chance of missing). This is somewhat made up by the Tiny Flower's Detonation boost. However, everything after the first turn does have a chance of missing. Neither Yulie or Raquel have any changes to their set ups, which is Goat Doll for Yulie and Cat's Paw/Gunstar Sign for Raquel. Yulie must have the Goat Doll because if she dies in the third phase, it's an instant reset. No one else has revival and I have no Revive Fruits to wake up dead PCs.

With that we're off. Without Hi-Blast, the only way to get a clean shot at Divine Weapon is with Isolate. Isolate is about as reliable as Microsoft working so right off the bat, there's issues here. You only need to really separate Divine Weapon from the devices. The position of where he ends up isn't as big of a deal, but if he ends up in Jude's line of fire unprotected, then it does save FP, which is important. The rest of it is simple. Yulie goes under Turn Shift state for the RFX bonus and Raquel ends her turn in an Intrude state before phase 2. It is vital that the Devices be separated because they have auto-Defender, which will cut into any physical attack you use. If you leave them with Divine Weapon, they can also cast Quicken, which you really don't need.

Phase two is where trouble really starts amping up. CT isn't reset to zero here, but for some reason, the Tiny Flower effect gets reapplied. This means, that since Raquel ended the fight in Intrude state, she starts the fight off with 100 CT, letting her go first immediately. Moving Raquel is vital to remove some of the sting from Claymore. For some reason which I have not yet figured out, Yulie ends up being slower than Divine Weapon, which never happened with the first strategy. I suspect it has something to do with leaving one of the Devices alive which may alter his residual speed. Alternatively, the more probable scenario is that Yulie's speed after turn shift is equivalent to Divine Weapon 2 so its a pure dice roll in determining who goes first. This is normally really bad because having this form take a turn is about twenty kinds of bad news. Claymore cancels actions, and he's faster, so he can constantly spam it to kill you or make you take a massive time penalty. Prismatic Laser is a guaranteed reset. Dead Heat is a bit of a joke, but the Isolate effect doesn't help either. However, in this case, he knocks Raquel into Red Zone after taking a 4 hit Intrude chain to the face. Welp.

The final phase features two parts. The first part simply requires you to drop Divine Weapon to 1 HP. The second part requires all 4 party members alive, in the same HEX and with 100 FP. That part where it says "alive" is the real issue and this is why you can't skimp on things such as armor and why Yulie needs Healing Plus here. Divine Weapon 3 is also quite nasty. He has an ability called Accelerator, which when it triggers, lets him get an instant turn. He can do this even if he just finished another turn, so it's possible for him to do chain three Accelerators together to triple turn and then proceed to do something like triple his damage and use his most damaging move (Arch Smasher) twice. There is no way to shut this ability off like System Chronos, which is why this fight is really random and generally unpleasant. There is no set turn order because he can always cheat with Accelerator.

Divine Weapon 3 also has 4 supporting monsters called Sword Devices. These also need to be killed ASAP. They clog the turn order and can pick off Yulie easily. Remember that once Yulie is dead, the entire fight is lost, so getting rid of them is a high priority. It also frees up HEXes which gives more targets for the ABM Launcher's missiles to hit.

The turn order of Arnaud going first before Jude is critical here and is why all that previous trouble despite unreliability is worth it. Arnaud going first means he's able to drop Hyper down for Jude. Jude, under Detonation and Hyper, hits for about 35000 on average. So right off the bat, we've dealt about 50% of Divine Weapon's HP without spending any FP. Dealing the remaining damage isn't much trouble. I don't bother sending Raquel to work because Hyper Jude ended up getting most of the work done and thankfully never missed. The accuracy is an issue as mentioned, but luckily, he managed to hit 3 times out of 3. This results in using pretty much no FP for the first part.

By keeping FP expenditure to minimum, I am able to minimize the time I need to keep everyone alive for the second, which is the real challenge in this battle. Thanks to Accelerator, I cast Protect because it goes a LOOOOOOONG way at keeping everyone alive. Having Healing Plus means Revive is capable of being a near full heal to boot. Once everyone is alive and 100 FP is stocked, any PC can trigger Arc Impulse and put him down for good.

The rest of the recording is basically all ending/epilogue stuff. The kill on Divine Weapon is my fastest yet, clocking in at 3 minutes and 42 seconds across all three forms and the entire segment about 6 minutes and 43 seconds. Using the time of the last save, this means that the final time on the kill is about 5 hours, 1 minute and 28 seconds.

Alternative strategies

Let me address a couple of things that viewers may be wondering.

1) Why don't you utilize Grow Apples for mass EXP?

I have considered this before and one that was brought to my attention very early on. The simple answer to this is because it won't make the run faster. For a more detailed explanation, this is why:

Wild ARMS games tend to be very EXP focused on bosses and not random encounters (sans the Grow Apple as mentioned). This means that, despite the fact that I end up fighting mostly all forced encounters, my ending levels aren't too far away from what your levels would be if you decided to play the game normally (it's about -5-8). If you decide to fight Apples for EXP, that benefit will only fast for a few fights before the higher EXP requirements for each next level wipes out your level advantage. So for grow apples to be effective, you have to make sure that the short advantage you get pays off actually getting into a random battle.

If you want to time it, most Wild ARMS 4 battles take about 30 seconds to complete at the fastest. It takes about 8 seconds alone for the field to load and another 5 seconds for the victory/results screen. The shortest amount of time you can kill a Grow Apples it basically 17 seconds – Raquel getting a turn and attacking. If you do anything else, then it will take longer. Now, for a basic attack, Raquel will net about 11000 EXP for the group at end game and about 2000 or so early. Late game, that 11000 EXP means nothing because it will give you at most an extra level. Right now, the strategies I use don't need additional abilities (which levels are more important for), so at most, it's going to void some of the variance and maybe save a turn. So you spend 17 seconds late to save 4 seconds in a fight or two. That doesn't help at all.

If you do it early, where it will make the most difference, 2000 EXP will get you some new abilities earlier, so maybe it will help for Jeremy 1 and Earthbound Dead. But that's about it. Once again, in terms of abilities, most of the bosses pass that point, you'll get access to what you need just by facing the bosses themselves since they leave behind large amounts of EXP. You need to save 4 actions or so and I'm not seeing it. If you're using Joint Struggle that early, you'll need to move PCs individually. That alone costs time where you aren't attacking. Outside of Joint Struggle, maybe you can opt for Red Zone, but if you have no metre, you won't really be able to do much with it. Even if you get access to Illusion and build metre that way, you'll need to group up PCs together for the biggest benefit, and well...see the problems associated with Joint Struggle there.

Furthermore, most bosses have speed stats that are well over yours. A few extra levels may get you more abilities, but on raw stats alone, you won't suddenly be able to have Raquel out speed Jeremy 1 unless you grind excessively. In terms of attack power, without getting stronger weapons, your damage is just going to rise way too slowly to matter. In fact, having a stronger weapon makes much bigger of a difference than the levels. And if 1 Grow Apple fight doesn't help as shown here, fighting more of them won't make things better.

"What about Assault Buster?" Well what about it? That move, if you're using it on apples, requires a ton of set up. This matters because the Apples themselves have 338 RFX on base, which means that using it without set up is going to end up with like no damage at all. The earliest you can get it is level 26, and if you beeline, the rest of your stats will hurt since you can't get any class levels. Setting it all up likely pushes it well into a minute (between slow down, mystic lucky cards, shut out to prevent it from escaping, the apple taking turns itself and so on), which means now instead of 4 actions, you have to save 15 action. All it does is dig you deeper into the hole.

2) Why don't you use more Tiny Flowers?

There seems to be a point at which extra flowers don't help. That number seems like its 1 early on and two in the last portions of the game. There are only a few spots to get the flowers outside of Wunderwaltrum and again in every case, you can expect on average for fights to take about 30 seconds. On some fights, more flowers outright hurt you (Farmel/Hugo). Other like Enil or even the train fights, don't help by much because your strategy is accomplished by using just one flower. It may have an impact on like Guardian Chimera and Krakken, but even then, you'll need to save 7 actions between them. More if it takes you longer for the second flower.

Basically, it's a case of diminishing returns. Having more than one flower early doesn't feel necessary, while having more than two late is the same case. On the other hand? Not having a single flower results in much slower and more randomized results.

Ending thoughts

I had always hoped to eventually get a submission into SDA. This marks the end of a very long journey. The speed run has been very fun, with its own set of rewards, even before submission or acceptance. I'm always interested in seeing how much lower I can go with the game, pushing it to the limit, and to be honest, I think we're almost there. Outside of finding glitches to literally skip portions of the game, fixing the remaining mistakes and route adjustments may save another 2-3 minutes, which will hit sub 5 (YES), but there isn't much else after that. So overall, I'm really happy with the way this run turned out. It's been basically the result of several years of hard work, finally showing itself.

For those of you reading this and want to speed run a game, my suggestion to you is to start, love the game you are running and keep practicing. That's how this run got to where it is now.

Thanks to everyone who supported me during this time. My family, friends and especially my close friends to whom I often talked to in person about the various real life troubles I was going through. 4 years is a lot of time for bad stuff to happen.

Thanks of course to SDA for hosting and its various members for helping me understand the submission process as well as Nate for encoding.

Special thanks to TalaysenFBW, who in the initial stages of the run, was more or less my right hand man, and the person who I turned to and consulted for various strategies and ideas. A lot of it is still being used even now.

Additional thanks to NEB, Jo'ou Ranbu and SageAcrin for expressing continued interest in my progress as well as Grefter and Superaielman for being around to talk at various points when I felt like calling it quits.

And with that, I'm off. I'm not sure when or if ever I will come back to speed running Wild ARMs 4, but I hope that you, as the viewer, enjoyed it. And of course, if somebody would like to take up the torch while I am away, they are more than welcome to employ what I have here. I'll likely be moving on to Wild ARMs ACF next, as that has been the game that got me started and I've done runs for it before. Until next time!