Golden Sun 1: 100% FAQ

                                    		Golden Sun 1 100% FAQ
                                                   (Intro/No Intro)

        What is 100%?

For an RPG like Golden Sun there are many sensible definitions of '100%' due to optional psynergy, optional bosses, optional equipment, optional side quests and optional Djinn. The Golden Sun community has essentially agreed that the most interesting definition for this game is obtaining every djinn (there are 28 of them). In particular, we do not include defeating Deadbeard as he's just a guy who doesn't give you anything special.

	What is Intro/No Intro

"No Intro" means the game starts immediately after you leave Vale. I am running this category because the first 38ish minutes of the game are extremely tedious in Golden Sun. At least half of that time is spent mashing through text, possibly more. The "puzzle" is straight forward, and Sol Sanctum is largely skipped and it is nearly impossible to get an encounter using the skip i.e. there's very little randomness/skill involved for this bit of the game. No intro for 100% is generally only run for practice and official records demand that the intro is included.

	Are you running on Emulator or ...???

I'm running on Wii U Virtual Console. The only difference between the versions is the time it takes to hard reset. Right now I've been too lazy to time it, but when I get more serious about attempts I'll have a precise conversion from Wii U to Emulator so I can compare against an accurate WR time.

        What is the basic route of the game?

Vault > Bilibin > Imil > Mercury Lighthouse > Kolima > Tret Tree > Fushin Temple (for Zephyr) >
Mogall Forest > Xian > Get Corona > Altin (skipping hydros) > Lamakan Temple > Lamakan Desert > Get Vine >
Kalay > The Boat > Tolbi (fountain) > Get Hail > Kalay Docks (Ground) > Altmiller Cave > Colosso >
Vault Cave (Sap) > Toadonpa > Vale Cave (Kite) > Lunpa 2 (Tonic) > Storm Lizard > Suhalla Gate >
Crossbone Isle (Bane) > Venus I (blue path) > Lalivero > Tunnel Ruins > Venus II > GG

Here is a convenient spreadsheet detailing every fight I will take and the experience they give me!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IL1nYfjHz2A0pMrCdXkYf_f7yfKfLpBrg2Cq-r5xn-U/edit?usp=sharing

        What level are you at the end of the game?

See spreadsheet!

        What are the big difference between Any% and 100%?

Aside from having to do less stuff (no Vault II - Vale II - Lunpa, Storm Lizard+Crossbone Isle) the main difference is in money/item management, levels & Djinn (consequently, battle strategies) and a major skip which skips almost all of the Altin dungeon. The run is identical to 100% up until Altin.

        What are the major run killers?

Saturos (we do our best to make the fight as safe as possible though)
Lamakan Desert (the RN manipulation here is hard, messing it up can be death)
Fusion Dragon (current strats fail about 30% of the time!)

        What is RNG (random number generator) manipulation?

Doing particular actions in the game will always have a predictable effect on the games internal RNG. There are two RNG seeds in GS1 (battle RN [BRN] and general RN [GRN]). In GS1 doing a hard reset clears both RNG seeds, and this means that more or less everything in the game can be manipulated.

        What effects the RNG seeds and what do they do?

A Hard Reset will reset both the BRN and the GRN to default values. A Soft Reset will reset the GRN but retain the BRN (this is used once in the Any% run, and there may be places where this offers an improvement in 100%).

BRN - In battle moves, how many people are hit by psynergy, number of enemies alive at the end of each turn. Tells you what attacks enemies will use, whether unleashes will activate, whether drops happen and whether you get attacks first/caught by surprise. A hard reset will always give "attacks first". More information is readily available on popular GS wikis and gamefaqs and has been manipulated for over 10 years.

GRN - Anytime a random element happens a new GRN seed is generated (e.g. town person movement, changing areas, psynergy particle effects, psynergy in battle, level up stats.... basically everything). If you see me using psynergy in the overworld or 'attack cancelling' (entering an attack and then cancelling it in battle) then that is normally me manipulating the GRN. GRN Determines how random events behave -- the important ones being what mobs are encountered, when they are encountered, whether or not a run will be successful, what I get from Tolbi fountain and where attacks will hit. This has only been properly understood in a speedrunning context since 2013 and is essential in modern GS runs.

        What is the Retreat Glitch?

If you have Retreat set to a hotkey (R or L buttons) and attempt to use it while Isaac is out of PP then the game gets awfully confused. It won't warp you to the entrance of the dungeon, but the game will think Isaac is in the first room of the dungeon. This can have some strange effects, they are listed below:

Enter a Door: Doors are numbered in each room. Entering a door while in retreat mode will look up the door as if it were the same number but in the first room. Thus it will send you to where that door would have sent you. If the door doesn't exist in the first room, the game will send you to Vale (the global 0 door). (e.g. warping to the top of Mercury lighthouse after the Mia cutscene)

Save/Reset: The game will save your coordinates and when you reload it will reload you at the same coordinates in the first room of the dungeon. This can possibly get you out of bounds where there are garbage data doors which can be entered (e.g. Tret tree). These can send you all over the place. It can also reload you into a more convenient place in the first room (sometimes, off screen) which allows you to skip parts of the dungeon (e.g. Goma cave (on screen), Mercury Lighthouse (off screen)).

In Lamakan desert, leaving the reveal radius while in retreat mode will cause the objects to load back into the dungeon incorrectly. In particular this can get you out of bounds in this area and a particular quick sand pit which gets misplaced to overlap a cliff can send you to (0,0) after the battle. Lamakan desert is the only dungeon to have this behavior.

The glitch also works in Golden Sun 2, and has an additional effect of looking up chests data from the first room of the dungeon while in retreat mode (allowing the Early Iris glitch).

        Okay, how did you fight the Manticore??

First I used the retreat glitch to get out of bounds. Secondly, I talked to the Manticore. Turns out the Manticore is an object located at coordinate (0,0) on each of the Lamakan desert maps. So I simply walk there, and talk to him. ezpz. After the Manticore is killed the game is scripted to send you to a specific location outside where the Manticore is usually fought, thus skipping the majority of Lamakan desert. Using the retreat glitch around where the Manticore is normally located you can actually observe the Manticore jump down from (0,0) to the cave entrance.

        What is the infinite climb glitch?

This is a new glitch that Vallkyr discovered in the middle of 2014. When you approach a ladder and hold up to climb it, there are 12 frames you must wait before Isaac jumps up and climbs the ladder. The climbing animation starts on the 13th frame after holding up, however the game still allows you to input commands on this frame. But since the climbing animation is playing the game ques up this command to execute after the animation. This allows you to do a few uninteresting things. The interesting thing about this is that you can open the menu while on the ladder. Saving the game and reloading the game while on a ladder will reload Isaac into the same position but with his Z coordindate (height) increased by about 0.6. This allows you to interact with objects on a higher Z-Plane than you (or continue climbing infinitely, hence the name of the glitch).

There are two applications of the glitch in the current route, both in Altin. The first saves 11.5 seconds if you get it first try (draws even after roughly 7 tries) and this happens in the room where you encounter the very first Living Statue. The glitch allows you to skip the last one of his three moving cutscenes by talking to him from the low ground. The cutscene takes about 23s, after factoring in the extra distance Isaac has to walk. The second application allows you to talk to Spritz without doing the cart ride sequence which saves time from the ride, a move, a frost and RNG weirdness from using move. The queuing of the action works with other animations but they all produce uninteresting results. This was mostly patched in GS2; but you can do it when Felix is pushed by an object (e.g. a flame spitting statue) but this produces uninteresting results. More information about this can be found here: http://pastebin.com/BMSfKkwG

        What is a Sanctum Warp?

After a reset, holding L+Start while loading a file will initiate a data recovery which will load Isaac into the Sanctum of the most recently visited town. This is used to save time all over the place.

        Why are you spamming reveal in Venus I?

Turns out that in Venus I the encounter counter doesn't change when you have cast reveal i.e. you won't get encounters while you are in reveal mode. This glitch is unique to Venus I.

        Why are you mass resetting in Venus II?

The sand in Venus II makes manipulating the RNG next to impossible in an RTA setting. That means I either need to fight the monsters or abuse the BRN reset to give me attacks first (to ensure the run). Turns out that killing the monsters takes longer than the reset, hence the mass resets.

        Why is Jenna's face everywhere at the top of Mercury Lighthouse?

I don't know exactly, but I do know it's not an emulator glitch. Here's my theory. Normally after casting ply on the statue warping you to the top there is an overworld cutscene which shows the lighting of Mercury Lighthouse. The game then loads the party on the top of the lighthouse as if they have been knocked on the ground, and then the party gets up and groups up into Isaac. The retreat warp to the top of the lighthouse skips this cutscene and instead loads you into the aerie using a door that presumably existed before the Ply statue entrance existed (the door doesn't exist in normal play through as far as I know). In doing so some cutscene events are missed out -- for instance Mia's PP is not refreshed upon arriving at the top of the lighthouse like it normally would. I presume that another action of the cutscene is to load Jenna/Mendardi and co into the aerie and that by using the retreat warp they don't load. This causes the game to get confused and display Jenna's face everywhere. Incidentally, you can find a retreat warp which loads the Mercury cutscene and warps you to aerie, and in this version there is no Jenna face glitch. Playing around with the memory editor I've been able to trigger cutscenes without loading the actors properly and similar face glitches occur, somewhat confirming this theory.

	What are the major differences between Wersters 3:57 100% run and the route you're using?

Good question. Aside from generally better strategies and less hard resets...
- Better Saturos Strats
- Extra retreat warp in Tret
- New retreat warp in Mogall Forest
- Infinite climb glitch in Altin 3
- New retreat glitch to skip Hydros Statue
- Killing everything from Hail to Flash with the Assassin blade
- New retreat warp in Vale Cave

	How much time can you save over the WR?

The new route can probably save up to 3 minutes (possibly more) over Wersters run. Of course, that's assuming execution that is on par with Werster.

        Why are you doing X?

Probably because it's faster.

	I love Golden Sun! Who are cool people that I should know!

The following people have made contributions to the 100% route as it is today. You can find a brief history for Golden Sun 1 that I wrote for ESA here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v8orqyxx0q4y9m1/gshistory.pdf?dl=0

Plexa 		- http://twitch.tv/tl_Plexa 	(runs GS1 Any%, 100%, GS2 Any%, GS:DD)
Werster 	- http://twitch.tv/wertser 	(runs GS1 100%)

Most of the route has been devised by these two runners, with small additions from the following people.

BaalNocturno 	- http://twitch.tv/bloodduster	(runs GS1 100%, 100%+Deadbeard)
Astrious 	- http://twitch.tv/Astrious	(runs GS1 100%, Mialess%)
Arkhanno	- http://twitch.tv/Arkhanno 	(runs GS1 Any% no Save and Quit)
Pavocado
Vallkyr
Kyhron
Vanishmantle
Manocheese
KirkQ
Teawater/fox

And some other GS runners that are worth noting!

MrTeedus	- http://twitch.tv/Mrteedus	(runs GS1 Any% no Save and Quit)
Fretzi_sr	- http://twitch.tv/Fretzi_sr	(runs GS2 Any%)
Zetonegi	- http://twitch.tv/zetonegi	(runs GS2 Any%)
Cozy 		- http://hitbox.tv/cozy 	(contributed to the GS1 any% route, has done runs in the past)