Golden Sun 1 Any% FAQ

						Golden Sun 1 Any% FAQ
						      (No Intro)

	What is No Intro Any%?

Any% simply means beat the game as fast as possible with no restrictions. ie. You don't necessarily need to collect all Djinn or any specific items. "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. As such I've made the call that skipping the first 38 minutes is in the best interest of the viewers and my sanity.

2016 Update: I first made the call to skip the intro in 2013, since then many other people have taken up no intro as the de facto standard for this category (check speedrun.com to see this). It has also meant that more people are willing to get into the game and run it. So, while skipping a large chuck of the game may not be true to what goes on elsewhere, it is a decision that has contributed to a happier community and been a huge positive for the community as a whole.

	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 (skip) > Lamakan Temple > Lamakan Desert > Get Vine >
Kalay > The Boat > Tolbi (fountain) > Get Hail > Kalay Docks (Ground) > Altmiller Cave > Colosso >
Suhalla Gate (no Storm Lizard) > Suhalla Gate > Venus I (blue path) > Lalivero > Tunnel Ruins >
Venus II > GG

	What level are you at the end of the game?

Between 14-14-14-15 going into Saturos/Menardi, 17-16-16-17 for FD.

	What are the requirements of a No Intro file?

No exp gained, no non-compulsory items, file starts immediately after Issac/Garet have left Vale.

	Can I run No into Any%?

Yes, of course you can. Here is an optimal (in sense of minimal in game time on the save) save I generated via a TAS.

https://www.mediafire.com/?x0dca2gi9741saf

It is a battery file, you can load that into VBA via File > Load Game > Import Battery File. Be aware that emulators have an advantage in terms of more precise movement and a faster hard reset. For this reason we generally prefer records set on console, but will compare to emulator times for the sake of accessibility.

	Why don't you also skip the Flint cutscene?

No good reason. It just seemed like leaving Vale was a natural place to begin the run.

	What are the big difference between Any% and 100% [all Djinn]?

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 almost identical to 100% up until Altin.

	What are the major run killers?

My stupidity.

	Which Djinn will you be getting/skipping?

I will get 5 Venus Djinn, 6 Mars, 6 Jupiter and 5 Mercury. The skipped djinn will be:
Venus: Sap (Vault II is skipped), Bane (no Crossbone isle)
Mars: Torch (has no effect on the final fight thus useless)
Jupiter: Kite (Altin skip skips Lift, thus inaccessible)
Mercury: Spritz (Altin skip), Tonic (no Lunpa)

	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. The most recent advances in GS1 routing has been exploiting this fact to get more favourable fights.

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).

	What is menu gliding?

Menu gliding is basically super fast menuing by refreshing inputs. There are three ways this can happen.
	1) 5 or 6 frames after pressing A to confirm you want to battle or after confirming a characters action for the next turn, pressing
	   Right or Left will be have Right or Left registered as being pressed twice. [This is often the source of many menuing errors]
	2) In some menus, pressing Down has the same effect as pressing Right (and Up the same effect as pressing Left). Pressing Right then
	   Down allows you to menu much faster than pressing Right then Right.
	3) Holding Right (or Left, Down, Up) and pressing select or start issues a second Right (or Left, Down, Up) input. This allows you
	   to menu faster.

	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.

	Can you explain the Altin skip?

The game doesn't clear the memory properly after a soft reset. Large map files have sprite data which isn't overwritten. This effects what is going on OOB after you underflow your coordinates. By loading the Mercury file there's a really convenient Altin skip door nearby which saves time over the previous strat.

	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?

The game knows where to load you by two pieces of information; area and door. Area tells you which map to load, door tells you where you came from. Retreat warps allow you to access any door from the first Area of the dungeon. The first area of Mercury actually contains most of the interior from the last portion of the dungeon and in particular contains the doors in the "Rainbow Room" where you case Ply on the statue to be taken to the Aerie. Before you beat Saturos, casting Ply on the statue will trigger the 'Mercury is lit' cutscene in the overworld before sending you to Door 1 of Mercury Aerie (this also contains Isaac and co picking themselves up off the ground and refreshing Mia's PP). After you beat Saturos, casting Ply on the statue will send you to Door 3 of Mercury Aerie, which doesn't have the Mercury is lit cutscene. The retreat warp we do sends us to Door 3 instead of Door 1. Loading into Mercury from Door 1 also loads Jenna/Felix/Kraden/Menardi onto the left elevator to prepare for the cutscene that triggers when you walk up to the top. Door 3 doesn't include this piece of code since it is impossible to access Door 3 before Saturos during normal gameplay. However the cutscene trigger is entering a specific region at the top of the Aerie which doesn't depend on the door you came from. This means that the cutscene will still play even if you came from Door 3 and the actors on the left elevator aren't loaded. Saturos is loaded into the scene during the cutscene, this is why he loads normally. The way the game handles missing actors in a cutscene is pretty much what you see at the top of the lighthouse - portraits get messed up and displayed in random places. Playing around with the memory editor I've been able to trigger cutscenes without loading the actors properly and similar face glitches occur.

	Why are you doing X?

Probably because it's faster.