Yu-Gi-OH staircase GBA all duelists background 2018

So if you guys have played this game casually you know that there are some secret duelists that are kinda tricky to unlock:
- Duke Devlin: gotta beat all duelists at least 1 time including Bandit Keith
- Bandit Keith: gotta have 5 more wins than losses in your stats for every duelist in the game (except Duke obviously).
This info is what I could gather from sites such as GameFAQs and seems pretty accurate, however I'm not able to confirm 100% that these are the specific requirements to make these duelists appear roaming through battle city.

So with that on the table Bandit Keith is obviously a big problem for the all duelists speedrun since it takes a massive amount of duels to unlock, however there is sort of a workaround for this. After a couple weeks from beating Marik's pyramid the KC cup will start and you can face Keith early (without meeting the duel stats requirement) during the second round of this tournament. Bad news is that from my tests beating Keith this way does not trigger Duke spawning in battle city. I tried both ending on the KC cup Keith duel and ending on some other duelist through a normal battle city encounter after beating Keith in the KC cup, no luck spawning Duke after any of these methods.

According to my tests it is not possible to face Duke early in a similar way you can face Keith; he doesn't participate in any round of any tournament including the KC cup, the challenge cup and the Saturday's championships (I tested this by reseting multiple times to change my opponent in each round). There is still a way to face Duke "early" (still kinda slow though) by playing him on the 5th limitation match (he isn't introduced, but you are actually playing against him in the 4 star or lower monster limitation match). Even though it is possible to skip the massive amount of battles required for Keith to spawn in battle city and still beat all duelists, it is kind of a turnoff having to go through half of the limitation matches just to duel Duke. Also having to do the first 4 limitations causes the same deck problematic we have in the all limitation tournaments speedrun, so the creativity of deck building that all duelists seems to have at first glance wouldn't really be that different from the all limitations approach.

In spite of someone finding different criteria to make Keith/Duke spawn or some other strat that makes Duke spawn after fighting Keith in the KC cup, this would be the current fastest route Idea:
- Password inputing + toon world (unlocks Pegasus) + deck adjusting
- Start encountering duelists in any order with the following criteria:
Trusdale: win
Ishizu: win
Mai: win
Bakura: win
Pegasus: win
Espa Roba: win/avoid
Mako Tsunami: win/avoid
Rex: win/avoid
Weevil: forfeit
Yugi: forfeit
Kaiba: forfeit
Tea: forfeit
Joey: forfeit
Mokuba: win (unlocked after forfeiting 5 times)

It is only neccessary to avoid 1 duelist from the ones that are labeled as "win/avoid/forfeit", the reason for this is that there will be an optimal opportunity to win against one of these duelists in the first round of the KC cup (which is mandatory to have the opportunity to face Keith in the second round), so optimal avoiding is done by keeping track of the duelists you have encountered and predicting which duelist will be the last one remaining as "unknown" for this first part of the run; if it happens to be one of these duelists you can face in the KC cup then you don't have to encounter him at all until the actual cup, saving an extra unnecessary forfeit. The duelists that we use to forfeit and unlock Mokuba are optimal since we will be forced to win against them anyways later on during either the Pyramid or the limitation matches.

- Once this first part of the run is done, proceed to grind the passerby until the first ghouls message
- Repeat until all 5 ghouls are beaten (Rare hunter, Arkana, Odion, Lumis & Umbra and Strings)
- Beat Marik's pyramid (Joey, Tea and Marik + 2 more useless repeats of ghouls)
- Beat the warrior limitation (Joey again so useless)
- Beat the spellcaster limitation (Yugi)
- Beat the dragon limitation (Kaiba)
- Beat the insect limitation (Weevil)
- Beat the level limitation (Duke)
- Encounter and beat Shadi
- KC cup first round (Espa Roba, Mako or Rex)
- KC cup second round (Keith)

Haven't really decided if I'll do runs since having to do the limitations was a huge turnoff for me, any new ideas or tests are welcome.