No Subjobs Galdera Speedrun Route v1.0 (see Google Drive Link)

Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lrxpsK4hQvPepDFIv-lFVe_5KeNFGsin?usp=drive_link
(Pastebin gives me issues if I try to have the full text here.)

No Subjobs Galdera Speedrun Route Notes

Last Updated: Apr. 28, 2022
Contact: AnimeGamer#1297 on Discord if you'd like to reach me
Status: Complete but very rough with many optimizations still possible.

Sample Video: https://youtu.be/34a73fZQJMY (7h37m33s)

This is a challenge speedrun I routed for fun, which aims to beat Galdera without any subjobs, not even unlocking the subjob menu. With this restriction, the route is obviously much slower than a regular Galdera run, but I liked the challenge casually and thought it could be an interesting thing to route. Since characters don't have as many options, I think the fights/menus are simpler relative to a normal run, and there's also some fun strategies and changes that I find refreshing. It took a while to route (I took multiple breaks from this because it was daunting to route it all), and I'm not fully satisfied, but it works for now and would take too long to fully optimize this when it's just a side challenge speedrun.

There is one important caveat though - Phase 2 is not a guaranteed fight and does not have a super high win-rate (I estimate that I get through about 80-90% of Phase 1 battles and 60-70% ish of Phase 2 battles). Despite all my testing, I couldn't find a good, consistent approach to it. Everything prior is fine for the most part, even Phase 1, but the issue with Phase 2 is that Maw can just randomly use triple AoE magic for a ton of damage, and then the Blade often does Sweep and/or Overpowering Slash to knock out the weakened members afterward (even if it doesn't, the main body/Lyblac also both attack often, and things can quickly spiral out of control when you start to lose characters). There are reliable methods to clear this phase, such as grinding to a much higher level or capturing a group of Animated Armors to have an assured but extremely drawn out fight, but they aren't particularly fast methods, nor methods I enjoyed relying on. You can see the strategy I decided on below, but even with it, I'd say some runs would wipe due to unfortunate luck and have to redo the whole gauntlet + Phase 1, which takes a VERY long time with our limited firepower.

Bad turn order (we want Olberic to damage Maw, but he may not get the BP in time depending on turn order or if he's focus-fired too heavily by enemies), RNG from enemy attacks, and even RNG from our own party's inconsistent summons/attacks like Arrowstorm hitting too much, etc all complicated the process of routing the fight and made Phase 2 too inconsistent to find a very reliable fight/script to. And even before that, Phase 1 isn't actually guaranteed either - it's about an 80-90% win rate, which means you can be screwed by RNG in that phase as well. Even RNG like Beast Lore capture usages make planning for some of these fights difficult too (ex: you can capture Devourer of Dreams for Galdera's Phase 1 Soul Summoning parts, but it has very limited uses and isn't good since the battle still takes a while, plus he resummons them).

But if you don't mind that or can look past that, I think the route itself was interesting, if only for it having some changes from other routes in this game, and it just makes for a fun challenge.

Route-wise, it starts with Cyrus and keeps him the whole game, as he is the only one with access to Evasive Maneuvers. After getting Cyrus, we get Tressa and use her for the majority of the early-mid game, but because we want money for armor and have limited character slots, we do switch her out eventually. We get and use Therion for Purple chests, Thief damage/Armor Corrosive, steals, and to level him up for his story steal. However, a good bulk of the damage of the route comes from Olberic, who is the only one able to access Surpassing Power to break the 9999 damage cap. (We can technically circumvent it with multihits, like Aelfrics Cyrus, but even that only hits 40k, whereas Olberic eventually reaches 50-60k+ and is easier to setup than Aelfrics, which requires Ophilia). Vets technically work too, but it obviously becomes VERY resource-intensive when you try to Vets your way through 10-20 bosses. Because of that, the central core of this route is actually Cyrus, Olberic, and Therion (with some swaps in and out, such as Tressa/H'aanit/etc especially since H'aanit needs some base levels for her two monster captures). I use Absolute Zero so that Cyrus can substitute as a "poor man's Sorcerer" for clearing encounters and then Abide with Armor Corrosive to hopefully 3T bosses with Brands eventually.

In terms of story chapters, we do Ophilia first to unlock the Friendship Badge, then Olberic for the Captains Badge and BT Blade, and then Cyrus for the Absolute Zero Staff. Cyrus' chapter bosses also give a bit more JP, and they help with unlocking Brands for later bosses. Absolute Zero is the only elemental boosting item Cyrus can use for his spells, so it's very important as he is basically our "poor man's Sorc" for the run to help defeat random encounters more quickly for EXP/JP. He actually still isn't strong enough to one shot many of them though, so we also use Olberic's Level Slash, sometimes in conjunction with Take Aim/etc, to better assure some random KOs. After Ophilia, Olberic, and Cyrus, we move onto other character chapters, aiming to use Brands (which works well with Abide and Armor Corrosive + Insult to Injury). Along the way, we do a few extra quests for nuts and other resources.

I haven't finalized the Pom/Stone/Jam routing, so it's routed very conservatively at the moment. This is because Phase 1 is a LOT safer with an abundance of stones, poms, and jams. Because of that, we try to conserve L Stones for the bulk of the run, and we even conserve money too, as we buy a decent chunk of gear for the phases. Even with our excess money, we want to fund Veterans/Dancers/Clerics/Bandits for Phase 1, and I have actually run out of money in that phase before too, in my testing. Strictly speaking, we don't NEED as many Vets/Poms/Stones as we enter the gauntlet + Galdera with, but the more of it we have, the more consistent it becomes, at the tradeoff of the route being much slower beforehand.

As far as story chapter fights, I'd say probably Werner is the possibly the worst, but many fights are just generally slower. We only have 1 Merchant, and everyone is limited to the passives from their starting class. Ergo, we can't just slap Hang Tough on everyone for survivability or skills like Surpassing Power to overcome the damage cap, etc. We don't have two Hired Help users for coverage, and there's other issues with our limited job skills. Even just breaking enemies at times can be difficult, as we have limited coverage. Soulstones provide an avenue for elemental breaks, but using too can be bad for Phase 1, as mentioned, and then some enemies require weapon hits.

Testing Phase 1 and 2 took about an hour ish per attempt, and I also restructured the chapters a few times - this took ages to redo my saves each time (originally tried Olberic early replacing Therion, but you lack AC without RNG-heavy guides). I also had to setup files that could separately fight phase 1 and 2, which was fairly time consuming as well. Tentatively, I think I won't come back, but improvement-wise, I think the chapters need to be structured better and more spare items cut. I think I could get away with using more Soulstones to defeat encounters/bosses faster, but it's hard to pin down the precise count needed for the phases in this challenge.

There's other approaches to the final fights too - when I did it casually, I used Olberic in phase 1, stacked him with both Aelfrics and Sealticge's, and then I used double AoE Cross Strikes to get through the phase, but when I routed this, I tested a lot more possibilities, even Dreadwolf (but it's too inconsistent because the # of summons can be just 1, which isn't enough, so I substituted the triple-sword-all bird for it, though I'd like to route that out too honestly).

As far as equipment and stats/items go, everything is actually semi precise. Searing Orb just barely leaves my Phase 1 party with leftover HP, then my Phase 2 party just barely lives the triple elements/Eternal Void, and then Olberic only survives Exterminate with max Bolster Defends or if low on BP the main body has Shackle Foe on/the Endure Glitch kicked in on Olberic. Even magic attack wise, Cyrus just barely hits 999 ish with the nuts available, and I get a lot of Nourish/Resistant/Tough/Fortifying/Magic/Crit/Sharp nuts otherwise to help the team out, aiming for about 610/630 elemental defense and 3k HP/4k HP for phase 1/2.

Anyway, despite all the issues with the route, I did still enjoy routing it (I burnt out for a bit but enjoyed it when I returned to it and have worked on this on and off for quite a few months, nearing a year), and I hope it's an interesting read/speedrun for anyone who likes to check out this stuff.

Notes:
- Prepare Buffer glitch beforehand if you need setup/practice.
- This assumes no Cait, but if you want to grind for a Cait or just get one by chance in the beginning, you can skip the beginning grind for Evasive Maneuvers and adapt your EXP/JP/Battles/Exploration as needed.
- If you ever skip or miss an encounter, you can opt to force it or take another later to make it up. Likewise if you have extra encounters, you can opt for safer stats to skip them.
- If you get JP early, you may learn and equip skills/passives early. Just adjust EXP/JP/etc as needed.

Notation:
DBP = Donate BP, AC = Armor Corrosive, FS/BZ/LB = the two hit scholar spells, and other acronyms are often skills
TP = Teleport
C = Chapter
x2,x3,x4 = boost with 1 BP, 2 BP, or the max 3 BP respectively. x1 is not used but would be 0 BP and a normal move.
S+Q = Save and Quit and reenter the game to reset/reload the encounter rate
Reload/Reset = usually exit and reenter a screen to reset the encounter rate
Buffer Glitch = use the Buffer Glitch to gain access to an item or area - see https://youtu.be/0XlAM3mTu0Q [available and usable on NS/PC/XB]

Settings/Technical Things (recommended, but you can play how you want):
- Japanese Audio
- Message Speed Quick
- Revert to Original (Battle Cursor Position)
- Preload Before a Run (Start a new game with any character and exit to the menu, since the first load is slowest)
- Note that loading games directly from console is usually faster than loading from an SD/memory card
- Always Hold B to Skip Cutscenes, unless the textbox/scene is so short that it's faster to mash (Ex: usually 1-2 textbox scenes)

General notes on the route below (general guideline but not super strict):
- If possible, conserve your L Stones for Galdera and your Light M as well
- You can toss other M stones more freely to do damage. If you want to toss L stones, Shadow L is least useful for us followed by Thunder L being the second least useful.
- If possible, skip encounters, but there are some thresholds we want to hit, such as early L15 Ophi for a quest or Brands shortly after Lucia or Patience just after Redeye, etc.
- Later, we transition to Brands in place of HH Vets damage, but the JP for it is mostly from bosses, so encounters don't matter too much as long as you're not skipping them outright. You shouldn't need to grind any extra encounters in any area at least.
- Gate of Finis Gauntlet gives us all the stats we need alongside our gear and nuts.
- Steal and preserve Curious Bloom, Sleepweed, Addlewort, and Pom S/M/L/Rev Jams

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Other Notes:
- I tested Phase 1 without elemental weapons, and it's doable, but it's less safe, as you do much less damage and usually require an extra turn(s) to KO the adds, which can be critical if you miss the KO and they return from break.
- I also tested other captures including other dagger monsters, sword monsters, boss monsters (did tests with Dreadwolf and looked into Behemoth/Manymaws/Devourer of Dreams/Gigantes for their abilities), as well as some other random monsters such as Mental Boost users, Giant Gator, etc. I likely would re-route the dagger monster to something that cannot miss Galdera (apparently, the frog that is captured can miss its hits), and if possible, I'd like to skip the Sword bird as well.
- I also did originally test without some of the weapons, such as without BT Bow, but its occasional Defense Down can help, and its damage is semi useful too, especially since we have enough money at that point in the run.
- Werner likely needs a better/smarter script, and the chapter/side story order likely needs to be adjusted to be more optimal.
- (I currently do Ophi 4 for Friendship Badge, Olberic 4 for Captain's Badge + BT Blade, and then Cyrus 4 as his bosses give the most JP for unlocking Brands and Lucia is harder to use Brands on, plus it unlocks Absolute Zero Staff for Cyrus. Then its Tressa for Grandport's nuts and Crit armor, followed by the others. Therion 4 is done toward the end for extra levels, but I still challenge and get Thieving Tips and Tricks to make his steals 80-100% ish.)
- Need to restructure amount of Poms/Stones we get and use. Maybe swap some around, like maybe getting Pom S outside of Noblecourt and such.