dq3-4

DQIII - Last night, I was on an offline run roughly 6 minutes ahead of PB at the midway point. I played calm and efficiently, and took some calculated safety strats to ensure success up until Baramos. As long as I made it past Baramos (a notoriously dumb boss), I'd be in there. And I was in there, Baramos went fine (good, actually.)

I soared through the Dark World, with almost no bad encounters (just 1, which was scary, but I survived).

Upon entering the final boss rush, I was about 2.5 minutes ahead of my goal, which is to cut 3 hours JRTA. I wasn't overly nervous, but I knew I was prepared - I specifically had been practicing Dark World segment a lot recently.

The run died within a few minutes. Turn 1 of Baramos Bomus (2nd boss of 4), I used a Sleep Staff instead of a Sage's Stone, so instead of healing the nasty AOE damage I took, I wasted a turn. It ate two World Leaves (revive item, and you only get two), and I barely scathed through with everyone alive (how, idk). I made it to Zoma, and if I got a god-like Zoma fight, I could perhaps pull it out and reach my goal. I played extremely risky and it was working. About 70% of the way, Zoma used a physical on my Sage (4th party member, least likely to get hit of all party members) and she died, and so did the run.

What happened was that I didn't sort my inventory before the Baramos Bomus, so instead of Sage's Stone being in the first available item slot in the Warrior's inventory, it was Sleep Staff. The standard of boss menuing is so high that you just don't have time to sit and check every item you use, you just have to rely on intuition and practice, and hope your menus were appropriate everywhere, and they honestly were for the entire run except that one exact moment 2h 45m in. Sure, you can blow some time checking your menus in every fight, but it's a good way to burn minutes over the course of a 3 hour speedrun, and that time just isn't there for the standard I'm up against.

Last night was a minor setback. Like I said in a pastebin awhile ago, I've been playing this game seriously offline for the most part. I actively practice and try to research things to do better. It takes all of my mind & body to focus on performing a run seriously, and it can be demoralizing when improbable things crush the early parts of your run (like failing to run 3x in battle multiple in a row, a 6.25% chance each time). I had it in my palms yesterday, and it slipped away. I guess I'm somewhat selfishly writing this pastebin to demonstrate my struggle. The game is extraordinarily challenging on a decision-making and performance level, and going for under 3 hours JRTA is easily the hardest goal I've ever set out to accomplish in a game. I never thought I'd say that a game could make Rockman & Forte look like a modest speedrun in comparison, but here we are.

Still - I'm going to burn my goal and get sub 3