Baten Kaitos Any% FAQ

Baten Kaitos Any% FAQ

== Newcomers ==
- What is this game?
It's a “Card Based J-RPG”. The battle system is based on a deck, so the draws are random. But the content of the deck is decided by the player, who chooses which cards are inside. The most important point of the run is to create the best deck.

- How do your decks work?
Each character has his own deck. What determines the properties of the deck is the class of the character, that goes from 1 to 6. Depending on the class, we can have a certain amount of cards in the hand, in the deck, and usable each turn. From classes 1 to 5, we have from 3 to 7 cards in the hand, from 25 to 50 cards in the deck, and use from 2 to 6 cards per turn. In class 6 we still have 7 cards in hand but we have 60 cards in the deck and we can use 9 cards per turn.

- What are the number around the cards?
Those are the spirit figures. They go from 1 to 8, and some rare cards (mostly endgame) can have a 9. A card can have from 1 to 4 figures, 1 generally being for the weakest cards and 4 being for the strongest cards of the game. In fights, if we attack with 3 cards with the same figure, or 2 cards with the same figure + 3 cards with another same figure (for examples), we will inflict more damages. But the bigger damages are done with straights. And combos containing a 9 are 50% stronger.

- How efficient are the straights?
All the following examples are without 9, but straights of 3 figures are +28% powerful while 3 times the same figure are +21%. Straights of 4 figures are +45% while 4 times the same figure are +33%. And the gap increases quickly: Straights of 5 and 6 cards are +64 and +86% respectively while 6 times the same figure are +57% "only". There are also the "Sunrise Straight" (from 1 to 9) that deals +306%, and the "Sunset straight" (from 9 to 1) that deals +255%. As you can guess, it is extremely important to build a deck that allows to get straights the most often.

- How do you pick a spirit figure in particular?
The C-stick. Or A if there is only 1 spirit figure.

- Why are the spirit figures rotating at the endgame?
This is the Confusion status. This is caused by equipment that give me immunity to other status and good stat boosts.

- Are there any skips or glitches?
Only a few small ones.

- I thought this game was 2 weeks long and that there was something about a Shampoo?
You're referring to the 100% category. You can check its FAQ here: https://pastebin.com/BRvPJ430



== People knowing the game ==
- How can you speedrun this game?
The run itself is not hard, the routing was the real challenge. I had to consider the evolution of the magnus in order to keep my good items, I had to grab enough things to have correct decks. But it's actually kinda easy, trust me.

- What are the run killers?
I would say there are 3, but there are also heavy trolls that can make me lose a ton of time for nothing. The run killers are the Nunkirantula at the very beginning if I have a very bad RNG (happens 25% of the time), Chaotic Trio 1 if I have a very bad RNG (happens 10% of the time) and the Mad Emperor if he instant kills a character and I have a very bad RNG (happens 20% of the time). For the troll fights, there are the Tree Guardian if it heals twice and I have a bad RNG to counter the second heal, and Gnosis if I mess up or get bad RNG.

- What are the region differences?
I made another Pastebin for that: https://pastebin.com/vpbBJ0ku
TLDR: US > JP > PAL

- How exactly do you build your decks?
I will always be low on items. I have to keep my weak weapons until late because even if I get more and more items, sizes of the decks increase as well. It is also very important to have an equal number of each figures, except 9. More especially for classes 4 and 5. In class 6, we focus on Sunrise Straights so we need a ton of 1 but not that many 8. And of course, every 9 we can use. It really depends on what we get in the run. Luckily, towards the end of the game, we have a lot of cards with 4 figures, which makes the accomplishment of Sunrise Straights easier than it seems.

- Why do you have nearly only weapons and almost no armors and heals?
Because that's the most efficient way. The more non-offensive cards you have, the more likely you are to have your hands obstructed and not being able to attack. And if you can't attack every turn, you lose time. And because we focus on straights when we attack, we deal more damages and the fights are faster, which eliminates the need to defend or heal. It's as simple as that. The idea is to blitzkrieg everything. That's why I always say the run is fundamentally easy.

- How do you deal with the high amount of RNG?
By having as many offensive cards as possible, and an equally split amount of each spirit figures.

- What is the World Record?
You can check the Leaderboards here: https://www.speedrun.com/Baten_Kaitos_Eternal_Wings_and_the_Lost_Ocean#New_Game


~ Baffan
https://twitter.com/baffan
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