Yu-Gi-Oh! Stairway to the Destined Duel FAQ (2022)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel FAQ (February 2022)

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat all 23 duelists in the game once. This is done from a New Game+ file with everyone already unlocked, card limitations removed, and a deck already prepared.

Q: What are you playing on?
A: mGBA, an emulator for GBA games.

Q: What is the world record?
A: 33:33 by me. Full leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/yugiohstairway#All_Duelists

Q: Does this game follow the rules of the trading card game?
A: Yes, it follows them exactly.

Q: How many cards are in the game?
A: About 1000. It has all the cards through the Labyrinth of Nightmare booster pack (released in 2003 in the US), plus a few extras.

Q: What is your deck strategy?
A: Cyber-Stein FTK (first-turn kill). You play Cyber-Stein, use its effect to special summon Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon (4500 ATK) from your Fusion Deck, equip BEUD with Megamorph (or sometimes United We Stand/Mage Power), and win in one turn. If you don't draw Cyber-Stein, you use Hayabusa Knight (1000 ATK, can attack twice per turn) with equips as a backup. This strategy is very effective with card limitations removed, because you're running 3 copies of OP cards that help you clear your opponent's field and draw more cards quickly.

Q: How does the overworld work, and how can you quickly find all 23 duelists?
A: The duelists are scattered randomly throughout 14 areas in Battle City, but you can only see 4-5 areas at a time, and each area contains 0-3 duelists. To travel to other areas, you must duel someone or talk to a passenger, which wastes time. Optimally you want to do 23 duels without talking to a passenger. My first runs didn't do this, but I've since found a path that does.

When you travel to other areas, those areas always contain the same duelists and passengers (it's not RNG). So you can plan a route for dueling everyone by creating a save state on emulator, then testing what happens with different orders. You can't do this on console because the game auto-saves after every overworld action. (You could, however, export a console save file to emulator, route it on emulator, then run it on console.)