uko's sub-4 crusade

uko's sub 4 crusade - (updated 3/16/16 -- PB: 3:57:05)

-------------Below is from BEFORE my sub 4.-------------

With being crushed out of the EarthBound Super Series pretty much because of RNG, the question became what will my next move be? Well obviously being the person I am I want my revenge. I'm coming after sub 4.
After seeing myself practice and practice and nail a top-5 time in Boogey% (unfortunately not in a race tho) I figured hey, the potential for having that happen all over a glitchless run is there as well, so why not grind for it?

Some info:
A: My PB progression since October 19th (When I failed out of EBSS, after which I took a break to pursue EBHH and PJKK and then came back) is as follows:
	- Started at my pretty awesome 4:26 run, which saved 7 minutes off of my prior 4:33 (which saved 30 seconds off of my prior 4:34).
	- Got my nonmanip 4:23 with a boogey tent death recovery on Day 012.
	- Got my first manip PB of 4:12 on Day 020, which was a much worse run than my PB but still saved 11 minutes.
	- Got my finest EarthBound run EVER from start to finish, of 4:02:28. (Day 023) My current pinnacle broadcasting my true abilities as an EarthBound glitchless speedrunner.
	- JK, now I have a 4:01:38 that's even FINER. >:) (Day 029)
B. Onett manip took 3 days to learn, and about a week from there to memorize. My current PB was my second finished manip run ever, my second best Onett time ever (18:55), and my first Onett manip with no notes at all.
C. I've been working pretty hard to maximize my abilities at this speedrun. I'm really close to the point where my execution is very top-notch, and my only time losses result from RNG. My current PB showcases my level of play astoundingly, which is what I've wanted from this game ever since I saved time off of my 4:47. My ability to recover from bad situations is much stronger than ever before, and my level of concentration is maximized once I really put my mind to it and make sure not to be complacent at all. I'm officially on the sub 4 grind. Wow, what a feeling!

My plan of action is as follows:

---STEP 1: Sub 4:20---

After Day 1 of the sub 4 grind in which my main goal was to just finish a run to see where I lie as far as skill, the potential for 4:20 or even sub 4:20 was already met. I made it to magicant 4 minutes ahead of my 4:26, and almost saved another minute from there, and had time to save at endgame. My Day 13 run was even better, and WOULD have been a 4:18 if not for the Boogey Tent fiasco.
I'll go for nonmanip 4:20 on sunday races, but after seeing these results, this step was skipped. >:)

---STEP 2: Sub 4:10---

I surpassed both sub 4:10 and sub 4:05 with one amazing run. I am now the 10th fastest EarthBound glitchless speedrunner.

---STEP 3: Sub 4:05---

4:02:28 is the exact pre-sub 4 time skateman had. I forsee amazing things.

4:01:38 bops ClassicJames by 6 seconds. All's left is RBM (then skateman c:<).

---STEP 4: The Road to Sub 4---

"From here it'll only take 3 days to get sub 4. Right, skateman?"
Oops. It didn't. I can't be THAT godlike, teehee. But no sweat, now I have a new potential goal to meet: June 26 was the date of my first completed run... can we beat 6 months?

---Optional STEP 5?: Sub skateman222 (3:57:08)---

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT. Depending on how good my sub 4 run feels, I'll enthusiastically continue the crusade to bop this muhfucka in two mother games. Oh shit waddup.
The 8th place spot would be great. The 7th place spot would be better. >:) ilu skate

=========================================================================

On Day 50 of my crusade, I finally hit sub 4. This was more than two months after my 4:01 PB, and around 8 months after the start of my EarthBound speedrunning career.

Not only did I sub 4, but I subbed 3:57:08, by THREE SECONDS!!! All in one glorious run.

My new PB is 3:57:05, and get this. It sucks.

My mole cave time was 1:29, which was definitely one of my better paces, but it was littered with all kinds of discrepancies from Jeff Joins to Desert. Including homesickness. Yeah. Also had a lame Boogey Tent and Threed, as usual. Next, I played all the way through Summers as well as I could, aside from almost losing the run to Mani Mani statue... and then I lost 1:30 to a sign/car fight. Yeah, I'm that stupid. Once Poo joined, I had to teleport out to Saturn Valley and revive everybody.
My Starman Deluxe time was 2:53 though, so even with the 2.5 minutes of dumb time loss (plus an additional 1:40 from a south scaraba death) I was still on PB pace, and from there I had a pretty amazing Lumine Hall and sanctuaries. I saved another 3 or 4 minutes in that whole section of the run, and finished strong!!!

So despite my many many discrepancies, I had a pretty fantastic run. Fortunately and unfortunately, the fact of the matter is I still have to pursue this run, just because of how much time save I know I have. My new goal is to hit that top 5 spot sometime in the year 2017, and with my cart on the way this is gonna be pretty fucking exciting. So, I'll catch you all on the flipside.

=========================================================================

PROGRESS LOG:

Day 001:
	- (almost) finished one run, met potential 4:20 time

Day 002:
	- Trained in manip! One full timed run through Frank, plus a couple save-state runs through Giant Step!

Day 003:
	- Finished learning manip! One full timed run through Ant, plus a couple save-state runs through Cops!
	- I've been doing a lot of offline practices whenever I get 5 or 10 minutes to myself, just to go through the Ant section, then the Cops section, using my respective restore points. I've gotten each individual section of manip extremely solid now, I just need to be able to nail all of it in one full run! (AND have a good rest of the game as well, heheh.)

Day 004:
	- FINALLY pulled off a full Onett Manip! Kept going with the run as well... until Mole Cave. Ugh.

Day 005:
	- Second full manip, with backup cops... after 5 hours... with a minute lost every split. GG EarthBound.

Days 006 - 008:
	- Tons of manip grinding, and failure. Unfortunately not enough time lately to start runs.

Days 009 - 011:
	- Nonmanip runs!!! Because that's all I had time for. Got better and better each run. Good practice for everything.

Day 012:
	- 4:23:30 Nonmanip. With a Boogey Tent death. Like, a 6 minute Boogey Tent death. Yeah, pretty huge.

Day 013:
	- Got a manip run going, finally, and sustained a 4:03 pace for the entire first half of the game. Major error made when I jumped down the wrong hole at dungeon man, lost focus for the rest of the run, pace dropped to around 4:12. Rip to phase 2 of Giygas. NEXT TIME.

Day 014:
	- 4.5 hours of manip attempts got me one run, super late at night. Lost a lot of time throughout, then ripped to Fire Spring due to a decision I won't make again.

Day 015:
	- Race flib flubbed, like, immediately, so salty runbacks happened. Got through manip on attempt number 3, made it, once again, to Fire Spring. Better run than previous, but the rng was ridiculous and the game wanted me dead. Got another manip attempt out after 3 tries, but was interrupted and had to leave before iron pencil.

Day 016:
	- Finally returned from week-long vacation, surprisingly was able to nab manip pretty early! Unfortunately, run ripped at mole cave due to pincer shenanigans that I didn't know how to handle properly. Learned for next time.

Day 017:
	- Discussed with skateman a few new strats for me...
	- 1. Abandoning the Twoson Death Warp for the walk back.
		- This is tricky for a few reasons; I need to make SURE not to die AT ALL up until I reach Twoson (This also means Z E R O fights up until I can nab a butterfly and lifeup). If I die, I respawn at Ness's House. This is more execution-based than the death warp is, so all I have to do is pay attention (as shown in Day 018), and usually things will line up in my favor.
		- I chose to do this because I like doing it, not because I hate the death warp or anything. Just my preference for the time being, until it starts to fuck me over too much.
	- 2. Great Charm Strats!!!
		- The skateman version. Once I reach Saturn Valley, I withdraw $800 to buy a Great Charm for Paula and Jeff each. This makes everything from Belch up to Kraken a lot safer because of the speed boost and paralysis guard.
	- 3. Buying fewer bombs at the dept. store.
		- GASP???? UKO BUYING LESS THAN 18 BOMBS??? IS THIS A DREAM?
		- I tried recently to write an item management "route" for the run, and it became too specific to be reliable, and also it took way too long to read as well as do things I don't normally do, so I thought of an easier way to deal with that: Buying fewer bombs at the dept store.
		- Previously, I bought as follows:
			- 6 bombs Ness
			- 8 bombs Paula, 1 BBR
			- 4 bombs Jeff, 8 BBRs
		- This was so I was carrying the maximum amount of bombs I could ever need for the upcoming section AND the rest of the run... but it costs me time later due to my inventory being extremely confusing, and different across every run. I also only had one emergency BBR... sometimes desperate situations call for more than that. The new plan is as follows:
			- 6 bombs Ness
			- 5 bombs Paula, 2 BBRs
			- 3 bombs Jeff, 8 BBRs
		- This takes into account the absolute lowest amount of bombs I could need for the main parts of the run.
			- 2 for dept store
			- 1 for dept store spook (can use extra bbr, NOT a bomb)
			- 1 for mani mani statue (can use extra bbr, NOT a bomb)
			- 4 for clumsy robot (Should have 5 at this point if everything is optimal, in case of my recurring horrible super bomb luck against clumsy)
			- 3 for Shrooom! (2 if a 5th one is used on clumsy | 2 bbrs, 3 if no extras are used by this point)
			- 3 for Kraken
		- So if everything goes right for that part of the run, I'll either have zero or one bombs left over, instead of 5 or 6. My inventory won't be nearly as clogged, and I'll know how many BBR's I need to drop at Deep Darkness!
		- With these bomb strats I obviously will need more super bombs for magicant and giygas, so assuming nothing goes awry I should have enough money for 12 MBR's as well as as many super bombs as I need. I'll buy 3 for ness and as many as I can afford for paula. I'll be set for the rest of the run, and my inventory will be much more organized for all the little key items I need.
		- I just need to get a run that good. Pls and thank you.
	- I also tried manip for 3 hours that night and couldn't get out.

Day 018:
	- I tried manip twice and got out, ezpz. Weird how it works that way.
	- I died doing my walk back strat so I had to walk out of Onett again and lost two minutes. Everything else was fine though until Moonside when I effed up without realizing it: I ruined my bomb strats by throwing a second one at mani mani without giving it a second thought. I was SUPPOSED to remember that Jeff was immune to paralysis and throw a BBR instead. But nooooo. I have to be DUMB.
	- As a result, EarthBound decided to punish me by having the four bombs I had left over not kill clumsy. I also forgot that I probably could have healed in time to paralyze him but I always forget that... so lesson learned. I lost 6 minutes that way, evening me back out with that boogey tent death... except the rest of the run was fucked up because of money trouble. I guess these strats are go big or go home.
	- Would have been a measly 4 minute PB if I didn't rip to giygas. Oh well.

Day 019:
	- Got out of Onett after less than an hour, awesome! Then proceeded to have the best pace I've ever had in this speedrun. Not that it was as great as I wanted, because after Boogey Tent I was only 16:50 ahead as opposed to the 19-20 minutes ahead that I want, but I did a pretty excellent job maintaining my pace throughout the run. During sanctuaries things got a little shaky, but I made it to magicant okay. And that's all that happened, because I STILL DIDN'T FINISH. UGGHHHHH.
	- At least it wasn't a giygas rip this time. We're getting closer.

Day 020:
	- THA PB!!! 4:23:30 --> 4:12:32. Only 11 minutes of timesave where 18 were due, but that's how it goes. However, because of this, my next goal is 4:05.
	- A lot of free timesave throughout the run as a result of this. 3 minutes or more of time to save at sanctuaries, more from pyramid and dungeon man, plus another minute from losing money. Other stuff as well that didn't go so smoothly. Gonna run this back asap.

Day 021:
	- A bunch of manip rips. 1 was me making it through after a lot of starman trouble, then immediately dying in prv from a pincer (no twoson save, so reset. won't be doing that strat anymore). 2 was a mistake before cops, I messed up rng 3 at a bush on the way down. 3 was an input mistake during the strong fight. After that I knew this night wasn't the night, so I did some TAS work.

Day 022:
	- More manip rips. Didn't have time for more than an hour of attempts, plus I had taken a long break from doing runs and I came back on little sleep. Next time should be better.

Day 023:
	- Uh, let me be the first to admit I did NOT expect this. This literally came out of nowhere, I expected this night to fall to manip rips as well but all of a sudden I shaved 10 minutes off of my run. And bopped 8 people. And put myself in 10th place.
	- After two hours of manip fails, I finally pull myself together and get one out of Onett. 18:55 is my second-best Onett time, so it was super hype to save those 9 seconds over my backup cops time. After that, a really great PRV/HH happened, and then a pretty nice winters as well. With limited Threed shenanigans this put me at 2 minutes ahead. Sweet! Grapefruit was a butt and after reaching mole cave I was brought down to one minute ahead, so I figured this run would be just as meh as my last one, but suddenly my mole cave was gold. And then... timesave. after timesave. 6 minutes ahead after stage 5... 8 minutes ahead after stage 6... and that AMAZING giygas split. ohhh my god. And get this... 4:02:28 is the EXACT SAME TIME that skateman had before his sub 4. So... see you at day 026?
	- A few "free" things to eliminate here: the homesickness which wasted a couple minutes, the Jeff death at Spook which wasted around 1.5 minutes (due to buying bombs and reviving at hospital), and UGH. THE PRE-WATERFALL SPLIT. I hate grapefruit falls so much. I just need better luck there, but I can also save 40ish seconds by not buying great charms either! So... one might say sub 4 is pretty free. In fact without great charm strats and the homesickness I could have had it already... BUT let's not get hung up on fantasies. I need to step up my game and go pro if I wanna be in one of the top spots.

Sub 4 strategies that I'm not already doing include:
	- No hard hat (~25 seconds)
	- 1 refreshing herb (~like 6 seconds ig lol)
	- No bitch bear (~15 seconds, unless I get screwed by Shrooom!)
	- No great charms (~40 seconds)
	- No Dept Store save (~10 seconds)
Lol I figured there'd be more than that, but I honestly think I'm already doing majorly what I can to lower my time. I guess I deserve that top 10 spot?? ;p
There are definitely a few areas I should read up on and/or practice (Grapefruit Falls and Fire Spring come to mind) but I think I'm finally nearing that spot in my EarthBound speedrunning career where most of my run is skill-based, and that feels really good. I need that sicknasty good luck. My best bet as far as sub 4 goes is doing all of these choice time saves, and cushioning myself as much as possible for later timeloss. My mole cave time right now is 1:32:50, and I'd like to lower that to around 1:30:0x if I can, or even lower. That would be phenomenal.

Time saves off of my new PB include:
	- Grapefruit falls (both trips)
	- Homesickness (RNG-based)
	- Jeff Death after Spook (RNG and effort based)
	- Underworld wrong-warp (RNG based because dinos, effort based because I'm dumb)
	- Carefree bomb fight that took like 6 turns to run from
	- Fire Spring (RNG-based, but I need to keep up my moxie here as well)
	- Boogey Tent, Threed despawning
	- Mr. Bear!!!
	- Stonehenge Base

That's everything major. A lot of minor stuff can change the game as well, and of course there's the potential time LOSS to take into account as well (Prv/HH, Winters, Mole Cave, Lumine Hall, GIYGAS).

A lot could go wrong during this grind... but a lot could go right too. We'll see.

Day 024:
	- I had a weird manip problem after frank, failed at that exact spot about 5 times before finally getting out. Once I did, I died to ninja shrooms that I couldn't avoid (Gotta learn mushroom manip!) and my stubborn ass didn't wanna reset. Made it to Starman Base before red swirl mook bot bodied me. Pretty crappy RNG all around, but my execution was pretty top notch, I think. The potential is there, I just need better Circumstances. Oh well, day 1 out of 3 out of the way!

Day 025:
	- I got a 4:05! Pretty insane run, my early game up to Mole Cave Enter was super solid, was 5 minutes ahead of PB at that point! Slowly lost time for the rest of the run, except for most of midgame where I maintained very well! Tried again later that night but had no success. Rip to Desert Wolf (completely unavoidable spawn location, no PP to even try to fight it, run didn't work), followed by rip to Mini Barf (Threed Cave was rough without a Teddy Bear, slowly had my resources drained throughout cave).

Day 025-2:
	- Apparently I miscounted my days. I knew this would happen at some point ;p
	- Tried for an hour this morning, didn't have enough time to get a run started if I wanted to make the race a priority. Race didn't go so hot anyway, was on pace for about a 4:45 after starman base so I switched over to sub 4 attempts and had no luck. I did restore my mojo, but I made a mistake in Belch's Base of trying to stutter past three piles. I'd done that before and thought I learned my lesson. I actually did it a third time in the following run, but managed to survive that time and kept going. I need to watch myself better there. ;p Anyway, that run's first half turned out to be completely bad, was 6 minutes behind at one point. Started to turn it around by the second half by restoring to 3 minutes behind so I continued out of curiosity, but I managed to rip to fire spring because I used too much of Poo's PP to revive Ness with Healing Y before the boss. This concluded that not everyone can sub 4 in three days, like skateman. </3

Day 026 (which is actually 027):
	- Had a decently paced run rip to the Guitar Center Fuck Parade, a shame. However, this and Day 027 (which is actually 028) both prove that I need to remember to LIFEUP JEFF AFTER MOLE CAVE. Still, the fight was rough, and even if Jeff had full health it would have been a time loss anyhow.
	- Following that I had two of the exact same shack fight rip. Really made me realize how 1. Terrible and 2. Fun the sub 4 grind is. There's a lot riding on a few different key moments.

Day 027 (which is actually 028):
	- Had some rough luck throughout HH, but I barely hung on due to some god-send misses and dodges. I probably made some strategy mistakes there as well, overall need to perform better. As mentioned above, Dept Store could have gone better if I lifeup'd Jeff, but I was just Lucky this time that nothing decided to hit him. Fitting that I'd manage to keep -3 minutes (sub 4 pace) all the way up to starman base, then rip there due to accidentally using the cup of lifenoodles on the wrong person. Wow, what a way to lose a run. Needless to say I need to step up my concentration game.

So far I've had two of my rips (out of my 9 attempts so far that didn't finish) be COMPLETELY my fault, and I'm happy to be able to say that. If I can keep up my moxie and continue to make my execution superior, the luck will come my way as well. I have never been at all discouraged during this grind, I'm excited to keep on going.

Day 029 (there we go):
	- Woke up, got coffee, sat down and streamed. First attempt PB'd Onett, and also PB'd the run!
	- My 4:01:38 bopped ClassicJames by 6 seconds, putting me in 9th place. 2 to go. >:)
	- This is my proudest run, by FAR. Very few errors, none of them very life-changing. Luck lined up for me except in a few areas... Deep Darkness, Stonehenge Base, and Lumine Hall were a big section of the run with minutes of time loss. Stage 4B Lost me a lot of time as well... if I matched my PB in Magicant through Giygas I would have had a 3:59:59. Lol.
	- My Winters lost me about 1.5 minutes, and Threed Tunnel --> Mole Cave were less than optimal. Looking all over this run I see how 3:50 is actually possible, lmao. If I could just nail one of these time saves, sub 4 is mine. I'm coming for it.

Days 30-50 were all about the same. I stopped logging because 1. I was lazy and 2. It only would have just been "rips rips rips" anyway. (Or, like, "it turned out I was too tired to do manip" or shit like that lol).

Night 50 was the one. \m/