So, several months ago I said I'd never run this category again, because of what a bad experience I had the first time. My only remaining interests were updating the route to make it more efficient, and adding more quality of life changes for other runners.

Lo and behold, after having watched a few other PMD2 Recruit 'em Alls, and after slowly editing the route over the course of several months, I suddenly got the perfect amount of time off to attempt the run, and DoctorMiawoo decided to make a vastly improved tracker to use for the run (through four straight days of effort on his behalf). I couldn't possibly have been more excited to run this category back.

And I'm really glad for the result.

For the most RNG aspects:
- 1 hour Spinda's Café split
- 1 hour 7 minute Aegis Cave #1 split, only missing one Unown
- 1 hour Kecleon split
- 3rd try Rayquaza, 2nd try Giratina, 1st try Articuno, Groudon, Mew, Heatran, and Kyogre
- 23 minute Aegis Cave #2 split, iirc the Regi trio was 7th try
- 2 hour Spacial Rift split
- 5th try Lugia, 2nd try Moltres & Darkrai, ALL other Secret Slab legends were 1st try

The Good:
- DoctorMiawoo's new tracker; extremely helpful for quickly marking off Pokémon, deciding which floors to move to in dungeons, and identifying which Pokémon are necessary / optional recruits.
- Updated route; incorporates earlier Tight Belt, earlier Gold Seeds, and Final Maze for alternative methods of obtaining certain Pokémon. Also much easier to save up the gummies needed for Nature Gifter and Map Surveyor, and had just enough storage space and items for everything.
- Much better execution with Illuminate; frequently used the attack animation skip trick that Anthem found, and also knew better which enemies have Leer, Screech, or annoying moves to avoid.
- Much better knowledge of spawns in dungeons; was able to focus on rare / difficult Pokémon more immediately.
- Actually paid attention to Stair Sensor most of the time when needed (this IQ skill must've saved me like an hour over the course of the run).
- Very efficient with evolution strats (most notably, shortened Dark Crater by evolving middle Fire starters, and incorporated Wailmer into Nature Gifted Gold Seeds to reduce wondermails).
- Only let Service Fish kill one important recruit that I needed for the entire run (Rotom). Didn't even matter much in the end.
- Very good luck with rare spawns joining first try (especially in Aegis Cave, Spacial Rift, Lost Wilderness, Lake Afar, Happy Outlook, and holy sht the Secret Slab legendaries)
- No deaths.

The Bad:
- Item management; grabbed more random seeds and orbs than necessary after recycling was done, leading to lots of extra storage checks.
- Forogt my Iron Thorns a few times and I like having those >:[
- Kinda slow recycling menuing.
- Forgotten Escape Orbs; wasted about 15 minutes finishing dungeons unnecessarily (most notably, the entire Marine Resort and Landslide Cave dungeons).
- Don't grind for Wailord in Surrounded Sea. Don't do it man. It sucks.
- Dragonair :(
- Rhydon >:[
- Magnemite and Magneton >:[  >:[
- Dittos pretending to be Magnemite and Magneton >:[  >:[
- WAILMER AND WAILORD >:[  >:[  >:[  >:[ > :[  >:[  >:[  >:[
- Pichu :(
- Solrock :(
- This didn't affect my time, but I do wish I'd lowered the audio of the voice call I was in during Day 1, or raised the audio of my own voice on stream. I'm bothered by the poor balance, and it's incorrigible!

The Silly:
- Recruited three ! Unown
- Worst Team Rogue fight ever during Bidoof's Wish
- Service Fish told me we should look for a Mix Elixir
- Saw six Dusknoir during Spacial Rift
- Why couldn't I have all those Pure Seeds during my Any% and Darkrai runs?!

All in all, a great run in terms of both execution and RNG. The pros definitely out weighed the cons, and with a run of this magnitude, it's inevitable that there will be at least a few frustrating moments, as well as some dumb mistakes. I'm really glad I was able to feel like I was having fun for most of this run, instead of feeling frustrated all the time like I did in my old PB. The route is great (just needs a few more tweaks regarding evolution strats and readability), DoctorMiawoo's tracker is a huge blessing (just needed some bug fixes mid run), and Service Fish is a good, helpful friend ("The stairs seem to be over this way!").

Starting out, I was hoping that with all the new things going for this run, I would maybe just barely have a chance to claim the WR, as I thought a 35-hour time was a super lucky, challenging time to beat, especially since I tend to have poor luck with runs of this game. I had absolutely no idea that WR had over three hours of timesave to reap... and I could even have gotten a 31:5x:xx if not for my Escape Orb mistakes! Had I known this run would be so short, I would have pushed to finish in just two days, but I'm weak when it comes to maintaining focus during these runs, and I'd assumed that I'd be playing for 36+ hours, so I used all three of my allowed 9-hour breaks, one of which just to unwind for 45 minutes during the later part of Day 2. Thus, this is not an RTA WR; only a gameplay time WR. But that's all that matters to me, personally.

With this, I have achieved undoubtedly one of my luckiest PMD runs ever, and a solid time to leave this category with, even if there are more route changes, or my time gets beaten, or whatever. I look forward to optimizing the No Wondermail Recruit 'em All category some day, or perhaps the Explorers of Time Recruit 'em Alls. We'll see!

mozzarLove