Golden Sun 2 any% FAQ

      Golden Sun 2 any% FAQ

Q: What are you playing on, it is emulator?
A: No, I play on a Gamecube through a Gameboy Player using a Gameboy SP as a controller.

Q: Does this game have RNG Manipulation?
A: Yes it does!
The categories for the games are generally distinct between allowing Save and Quits, and not. This is just any%, so S&Q is allowed, and as such there will be RNG Manip.
S&Q also allows for other things that aren't strictly manip too, save as save warping (both Sanctum warping, which is intentional and Save Retreat warping, which is a glitch.)

Q: How does RNG manipulation work in this game?
A: There are 2 different types of RNG.
Battle (Referred to as BRN), which as you might guess is relevant in battles, including things like what attacks enemies use, and whether you get Attacks First or Caught by Surprise against an enemy.
and General (Referred to as GRN), which is relevant for everything else (including stuff inside battles, such as who enemies Target, whether you can flee from encounters, stats levels up after a battle)

When you Hard Reset, both of these values are set to 0. When you Soft Reset (AB Start Select), the GRN is set to 0 but not the BRN. When the BRN is 0, you always get Attacks First on the first party (allowing you to flee).

Now while the GRN is reset to 0, it during the Title Screen every frame. So hitting a consistent GRN value after a reset is a frame perfect trick.
So in order to do manips with good consistency, clusters of several frames are mapped out, with different procedures. The general idea is typically to take the first encounter after a reset, and then depending on what it is, slightly alter what you do in order to then end up on a known GRN slightly after, and then follow a set path.

Q: Does this mean everything in the game is manipped?
A: No, it does not. There are several places in the game where manip is near on impossible to control, because so many things advances it in different ways. For example;

Being in a town for a long time is hard, but not impossible to keel manip for. There are some instances where I'd like to map out manips through towns, but for now I'm not.
There are several places in the game where RNG is advancing every frame, and manip is just not on the cards. The exterior of Aqua Rock, as well as the outside of Mars Lighthouse are good examples of these.
Using Burst gives crazy random results, fuck Burst.

There are also some instances where you can manip, but it's faster not to because there's only a few encounters until the next place, so it's faster to just run. And/or some of these where I just haven't mapped out the manip yet.

There are also some places where manip can *slightly* vary because of odd frames cycles. Magma Rock is the worst for this, both using Burst inside AND casting Judgement.

Q: Why are you clearing the names at the start of the game?
A: This is because it advances the GRN every time you do, and once you start the game, there are a few random things that are checked for, notably the starting stats of the characters, and perhaps more importantly the starting Djinn of the characters from Golden Sun 1.

Q: Why are you going to attack and then cancelling out?
A: This is known as Attack Cancelling, and the reason for it is every time you register a command with a character, the GRN advances by 1. So say I want to advance it by 2, I'd input 2 characters to attack, and then B out to cancel them. This is often used to allowing for fleeing from encounters, but also other things like changing targets of attacks.

Q: Why are you using a Psynergy there when it does nothing?
A: Using certain Psynergy in the overworld will advance the GRN by specific amounts. For example using Growth advances it by 63, and Frost by 96, Lash by 144. This is used to often change encounter patterns, i.e. change what and when the next encounter will be.

Q: Are there any glitches / skips in this run?
A: Oh my yes!
One that is used quite a bit is the Retreat Glitch. By attempting to use Retreat from a shortcut (L or R) with less than 6 PP, you enter a glitch state which has a few applications;
1) Retreat warping, where entering a loading zone will warp you to a different location.
2) Save retreat warping, where saving after entering this state and reloading will load you in a different area.
3) Retreat chesting, where picking up a static item (for example a chest), gives you a different item.

The glitch that saves the most time in the run by itself is known as Death Storage, where by having a character gets posioned and dying in the overworld right as you pass a loading zone, you pass through that loading zone and can go OoB. This is used twice in the run, but skips hours.

There are several other glitches and skips used in this run, such as Move clipping, Boat clipping, Burst Glitch, Fire phasing, Aerie OoB, and some small others.

Q: How do you have Isaac already?
A: There is a certain chest in Gabomba Statue, that if you reach the puzzle at the top (this is important as it sets the Retreat location to that space), and then backtrack to it and Retreat Chest, you get rewarded with a Sol Blade, and Isaac. And as a flow on effect, the ability to effectively 'clone' a member of your party. It's pretty busted, and really cool!

Q: What is the current World Record?
A: www.speedrun.com/gsuntla#Any | See: Spilts

Q: What time are you aiming for?
A: To start with, would like to get sub 3 hours with this route. Then there are quite a few optimisations I can make that would take a lot of rerouting, see where it goes from there.