Zelda any% thoughts

The Legend of Zelda any%

Just wanted to give some insight and my responses to community responses about my running Zelda any% with up&a (which is effectively deathwarps) -- Sort of an FAQ, and a substitute for continuing to work on any% while I do other things.

First of all, I really appreciate all the people who were there supporting me when I ran any%.  You know who you are, and what you've contributed. Really, that's the bottom line here. Thank you.


When I decided to run this category I had three motivations for doing so:

1) Up&A provides new routing opportunities. It's possible to route in more time saving damage boosts and to use Save and Reset for Money Making Game manipulations (which I didn't use in my PB).  D-boosts and RNG manipulation are core elements of speedrunning that were rendered practically useless by the No Up&A restriction. I put a lot of effort into documenting and practicing MMG manipulations.  They save a very small amount of time in 1st quest routing if executed perfectly.
Another routing possibility is early level-8 which I doubt I'll ever do, having experienced the prospect in my low% runs. Saver's recent re-timing for no up&A routes suggests that my any% route may even be obsolete.  There's still a lot to figure out with Any%.

2) No one good besides Reabs was doing it, and I couldn't find a good empirical reason as to why that is. BT and I had speculated as to how much time it would save.  No one seemed to have the data on that. There were speedrunners from outside the TLOZ community who questioned the arbitrary "no up&a" restriction. BT and I encouraged them to run it with Up&A, but no one did. I wanted to know, so finally I did it.

3) This is the big one, the first one, the only reason I needed. The Legend of Zelda is a game I love, but the speedrunning it was wearing on me. I'd start attempts and become irritated within 30 minutes due to resetting RNG and waiting on that damn title screen wait. I wanted the run to be different -- not just for myself. I thought if other people were frustrated with this aspect of the run, they too might like to try something different.  I would like to support other Z1 runners, but it is awful watching resets in Level-3 over and over and over. (And yes, projected empathy is why I quickly get frustrated with Level-3 resets on stream.)
  Yet, my initial routing for Level-3 didn't even fix the problem, and the any% PB was stuck at 28:56 for five months with a 2:22 Level-3. That's how bad it was. After routing the J-Prototype and recalling a race strat of Saver's, I came back to any% with a new reliable Level-3 route cranked out some PBs. The Level-3 re-route also better facilitates getting the 10 rupees in L-3 for MMG.

Things that did not weigh on my initial decision to run any%:

A means to getting the any% world record. As the person who re-routed the WR route into any%, I know (barring math errors) how much time it could save. To me, if my run doesn't save almost that much time, I'm not altogether satisfied with it.  In a way, this pastebin is the Roger Maris * next to my "any% WR" where you should have just come from.
Also, if I beat Lack's no up&A time by a small amount, I expected no fanfare from other Zelda speedrunners who at least have a vague idea of how much time they are wasting by backtracking on foot. :P

Over time, the main topic of inquiry regarding any% is how much time Up&A can save.
--  I've never tried to obscure how much time up&A can save for any reason besides not being 100% sure about the data. In this case, I collected practical data rather than theoretical.  This is largely because I do not enjoy using TAS editors enough to do a bigger project. Also, no one can live up to theoretical numbers in a Zelda RTA.
--  If the question was asked and unanswered, it was because I felt in that instance the question was ingenuous. In other words, I felt like the question was, "What number can I add to your time to make it fit my view of how Zelda should be run so I can compare you to that?"
--  I didn't post the data openly (such as on my twitch profile) because no one else does this; it would be saying that any% needs a case to exist.
--  This answer isn't as black & white as "How much time is saved by Japanese text".  This isn't a fixed number for which we can adjust times.

Finally, I want to respond once and for all (or some amount of time) to the suggestion that I could get the no up&A WR if I tried, and this will roughly answer the previous question as well.  This is the other bottom line.  This is what I have to remember when I get tired of being alone in this category, respected by few with no one else to push me while everyone else is climbing the no up&a ladder:
If it's between getting a WR in "no up&A" and getting a sub-28 in any%, I'd rather have the sub-28.