Yu-Gi-Oh! Stairway to the Destined Duel FAQ (October 2023)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel FAQ (October 2023)

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: 31:37 by me. Full leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/yugiohstairway?h=All_Duelists&x=wk6jnwqd

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.

In-depth route: https://pastebin.com/ZdxqyYNH

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.)

GoddessMaria has attempted some "manipless" Stairway runs that aim to find and beat all the duelists from an unfamiliar starting point. I may attempts these runs as well.