Dragon Warrior IV Chapter 5 IL Speedrun in
This run went pretty well, but could still be optimized. Sub 1:50 shouldn't be too difficult, but to go lower than that would require grinding for luck.
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To explain what's going on here: An "IL" is an "Individual Level" speedrun, meaning I can spend as long as I want setting up before chapter five. All that matters is the time it takes to complete chapter five.
To set this up, in each of the first four chapters I leveled everyone to 99 about six times (hacking in 10M experience to do so) and took the best result (Stat gains are not fixed, sometimes stats would fluxuate as much as 50 points!). Then, I maxed out all stats that could be theoretically maxed out by checking which seeds can be dropped by monsters in each chapter (Str/Agi in Ch 1, 2, and 3; Str, HP, and Luck in Ch 4). Note that Str, Agi, and Luck max out at 255, but HP and MP max out at 65535.
Furthermore, I gave myself about a million casino coins (which I do not use) and gave most characters full inventories of the most expensive items they can obtain to sell in chapter five, since you can't carry gold over between chapters. Really all I needed to buy was three Stiletto Earrings, though. Armor doesn't matter and Ragnar doesn't really need a better weapon than his Sword of Malice.
I used the team I used because the female characters can all equip Stiletto Earrings to attack twice per round, and Ragnar doesn't waste as many turns as Taloon and Cristo. I could put Cristo on Use No MP, but Ragnar has way more HP.
One obstacle I can't get around is that if the hero is "in reach" (if he can cast spells; meaning either the wagon is with you or you're in a "town" (Santeem) or Necrosaro's castle) then you can't run from everything 100% of the time. This matters in more places than you'd think (The whole game up until the wagon, Santeem, Necrosaro's Castle, Magic Key cave, Z-Armor cave, Final Cave, Zenithia Tower, maybe others???). You can, however, repel everything on the world map, except for in that desert right after you get Hector for some reason.
Anyway, my early game routing and itemization could've been optimized a lot, but overall it was a solid run. If I'm ever streaming runs of the full game and they don't go well (as they do) I'll consider doing another IL run.
-- Watch live at / thecowness