I found a simple way to get the money to afford armlet of the sun at the cost of either ~17 seconds in chapter 4, or 12 seconds in chapter 7. That's really not a whole lot of time spent. But is it worth it? So far I can't find any fights that seem noticeably faster because of it but I haven't tested everything.

I did some testing and it looks like it might not even be worth 12 seconds to get. The attack bonus is pathetically small (like under 5%), and so far I haven't found any fights with a significant enough reduction in hits required to save more than 12 seconds. The only noteworthy changes I could find are:

• The helicopter in ch8 sometimes flies away after 3 arrows instead of 4
• Turret gunners and the rocket launcher guy in the window of ch8 seem to require less arrows to kill on average, but there isn't enough testing to show it is statistically significant.
• The electric worms in ch10 die in 4 gleaming blades, whereas before they still needed like a single swipe of the DS (or 1-2 explosive arrows) to finish off after 4.
• The hydracubus tentacles in ch 5 and 7 seem to more reliably get knocked off after 2 flying swallow (this could actually be a big deal if true)

Everything else I haven't been able to kill in less hits. The problem is fights like pazz zuu, regular doku, and smaugan are too difficult to test, as they take so many combos to kill and tend to guard attacks.

Would love to hear from someone who actually understands the effect of the armlet to some degree. I can't find any reliable sources on google. Does it apply different to weapons, projectiles, and ninpo?

I don't fully understand the effects of the armlet of the sun, but my personal experience with it is that it does indeed lop off Squidward's tentacles in 1 less hit, and causes the zombies in the altar room on Very Hard to fall a bit faster with the dragon sword. If nothing else, it has a psychological effect on me that makes it feel like I'm hitting harder, which is no less important than actual DPS in my experience. I'll also check the fight against Marbus, since after you stun lock him, you can finish him off with 1 combo