I was just interested if it would be ok for this runs to go online and get pulled through low and highrank quests for farming equipment because there is nothing in the rules that this is forbidden.
I'll double check with the other mods, but as of right now, going online for anything other then purchasing items, armor, etc. is not allowed in the Any% runs because it's not part of the main offline story. The only reason we allow the purchasing of items online is because you can purchase a Farcaster online, which you can't normally purchase until much later that is used by of our runners in Cha-Cha Any% run. It's clever and anyone can go online to purchase said item.
However not everyone may have a friend or 3 willing to drag them through HR for RNG drops to potentially get game breaking armor to complete the offline story mode. Plus there's always the concern that hunts are dying quickly because of hacking, which is rampant online (Killing an Alatreon solo in like 10 seconds is an example). To give another equivalent situation, it would be like trading for a level 100 Pokemon at the beginning of a Pokemon speedrun, which is certainly not allowed.
Once we've decided what the official ruling will be, either me or another one of the mods will make a post and it will be added to the rules. :) Thanks for inquiring about the rules.
Thank you for the answer. I was wondering because it only said: "Beat the Ceadeus from a new game.", "Time starts on first input from talking to the village chief." and "Time ends when the "Quest Complete!" textbox appears after repelling/defeating the Ceadeus." and never said something about Offline/Online. It seemed a little bit suspicious to me so I wanted to ask that first before wasting 4h for nothing.
Btw: Tanzia port is offline and online. ;)
Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on your Cha-Cha% WR! I have yet to watch the VOD for it, but I look forward to doing it. It's the one category I haven't run (no one is ever going to run Alatreon, not even me) and it'll be interesting seeing how you do it.
Regarding your question...It is not in the rules because it seems pretty obvious. Very few speedruns involve multiplayer of ANY kind, and those that do are clearly marked. Our Individual Levels categories, for instance, allow you to submit times for 1-4 players. I look forward to filling some of those out in the near future, in fact.
However, for single player runs, it is simply out of the question to have other players enter the picture at all. It defeats the point. The goal of this speedrun is to complete the one player campaign (or sections of it, at least) as quickly as possibly on your own. I appreciate your looking for ways to exploit the run and cut that time down as much as possible, but it falls down to us mods to consider the SPIRIT of the run as well as the letter of the rules. This is a long run, but it's based almost entirely off of knowledge of the game and skill at executing each and every fight.
And frankly, because of this we'll be more specific and state that there are no other players allowed. It's one thing to pop into the marina of the offline tavern in order to buy rare goods from Granny. It's quite another to sit around while some HR 999 friends spend roughly an hour getting you to HR so you can cheese getting a better weapon and some basic HR armor to chew through the quests in 3 hours.
This makes 3/3 of the mods for this game voting against your idea. I'm sorry to shoot you down, man. If you can think of any other potential avenues to exploit things or cut down the time, let us know. We ARE open to optimizing this game as much as possible, so long as it's done fairly and with the spirit of the run in mind. And I look forward to seeing you submit times for Ceadus and Ivory runs!
