HI all,

I thought it might be a good idea to have a place to put anything you've discovered to help the community out. I've been practicing Any% NG a fair amount, and with any luck, my capture card should arrive soon and if my laptop can handle it, I should be able to start posting runs, employing the strategies below.

I'll start with a few since I don't have much time right now, i'll update as and when I can. Feel free to add your own and to start discussions :)

Any% Legend Mode Normal

(For buttons, I will be using the default PS4 configuration, as that is the version I am using. S=Square, T=Triangle, etc.)

General: Luffy's special action (Gum Gum Pistol, R1 on PS4) is exceptional as it can stagger bosses out of their attack charge animations, takes out a chunk of their hyper meter, and in kizuna rush, deals a fair amount of damage. Used on Buggy and Crocodile, it can cancel their super when they're charging it after they jump to the centre of the arena.

I've found a good level to be is Level 20 by the time you Hit Skypiea. Sanji's SSST Is stupidly good. If not, Luffy can clear the stage fine. You’ll be level 20 by Water 7 anyway.

Sanji can juggle and kill officers efficiently using ST, R1, X, TTSS. This is especially useful during post-enies lobby to deal with Franky after stunning him.

Learn your allies' routes during escorts and take out base captains and officers in their way. I've also found that if you're in view of them, thy'll try and kill every peon they see before moving on. They seem to move easier if you leave them be (Citation needed, I may just be going crazy). If there's more than one character to escort, PRIORITISE NAMI. Especially on Loguetown. I've gained more than a few grey hairs trying to get her to move.

On most bosses with three sections to their health bar, you can bypass one of the partitions by activating kizuna rush at the start of the fight. This will cause the boss to do the same, removing the first partition in their health bar. This is useful, because you then don't need to break up your combo and wait for them to power up again. Exceptions to this are: Morgan, Buggy (Orange town), Arlong, Crocodile, Lucci, Magellan, Caesar(maybe, I forget), Doflamingo.

Stage-specific:

Syrup Village: After Kuro shows up, you're told to capture three bases. You actually only need to capture two.The left and centre ones are the fastest, starting with the left. After the seconds base is captured, kuro opens the gates above the centre base.

Water 7: Don't use Luffy. He has to fight Usopp right at the start. Picking anyone else skips it.

Thriller Bark:

Oars was a huge stumbling block to begin with, however, the fastest way I've found to deal with him is to use Luffy's TTSS, followed by Franky's Square-based Kizuna attack. This takes a massive chunk of HP out and, if you don't charge luffy's combo, comes out just fast enough to dodge Moria's interference.

Marineford 2: Using Luffy ends the stage at Akainu. There's a very long section after it that other characters have to play through. Luffy skips it.

Any% NG+

Return to Sabaody: For the love of god, don't use Sanji unless you're certain you can get your kizuna gauge to max quickly and even then, make sure it can one-shot Perona, otherwise you're going to lose a lot of time. I learned that one that hard way.

Oh, and one last thing: dialogue boxes. Using supers/kizuna finishers and activating kizuna rush delays any further text boxes, meaning it could take longer for allies to start moving to destinations and for missions to finish. In NG+, this is less of an issue since supers one shot just about anything. However, in NG, supers do little enough damage that it’s often not worth using them.

Also, text boxes are produced every 500KOs, so keep an eye on that. The most obvious example is right before captain Morgan spawns at the end of romance Dawn. You’ll probably have 1000-1500 by then. These text boxes are low priority, so they get tacked on at the end of dialogue chains and take about 5 seconds to finish, so keep that in mind.

TBH, if you are doing NG+ you should avoid the specials unless needed cause they take too much time anyway..if you doing segmented then go for it.

Also be wary of the character's running speeds cause I do know Zoro is slower while Sanji and Ace are decently fast on foot..

Want to point out similar to Water 7, if you don't play as Luffy on Fishman Island you skip a fight against Jinbei.

Right, I completely forgot about that one! I usually play Sanji there XD

Sanji is one of the better characters to play in terms of speed imo. Also playing Sanji on stage 1-3 you will skip the treasure event lol

Yeah, there are other characters around the same speed, they just don’t put out the damage in a timely manner(Marco) or are just plain naff (looking at you, Buggy).

In NG I use luffy until I hit level 20, at which point I switch to sanji for most stages he’s in (barring punk hazard, Monet is a nightmare and kizuna attacks don’t one shot her)

NG+ is sanji almost all the way :)

Okay, how did I not notice that specials freeze the In-level timer??? Now everything makes sense! I was wondering why my arlong park runs were off by about 50 seconds XD

Yea, all special freeze IGT lol. I am surprised no one asked about that tbh. I noticed it on one of the levels...I think Impel Down

It hadn’t occurred to me since I do a lot of RTAs and avoid specials like the plague :P

I have been working on Segmented atm so I just roll with IGT for now..eventually I will do NG+ run when I am not lazy

Good idea. RTAs take mental preparation. NG especially. Your Segmented is pretty damn solid, my attempts still fall about Half a minute short XD

I also need preperation to do a 5 hour run in one sitting as well... lol. I still need to finish it but that will come soon. This is more of my relaxing (odd way to put it...) speedrun so been a bit slow on it and the routing really..will have to possibly reroute for NG+ tho.!Thank you, They can be lower still but I rather not spam anymlre than needed For 1-4 before I found the IGT manipulation I got 8:31:11 Idk if that would help in terms of rta or not

That’s pretty much how I run rta arlong park lol. The run is pretty straightforward without specials. It’s just knowing where to go at what time. Although I tend to find long pieces of dialogue in which to activate kizuna rush and, in the case of sanji levels involving female enemies, using kizuna finishers so that the chain of text isn’t interrupted.

That one is my best in terms lf rta due to no villager dying and Usopp not being completelt useless rofl. But doing some specials during dialoage will still keep it going. The rush I avoid in rta cause it is way too long and not worth the damage compared to a normal attack or special..at least on easy/normal

I’m messing around with Post timeskip Usopp for some stages (I say some, it’s alabasta for now), since his R1 has a decent radius and damage, and his run speed is rather fast, if I’m correct. On normal, sanji’s kizuna finisher doesn’t one-shot Tashigi in Alabasta, so I’m trying to find alternatives.

NG+ doesn’t really need kizuna rush, maybe for Dressrosa but that’s about it.

Speaking of kizuna rush, on NG you need to use it sparingly, since you don’t have access to battlefield charisma, you use it to deal with problem enemies, then R2 out of it. A good example is Loguetown. As Luffy, you have 3 kizuna allies in Usopp, Sanji, and Zoro. Usopp leaves right before the Smoker fight at the end, so any Kizuna Rushes you use during the stage come from him. So then you have zoro and sanji full for the smoker fight. With more practice, I could probably take down smoker before the first rush runs out, meaning I could use Usopp on Tashigi and sanji on Buggy, but the second is there for safety at the moment.

I use Zoro in my ng+ wr run I just did because hes the only lvl 100 guy I got so far...I think most of the levels I did were optimized well except for Fishman Island where I forgot to go to the certain square and wasted like 30 secs....I was getting tired at that time...I also found a skip in the Baratie stage which I kind of explain in the video

Out of interest, what was your skill setup for Zoro?

That’s pretty neat. I’ll see if I can get it to work in NG, maybe by mashing Krieg with a kizuna rush. That’d chop a lot of time off the stage :)

Im trying to remembrr off the top of my head...not homr atm, the one that captures territores easier, the one that fills your special meter over time, to do dmg to logia users and I think the one that does more kizuna dmg, I'll check when I get home

That sounds about right. My go-to loadout is pirate alliance, leadership, battlefield charisma, hero’s strength and [insert specific move] boost. The last two sometimes swapped out for a 2-slot skill, depending on character and stage.