Yea, they tuned it down in Zestiria with the grind for equipment and skills and in Berseria they cut it totally now as you cant take over equip, so it is now all base stats and execution aswell as some drop luck maybe.

You can cut the 2 1k HP probably to save yourself 1k but yea, 13k for every option except Half Exp (which would be pointless to take). Oh believe me, it will be a pain, this is always a pain xD ^^ It is just tedious grindy stuff you have to do.

It is kinda hard to explain. But for starters, when you have a global amount under around 50 herbs currently spawned then the respawn starts to trigger. 118 herbs are there in total overall, I havent done a full list by now but here is a set of sheets where I wrote down stuff regarding, aswell as my old route for a long term rundown of herbs.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AdkNaXOPNDa1NkB27dV39fONLj7cgF5hxgKa3RQUTnE

Next thing to note is, that there are priorities in what herbs respawns based on an internal list (which no one has any idea how it is setup). So if you save and load and pick up a herb, find a herb that has been respawn, then load again before you picked that one up, pick up a different herb and the same herb respawns again, then you can maybe start a loop of farming by using the herb that respawned as your starting herb, save and load to reset the priorities (we think that they get a block flag after being picked up, but this is still a bit of speculation) and can start over again.

One spot is working for me that is Stonebury and Haria. In haria I currently have the Red Lavender on the top of the list when ever I pick a Herb. I use the 2 Herbs of Stonebury to work a loop that goes like this:

Save outside Stonebury > Load for safty again > Pick up the first herb in Stonebury > Teleport Haria > Pick up the Red Lavender that spawned > Teleport in front of Stonebury > Save > Load > Pick the other Herb in Stonebury > Teleport Haria > Pick up the Red Lavender > Teleport in front of Stonebury > Save > Load > Repeat.

This way I can currently farm per full cycle 3 Red Lavender (Attack) and 1 Red Verbena (Defense). It is a start to max out Attack on everyone and I maybe find other spots where I can abuse this way for the other types properly (still figuring out how to set them up properly).

So, yea, this is much info and stuff, but you probably will get how it works fairly quickly.

Well, it took me around 1200 hours and then some more to get my setup for NG+ runs in Zestiria, so this is nothing suprising that it will take long but Berseria is more gentle when it comes to herb farming. I'm currently looking into the herb respawn mechanic with closer looks to see how it is possible to loop certain spawns as it is possible to manipulate the respawns to a certain extend. There probably will be no rule to limit herbs, so maxing out will be the result in the end.

You could start runs as soon as you want and kinda work up on it (I did this in Zestiria), so you get runs down, can practice and also afterwards collect herbs for the next run to have better stats then. Dunno what to say what aim for stats but getting Attack, Arte Attack and Focus as high as possible would be the start. The rest is not that important, atleast for Any% (will probably be run mostly on Easy or Normal).

NG+ is still a work in progress from what I know (myself included). In NG+ is everything allowed that the game offers, including herbs enhancment aswell, so therefore go ahead and grind them. As for Grade, well, pretty much everything except Half Exp (I think that was the only negative option). You can go all out for it.

As always Any% NG will be done with Normal Difficuly settings.

I dont even know what the issue right now is. Corick didnt even asked for a leaderboard, just for opinions and people to do runs with him. So I dont get why the leaderboard is a topic right now. Just because there is no leaderboard doesnt mean it cant be a category, and only because it is a category doesnt mean it needs a leaderboard. This is possibly just for the sake to see what can be done with the game besides the general Any%. Same goes for the Plat%. People are asking and checking around, wanna get ideas or look for people to work together with. I dont even care if it gets a leaderboard or not, but I will take my times, record them somewhere and be done with it. Because I enjoy the game in multiple ways and just wanna have fun.

Personally for me it would be more of a "Just having fun"-run and I'm also planning on doing a run (which is probably just a "I'm going in and see how it will work out"-run cause I suck at routing and I need to do runs actually to see where I need to change things). So yea,I wouldnt make much a deal out of it, but having some people to mess around with NG+ would be fun :D

One Trophy is all 13 Royal Arms yes. And yes, I think this one is actually quite a quick one and would change the route possibly because you maybe want some level ups on the way, so stuff like Adamantoise isnt a problem. The thing about the Platinum in this game is, that it doesnt really require many hard bosses which will make this a short trip and more of a A to B thing.

Feasible is it imo 100%. A lot of the trophies are doable while doing an any% run and some trophies can be connected with other trophies (The fisher quests for example would be good as to get fishing higher aswell and some stuff for later fishing).

The longest trophies will probably be Adamantoise, Fishing and Survival (these will end up doing repetitive stuff). The rest is fairly easy managable.

About the length, good questions as I currently have not really an idea how long it could take. I would guess at possibly around 10 hours with the option of possibly going into the direction of 12 - 13 hours. I dont think it will take much longer.

This is a topic that is kinda splitted in opinions but following will be the handling about this from moderation-side:

First and foremost it will be important to be discret about it. Since we dont have splitted categories for console and PC it is an unfair advantage and we also dont wanna split them into seperate categories.

So as long as it is not obvious that a cheat engine was used to gain illegal advantages, we dont will take actions against it. That means, if you do anything that can normally be achieved by playing the game as you normally would, it is tolerated as long as you stay discret about it.

On the other hand, if a run uses Cheat Engine or any other 3rd party program to alter the game in nya way that is normally not possible and we find out about it (skills that are impossible, depositioning, FPSlimiter and what not is all possible) the run will be denied and taken from the leaderboard.

There can be single case decisions coming up and rewriting of these rules on a case by case basis so dont take this for granted and feel free to do whatever you want. We still wanna stay competitive for those that search just that as much as possible.

We may also alter the conditions on espacially PC-Runs to may ask for additional proof via savefiles if we think a run is not 100% legit but as mentioned on a case by case basis.

As FellVisage stated, our routes are based on Braster's run, but we let our own playstyle flow into the route so it is nothing like a "general" route. The problem with ToZ is, that you can, more or less in NG, customize the route to your own playstyle and do what feels the best for you. I have no online notes so far yet, everyhing is still local and not finished yet (I still need to route and note the final part after Cerberus).

The loading times differ from the console versions to the PC-Version depending on your PC. Watching the (I think) PS4 run and compare it to mine, there are serveral seconds at some points difference that I'm faster with my PC. So yea, the loading times are definetly different.

I started speedrunning a month ago and I choose a game I like and enjoy playing, so on first it is the fun of it. My current other reason for speedrunning this game is, I wanna see how far I can go and where I hit my limits to a point that I can't progress any further and is the end of the line. I'm still very inconsistent and I wanna train it this way to be a consistent runner of that game and have well thought way of beating it.