Hello everyone. I've been interested in running Dragon's Crown for a while now since it is my favorite game. However, the categories and rules here seem pretty rough to me. I'd like to propose some ideas that I have thought of for new categories and rules, and how to better organize them.

First of all, I believe that runs should be separated by character, as each character plays very differently and will have different strategies and ways to speedrun. The game is decently balanced, but the top characters would be pretty uncontested if they were all in the same category in my opinion. Take a look at the leaderboards of Streets of Rage 4, since this is how I envision it will look: https://www.speedrun.com/streets_of_rage_4 - separated by character, and then difficulty. Co-op runs should also be a completely separate tab like they have it in the Streets of Rage 4 page.

For categories, we can have the 4 difficulties listed, and have the following categories in them:

A Routes: Defeat every A Route boss. The run ends once you defeat the 9th A Route boss (Level up screen). B Routes: Defeat every B Route boss and the Ancient Dragon. The run ends once the Ancient Dragon is defeated (Level up screen). All Bosses: Defeat all A Route and B Route bosses, and defeat the Ancient Dragon. 19 bosses total. The run ends once the Ancient Dragon is defeated (Level up screen).

Example of Level Up screen, where a run would end:

The rules would be to play a character capped at each difficulty level (except Infernal), and to use equipment only up to that cap. So a level 35 character for Normal and 65 for Hard. This is just to keep it a bit more fair, your characters do sync down and everything, but they will still be much stronger because of their affixes. For example, if I bring my level 255 Sorceress into Normal mode, she will have access to the Salubrious glasses that give her a 50% chance to use 0 MP, which of course you can only get from Labyrinth of Chaos or Tower of Mirages (rarely).

When it comes to Infernal, I believe that once you unlock Ultimate difficulty it will uncap your character (correct me if I am wrong, I don't remember clearly). I am pretty sure that you need to do the requirements to unlock Ultimate to progress further into the Labyrinth of Chaos. Keeping the cap at 99 will keep you at floor 6 I believe, so you wouldn't even be able to get some of the unique pieces of character equipment. That is why I think keeping infernal runs uncapped is fine. However, you wouldn't be able to use Ultimate mode equipment - those are much stronger and should be saved for their own category. For Ultimate runs, of course nobody should be expected to be level 255 - I think the difference isn't too crazy anyhow.

Demon King: Labyrinth of Chaos and Tower of Mirages can have their own categories, the Demon King category. This would just be doing floors 1-9 as fast as possible, ending once you defeat the Demon King at floor 9 (Level up screen).

New Game: This run would be started on a fresh file, and starts as soon as you make a new character. The reason why it should be a fresh file is so everyone starts off at a level playing field - no saved equipment, no skippable quests, and no skipping the tutorial, visiting Morgan, or resurrecting your first ally. The run ends after defeating the Ancient Dragon, when the character ending artwork screen appears, before the credits. Example for Sorceress:

All Quests: For this run, you would prepare a character by getting them to Hard mode without doing any quests. This way, you can do all of the quests in a row, since there are some locked behind defeating the Ancient Dragon for the first time. I'm unsure if this run should be done in Normal or Hard mode, but I suppose it could be done in both, following the same level cap rules as the story runs (capped at 35 for Normal, 65 for Hard - don't use characters from higher difficulties). The timer would end upon the final quest turn in at the Adventurer's Guild.

Universal rules: No NPC allies, no hacked equipment, no online.

One more note: Hacking is a big issue in Dragon's Crown, and players can have hacked equipment without even knowing it, by burying character bones that have hacked equipment. To prevent cheating, I think it would be a good idea for players to head back to town and go through the equipment in their bags on video, at the end of a run:

Hacked equipment is usually pretty obvious. You can't have more than 2 colored affixes on a piece of equipment, so if a piece of gear has more that is usually the easiest way to tell.

I would also like to mention that it is a good idea to use one of your extra files for doing a run. I use file 1 as my main file, file 2 as an extra copy for experimenting and such, and will use file 3 for doing a run instead. This helps you do certain runs repeatedly, and keeps you from uncapping a character when you clear the difficulty.

If anyone has thoughts on these ideas and rules, I would like to hear them. Any improvements or points I might have missed would be appreciated. I am going to do an introductory run for each of these categories as soon as possible, and if they sound good then I hope we can add them to the leaderboards, and separate each character, and co-op on the leaderboards as well.

TLDR; Way too many categories for a game no one runs. Most boards would be empty or have one person trying to collect gold star stickers. It doesn't develop competition; it is cumbersome. Some ideas seem okay.

So you want to add over 90 categories and boards so there will be dozens of empty boards?

Proposed: New Game, NG+ 9 Talismans, NG+, Co-op for each of those 3.

No need to split characters with so little interest. Co-op could be an issue with online vs offline and verification, but could be tackled later.

osey889 and I had been running NG+ 9 Talismans, which was using a new character created at lvl... 15? The character was not allowed to use any gear or items from previous runs, but skipping quests and manipulating the shop at the start was allowed to force potions. Get the 9 talismans (B route) and kill Ancient Dragon. It was a more condensed version of New Game that helped make it accessible and easier to slot into marathons in a satisfying way.

The definition for All Bosses you are proposing doesn't have all the bosses. The Demon King is in the super dungeon, and it is definitely a boss.

I don't like A Route runs because they are not really a full game run, nor do I feel they have a particularly satisfying conclusion.

For NG+ pre-made characters, the point of the original rule set was to make things approachable without grinding gear for hundreds of hours. Because of this, Infernal gear was banned. The definition of this is up in the air, but I took it to mean no blue attributes (whatever the super powerful, character ability specific powers were on gear). Not 100% sold on the level capping, but I don't feel strictly against it. A 99 level cap might be appropriate as a compromise so the super dungeon doesn't need to be grinded extensively.

NPCs are a part of the game. I could see banning them for NG+ due to hacked stuff. For New Game, offline, people could use them if they want. The extra NPCs scale the enemies, and they aren't particularly effective except as decoys.

No hacked equipment I could see, but anyone with hacking knowledge could easily make items with maxed modifiers that make sense for the gear. This is really an honor system thing.

I don't think that having a lot of categories is a bad thing, even if the game isn't run right now. With a good amount of options for people to choose from, it could gain more interest in time. I think there are others, myself included, who would have fun just trying to beat our own times even if there isn't any competition right now - they may come later. Even the people farming gold stars as you put it, might end up bringing competition when someone else comes along to beat their record and take the gold medal from them.

However, with 4 difficulties to the game it probably could be trimmed in some areas. Only having a talisman run doesn't feel right to me, as that leaves out 9 of the bosses and dungeon paths. All bosses didn't include the Demon King as it would only be doable on Infernal or Ultimate, and you would have to take a detour to kill him which I thought might be awkward. This is why I proposed the Demon King categories for Infernal and Ultimate. As for A Routes, I would like to include the Ancient Dragon ending to it, but players would have to be sitting on 9 talismans for that. It's probably not such a bad thing though because of having multiple save files. I would like for that to feel more satisfying with an Ancient Dragon kill as well. No Labyrinth of Chaos gear for Infernal Story is fair, reaching floor 99 for the best gear from that difficulty takes quite a while. Which I guess would mean capping at level 99 and not unlocking Ultimate to go past 99 would be best.

You say that having a lot of categories wouldn't help to develop competition, but I feel that way about having the characters shared on a leaderboard. I don't think it would be very fun competing against other characters, as some would end up being more dominant. Aside from that, there isn't really much to learn from it in my opinion, in comparison to getting to study how someone else plays the same character in a different way and trying to surpass them. Co-op runs being mixed in with solo runs doesn't sit well with me at all either. It's not that a solo player can't beat a co-op run, but of course you aren't on a level playing field, even with the HP increase of enemies. I guess either might not be a big issue unless the game gets bigger here though, in which case it would hopefully change.

Edit: I have thought about the New Game Plus 9 talisman run some more and think it sounds decent, maybe it can use some tweaking with the rules here and there that can be discussed.

I guess NPCs aren't that big of a deal, but I had thought of banning them so everyone is on a level playing field more than anything. Some players wouldn't want to use them, some might. So disabling them removes any kind of potential advantage or disadvantage.

Well, that is about all I have to say for now. The leaderboards have been empty already for years, and I feel like changing things up would be beneficial and could potentially bring in new runners. Hopefully there can be some sort of change done to these categories.

Hmm, well I just wanted to add that I do understand better now that while the boards are very inactive, the character imbalance thing or co-op might not be a big deal. I do hope that would possibly change at some point if the game grows a bit more here or if one or two characters start to dominate the leaderboards. I feel like for now though, adding better rules or changing some categories might be a good idea.

Here is what I think could work, for a small amount of categories:

Normal: New Game (Fresh File) Normal: New Game Plus (Talisman Run and Ancient Dragon) Hard: All Quests (Character that is fresh into Hard mode) Infernal: A Routes (Ending with the Demon King) Infernal: B Routes (Ending with the Ancient Dragon) Infernal: All Bosses (including Demon King) Ultimate: Tower of Mirages (Floors 1-9)

I think just taking a detour to Labyrinth of Chaos floor 9 after all to kill the Demon King for All Bosses and A Routes might work, but I think that uncaps your level if you want to stay at 99, unless you just do the run on a copied file or something.

I know this is still quite a bit, but I feel like this covers every difficulty in a good amount and trims the fat on what I initially proposed. I think the Tower of Mirages speedrun is quick enough and would let the endgame shine a bit more with all of the different LoC and ToM affixes you can use, even if it is one that you can more easily succeed in the harder you grind. All Quests seems like just a really fun and simple one to me as well.

Sorry for editing my posts so much, I have been giving it a lot of thought and changed my mind on some things, and wanted to explain others better.

Edit: Another concern with making such granular categories is that eventually someone will want platforms split (PS3, PS4, PS4 Pro, VIta, PS5 prob) which leads to hundreds of categories.

I want to comment that I absolutely agree that the rules should probably be a bit more clarified, and co-op should be split. The comment on not driving competition comes from extremely bloating the category amount. My experiences with this approach are that people will do the run once just to get a top 3 position on an empty board and then never touch the category again.

My other opposition to certain categories is that the strategies don't change much once you hit a certain threshold of power. The difference between playing NG+ in Normal - Ultimate in the normal game is relatively similar due to blowing things up very quickly.

Some minor examples of what has been done in New Game and 9T

New Game (osey889 has some VoDs of this floating around also):

9T Solo:

9T Co-op w/osey889 (we did limited runs of this due to scheduling and online):

Yeah, there probably wouldn't be that much of a difference when it comes to doing story runs from Normal-Ultimate when it comes to strategy. I propose that New game and New Game+ (I feel like the level 15 characters should be the only definition for this) be the only categories for Normal, while Infernal has A Routes, B Routes and All Bosses, just as a higher level type of speedrun. Hard Mode could have All Quests, and Ultimate could have Tower of Mirages. That gives us 7 types of runs which I think isn't too bad. It would be a lot more later if the categories do get split by character, but if there is more activity I think that is fine.

I'm still not really happy with characters sharing a leaderboard, the friends I have talked to who are interested in speedrunning this game agree that they should be split up - but I accept that with the game being inactive for speedrunning, it might not be necessary for now. It's just a turn off for me personally. It's good you agree on the co-op being split up though, that being mixed in with solo runs looks awkward to me. Co-op could have much less categories than solo as I imagine there wouldn't be as much interest to run them as solo runs, since they aren't as accessible.

I did a New Game Plus run last night (AKA level 15 9 talismans). The rules I went with and that I think would be good are:

Shop manipulation allowed: You can set up Morgan and Lucain's shops by entering and leaving a dungeon until you get the items you want in the shop, which you can then buy on the character you make. No previous equipment: You start a run with just the base weapon and can't use any equipment already in your armory. Using an extra save file is recommended if you want to delete equipment so it isn't confusing. Quest skipping allowed: You can skip quests to gain skill points, but only when the timer has started. I wasn't sure about this one, but I think it actually adds some strategy with how much time you spend doing that and learning skills. Rune Purchasing Allowed: Of course, you can make a quick stop to Lucain and buy runes to use in your run. I didn't do this in my run, I forgot to, but there's nothing wrong with it. In a New Game run you might be able to get enough gold for just the D/B rune by the time it unlocks, but since New Game Plus is supposed to be faster with things like quest skipping, it's fine. NPCs allowed, but not needed. (Universal rule) Hacked equipment is obviously banned. (Universal rule) Online is banned. (Universal rule) - By this I mean you don't do a run while online, where other players can join you. If it's an online co-op run, that is a different story. But of course that would be for the co-op categories.

I started the timer as soon as I made a character and ended it as soon as the Ancient Dragon was defeated. I wanted it to end on the character ending screen myself, but this is more like a B Route run than a story run like New Game is (I do want it to end there on New Game).

I submitted my first speedrun attempt that will hopefully be posted here soon. I'll work on those other 6 categories I mentioned as well in case they get approved.

This is pretty close to what I was proposing. Been hard to find motivation to run lately, especially with PS4 Pro vs PS3. I have come to accept hardware discrepancies all over the place though. Maybe I'll dig in this next year for a potential run at RPGLB.