FFCCRE General FAQ Please come join the discord! It’s the best way to get in contact with us and has lots of resources. Plus, it’s a real good time in here. https://discord.gg/YRRquyF I hope this helps answer most of the obvious questions!
#What console should I play on? -Whatever you have should be able to be decently competitive now that we have swapped over to using "Load Removed Time". When we compared based solely on real-time alone PS5 > Switch > PS4 came down almost exclusively to loading time differences (which could be quite massive, about 10 minutes from best to worst case.)
-Strictly speaking however: PS4/PS5 will likely be the fastest by a slim margin over Switch. This is simply due to Switch dropping frames in a few places. Android/iOS lose a couple extra minutes in full-game runs over consoles due to not being able to skip the cutscenes that play when you sail on a boat across the river/ocean. Otherwise, they work perfectly fine (though can be slightly more annoying to retime without loads if one ever taps on the loading screen's text. Also the control scheme could be argued to be objectively inferior in some scenarios.)
#How do you time a run without loads? -We use an open-source program called Unload to remove loading times from runs after they have been submitted to the leaderboard.
-There also now exists a program that can be used with LiveSplit to get a very accurate estimate of the loadless time for runners. Setup for it can be found here.
-As stated in the "Game rules" for this game, a runner does not need to remove loading times from their own runs prior to submission as a moderator can/will do it for them. However, more information on the entire process can be found there.
#Which tribe should I play? -This primarily comes down to personal preference and the category being run.
-Selkie was the most popular in the original game due to their high STR, versatile defend, and strong focus attacks. For No DLC runs especially, this all still applies. In the original, female Selkie is able to execute a one-cycle memiroa more efficiently than male which saves a lot of time at the end of the game. () This strategy can likely be emulated by using the menu to pause buffer in the Remaster instead of the pause button (which doesn’t exist here). With DLC weapons Selkie has the most starting STR in the game, and is a top tier choice for categories allowing DLC. For Co-op individual level speedruns having a Selkie is basically mandatory due to being able to buff the party with Hastega.
-Clavat is similarly viable in No DLC categories as it was in the original game- it is unremarkable compared to Selkie and Lilty due to having lower STR and no useful unique benefits. However, with DLC Clavat is easily a top tier tribe due to having the 2nd highest starting STR in the game and having an easier time of skipping armor due to having the highest starting DEF. It’s also worth noting that male clavat’s 3-hit combo attack finishes several frames faster than all other tribes meaning that at equal STR values the male Clavat will do the most DPS if uninterrupted. In individual level speedruns this could become especially noteworthy as with max equipment Clavat ascends to having the most STR and fastest attacks in the game.
-Yuke is the slowest tribe for Any% No DLC and All Dungeons No DLC runs since its design is heavily focused on magic casting (which is slow) and it has by far the worst STR. If you want to play as Yuke in these categories, but don't want to be the definitive worst option you could consider looking at the Misc. "Magic-Users" category (more info on that later in FAQ). With DLC Yuke is not bad at meleeing- it just has poor focus attacks. Yuke gets very interesting in Post-Game though. With the Wiseman’s Soul spellcasting accessory, it does damage unmatched by any other tribe in the game and is likely the best tribe for completing solo IL speedruns as well as probably being the best tribe to run the Post-Game Dungeons category with if you prioritize getting the Wiseman’s Soul ASAP.
-Lilty has the highest starting STR (without DLC) in the game and in theory is the fastest Any% No DLC tribe due to this. However, it lacks the Selkie’s powerful defend and has mediocre focus attacks particularly on its master’s weapon. For Lilty it’s actually possible to do a route which skips the master’s weapon with relative ease though, which reduces RNG from large parts of the run (this may not be the theoretical best strategy, but it can make the run more consistent and might be realistically very viable and hard to beat). With DLC Lilty is relegated to being the odd one out as its DLC weapons do not give as much STR as Selkie, Clavat, and even Yuke. Even with this, it is still relatively viable due to how absurd its starting STR still is with DLC. It is worth testing how well their post-game weapons were buffed in a recent patch for IL speedruns, but expect them to be the worst choice here in most compositions.
#How do stats work in this game? -Counterintuitively all stats only actually increase your power every 5 stat you get. (Example: you deal the same damage with 21 STR as you do with 24, but hitting 25 STR causes you to enter the next bracket of damage.) For speedruns: don’t eat meat/fish (+2 STR) or fruit (+2 MAG) unless you need it to heal or if it will allow you to hit the next damage bracket (especially make sure to pay attention to this for bosses), otherwise it’s just a waste of the resource.
-Note that if coming from the original game food buffs work how they do in the US and PAL versions (i.e., they need to be reapplied between loading zones).
#How do DLC speedruns work? What do I have to buy? -DLC Weapons are the core of what makes the DLC speedruns so fast. They give immensely overpowered amounts of STR stat and can be acquired at the beginning of a run. This completely trivializes much of the game (particularly early on) while eliminating much of the gil/drop RNG from later in the run. With DLC weapons Selkies start with 52 STR, Clavats with 51 STR, Yukes with 50 STR, and Lilties with 48 STR.
-Which weapon set you should purchase depends on the tribe you intend to play. Selkie and Lilty generally will prefer their ‘Relic Weapon’ while Clavat will prefer their ‘Moogle Weapon’ due to the focus attacks each give (though Clavat's relic weapon is not terrible either, could be better for certain things even). Yuke’s choice doesn’t matter much at all since they rarely if ever focus attack.
-There are also DLC accessories. On paper the wallet accessory that increases the amount of gil that drops sounds good, but it is actually quite useless (maybe ~10% increase to gil dropped) due to not affecting the gil your father gives you and due to most of the gil required during the run coming from selling items- not raw gil. The recovery accessory is worth purchasing however as it can save you from needing to heal in several scenarios- the rate at which your health regenerates is massively increased.
-Cosmetic skins affect nothing gameplay-wise and cost time to put on mid-run so they are not explicitly banned. This could change if they are found to somehow give an advantage.
Note that buying “extra” DLC will lose you about 1.5 second each since the storage moogle will always give you all DLC weapons and accessories that you’ve purchased. Optimally you should only purchase 1 set of weapons and 1 accessory, but buying both weapon sets and accepting the miniscule time loss doesn't really matter if you want to use either for different things. Just don’t buy the wallet, it’s pretty useless.
#What is Any% Unrestricted? Why is there no Unrestricted version of other categories? -Any% Unrestricted is basically just Any% DLC that also allows for the runner to create online lobbies with the intent to play through dungeons by themselves in multiplayer mode as this can allow for you to “teleport” across the map. This is mainly useful to skip all the travel and cutscenes from Lynari Desert to Veo Lu Sluice 2 and then to Mount Vellenge which saves several minutes of time. The disadvantage to using this strategy is having to complete dungeons without Mog and with buffed enemy/boss HP. The time saved by doing the teleportation more than makes up for this though in several places, though actually completing the dungeons can be very tricky!
-The reason this is currently only allowed in this one “true” Any% category (and also why it isn't listed as the default category even though it is technically fastest) is because the use of a feature that requires an online connection, subscription, and for the game’s multiplayer servers to be up means that this category likely has a limited lifespan on it. (It is expected this game’s multiplayer servers won’t last forever, as opposed to something like normal DLC categories which will always be able to be run on your device if you purchased the DLC at some point.) It is also controversial whether using online multiplayer is really fair game or not at all. For these reasons, we have decided to currently only allow for this technique to be done for Any% since it is the technical fastest way for someone to beat the game (as long as nobody joins their multiplayer lobby to assist them). There could be an Unrestricted version of every singleplayer category, but it is for now not a direction we want to go in due to issues noted surrounding a category like this.
#Why is there no 100%/all trophies? Why is there no All Cycles? -Basically there is no 100% because there is no current desire for it. It would be an incredibly long and immensely RNG-heavy speedrun that nobody has shown any genuine interest in running. It's no different really than the same issues with doing it in the original game (which is explained in the original game's FAQ forum post). For the Remaster we thought it would be a better idea to include a post-game category as it's much more feasible to run, isn't reliant on ludicrous amounts of luck, and still scratches the itch of seeing a large breadth of the game's content.
As for why there is no All Cycles even though it exists in the original game- we just felt Post-Game Dungeons is what made sense to go with for the Remaster as essentially a spiritual successor (of sorts) to All Cycles. We initially felt that the "spirit" of All Cycles was to basically require the player to do every dungeon on its hardest difficulty- which just so happened to necessitate doing every cycle of every dungeon in the original game. In the Remaster with the inclusion of hard modes the third cycle is essentially superseded by the post-game dungeon variants in terms of difficulty and these post-game dungeons do not require the third cycle to be completed before being accessed. Thus, we decided an appropriate definition was to keep the original intent of "complete each dungeon on its highest difficulty" which for the Remaster means just completing it on hard-mode with the cycles completed beforehand being irrelevant. From a different perspective though some may disagree with this approach and instead wish that we had gone with a "complete every version of every dungeon" definition which is a very valid opinion, though that'd also be a longer category.
It is of course possible All Cycles could return in the future if it has some demand. We would need to think about how to implement it though. Would we exclude the post-game and have it be every cycle then Mount Vellenge? Or would we make a massive dungeon crawling category of All Cycles + Post-Game Dungeons combined? We'll have to cross that bridge if/when we get to it.
#Are there any game version differences? -For singleplayer speedruns there is nothing of note outside the different languages (Japanese version is about 4 seconds faster across a full run due to text speed). There are three different versions of the game corresponding to different regions: Japan, The Americas, and Europe/AUS/NZ/etc. Switch and PS4 physical versions exist only for the Japanese version. Load times have not been tested for physical versions- they may differ slightly for Switch running off the cartridge, but I expect PS4 is unaffected since the disk is only used for the initial download and then verification.
-All three versions can be purchased online via the platform’s corresponding store, but note that each of the three versions is distinct and you cannot play co-op with people that own a different version. It is possible to have multiple copies of the game on one system if you purchase the game multiple times in different regions’ online stores (for example, I own both the US and PAL versions on my Switch. I purchased the PAL version from the Australian eshop and am able to play with people in France/Germany from my location in the US. They have distinct save files and connect to different people online, but are functionally the same game otherwise). If you live in certain regions you may not be able to purchase the game (likely if it doesn't support your region's native language), the only thing you can do to get around this is either import the Japanese physical edition or find a way to both access and use appropriate currency for a different region's online store (typically by buying online gift card codes in the appropriate currency).
-A final note on the languages available in each version: the Japanese version has different voiceovers and text is locked to the Japanese language. US/PAL versions can switch from English/Spanish/French/German/Italian text and are stuck with English voice acting. Since there is no greater than 4 seconds of time loss across an entire run due to it, play your preferred language as it is particularly helpful in the memory quiz at the end of the game among other things.
#Are there any glitches? -No useful ones that we know of currently. Sub-categories are split based on the use of DLC/online content and the pure base game.
#What the heck is Co-op NG+? -tl;dr We can have a relatively cohesive co-op speedrun experience that is somewhat similar to the original game by designating one player as the host for all dungeons and requiring them to start on a new file, but allowing all other players to make new characters on already-progressed files.
-Due to how Co-op works in the Remaster it is impossible to do a fresh new game co-op speedrun similar to how the original FFCC does it. If two people make a new save file and want to progress together it is in essence impossible to do so without having to repeat every single dungeon two times (or three, or four with more players). This is because players cannot access Mount Vellenge via multiplayer until they have unlocked the unknown element (year 5 at the earliest). It would be unreasonable and completely undesirable if we were to require all co-op players start from a new file for this reason- as getting everyone progressed to year 5 doubles, triples, or even quadruples the number of dungeons you have to do to get there in order to keep everyone “caught up”. Then you would all have to change your element in Lynari Desert and… it just wouldn’t really work…
-Thus, we developed a solution with the help of the Japanese co-op runners from the original game: Co-Op NG+ (New Game+)! The goal of this category is to emulate the original co-op experience as much as possible. The person who times the run and who progresses through the game is the “host” player who makes each lobby and starts from a new file. Each dungeon they simply invite their friends “guests” to come along with the only caveat being the guests start on a file at year 5+ (so they can access Mount Vellenge without needing to ever host a dungeon themselves). The guests, of course, do not use progressed characters, but instead create new characters for the run so that they can start off fresh and grow in power with the host as the host progresses through the game (so basically, guests play on a NG+ file). This allows for a “normal” Any% or All Dungeons speedrun to be done with 2-4 players without having to repeat any dungeons. (Though there is one point where the host has to enter a dungeon solo to change their element to ??? in order to access Mount Vellenge).
-Read more about this category’s rules on the leaderboard and maybe watch some of the runs! It’s very fun, and I promise it isn’t as complicated as it looks at a glance- we just had no other better way to get co-op speedruns to work for this game. And no, there are no plans for there to be a Co-op Post-Game Dungeons full game speedrun (especially since you can't play every dungeon's hard mode online every day of the week except on the weekends because... reasons?).
#What is Magic-Users? -Magic-Users is a Misc. category that exists primarily to encourage runners to try out a playstyle that would otherwise be unviable in normal speedruns of Any% and All Dungeons (No DLC). It's very arbitrary, as is the nature of Misc. categories, but demand was there in the original game for something like it to exist so we came up with the category as a way to make everyone as happy as possible and ported it over to this game. The main restrictions added to all runs is you cannot have 30 or more STR (which makes going into a magic-focused build the fastest), and you cannot use DLC weapons (obviously) or accessories (just because No DLC was a better standard to have for the category- similar to how the original game's Magic-Users is kept Glitchless). This has the added effect of giving Yuke some incentive to be played in these categories as on the main leaderboard it's at a significant disadvantage to other tribes regardless of what artifacts you take.
#Closing misc. notes -There’s no way to manipulate random encounters, pattern drops (master’s weapon, etc.), materials (iron, mythril, etc.).
-General Artifact priority for most categories is going to be STR > HP > DEF/Command Slots as STR is king for making you go faster and HP is essential for not getting 1-hit later in the game. Specific guides/routes will outline exactly what you take where, but keep this in mind generally speaking.
