This is based on what I do for my attempts and is very much open to any sort of change or optimization as each person sees fit. Basically use this as a guideline for what you'd like to do and go from there.

After clearing the tutorial Lizard Men fight, place the Sprohm icon next to Giza Plains. This can be any of the three directions, it's not important which.

Purchase the next mission, Herb Picking. Purchase: Silver Sword x2, Rod x1, Thorn Bow x1, Rising Sun x1. Sell: Bandages x4 Change the Nu Mou to a Black Mage, equip everyone but Montblanc with new weapons that were purchased. Equip the item ability on Marche.

Herb Picking

• Place the soldier in the bottom location so he can get a first turn kill on the Fairy when he moves

After the mission, place Lutia Pass on any space directly next to Sprohm. Again, exact location doesn't matter, just so long as it's next to the town. This is so Knives will be against the law during the next mission, rendering two enemies completely useless in terms of damage.

Purchase the next mission, Thesis Hunt.

Thesis Hunt

• Make sure to kill the White Mage before he heals his party too much, otherwise standard battle

After Thesis Hunt, place Nubswood wherever you'd like. Head to either Cyril or Sprohm. Purchase the next mission, The Cheetahs.

The Cheetahs

• I'd recommend deploying the two Black Mages and the Soldier, though in this battle a lot of the main damage will come from the guest characters.
• Black mages are good for area, ranged damage. Kind of useful to keep them from getting hurt too badly.
• Be wary of the White Monk and his Air Render ability, it will hurt A LOT

After the mission, place Eluut Sands wherever most convenient. Purchase the next mission, Desert Peril. Purchase with remaining Gil: Gauntlets or Battle Boots.

• Gauntlets allow for easier killing while Battle Boots add in extra defense. I usually put these on my Soldiers or Monk. If any valuable drops have been obtained, those can be sold to buy a couple more of these accessories as they are kind of costly.

Desert Peril

• Entering this battle on the 15th of the month will make lightning against the law rendering the flan completely helpless
• It's very easy to die here, try to focus one panther at a time with the melee characters before the antlion and blue panther get into the fray
• Black Mages are good at dealing area damage as always. Archer can immobilize if needed to keep an enemy or two from getting close

After the mission, place Ulei River wherever most convenient. Purchase the next mission, Twisted Flow. Purchase with remaining Gil: Hi-Potion x10, Phoenix Down x10

• If some money is leftover, more Battle Boots or even hats and armor can be purchased and equipped for extra safety

Twisted Flow

• Roulette. It will either happen or not. It's good if it takes out an enemy or two, but be prepared to revive a lot during this fight.
• Focus the additional enemies before working on Famfrit. It's impossible to bring him down while ignoring them
• Use Marche or the other Soldier to Speedbreak Famfrit at some point, lowering his turn count significantly
• Once additional enemies are dead, work Famfrit's health down slowly by attacking with the Soldiers and Monk. All other units deal terrible damage and aren't worth the time
• Mages and Archer can go on potion duty, healing the fighters that get damaged by counter and other attacks

Split when Famfrit dies and you're done!

Thanks for the notes! I tried to implement some little improvements and I came up with the idea to use a thief instead of the soldier. He can equip the Jambiya then which has 31 akt instead of the silver sword which has "only" 30. Might be useful, have to do more attempts on this ;-) Also an idea from Polminitui: buy a CharBow for Viera instead of ThornBow. Makes you able to blind enemies on ThesisHunt and DesertPeril. Might also be useful, I'm going on to check on these. My updated notes -> http://pastebin.com/uixrTUBH Will change them a lot in the future ;-P

I'm not too sure on the Jambiya. The Silver Sword has added evasion, I believe one point more than the Jambiya, but also allows for use with a shield. Even though a Thief should be able to evade naturally, I feel like it might die easier.

The Char Bow is a good idea since the Viera isn't really needed too much for damage. Immobilize is a good temporary solution, but blind will last much longer. If used on Famfrit himself, that would pretty much guarantee never being hit by Counter or his standard attacks.

As for buying the two pairs of Battle Boots right away, that's a waste of precious time. They aren't needed until the Cheetahs and can even be held off until Desert Peril to cut down on extra shopping trips.

Still feel free to try out these ideas though! I like the theorycrafting going on. That's how solid routes get made.

Even though I have very very little practice on the run (1 run is just not really enough to point out anything...) I feel that double soldier is actually more interesting. As it was said, holding a shield garantees you to not get killed THAT fast and let's you tank a bit more damage. The boots are definitely to be taken before cheetahs/desrt if not possible before. It pains me to say that a very biig part of this game is chance dependent. You can have a perfect Desrt fight but failed miserably your Cheetahs, or eve the herbs... In the Herbs mission I missed about 5 or 6 hits which indenyably made me lose a lot of time. Tht is where Char bow comes in handy. It puts blind on the ennemy AND gives your more accuracy against these blinded ennemies. Though it has a 30% hit chance on Famfrit, I think it is more usefull than just doing nothing (except healing of course!) with the archer which is otherwise VERY useless... I think a bit of luck in looting different items can also change, not the route, but the actual possibility of going faster by making more damage (ex: thunder/fire/ice rod can give more mag pow to MontBlanc and thus hit harder). I'm realy excited to go on and make this run go as far and as quick as possible!

Placing the the map:

• Sprohm --> above Giza
• Lutia --> right of Sprohm
• Nubswood --> above Sprohm
• Desert --> right of first town (dunno how it's called, I play french version!)
• River --> right of Lutia The laws alllow you to nearly do what you want! (no Knives in Lutia, no Thunder in Desert...) Long post, hope it's usefull!

Ah yes! Final thing! Is running on a NTSC and not PAL version faster or is it just the same? Because if US version is faster, I'll go for that one and not european!

Sadly, FFTA at it's core is an almost entirely RNG-dependent game. Every action, every outcome, is decided on a frame by frame basis. Manipulating in real time can only be done via save and reload, and only works for a few things specifically. Even then, it's not so much manipulation as it is hit a different frame, hope for a better result.

The loot does make the run interesting, I agree. Firewheel and Sleet Rods are super useful for the standard fights, but not as much for killing Famfrit. Kaiser Knuckles are still one of the best items to get early on for Air Render since it does more than a normal attack and has a range to it. Again, due to the way RNG is handled, they're impossible to manipulate without wasting way more time than they'd save in this category.

I agree with the map setup as well, except for Eluut Sands. I'd suggest putting that a few spaces away from the rest of the group since there's always a bit of travelling to get it to the 15th before the mission. By leaving some space, it lessens the chance of a clan wandering in the way or onto that spot. I've always just gotten so used to the Any% setup I keep forgetting to change that.

I'm fairly certain versions are the same for running, with the exception of JP and it's different (and bullshit) laws. As for gameplay speed though, all versions run that same.

Hi Everyone. Not entirely sure if people still run this game. I have been a casual player on and off for a few years now. I just picked this game back up and I have become a huge fan of speed running, I would like to try speed running for the first time and so I am going to be starting with one of my favourite games of all time - FFTA.

Any Tips for a complete newbie about this game?