[section=Intro] This is a super basic outline of what to do for the Brawler Any% Normal route. Fleshing out will occur over time. My goal is to explain how to route level-ups and what generally to do in each area, not explain every fight and spawn. This is just a generic how-to.
This is the route the (now obsolete) WR from JAN 2017 takes. Changes may be forthcoming as the route improves. Fon now has a faster Brawler run using the same basic concepts but some higher risk tweaks to build and approach (like going for a swim in Chaos's puddle with nothing but Herbs to heal with...). The suggestions here can be considered the "Baby strats" version.
[section=Stat and Skill Build] Here's what your base stats and skills should look like at the end, to give you an idea of what we're going for. These figures are flexible to a degree. You can't go much lower on VIT and survive later fights, but you can balance between DEX and INT quite a bit. Experiment and find a comfort zone.
STR: 0 base points. You'll get a ton of STR from Power Wine later. DEX: Around 50 total DEX. This will be everything left over after meeting your VIT requirement. INT: Depends on preference. 0 is acceptable but you'll have to carefully manage your MP. If you're a skill spammer take up to 15. VIT: As much as you need to feel comfortable. I take my VIT to 35 to give me 105 HP. Some runners go higher.
Claw: One point wonder. Damage is not increased much by additional points so you'll just waste MP. Knife: Level 3 or 4 depending on what level you end at. Geometric damage, boss killer, especially with Guts. Guts: Level 3. Forcing a Guts proc is critical to the run and the higher level you can get the better. Knife becomes a better investment after Power Wine duping. Critical: Any points left over if you want. Tiny marginal gain.
The way you approach these points is important. The route is divided into three sections:
Pre-Power Wine: From start til the end of Boat. You'll want a point in Claw right away (your first or second skill point), then Guts to Level 3. Save remaining points for Knife. You should take stats that will get you to Boat safely. This is usually a tiny bit of VIT, an optional tiny bit of INT, and the rest into DEX. Once you get the Power Wine from the Boat side-quest you'll want to dupe it until you have 100-130 STR.
Post-Power Wine: Once your duping is done you should be able to take Knife straight to 2. You'll eventually want it at 3 or 4 depending on when you end the run. You should push your VIT up to your comfort point (35 for me) then put the rest into DEX. Once you have STR, you'll start using Claw for movement and Knife for boss killing.
The Final Push: You should gain a level in either Hotazhek or the Chaos Castle. That should be your final level and you should dump all remaining skill points into Critical, assuming you can't afford one more tier of Knife. All your stats should be DEX here because missing is a serious concern in the final leg of the game.
[section=Movement and Combat Mechanics] This is a hybrid Claw/Knife build. Both weapons have a specific use and you'll want a decent weapon of both types. Guts buffs both combat styles into the stratosphere.
Claw is your movement solution. Charging Claw to even just tier 1 will let you lunge forward through enemies, ignoring collision hulls and scattering enemies out of your way. If you don't need to kill an enemy, you should either dodge it, or charge Claw-1 and knock it out of your way. Early game it's also your combat initiator, letting you get in, do some solid damage, then start mashing your basic attack. When running around levels, you should constantly have Claw-1 charged and ready.
Knife is your boss and hardened enemy killer. Every charge level of Knife makes your hits stronger, and adds another hit to the combo, giving a double benefit. My general rule is "If one Claw flurry and 2-3 basics won't kill it, charge up a Knife combo instead". With your low MP, you have to very carefully budget how often you use Knife.
Guts: Triggers any time an attack drops you from above 50% max HP to below. You gain a fire aura and do increased damage for a period of time. The aura gives you a flat damage increase to every hit you land, making a Knife combo ridiculously strong and making Claw decent. You'll want Guts activated for every boss fight, and having it up when running around ain't bad either!
Guts has some quirks to it. First it can stack. If you heal above 50% and get knocked below again, you'll get "Double Guts", which doubles the attack buff. My record is getting six stacks of Guts; it's as silly as it sounds. Second, only actual enemy attacks can trigger Guts; not poison, or secondary procs from enemy attacks. Finally, Guts only resets and can be procced again if you either leave the current room, or heal with a consumable above 50% max HP. Regeneration won't reset the trigger. Complicated, no?
Your goal in each room of the game is to find the one "Gatekeeper" enemy that'll open the door forward and kill it. Usually you'll have to kill enemies before the gatekeeper to make it spawn. Knowing which enemies to kill, which to leave, and which to despawn by running them off-screen comes with routing and pratice. Needless to say, Claw letting you dive through enemies and Knife letting you murder stronger ones gives you great flexibility and effectively swapping between them is key to the run.
[section=Duping] The dupe glitch makes the run possible and lets you run through the game at level 16, with 100 HP and 10 MP. Pretty ridiculous, yeah? In a normal run you'll probably need to execute this glitch 150-200 times, sadly.
Duping involves tricking the game into throwing an item while consuming the item count from a different box in your quickbar. For example if your item quickbar contains [Power Wine] [Healing Drop] [Nothing] and you perform the dupe glitch on the Power Wine, you'll throw a Power Wine, but consume one from your Healing Drop count. If you perform it on the Healing Drop, you'll throw a Drop but consume one count from the empty slot, which is what you want.
You perform the glitch by charging up to throw the item, then releasing B and pressing R one frame later. The timing is super tricky and it will take practice, but once you have a rhythm for it, you can land it pretty consistently. You don't have to fully charge the throw to do it; in fact you really only need one "Tick" of the throw power gauge to throw, so you can dupe several times a second once you get the hang of it.
As for what you dupe: the most important dupe is the Power Wine you get from Boat. Next to that, you'll be duping a ton of healing items and some MP restores as well. I don't really schedule when I dupe; just when I notice I'm running low on something.
[section=Stage-specific Tips] I'm not going to map out everything you do in every stage, but here's the super important notes.
[big]Goblin Fort[/big] I dupe my starting Herb a few times right off the bat, you won't need a stronger healing item for awhile. Don't dupe too much though because you will be getting a better option soon. You may also optionally buy an MP restore and dupe it a few times too, if you're a heavy Claw-1 user.
You'll want a level of Guts and a level of Claw ASAP so your movement and boss fighting kit is together.
Also make sure you get the key out of the bookshelf in the Goblin miniboss fight. If you forget it you have to re-do this level.
Optionally if you want a cash influx you can get the Red Shoe and turn it in to the girl in the bedroom to the left of the shops in town after the chapter, but this isn't really necessary for the Brawler route.
The Goblin boss should go down easy but you can speed this up by intentionally taking hits to trigger Guts during his invincible phase; just make sure you don't die! Also worthy of note: while the goblin is spinning, if he hits you twice, he'll instantly cancel his spin and fall over. Taking two hits is faster than waiting for him to finish on his own if you can afford the heals.
[big]Graveyard[/big] The first Poison Skeleton you meet is why you may want a few points of VIT early. He can oneshot you at 30 max HP if he lands a solid hit. I usually start this level with 45 to be safe.
There is absolutely no point in rescuing the adventurer. He doesn't even give you anything. It just changes the post-game photo.
You're going to need quite a few Herbs for the boss. Your strategy here will be to let him hit you with his ground punch to proc Guts, then beat him up with Claw charges and basics. Be super careful not to get hit by BOTH his punch and a falling boulder or you'll die, guaranteed. If you think this is too risky it's not a huge time loss to do it damage-less.
After the level you'll want to check if you can afford a Healing Water and get one if you can.
[big]Wizari's Palace[/big] If you didn't get the key from Goblin Fort, you'll find out here. RIP Run if you forgot.
The dining room has the first majorly useful spawn manipulation that'll save a ton of time. It's too complex to explain here but Fon's runs showcase it well.
The staircase rooms are easily handled by Claw charging through enemies. All these rooms have the gatekeeper at the very end.
If you need money for Healing Water, you can run into the Princess's cell and through a wall to the left to get an item that sells for a few bucks. It's useless to Brawler so don't bother unless you're hurting for gold.
Speaking of, the stair room just before the boss has your first experience with Blast. The gatekeeper wizard that spawns right on the door casts it. It's a green tornado that moves slowly. If it hits you, you'll take 2-3 hits per second of damage that ignores armor and resistances. Getting stunlocked on a Blast tornado is instant death anywhere in the run. Death here loses about 20 seconds. In your early runs maybe you should just yolo in on him and if you die, no big deal.
By the time you reach Wizari you should have Guts-3. You should take a hit from a knight to proc Guts and just pound the painting in one or two flurries. Once Wizari spawns, you can take hits from her weird aura attack to stack Guts even more.
Upon returning to town, you must buy a Healing Water here if you plan to use them at all in the run. They become unavailable after the next stage. Also check for a good Knife if you haven't dropped one yet; Knife time is coming soonish. I usually end up with the Jambiya (Curved knife with a gold handle).
Also keep an eye out for any fire or holy Knife. They'll make Coldazhek and Demon Tower a snap. Finally, if you can afford it, buying 4 grenades now will save you time versus buying them next stage (where you have to go to the Arena to get them).
[big]Fairy Spring[/big] This is the only non-linear stage in the game. Some portals will take you in a direction you don't want to go. I recommend watching a run and mapping this out for yourself. Though after your first few runs you'll have it down.
Wanna proc Guts fast on the mini-boss? Run straight up and stand on the fire when they're talking. Free Guts, and one flurry should waste the Goblins.
You should start putting your points into Knife (or just saving them for later) around here, assuming you got your Claw to 1 and Guts to 3.
Clione is a jerk and this is where a lot of your early runs will take a death. Her attacks have a chance to proc a second holy damage burst, which will double the damage they do. Guts proccing isn't recommended here if you're unsure of your HP management skills. Also even if you have a good Knife, her waterfall attack will make Claw a better option thanks to its forward lunge.
From here, the item shop is replaced by kids selling more expensive and less effective items. Do not accidentally use your last Healing Water, or you'll be in for pain. That said, if you do, Cakes heal 100 HP and that should be fine for a low VIT run. If you're going high VIT and use your last Water it may be worth doing the sidequest to get the old shop back...
!!ALSO VERY IMPORTANT!! Before embarking on your next quest buy 4 grenades and two wings, talk to the old man in the courtyard, find his letter (just south of him) and talk to him again. This is mandatory to get the Power Wine. If you forget to do either of these you will have to do the Boat twice.
[big]Boat[/big] Your damage will start falling off hard here. Resist leveling Guts or Claw or taking STR points, it will get better soon. Vikings hit like a truck, so be cautious around them. Also beholders can proc fire or darkness procs depending on their color. Fire doubles the damage you took from the hit, darkness lowers your effective DEX and causes misses.
A lot of the pathways in the boat are narrow so you'll either be killing things or using Claw-1 to blast through them. Experience is solid here and this is the last place you'll be forced to take a lot of fights, so don't sweat it too much if it feels like you're progressing slowly.
When you get to the hallway with barrels blocking the path left, grenade them (you can dupe grenades but if you mess up, you lose the grenade, so don't do it with no backup) then throw the kid a wing and use the other one to return to town. If the kid isn't there, you didn't talk to the old man and will have to do Boat twice.
This quest will give you the Power Wine, which is a permanent +1 STR. We're going to dupe this, a lot. Also if you don't have a knife yet, go to the shop and buy one. It doesn't matter how weak it is, you want a knife now.
Return to the dungeon and start duping either here or in any safe spot in the next room. You will want anywhere from 100 to 130 STR when it's over (current WR goes to 130, I'm considering less -- More than 130 risks major problems with Clone later), so it'll take awhile. If your hands get tired, you can continue with less and do a second session in the next stage; I'll point out when. I recommend keeping one Wine on the floor at all times, just in case you mess up an input and drink too many. Also don't let more than 15 Wines pile up on the floor or item despawns may start.
Once your Brawler is completely hammered on Power Wine, continue to the next room to fight the Captain. You can make this easy by running to the bottom right of the room until he charges you, which will get him stuck on the wall and let you Knife combo him through the wall. It should only take 2-3 combos depending on how drunk you got.
The Squid will be a joke with your new Guts + Knife + STR combination. You will need to get a grasp of his rhythm for his tentacle slap, and dodge it if your HP is low, but otherwise just go to town on his face. If he fires an ink blob you can run in a giant oval around the deck of the ship to dodge it; probably should, Darkness sucks as a status effect when you already have low DEX.
Now that you have STR, you'll want to keep an eye out for armor. Buying valuing scrolls isn't worth the time but if something wearable drops, snag it. The solid end-game kit is full Ringmail.
[big]Desert[/big] Desert has a few rooms with multiple exits, but they all go to the same place and are pretty much equidistant from where you come in.
A few rooms in you'll have to kill a gatekeeper in the middle of a square 'room' of stones. This is a safe place to do a second Power Wine dupe if you don't have your full STR loadout yet. You can also do a third just before the boss, if duping really wears your hands out. You'll lose time on the midboss though if you do 3 dupe sessions.
The sphinxes here can cast Blast. Remeber Blast? Be careful.
Stone Golems are worth switching to Knife and comboing; their DEF is so high Claw doesn't do much to them.
The midboss is a weird orb snake thing. You have two options here: get a bead on where it's going and Knife spin as it passes, or Claw lunge into it. Which is faster depends on how the snake is moving.
Oswald (I call him Leon for some reason...) is a joke. He stands still and a few seconds later swings his sword. You could choose to just take the hit for Guts, but either way a few Knife spins will take him out.
[big]Coldazhek[/big] If you have a fire affinity weapon, use it. You'll do massive damage to everything in this dungeon.
There's a few rooms that are mazey linear paths and taking the wrong one is a huge waste of time. Familiarize yourself a bit with the rooms before you come here.
Most of the rooms you'll be able to just Claw lunge through enemies until you reach where the door should be, and the gatekeeper will spawn nearby. This should be a very quick dungeon as a result.
The Yeti midboss can be taken out with a few Knife spins. Then you have to rescue the Princess (again). There's a skip here involving chipping her ice prison down to low HP then using a bomb to finish it, and exiting the room the moment the bomb goes off so you skip the cutscene. Check Fon's Ninja Any% Advanced run to see how it works. I don't do it in my run, it was humanized from the TAS after.
The boss here is gimmicky. You have to destroy his three legs (not four, for some reason) and then damage his head. One of his legs is always despawned because it's on the other side of his body, concealed by his shell. If you do a specific series of movements, you can kill two legs in one spin, the third and his head in the next spin. My run has this, I think. Fon's Advanced run has an even faster version but you need a ton of damage to do it. Either way, don't even bother with Guts, it won't help.
You need something for armor at this point. Ideal is full Ring Mail, but if you still have no armor, just take anything.
Also you should have, at minimum, 35 VIT here if you're following my route. If you have less, you should try to score a level to shore that up.
[big]Demon Tower[/big] Another level of a lot of narrow passages. Whee. If you can't get into the tower, your didn't free the Princess or messed up cutscene skip and have to do Coldazhek again.
Sphinxes can cast Blast again. Most dangerous are the ones on the outdoor wall rooms because you have nowhere to run. If a Sphinx drops Blast in one of these rooms, just run backward to despawn the tornado. Getting hit on this narrow path is death.
Most enemies in this dungeon hit like a truck but have long, long windups. You can bob and weave with Claw pretty effectively.
When you reach the outdoor level with a red arrow to the left, you're about to enter the midboss fight. !!DO NOT ENTER THIS FIGHT WITH GUTS ACTIVATED!!, this is literally the only mistake in my route that is a guaranteed RIP run, cannot continue. Don't do it.
In this room is the Clone fight. The Clone snapshots your stats as you enter the room INCLUDING GUTS. If you walk in here with Guts, the Clone will one-shot you; guaranteed. It seems like the Clone also keeps the snapshot even if you die and come back, so if the Clone can one-shot you, he will always one-shot you. RIP. Without Guts and with 130 STR, the Clone should hit you for about 90, which is why you need 100+ HP. If you've managed your stats right, he shouldn't be able to kill you as long as you heal as soon as you're hit; and then you have Guts to pound him with!
The rest of the dungeon is the same as the first half.
The Dark Mistress is a simple fight. She only has three attacks:
She'll land and Scythe Sweep, letting you get either two full Knife spins out, or a spin and some basics. If she hits you though, she'll pick you up and you'll take enough damage to be killed. You can possibly escape death by mashing heals when she's about to drop you. You may land a tiny frame window to get the heal off before the final fatal blow is dealt.
Her second attack is a bombing run with white crescents. Just dodge. If you stand right in the middle-bottom of the arena these won't hit you.
Finally she does a feather storm. If you stand at the bottom middle you'll take one hit as you run up and can get some free hits in.
[big]Hotazhek[/big] Even though it seems like an ice weapon would help here, it doesn't. Don't worry about it.
Hotazhek is very... generic. Not much to say. It's Coldazhek without the elemental abuse potential. Just Claw lunge through everything until the end then beat up the gatekeeper.
If things have gone well, you should have your end-game gear. Ignore everything that drops unless it's a healing item (hey one less dupe) or you can tell by sight that it's an upgrade for a gear piece that's weak.
Gillespie 1, all he does is try to hit you with his stick. Back off when he runs in, then spin in his face when he's stuck in his attack animation.
Gillespie 2, he adds in Dark Breath. He'll weave between staff hit, then Breath, then hit, then Breath. Just dodge and counter.
The Fire Giant is a DPS race. He'll walk forward while attacking and, if you don't kill him in time, he'll force you into a lava pool. Fortunately we have the STR to handle this. The main thing to worry about his his punch, which will knock you all the way back into the lava. Get in, do a Knife spin, then back up before he can punch. While he's shooting fire, stay back enough to see it coming and dodge to either the top or bottom half of the path. You should have him down before he reaches the half way point of the path.
[big]Chaos Castle[/big] Last stage! A holy element weapon on your switch could help. Half the enemy are weak to it and half are resistant to it. Go figure.
Damage floors are weird and are only active for a few frames. The spike floors especially seem to only be active at their most deployed point. If you learn their pattern and when their hitboxes actually appear, you can save time with cycle skips.
The narrow north-south hallways always end in rooms with dangerous fights. Five Dark Breath shooting demons is the most dangerous because they tend to all fire at once and taking all 5 shots is deadly. You're not a coward if you clear slowly up to the end of these halls.
The big green and purple golem things are stationary and you can just run around them. You CAN knock them back with Claw lunges though.
Gillespie 3 is like 2, except he also weaves in summoning monsters. Depending on what he summons, you may be able to ignore the monsters and just focus him down. Ranged attacks of any kind, Angel-Priests, and anything that can paralyze you are dangerous. Sidenote: Gil seems to be invincible while in his summoning animation.
The egg in the next room will be a boss fight in Advanced if you don't smash it. If you only care about Any% Normal, leave it.
In the boss fight against Deatharte, be wary that he always casts Blast after a charge. The tornado will spawn at the tip of his halberd, in front of his forelegs. If you're feeling cheeky you can stand in it and spam heal to stack Guts up to 6-8 stacks, but I don't recommend it. As for his charges, if you're south of him and don't move, he'll abort the charge before you get hit; I don't know if a bug or what.
The safest strat for Deatharte though is to run in a figure-8 around the room, so you're moving away from him as he charges, can get a Knife spin in, then are moving away in the other direction by the time he fires Blast. My current PB video showcases this safe strat well.
Once he's down, dupe healing items here. This is your last chance for the rest of the game.
[big]Epilogue[/big] Progressing the story is annoying. You have to do the cutscene, then talk to the bartender, then go back to the throne room, talk to the orb, and come back and talk to the barkeep again. Once you do that, you proceed to Chaos.
Fortunately Brawler is one of the classes that can outrun Chaos. You could facetank his puddle-mode with healing items if you wanted but it's risky. All of Chaos's attacks can proc any additional effect. Double damage from holy or fire, blindness from dark, paralyze, anything. Taking a hit is rolling the dice.
Chaos is predictable. He'll puddle, chase you, then rise up and summon a monster, puddle and chase, reform, fire a Dark Breath, and repeat. He becomes invincible while summoning but otherwise he's wide open to attacks between puddle phases.
Puddle moves slightly, slightly faster than you do. If moving diagonally it doesn't do so hot tracking you, so leading it on a chase diagonally across the arena will keep you safe. If you go diagonal from corner to corner of the arena, then cut straight across when it reaches you, you should avoid all damage.
Time stops as soon as the dialog box pops up after the final hit. It's a 2 hour run so don't worry if you split a second late.
Traditionally, you do the end-game photo as part of the run if you PB. This is so we can compare to J-RTA if anyone comes in with a J-RTA time, and so you can do something silly with the photo itself ;) This isn't required to get a time on the leaderboard, it's just silly fun.
