here are your maps : upright - http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/SOS-LadyCrithania(Upright).png upside down w/ NPC locations - http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/SuperNES/SOS-LadyCrithania(Capsized).png ¤taken from the awesome website that is www.vgmaps.com/atlas/
here are some details about endings (nothing ¤really¤ important) : http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/578932-sos/faqs/43213
this walkthrough has a considerable amount of relevant info : http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/578932-sos/faqs/18159
What you need to know is that, to trigger the best ending, characters need to have amassed 25 points for rescues which include certain key characters to their own storylines.
Capris Wisher : Bring Amy and at least 25 points of passengers. Redwin Gardner : Exit with Harry, Jack, Stella, and at least 25 points of passengers. Jeffrey Howell : Leave with Adela and at least 25 points of passengers. Luke Heinz : Leave with Captain Townsend and at least 25 points of passengers.
here's a points table taken from the walkthrough : ''LIST SORTED BY MOST POINTS TO LEAST:
· Marie/Mary Maxwell - Child - Anyone - 8 PTS
· Katherine Clayton - Best Friend - Anyone - 6 PTS · Katherine Meibrus - Dancer - Anyone - 6 PTS · Anna Tamaro - Nurse - Anyone - 6 PTS
· Jack Hamilton - Nephew/Kid - Anyone - 5 PTS · Luke Heinz - Player Char. - Anyone - 5 PTS · Jeffery Howell - Player Char. - Luke & Redwin - 5 PTS · Amy Markarson - Sister - Capris - 5 or 4 PTS
· Stella Adams - Girl - Redwin - (Harry + Stella = 8 prolly) 4 PTS · Harry Adams - Boy - Redwin - (Harry + Stella = 8, Prolly) 4 PTS · Adela Howell - Wife - Anyone - 4 PTS · Francoise Maxwell - Mom - Anyone - 4 PTS · Stacy Smith - Daughter - Anyone - 4 PTS · Pamela Smith - Mother - Anyone - 4 PTS · Angelica Snow - Barber - Anyone - 4 PTS
· Michael Burnings - Violinist - Anyone - 3 PTS · Frank Coney - Guy - Anyone - 3 PTS · Richard Cunningham - Caterer - Anyone - 3 PTS · Alan Gebres - Crewman - All - 3 PTS · Tender Johnston - Gambler - Redwin or Jeffery - 3 PTS · Kelly Nelson - Friend - Jeffrey - 3 PTS · Miller Strisers - Panicking Parent - All but Capris - 3 PTS
· Henry Abrahams - Engineer - Redwin & Jeffery w/ 3 Survivors - 2 PTS · Jimmy Akers - Crewman - Anyone - 2 PTS · Sargeant John Rattler - Bad Comic - Capris - 2 PTS · Cooper Smith - Father - Anyone - 2 PTS (Surprised? ;) · Ismay Carl Townsend - "Captain" - Luke - 2 PTS
---- Total PTS found, then: 100 (assuming max from Amy)''
At this point, with little-to-no thought about routing this category, any of the characters could be a viable pick... although, I really hope Redwin's route isn't the fastest because the room Jack is in fkn sucks! You can get stuck in that room for a very long time.
Another interesting thing to point out: You'll notice that some of the rescues aren't available until 33 minutes (IGT) into the game. I estimate the run itself will take under 27min to reach the boiler room, so there's a rather large possibility that death abuse will be useful.
If I had to make a WILD assumption here, I'd say randomness will be extremely painful (probably also hilarious) to deal with. There will probably be a lot of on-the-fly adaptation required, and I wouldn't be surprised if the fastest route depended entirely on what patterns the game gives us. NPC behavior could also cause problems.
I'll be posting here some more as we come up with route ideas and strategies.
Here are my day 1 observations:
Keeping hold of the crew is really tricky, gotta find a way to keep it tight ! (Although, according to SoreThumb's walkthrough, under '0009 - Secrets?', you can leave your rescue buddies behind and they'll meet you when you enter the boiler room. Did not have time to test this but it's definately gonna be a huge timesave if true.) Mechanics behind how the NPCs follow your lead is enigmatic, I can't quite figure out what makes you lose people exactly. Distance, of course, but there's probably more to it.
Jeffrey seems to be a good character choice. Adela's dialogue with him is very short (great marriage) and you can make it to where you wanna begin from his initial position. The idea of this route is to avoid situations where NPCs can't follow you. I figure it's easier to start high up and work your way down to door 35 :
- Katherine and Angelica (10pts) dialogue is kinda long but starting the route here is probably not a bad idea.
- Adela (4pts) she's in the door right below
- Kelly (3pts) another floor below, to the left. Idk why but this guy spawn only half the time.
- Frank (3pts) Anna takes a pretty long time to convince, but if Kelly is M.I.A., you're gonna want to get her (+6pts)
- Francoise (4pts) i'm not certain this is faster than convincing Anna but I'll say it is until I can prove otherwise.
- Henry (2pts)¤
¤If you can actually leave your partners behind and they join you in the boiler room, that means you may be able to skip the scene with the head-engineer at the entrance of the boiler room. In that case, grabbing Anna is definately faster because you won't have enough points with only Francoise.
This seems like a reasonable route to start with. The NPCs can follow you throughout most of that route without you having to pray for a good pattern. My estimate for a good run with this route would be somewhere around 22min, if you need to guide your rescue partners. If you can leave them behind, this may be achievable in under 15min.
Got a few more things to report
Henry (and the head-engineer) can be skipped, but not the way I expected originally ! Actually it's the same way you can get Kelly to not appear : When the ship is tilted, certain NPCs just aren't there ! In Kelly's case, I'd confirm this is absolutely true. As for Henry, he has spawned one time when the ship was tilted, and I can't quite figure out why. What happened was he fell from the door like normally, but somehow knocked himself out. The fact he spawned caused my party to stop moving and the run was dead because Henry was KO so I couldn't talk to him to get my party back. This game is too good !
So, for example, if you leave Adela's room and the ship is tilted, you can walk down to the room just to the left of where Kelly is supposed to be, wait for the ship to get back to normal, then exit the room. Kelly should be talking to you right as you go through the door.
Knowing Henry can be skipped pretty much meant that Francoise will be left behind for Anna, who's room you already visit to pick Frank up. I also found shortcuts in the Anna dialogue so it's really not that long.
Speaking of which, I haven't looked too much into optimizing the dialogues -- I did try out a few different things in the dialogues I get in this route, but haven't experimented with much outside of it. In other words, the route I'm using could turn out to be bad because I'm seeing too much text, and maybe I'm missing out on some faster points. Again, my main focus is creating a route that is achievable more than just in theory. I'll be revisiting route options shortly once I figure out more about NPC behavior (definately something to prioritize right now).
Also, my estimates were off (again). I was gonna finish a mediocre run in 21:3x, but Frank chose to leap off the ledge in the elevator room ¯_(ツ)_/¯ We can definately do this under 20min.
Btw, If anybody is reading this, thinking ''scattered thoughts and misleading opinions'', then I'm sorry ! haha I'm writing up a guide and will try to publish it sometime soon. I should also mention that this is pretty much my first experience in routing a speedrun, so please feel free to question everything :> ty
I just had something funny and possibly useful happen and I thought I'd mention it. I was climbing in the room before the conduit section and half my party chose to be dummies.
^ In this picture you can see Kate going full dummy and climbing past the gather point, and poor Adela blindly following her. Angelica was just about to climb up there too.
^ To my surprise, the people who kept climbing were already in the room waiting for me. :0
On this frame you can kinda see that Adela was still in climbing state, appearing from under the floor. Before walking over and placing a gather point, Angelica was just standing, and Kate was jumping repeatedly. All 3 NPCs were superposed in traditional SOS fashion, like when you leave them behind the last transition and return to them.
I should mention that I went through that transition too early and I lost one of the dudes, so there's a chance that was a condition to getting the warp. In that case, this glitch is useless. If not, then maybe this can be figured out and used throughout the run. I really don't have much of a lead as to why the NPCs chose to climb up there and, most importantly, how the warp happened. But it is pretty interesting :>
