Oh yeah, I've heard about that. It's not what I would expect to be the cause, but I'm really curious if there are any differences there.

Hmm, there's 8 card slots so, 9 up presses should be the first card slot (the Wind Card x1). If it's glitching on that one then maybe try some different quantities, these are all glitched prices and glitched descriptions. After that point is the "spirits not unlocked", which I think would be binary 1110 (14) in chapter 1.

Yeah, selling a card can be really hard to get rid of. I can sometimes discard it to fix that, but scrolling down to it can take upwards of a minute so I doubt it would save time.

If you wanna test prices quickly on different chapters, I recommend using the stage select codes.

I don't suppose you can narrow down which line is causing the freeze? Can you consistently sell the line before that one every time?

Hmm, without resorting to hexadecimal... how many up presses is it after being unable to sell the 2nd item slot? I want to check if a specific value is causing it.

Alright, I thought Decapent was on console. I don't have a setup myself, the closest I've got is 3ds and SNES Mini for testing. I can ask my friends on Discord if anyone has it.

The reason I don't think it's the save files, is because the shop is reading RAM for the "item" and ROM for the "item description". At no point should it be touching SRAM. Most likely it's an issue with accessing uninitialized data being different between console and emulators. Like the unused enemy EXP being hexadecimal $5555 telling the game to access the 21845th item description.

Out of curiosity, does it still freeze if you haven't recruited Teefa and if Sylph isn't present?

You're on console, right Iceplug? I wonder if a different release of the SNES could cause it. I've seen it work on emulator and the SNES mini.

If I counted right, it looks like it's getting hung up on Sylph's 100 max HP. Could you recall Sylph and see if that works for you?

That's really weird, not sure why it's doing that for you. I'd like to help troubleshoot it when I'm off work, in the meantime you should save before the shopping so you don't have to wait through the intro. Might wanna try other card combinations, maybe Wind 1/Earth 1/Water 1, or Wind 1. The values bugging out look to be around max MP/max HP which shouldn't be any different, so I'm a bit puzzled.

I really doubt there's a separate release of the game, though...

Yeah, the cards and medicine should only be a few thousand though. You could still blow the rest on more Intelligence. No idea what the optimal stats would be, though.

I mean, you had like 32,000 GP left over in that run.

Yep, that's my mod! I'm that Autumn.

I did get some intelligence honey, but it wasn't enough so I went back and sold Darwin and Teefa's equipment for agility honey. The level ups are the same, but there's other differences that make SOR a lot easier. There's EXP rollover so you can gain multiple levels in one fight, honeys raise 4 points instead of 3, Fog cards are 30 instead of 100... it's a more accessible experience. Although, the shield bug is fixed so you'll actually need a shield or you'll have 0 magic defense.

Unrelated, I recently finished a Low Level Game in my mod Arcana: Seal of Rimsala. Anyway, instead of spending all my money on Intelligence, I spent most of it on Alertness. On the trip up in Chapter 5, Rooks got many first turns which made running much easier. And in the fight against Rimsala, he got crits and extra turns that helped out a lot too.

Final fight is unchanged from vanilla (besides the translation), same final equipment and same final boss stats, I'm just showing off how many turns I got. This is one of the reasons I was suggesting to raise Alertness too.

By the way, I found another glitch. Not the game-breaking kind, though!

In the fight after Darah & Barah, if you get an encounter with a single enemy, it'll be unrunnable. That's because the game only overwrote the first enemy slot, so the second slot (Barah) still says there's a boss present.

Yeah, it sounds like you're getting stuck on the top of the card inventory. Maybe you haven't bought any cards?

Well, I found a variable that determines the battle/healing text speed. It takes even more scrolling to modify it than Early Crystal Sword (and trading for a Return Ring), but it would cut 9 frames off each line of text. That's over a second per level up, and way less waiting between turns. Don't know yet if it breaks anything like the final boss fight (it's coded to pause 60 frames between turns, probably to account for the lag).

But, just letting you know when I find something neat while breaking the game.

Don't forget to press Up to reach the Cards menu faster. And Teefa/Salah have Flee, might save a heal or two instead of waiting for Rooks' turn to come up. (Defending doesn't reduce damage to my knowledge, so it might be worth Darwin/Axs trying to Retreat anyway rather than Defend). Running is slightly easier when Darwin is in the party.

If you're gonna take the Rococo Armor, maybe spend it on HP or Alertness honey. I don't have a formula for turn order yet (it's super complicated), but it's my current hypothesis that higher Alertness will increase your chance for an extra turn. It might lower the chance that Rimsala gets two turns on you. At any rate, Alertness affects your accuracy and evasion.

For reference, Rimsala has 250 Strength and Endurance, 200 Intelligence and 200 Alertness.

By the way, against Galneon's Attribute 9, you can reduce the damage a little by changing attribute to Water. It's Wind/Fire/Water element, so it doesn't hit Water's weakness. I had a few other suggestions for the speedrun, but maybe they should go in a different topic?

Well, to explain the accuracy as a % would take an extra step, converting x/255 to x/100.

Most enemies have the same INT per chapter. The exceptions are Darah with 60 INT, and Rimsala 1 with 100 INT. I'll do the math and converting for you, so it's more clear.

• Chapter 1: 40 INT (+0%)
• Chapter 2: 60 INT (+0.5%)
• Chapter 3: 80 INT (+2.5%)
• Chapter 4: 100 INT (+4.5%)
• Chapter 5: 120 INT (+6.5%)
• Rimsala 2: 200 INT (+14.6%)
• Max stats: 255 INT (+20.2%)

So Chapter 3 enemies can use Sleep (72.5%), Chapter 4 enemies can use Sleep (74.5%) and Sleep All (39.5%), and Chapter 5 enemies can use Sleep All (41.5%). And Rimsala's Attribute 11 by default is uh... 99.6%.

On the other hand, you can counter this with magic evade from your own INT bonus. These same bonuses counteract their accuracy increases. For instance if you and your opponent both have the same INT, their Sleep spells will do 70%. If your INT is higher, their accuracy will take the hit.

Alright, I'm still piecing together the damage formula but here's some basics.

Healing spells always hit and heal [spell power] + [0...13] for each target.

Death spells

• Null Card: fire, Destroy: fire, Chaos Wind: wind, Entomb: earth
• -If the target is weak vs the element, increase accuracy (Null Cards are more accurate on Wind enemies)
• -If the target resists the element, increase evasion (Entomb is less accurate on Wind enemies)

For Damaging, Death, Status, and Debuff spells, the game checks for Intelligence bonuses.

• -Let i = INT-55
• -If i <= 0, return 0
• -INT bonus = [(i*66)/256]
• -This makes for a bonus of 0-51 from INT 0-255, with a bonus point about 1 every 4 INT starting at 59 INT.

ToHit = (Spell accuracy%)*256 + Attacker INT bonus - Defender INT bonus

• If ToHit > 255, use 255
• If [0...254] < ToHit, the spell hits.

I can work on deriving formulas for magic accuracy and damage, just the elemental affinity is really complicated so it'll take some time.

Sorry for the delay, I haven't gotten email notifications working from this site so I have to remember to check back.