Heya! Wasn't sure if anyone here was aware, but there's a major exploit in this game that can be used for quick money. It's pretty unwieldy and you need the right setup, but maybe it could be used for Fog Cards or honeys more efficiently.

Basically if you Trade for your second+ item but don't have the money, the cursor gets put back wrong. You can scroll up past your first item into out of bounds memory and sell other stuff. This isn't where the game progression or chapter is stored, but you can sell unused memory for like 20,000 GP. You're also setting that address to 7 (Chapter 1) or 15 (Chapter 2+), so casually you could reset your LVL or get Dao in Chapter 2. But that also means if you don't count correctly, you could set your max HP to 7.

Hmm, it won't let me post the link. I'm not a bot, darnit! It's on my YT, same username.

I have been playing around with this shop glitch and it could be leveraged to improve some routing. Out of curiosity, do you have any documentation towards which unused memory maps to what ?

Ah, just realized I didn't see a notification for this. Sorry for the delay!

I've got a RAM map on Data Crystal; address $13A9 is the first card slot. It's possible to sell certain cards then throw out the corrupted cards, but the game freezes for a bit when selecting it in Cards. And some card combinations make the shop stop responding; could probably put together a complete list, but off the top of my head avoid Fire x2 and Fog x2.

Also it's possible to set your active spirits to Sylph+Dao in Chapter 2 this way, not sure if Change Attr to Earth saves any time. Earth spells are more accurate, though.

I added some of the game mechanics like run chance and physical accuracy. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to look into, I've been reverse engineering this game for a while.

Apart from selling unused memory for a lot of money (which have gotten me rerouting a bit my run). Is there any way to use the shop glitch to add an item to the inventory ?

In the RAM Map section I see

$1419–1458: Equipment inventory (2 bytes per slot, $20 slots: ID then Equipped By)

• Equipped by flags:
• #$00: Rooks

I would assume that something along adress $0E00 would equip the Crystal sword to Rooks ?

I haven't found a way to go forward through memory, otherwise a lot more stuff could be broken into.

That list just keeps track of who's holding what, it doesn't actually affect your stats. On the other hand, what does affect your stats might be reachable with a ton of scrolling.

$1283: Equipped weapons

• Two bytes each, in order of Rooks, Guest 1 and Guest 2.
• item ID / "Equipped by" flag

Modifying this won't put the item in your inventory, but your character will be holding it. Until you equip something else, then it'll vanish. (A side note, this is what gets modified in the final fight to give you the Giant Sword.)

OK, I got Rooks the Crystal Sword in Chapter 1. It works! As a note, the glitch puts the item ID at that address. So depending on which item you're buying, you'll set a different value.

Oh man this brings so much potential, and still have plenty of money :O

Also of note, Medicine becomes Desiree. Also also, you can put weapons on your armor and amulet slots too. Lv1 Rooks with a Crystal Sword on armor has 98 defense. On the amulet slot he gets 52 defense, and checking the extended stats in my mod... 15 magic defense and a resistance to undead, medusa, dragon and giants.

I should list the Item IDs on Data Crystal, but I'll put them here.

01 Return Ring
03 Sleeping Bag
04 Tent
05 Strength Honey
06 Intelligence Honey
07 Endurance Honey
08 Agility Honey
09 HP Honey
0A MP Honey
0B Herbs
0C Medicine
0D Silver Flask
0E Gold Flask

So I have been getting very good results so far and got a decent pace starting Chapter IV but the run died in Chapter V. I can repeat the Shop glitch in Chapter III and Chapter IV. And so far I have been able to optimize Chapter I to III dungeons by having to take fewer steps by skipping the honey farming.

I have been trying to experiment with the shop glitch but I do not understand all that is implied behind. I was wondering how hard it would be to equip Rooks with the Giant Sword instead ?

Equipping the Giant Sword would require buying a Maiden's Tears, which isn't sold in the shops. In terms of every item in the code including unobtainables:

Return Ring -> Dagger
Water of Life -> Short Sword
Sleeping Bag -> Long Sword
Tent -> Broad Sword
Strength Honey -> Scimitar
Intelligence Honey -> Ice Blade
Endurance Honey -> Undead Blade
Agility Honey -> Fire Blade
HP Honey -> Dragon Blade
MP Honey -> Magic Sword
Herbs -> Lightning Sword
Medicine -> Desiree
Silver Flask -> Crystal Sword
Gold Flask -> Spirit Sword
Maiden's Tears -> Giant Sword
Moon Oil -> Golden Sword
Enchanted Jewel -> Cursed Sword

I was looking through the documentation that you provided. I was wondering if you would happen to know what is the formula to calculate how Intelligence influence Magic Defense (Accuracy and Damage). I seem to be able to abuse the shop glitch to grind 24 Intelligence honey I wouldn't have otherwise on the normal run.

When I get to Rimsala, Attribute 11 (85% Accuracy, 200 Power) seems to be missing a bit more and definitely hit between 20-30 dmg less on average. I can try empirically (I would assume that Int would max out at 255) to determine if it truly influence the Accuracy but having the formula itself would be great.

Moreover, mitigating those nasty sleeps (70% Accuracy) would be great as well haha

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.

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.

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.

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?

I definitely would like to hear about the suggestions you might have! I can never thank you enough for all the research you have made on the subject :)

Up to you if you prefer a different topic or keeping things in this thread.

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.

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.