LasRem Draft Run Part 1

I've already started my draft run. Second to start, by the looks of things. Should be fun, considering the units I've got. Managed to draft the following units, based on chronological availability:

Rush
Sandy
Baulson
Marty
Gabriel (why I'd torture myself with this unit, I'd never know)
Faye
Nora
Perneth
Beatrice
Adventurer Jorgen (Bandanna, Boots, Letter)
Acokus
Liza
Leshau
Ynfry
Paris
Zolean
Yugo
Snievan

I've also hired Neales and Chamberland to help out for the time being. Don't know if I'm going to hire any more soldiers, but I have 2 more slots I can probably fill. Not that it's necessary since the team is pretty much filled to capacity until hitting the second half of the game anyways. Might pick up a Traps soldier and a Potions soldier seeing as how I'm severely lacking in Bards (realized that I locked myself out of Robert and his crew a little while after I declared that I will be going for "At Hatred's End").

For Rush, I'm going for the Fencer class. More specifically, I'll be locking him into Adept Fencer for as long as possible. Maybe even proving that the class isn't terrible and that you don't need Legendary anything to get through the game. But then again, you wouldn't reach Legendary in quite a few classes when you're going for a true Low BR run in the first place~

His equipment will likely be a Shielding Hawkwind/Might Splitter combo. Sacrificing a little bit of a constant damage bonus for potential spike damage since I'm going to be training OH anyways. I'll likely end up upgrading to the Shielding variant all at once to avoid the Speed modifier. Accessories are still undecided, but will likely be using a few Remnants for their growth boosts. May go with dual Black Belts when it comes to the scoring, but we'll see. Not sure if I'll be using the accessory clone trick on anyone... Faye and Ynfry are practically begging for the Black Belts because of using DW.

As for progress, made it up to the Numor Mine events without too much trouble and without upgrading anything! Woo! The beginning segments were still about as easy as I'd remembered them. Floundered around in Gaslin and Robelia trying to get Pagus and Blocter's unions KO'd before the end of the fights to lower BR EXP a little bit. Didn't quite go as planned, but that's fine. There's still plenty of room later on to further optimize, but a good start is always appreciated. Torgal's union didn't go down during Dillmoor, which was a shame. Got careless around Blackdale and had to redo it once because I completely forgot about stocking up on Herbs ingredients. Almost went through the entire stock gathered from Robelia, Gaslin, and Dillmoor. Almost forgot that you could just slip right by one of the Skull Scavengers as it lifts off from the ground. The Fiery Idol took a few tries because I refused to leave the area to upgrade their equipment. I had 3 units, didn't see much reason to do so, nor should I have to.

Then ran towards Elysion, did/skipped all the story stuff, then ended up in the Catacombs. Which I promptly exited to start exploring, much to David's annoyance. Picked up whoever I could pick up (minus Gabriel for now), along with the 2 soldiers mentioned above. Catacombs were easy enough with Perneth and Chamberland taking out the larger unions with their Hexes. Sandy and Baulson still need to get their revive arts. Might take a little while though. Had a little fun running around trying to get them killed. Managed to avoid all the Landworms, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Normally, I'd just kill them and then move on. But since it's a fresh run, thought I'd try to optimize the early game as much as possible. Team wasn't optimal for linking the 4 Albic Qsiti at the end, so it was 2 at a time. It went from frustrating to too easy... Oh well. At least I'm at Numor Mine now. Thinking of grabbing the Simarrionne for Rush since I do need to start working on those OH and DW levels for Fencer. Almost time to recruit Jorgen too, which is good. Getting another healer is always a good thing, and it's right after a party upgrade.

Also noting down some speed-run related things. Playing casually and tweaking a few things, already at Numor Mine after ~3 hours. I can probably get that down to <2 if I didn't screw up some basic movements and without distractions (seriously, I was playing around with the FOV for a bit). I'll have to map it out a little better at a later point, but it does seem possible to beat it in less than probably 12 hours for any%. No way am I going to check out 100%... I don't think there's an efficient route for that one at all unless you go NG+.



I have the best/worst luck ever. First time entering a few areas... and there's a rare monster ready to fight! Too bad I only had Baulson/Rush/Sandy at the time. Can't take on rare monsters like that! I'll be back to kill you all... Just you wait!

Been thinking again...

So the idea of doing a speed run of Last Remnant has crossed my mind a few times before, but I don't know if it's possible to do so in a feasible amount of time with cutting down as much of the RNG as possible. The biggest issue is the exponential enemy growth starting from the second half onward. The game doesn't give you enough units to comfortably deal with that sudden level spike once the Six Bases comes into the picture. It's still possible to take it down with what's already available, although it will take some creative approaches (single unit revive unions, for one). A lot of the units are also locked away behind quests, so that's another issue to contend with. Using Mr. Diggs can end up wasting more time than just opening up new areas and looting them. Generic leaders cost money, which will affect funds for using IAs, so resorting to soldiers helps alleviate that... But then comes the issue of soldier stat growth: they're not very strong, and they take a lot longer to get up to par with the leaders. Equipment upgrades are also going to be sparse, so units will have to rely on using requested items. This can profoundly affect the sovani as the only request available to them is the Leraje Princeps from the Ivory Peaks for Torgal... but they can make do with what they start with. At least on Normal mode.

There's also the issue of any% vs. 100% completion. Going for 100% can be incredibly deadly to the team since the HP and stat spike is crazy. There's also when we start the timer. The Four Generals of Athlum actually get some EXP from the very first battle in the game, but it's a scripted fight. Depending on how powerful the rig is, there could also be a lot of slowdown just from the Gae Bolg's firing sequence. If going for 100%, what would be the fastest way to clear out quests? In a way, there isn't much you can do about it since you have to take them on one-by-one based on the client. About the only ones you can do concurrently are "Amnesia", "The Hero" + "The War of a Thousand Years", "Darien", "The Secret Letter", and several others. Those are the only ones off the top of my head...

Of course, there's also the issue of "100%". Probably the best definition of 100% of the game would be completion of all quests, which nets the player the "Dream Edge", which can be displayed from the inventory ("At Hatred's End" optional, but should be indicated whether or not it's been completed). Another definition would be 100% quest completion and 100% guild task completion. That one will definitely take a lot longer due to RNG for spawning rares. Wouldn't do that for a speed run. Ever. And then the absolute worst, which is what I've managed to accomplish, is 100% quests/guild tasks/rare monsters killed/all DLC completed. That too way too long... but I needed the data. Might settle on something soon-ish. But for now, I think we're going to work with draft runs.



In other news... Sunset Overdrive is probably the only X1 game that interests me so far, if only for the absurd colour palette and silly guns they have. Getting a mix of inFAMOUS (parkour and traversal speed aspects), Ratchet and Clank (from the same developers!), Borderlands (the crazy guns) from the trailers I've seen so far. Maybe a bit of Dead Rising and L4D because of the silly zombies and variety of them. I have this feeling that I'll have a PS4 and X1 before the generation is over... Not too sure about the Wii U yet. I'll have to gauge interest and other things. I'll probably end up picking one up for the Fire Emblem X MegaTen crossover. Just because. And I'm still going to make fun of the X1 because of its name. It'll be an interesting system, to say the least. We'll see how DX12 works out for it. If it can handle it.