Leveling

Gaining levels only increases a character's max hit points. That's all.

More importantly for a speed run, gaining levels also changes what kinds of wandering monsters appear in the main Sosaria map. This includes ships, which appear at level 5. The highest level in your party determines the maximum type of overworld encounters that will appear.

It is possible to get a ship, then replace your Level 5+ character with a different, lower-leveled character, or even a new Level 1 character, but this is unlikely to matter in a speed run.

Saving

Saving can only be done at Lord British's castle, and at the secret inn behind a door in Ambrosia. This limits the options for a Segmented run.

Status Screen Glitch (NES)

The key glitch that saved many minutes in the NES Speed run is the status screen glitch. It turns out that if you hold a D pad direction while leaving the STATUS screen, but before the map appears again, no wandering monsters will move on the map until such time as the D Pad goes neutral again. This was discovered by accident by Gyth in his TAS of the game (he originally believed, and wrote in his TASVideos submission, that speaking to the Time Lord did it, but in fact what happened was that the TAS's optimal movement, combined with going to the STATUS screen to group the party, triggered the glitch).

This does not work on the overworld map. This only works on submaps, such as Towns, Castles, Ambrosia. Critically, this lets us avoid fighting a single wandering encounter in Castle Exodus. It also lets us freeze the wandering monsters in the southwest forest maze on the way to the Shrine of Dexterity in Ambrosia, as well as freezing the strong water monster there, and the Whirlpool itself. Thus the only battle we fight in Ambrosia is the pirate battle on the way to the Shrine of Dexterity (which you even have ROT for in a casual run), and the only battles we fight in Exodus are the Floor battles.

Pirate ship glitch (NES)

On the way to the Shrine of Intelligence, just before the lake in your way, there's a one tile wide pass of forest squares that you walk west through. As you pass through there, stay on that line. Do not veer north or south. Keep walking until the pirate ship just barely appears on the far left edge of the screen. Then walk right and left one square, causing the pirate ship to go off screen and back on. Repeat until the ship turns orange. When that happens, the stack order of the Ship and the Pirate Ship have reversed, and you just skipped a Pirate battle.

Skip the opening credits and opening cutscene (NES)

Hold B when pressing reset. You'll skip directly to the main menu, bypassing the credits.

This can also be done to save time skipping the opening cutscene. Reset when the cutscene starts, then just start the game. You'll skip the cutscene and come up in Sosaria.

Stats and Stat Gain

Stats can only be improved by go ing to Ambrosia and donating at the shrines. Each shrine is named for a stat. To raise a stat for a character, go to that shrine, and have that character donate 100 Gold for each point to raise. Thus, to raise a character's key stat from 25 to 99 costs 7400 gold.

A class's MP-controlling stats are most important for magic users. For melee, Strength is much more important than Dexterity, at least on the DOS version. As Dexterity, when maxed, doubles your hit rate, thus only doubling your rate of damage. Strength increases the rate of damage by far more than that.

Spells

The spells you can cast are determined by your current MP and your class. Your MP is determined by your INT and/or WIS, and your class. A druid gets half of the higher of Intelligence and wisdom as his max MP. A wizard gets his intelligence as his max MP. Thus, leveling does not increase your magic ability at all. Only stat gains do so.

In terms of combat there are a few types of spell. Some are more useful than others in the speed run.

1. Guaranteed-hit missiles that insta-kill.
2. Guaranteed-hit missiles that do damage.
3. Sometimes-hit mass effect spells that insta-kill.
4. Guaranteed-hit mass effect spells that do damage.

The lowest level Cleric (UNDEAD on NES/PONTORI on DOS) and Wizard spells (REPEL on NES/REPOND on DOS) are of the third variety. They are useful because they are free, though UNDEAD/PONTORI only works on undeads, and REPEL/REPOND works on weak non-undeads like goblins. On the NES, REPEL works on all lowest-level non-undead encounters. The Druid can cast both, critically, for the early experience grind. However they fail half the time. On the NES, if you cast the spell, the final step selecting the spell, when the Wizard sprite's right foot is visible, the spell will however work every time (however it won't hit every monster every time, in any case).

Further, on the NES version you can repeatedly re-cast the spells to eventually wipe out the whole party! This is not the case in the DOS version. You get one shot, making the spells far less useful in a speed run.

The next Wizard spell (MISSILE on NES/MITTAR on DOS) is your bread and butter distance attack, against encounters like Pirates.

Two other Wizard spells are also useful. ROT on NES/NECORP on DOS is a spell of the fourth variety, and is useful because it's guaranteed to hit hard every enemy on screen, allowing them to be mopped up with one MISSILE/MITTAR each. Useful against groups of 8 higher level enemies.

KILL on NES/DECORP on DOS takes out one enemy guaranteed. Useful against the highest level encounters, which spawn pairs of large enemies.

Safe MP refills in dungeons (NES)

On the NES version, if you're in a dungeon you can refill your MP safely, without any risk of a random encounter, by spinning around in place.

Death

Don't die. Resurrection is not guaranteed unless you have the highest level Clerical spell. It's also very expensive if you don't yet have such spells, and is slow because you have to head back to town. Don't die. Reset instead.

AI (NES)

The monster AI is only random in when it chooses to use missile attacks or ranged spells. Therefore, all wandering monsters and monsters in combat without such range, have AI that are completely deterministic. In particular, wandering monsters will attempt to match your Y/Vertical coordinate before trying to match your X/Horizontal coordinate. This is critical for herding monsters in Castle Exodus, and is something that was only figured out after the 43:37 SDA run, and therefore is one of the bigger points of possible improvement over that run.

This also means the Floors can be fought blind the same way every time. To fight them without ROT, assuming a party of Druid (12MP)/Wizard(25MP)/Wizard(25MP)/Wizard(25MP), do this, turn by turn:

1. MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
2. MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
3. DOWN/LEFT/LEFT/RIGHT
4. DOWN/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
5. DOWN/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
6. RIGHT/DOWN/RIGHT/LEFT
7. PASS/MISSILE/RIGHT/LEFT
8. PASS/PASS/RIGHT/PASS
9. PASS/PASS/MISSILE

With a party of Wizard(75MP)/Wizard(25MP)/Wizard(25MP)/Druid(12MP), this route is possible:

1. ROT/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
2. MISSILE/LEFT/LEFT/RIGHT
3. DOWN/MISSILE/MISSILE/MISSILE
4. DOWN/MISSILE

RNG Manipulation (NES)

Yogidamonk has put out a demonstration video explaining the process of manipulating the pirates to get a minimal number, centering on *saving* after the gain of Level 5 in the route: http://www.twitch.tv/yogidamonk/c/5637501