ADnD: Dragons of Flame/Any%
From SDA Knowledge Base
Contents
Overworld
The overworld sections of the game are so random that it doesn't make much sense to make videos for them. It's best to just study the maps on https://nobusuma256.com/html/kouryaku/adddof/adddof.html. Any enemy encounter can be expected to take around 10-12 seconds and lead to potential damage. It's therefore most of the time worth to make a detour to try and avoid the encounter. A few remarks can still be made:
- Learn the basics of the game's RNG.
- Right at the start of the first overworld section, immediately going down will very often result in an early encounter since all three enemies will spawn below you. There are two ways mitigate this risk. The first is to immediately start pressing up (you will only push against the tree and not actually move up). This will ensure the first enemies all spawn above you. You can then slowly walk down, while trying to keep them on screen. This is a bit slow and chances are one or more of the enemies will soon wander off-screen. The other method to consider is to not move at all when the game begins. The three enemies will now rapidly spawn in random positions around the screen edge. This will likely allow you to move down faster than if the enemies spawned above you. But it's of course also riskier since enemies can spawn below you.
- In the upper part of the map, where it's mostly open, try to walk past enemies above or below (and not on the left or right side of them). See the RNG-section for why.
- Once you're below the river, try to continue moving down (at least in small steps). Saving all the vertical movement for when you need to enter the correct path through the forest will likely result in enemies spawning in your way.
- Once inside the forest, it can be worth considering manipulating some enemy spawns. The best way to do this is to push against a tree in the direction you'd like to spawn enemies in.
- There are a few alternative paths through the forest. Learn them. Taking a detour is a cheap price compared to getting an encounter (and avoiding enemies in the path is not very likely due to the space constraints.
- In the second overworld section, it's probably best to not move when the gameplay begins. This will hopefully spawn enemies in favorable locations, allowing you start moving down.
- There are several alternative paths in the second overworld section worth learning.
Dungeons
As opposed to the overworld, there is no RNG whatsoever in the dungeons. The enemy movements and actions only depend on the player's actions (and possibly local timer(s)). The route through the dungeons therefore consists in one part of finding the shortest path and in one part where to take damage in the most advantageous ways, while avoiding time-consuming menu trips as much as possible. In the videos demonstrating the recommended route, the value of two RAM-addresses are shown, the room number and front character's HP. The former is also shown in maps below, while the latter is provided in a spreadsheet.
Health management
Since there is no RNG in the dungeons and the execution is mostly easy to perform, a detailed route can be created with the places to take damage. The general ideas with the route presented here (and reflected in the videos below) are:
- Avoid menu trips for refilling health or swapping the front character with healthy characters in the back. A menu trip will always cost several seconds. Tanking damage everywhere saves a little time, but nowhere near enough to compensate for additional menu trips.
- Avoid additional menu navigation. There are some alternatives that have been considered, but the ones tested have cost more than time than what would be gained by being allowed to take more damage:
- - Combine the forced menu trip when Raistlin is moved from the front position to also cast some magic. E.g. a sleep spell against a troll to avoid taking damage.
- - Combine the forced menu trips against Ember with casting some health restoring spell.
- Plan for characters to have very low HP when being killed by strong enemies, while trying to avoid the next character to take big damage.
- Come in to the fight with Verminaard with high HP to allow for a few unintentional hits without having cast any healing spells.
Note however that this assumes entering the dungeons with full health. If minor damage (<79) has been taken in the overworld, the best is to compensate by not taking damage against the traps in the first dungeon (the Secret Path, room 40). If more damage has been taken, it can become more problematic to evaluate the best course of action. If the end result is facing Verminaard with less HP, there will be no time loss, but the fight will require more precise execution. The other possibility is either to use Goldmoon's healing or to put Tanis in front instead of Sturm. Putting Tanis in front costs time, but might be faster than navigating the menu to Goldmoon's healing spells.
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Is this the fastest possible route? No. You can construct a route that tanks more damage and gets to Verminaard with the bare minimum of HP. The execution of such a route is not more difficult, but the Verminaard fight requires better execution. The time save by pushing it to the limit this way would be ~1.5s. For a demonstration of such a route, see the TAS.