Item Drops

There is no random element to drops in this game:

• Enemy golds and bread drops are completely fixed in when they drop (every time) and in the amount of health or number of golds given.

• Some room spawns are completely fixed, as their items will appear every time you enter the screen.

• However some room spawns will only appear about one fourth of the time. These rooms work on a global counter. Count from 1 to 4, increasing the count by 1 every time you enter a room with one of these spawns. If the count is at 4, killing every enemy in the room will force the drop (as with the Mattock, all Boots spawns, and some Ointments), or the item will just appear automatically on room entry (as in the case of the ointment by Grieve and the ointment by the evil one).

Experience and Titles

Higher titles from experience tend to be a net negative in this game. While you do start with more golds after death or password entry when you have a higher experience level, and you do accelerate faster, there's one big disadvantage that outweighs both of those in a speed run. That is, your ointment and wing boots timers get shorter at higher levels. The Speed Run never goes up to a level where the timer reductions begin.

Timer Extensions

While the Ointment and Wing Boots timers are tracked separately, they are both decremented on a global counter. Every 64 frames, if a Wing Boots or Ointment is active, their counters will be reduced by 1 if the timer is above 0, or deactivated if the timer is at 0. However this only happens if the game is not paused.

So, by pausing the game in rhythm with that timer, so that the game is paused every time the 64th frame hits, it's possible to extend ointment and boots indefinitely. In fact, with perfect pausing, it's possible to keep ointment active even in boss rooms where the ointment counter is automatically reduced to 0, such as at the Black Onyx.