Introduction

Running Sora's Story requires a fair bit of improvisation, micromanagment, and good judgment. By running the game often and practicing, you can get a helpful sense for what kind of map card spreads and decks you can expect to get, but no two runs of this category will ever be identical in these respects. It is the purpose of this guide to outline general and specific strategies for gaining control of the random aspects of this game.

Farming

Over the course of the run, you will need to acquire ~150 map cards from random encounters to progress through the game. Traverse town's enemy composition makes it the quickest place to farm by far. Most of the ~150 can be accounted for by an average distribution of cards from Traverse Town's encounters, with a few exceptions. Because you cannot find blue cards as map card drops in Traverse Town, the following cards need to be found in other worlds:

• 3 Calm Bounties (or other treasure providing cards) - You will need to learn sleights from treasure chests in Olympus Coliseum, Monstro, and Destiny Islands.
• 2-3 Moogle Rooms (Route Dependent) - The first Moogle Room fills out the Raids Deck, the second fills out the Endgame Deck, and the optional third may be used to learn Thundaga after Larxene I
• 2-3 Other Blue Cards (Route Dependent) - Door requirements for 7F, 10F, and 11F. 7F and 10F are often skipped using the Hundered Acre Wood, but should neither of these be skipped, you will need to hold onto 3 spare blue cards
• The =1 Blue (The 1B) - At the very last Key to Beginnings Door in the game (often dubbed "The Gates of Hell"), you will be asked to provide a =1 Blue,an =3 red, and a sum of 99 value of cards. The 1B is the rarest card in the entire game, and one of the largest random factors. It should not be used in any situation other than opening the Gates of Hell.

In short, the easiest way to get blue cards is by farming enemies in the first world set with various elemental raids. Barrel Spiders, found in Olympus Coliseum, Monstro, Agrabah, Neverland, Twilight Town, and Destiny Islands by breaking barrels, are by far the easiest to eliminate quickly and consistently. Should you be pressed for blue cards late in the game, Twilight Town has the highest probability of dropping them.

The Consistent Route

Advantages:

• Recommended for Beginners
• Will often produce a decent deck for fighting future bosses
• Produces a larger ball of map cards in the beginning of the game, which allows for easier decision making in the first few worlds

The single convincing disadvantage is this route's inability to get the 1B early on, which means a run can have wasted time fishing for it, or crash late game when one isn't found. The current SDA run uses the consistent route. Here are the steps:

• Farm Traverse Town until you have ~80 map cards (Stop when you've cleared out the room in which you've gained your 80th card)
• Farm Olypmus Coliseum until you get a Calm Bounty, then farm Olympus or Monstro until you get a 2nd Calm Bounty and a Moogle Room
• Continue to farm barrel spiders in Monstro and Agrabah to hopefully get the rest of the blue cards you need.
• If at any point you have the required blue cards and you need to farm, go back to Traverse Town to get more cards
• If you find yourself strapped for blue cards, continue farming in Neverland and eventually Twilight Town until you have what you need.

The Risky Route

Advantages:

• Potentially Faster
• Potential to find the 1B in the first 30 minutes

Disadvantages:

• Often sketchy deck coming out of Traverse Town (You shouldn't leave with out blizzards, and you often leave without proper enemy card support)
• New reset point about 45 minutes into the game if the 1B isn't found (harder to finish a run)
• Needs a third Moogle Room

The current fastest time uses this route, and it should probably be used for serious record attempts. Here are the steps:

• Farm ~30 map cards in Traverse Town (About 5 rooms of Teeming Darkness)
• Farm Olympus until you get a Calm Bounty, defeat the bosses, and remain there. Farm Barrels for about 15 minutes and attempt to get the 1B (and the Moogle Room + Calm bounty you need for Monstro). If you don't find it, reset.
• A runner that gets past this point can breathe a sigh of relief and finish collecting the remaining required blue cards (shouldn't take long)
• Make your way through the first world set without using any important cards. Should you find yourself at a shortage of cards, farm Wonderland's enounters using blizzard raid rather than taking the time to go back to Traverse Town
• After defeating Larxene I, go down to Wonderland, create a moogle room, and get 2 thunders from it. Then head to Traverse Town and use Thundaga to odtain the cards you need for the rest of the game

Tackling Traverse Town

Traverse Town is a huge section of the game, encompassing about 1/3 of the run's ideal time. Any small but consistent mistakes in your farming strategy will cause you to bleed a disproportionately large amount of time over the course of the run. The first step to an endeavor like this is knowing your enemy, so what follows is an in depth explanation of the types of encounters that appear, with my name for each of them for future reference.

Encounters that appear in Teeming Darkness Rooms:

• "Solider-N": One Soldier spawns, followed by two red nocturnes which flank it. Based on your position (and rarely based on luck) the nocturnes can spawn on the opposite side of the field as a the soldier. The the soldier spawns on the left side of the field, you will often get this encounter. This is the only encounter where you often kill nocturnes last.
• "Soldier-S": Similar in every way to Soldier-N except that the nocturnes are replaced with shadows. If the soldier spawns on the right, you have a high chance of getting this encounter
• "Soldier-R": The last encounter that starts with an initial spawn of one soldier, and has an equal chance of appearing with a soldier start on either side. A second soldier will spawn, followed by a later spawn of two blue rhapsodies.
• "Mad Magic": Initial spawn of two nocturnes, followed by a spawn of 2 rhapsodies in one of two possible positions.
• "The Sandwich": Initial spawn of two shadows sandwiching you as the name suggests, followed by a soldier on either side of you, followed by a second soldier which spawns on either side of you.

Encounters found outside Teeming Darkness:

• "Lucky": This encounter only has one spawn, and it's 3 nicely arranged shadows.
• "Shadow-N": A nocturne spawns, followed by 2 shadows. These spawns are geometrically identical to Soldier-S
• "Shadow-R": Two shadows spawn, one at the top of the screen, one at the bottom, followed by two rhapsodies spawning similarly.
• "Bad": It is only possible to see this in meeting ground rooms, but there are at least 4 spawns and it contains every type of enemy. This is the number one reason to avoid farming in meeting ground rooms. Doing so is so easy, however, that I won't discuss strategies for beating this encounter.

Most of your farming should be done in teeming darkness rooms for a number of reasons:

• Each fully farmed Teeming Darkness room nets you 7 map cards when completed (not taking enemy cards into account), which is more than the net 4 other room types can boast.
• The rate of enemy card drops in Teeming darkness rooms is double the normal rate of ~5%. The shadow, blue rhapsody, and red nocturne enemy cards are useful throughout the run. In any room, the enemy card that drops will always be of the same type as the last enemy you kill in an encounter.
• Teeming Darkness rooms have a ton of objects which you can trigger for points and possible cards for your deck.
• The encounter spread of these rooms is pretty good, and the sandwich is the only one you never want to see.