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. For a number of reasons, explained below, the route we will use is:

• Traverse Town (TT)
• Olympus Coliseum (OC)
• Monstro (MO)
• Agrabah (AG)
• Halloween Town (HT)
• Wonderland (WL)
• Atlantica (AT
• Neverland (NE)
• Hollow Bastion (HB)
• Twilight Town (TwT)
• Destiny Islands (DI)
• Castle Oblivion (CO)

Hundred Acre Wood is often placed before Atlantica or after Hollow Bastion, depending on your deck composition. Finally to bring up a common misconception, the cutscenes in this game are skippable by holding start. Any of the few FMVs throughout the game, however, are not.

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 obtain 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 exclusively 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.
• "4 Shadows": This is another meeting ground exclusive. Its not so optimal either, so it's merely another reason to avoid farming there.

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.

Dealing with Lucky, Soldier-N, Soldier-S, and Shadow-N:
You only need blizzara to deal with these. Move slightly down and 1 step toward the initial spawn, stock a blizzara, and wait for the second spawn. If it is one of these, fire off the blizzara and kill everything in one stroke. In the case of lucky, you don't have to move or wait, just stock the blizzara and shoot.

Dealing with Soldier-R:
This is why you wait in the previous case. If a second soldier appears after the first try and group them together. if they are already grouped, (50%) fire a blizzara and kill them both. Otherwise, hold you position, and one of the soldiers will try to attack you. Walk upward out of the way, and that soldier will overshoot, flinging himself right next to the other one (most of the time). Then fire the blizzara. Your goal is to kill them before the rhapsodies spawn. Once they do, combo them.

Dealing with the Sandwich: You will have two blizzards, but ideally, you'll want to have a blue rhapsody enemy card or a third blizzard:

• With Rhapsody: Activate the enemy card, and wait for the first soldier. Fire a blizzard at the one that spawns, and simultaneously kill the shadow on that side. Combo the other shadow before the second soldier spawns. When the second soldier spawns, kill it with the second blizzard. You may have to sleight it with 2 attack card to ensure your blizzard resolves if it has value 0-2.
• With Blizzaga: Combo a shadow before the soldier spawns, then move in a circular motion around the group, bunching them together and stocking a blizzaga. When the third soldier spawns, attempt to hit both the soldiers with the same blizzaga. The shadow will likely go down as well, but if it doesn't, combo it.
• If you have neither of these, use the blizzaga strategy, stocking a blizzara instead. This is suboptimal because it is much more difficult to get all the enemies with the smaller area of effect, and a main reason finding improvements to your deck early can be a boon.

Dealing with Shadow-R:

• With Blizzaga: Take a step or two back and fire a blizzaga at the center. It will hit both of them simultaneously. Combo the rhapsodies.
• Without Blizzaga: Use a blizzard on the bottom shadow, then move up and use one on the top and combo the rhapsodies. Alternatively, you can bet on the rhapsody spawn; there is a 50% chance that the rhapsodies will spawn such that one is in the same place as the top shadow. if you wait for the spawn and this is the case you can take the top shadow and rhapsody with the same combo and save a small amount of time.

Dealing with ANY Traverse Town encounter when you have thundaga:
Stock thundaga, wait for everything to spawn, then use it. It is possible to save a second on each encounter by risking missing the thundaga and anticipating the last spawn. If an enemy is slated to spawn during the time when the cards are moving from the stocked position to the field, they will. The will not spawn while thundaga is in effect, however.

This concludes the farming section. After a few runs, you'll have had enough practice with this that it will be automatic.

Deck Editing

The next important aspect of this game is the dynamic deck of abilities and attacks under your command. The route that speedrunners use thankfully takes a ton of card points upon leveling up, so you have almost unlimited freedom to build a powerful deck. The best defense in Chain of Memories is a solid offense, so good planning is required to avoid damage and time loss.

Quick Menuing

It can be a bit daunting to attempt a deck edit when you often have no idea what to expect from your spread. First, you should always pay attention to the cards you come across and remember exactly what you want to have. You will never be fast if you both don't know what you want and where you can find it in the stack. Oftentimes the fastest solution to radically changing a deck is making a new one. Remember to equip it, and don't make mistakes loading it up, otherwise you'll have to waste time changing things around. Sometimes the situation will call for a deck edit that isn't large. In this case, start by removing the cards you don't want, then make holes corresponding exactly to the cards you want to put in. Be diligent, and be sure not to make a mistake when loading your cards. Remember:

• You can select a card twice to make blank space to the left of it, and select a blank space twice to remove it.
• You can switch cards with blank spaces
• Keep in mind that your deck is often multiple reloads long, build it with the second or third reload in mind.
• Mixing enemy cards in with the rest of your deck can be confusing
• Well built combos: Avoid using kingdom keys to attack when you can. Second and third world set keys are in general better than first world set ones. Crabclaw, Three Wishes, and Olympia (slower swing speed than Three Wishes) are combo finishers, Oathkeeper is second hit, Divine Rose is first hit, and everything else can go in either of the first two hits.

Your first Deck

What you have:

• A random blizzard (from the first barrel, not in your deck)
• 7, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0 Kingdom Keys
• 5 Blizzard
• 6 Potion
• 7 Cure

Your first edit: (must be done ASAP!)

• Double select the 7 twice to move it over two slots
• Press R, and add the blizzard you just got
• press L and move down to remove the 2, 1, 1 from the deck. Getting cardbroken is not a good idea
• Press B, Move the 5 blizzard to the front, move the 0 to the back, and fill in the remaining 5 spaces by double selecting them.

What you want to edit in over the course of the first farming session:

• Any Kingdom Key above 4 should replace the lowest card in your deck when you get it
• Any 0 Kingdom key you get should be added to the back before you fight Gurad Armor
• Add the first blue rhapsody in when you get it. The rest should be added in before you fight Guard Armor
• Any blizzard you get should be added when you get it

What you want to leave Traverse Town with:

• 3-4 (Preferably 4) Blizzards
• Your 8 highest attack cards
• The same potion and cure
• Whatever 0s you have (you don't ever need more than 3)
• An Elemental Boost Enemy Card (Preferably a Rhapsody)

What to do in Olympus Coliseum:

• When you obtain blizzard raid, move your blizzards to the first column, switching them with the attack cards that are there.
• Continue updating your attack cards if you can

The Raids Deck

This is the deck you create after your first trip to the moogle room. Depending on how much you edited the first deck and moogle pack luck, you may fin that the attack cards in deck one are horribly out of date. If so, make a new deck. Otherwise, it may be faster to make 3 spaces before the first card, remove the blizzards from your deck, and make 4 new rows before the potion

What you should have:

• 3 or more Cloud
• Some assortment of Blizzard and Fire cards
• Some assortment of usually high value Kingdom Keys and usually low value Wishing Stars and Olympias
• The same (or a higher value) potion and cure
• Some number of enemy cards, hopefully at least one Elemental Boost

Deck Structure:

• Up to 8 raids, and hopefully that many. Fire raids should come first to strike at Parasite Cage, Hook, and Vexen's Weaknesses.
• Keep the ratio of Fire to Blizzard raids 1:1 if you have fire and blizzard boost, ~1:3 or 1:7 if you only have blizzard boost and ~3:1 or 7:1 if you only have fire boost.
• Keep the raid value sums as high as possible and always keep them above 10. That said, it is better to have a few really good raids and a few with a sum of 11 or 10 than to keep all of them at around 15, say.
• Value is more important than attack card type!
• Order the raids from highest to lowest sum
• Keep the potion and cure in if you can, but if CP is tight, ditch the cure
• As many clouds as you can throw in such that each omnislash you use is above 10. (incrementor can help with this if you've got it!) More Clouds will save you time.
• As many 0s as you can throw in
• Hopefully a nocturne, followed by hopefully a rhapsody, followed by optionally shadows.

The Berserk Deck

Make a new deck for this one. What you have is the same as for the raids deck You make and equip this right before fighting Jafar

Deck Structure:

• Your 3 highest Blizzards (for getting Jafar's trick card)
• Your most well built combos. You'll probably have enough for 1-2 decent ones. Use the best attack cards regardless of value.
• Your highest kingdom keys. You'll probably want to have a total of 4 combos in your deck.
• 2-3 Potions (one is ok too)
• An omnislash above 10
• The 7 cure (not higher!)
• whatever 0s you have
• The Hades Enemy Card

The Halloween Town Edit:

• Take out the blizzards and clouds
• If your front 2 combos are very good, it may be useful to move the potions up
• make sure last 3 cards can break 7s (The 7 cure and 2 0s should suffice)

The Raids Deck: MkII

Immediately after you level up, switch back to your raids deck. At some point before you fight Ursula, you should make these changes. Editing the deck before Larxene I can save time on her depending on your composition(more clouds, higher value magic cards), but depending on your route, you might want to hold out until after you open up the moogle room right after Larxene and get more attack cards from it. You might skip 9F and get the elixir. If you do, then make this deck edit then.

Here's what you do:

• Take out the clouds, make space at the top, and throw them in when you put the attack cards in.
• Prioritize Attack card type over value, but don't drag your raid sums below 10. Delete enough cards at the front to build 1-3 good combos.
• If your back end raids are suffering, replace them with the high cards you just took out (in the same edit of course)
• Make sure you have at least one cure at the a back of your deck. If you have the elixir, this is where it goes, followed by 2 cures.
• Ideally, 2-3 0s
• (Incrementor if needed) followed by elemental boosts, followed by parasite cage, followed by hades

Before Vexen, take out all of your blizzards, and put in as many fires as you can, no matter how low they are. Adjust attack cards to compensate if need be.

The Endgame Deck

This is the deck you make after your second moogle room, taken in Destiny Islands. It is strong against the next few bosses.

Deck Structure:

• Your highest Omnislash (hopefully it's 13+)
• 2-4 high valued (15+) Judgments (Aero + Attack + Attack)
• Elixir + 2 highest cures
• Mega Ether + highest Potion + next highest cure
• If you somehow found more elixirs and mega ethers in barrels or something, put them here (appropriately sleighted)
• Whatever Clouds you have left
• Around 3 0s
• One blank slot, followed by 1-2 incrementor, followed by Parasite cage

Before Riku IV, put Darkside in the blank slot.
Before Larxene II, remove Darkside and put in Riku Replica.
Before Axel II, if you have 3-4 very high value judgments (~17+) take out the aeros and incrementors and put in an equal number of blizzards and as many rhapsodies as you can. (max of 1+elixirs+mega ethers.

It is often faster to make a new deck with:

• 3-4 of your highes valued blizzard raids
• the same elixir/mega ether/0 base as before
• a few rhapsodies followed by Riku Replica

Then revert (one way or another) back to the old endgame deck when the fight is finished.

The Berserk Deck: MkII

This is the deck you use to kill Marluxia II

Deck Structure:

• 3-5 Attack cards that can break an 8 (0s and 8s are acceptable)
• Your 2 most well built combos. Remember, you have an Oathkeeper to use for a second strike. Divine rose is the best first strike, followed by Oblivion, followed by Fairy's Harp, followed by Lady Luck. Crabclaw is the best combo finisher, followed by Three Wishes, followed by Olympia. If you can fit more, great! But don't put lackluster combos in, it's not worth it.
• Your 3 highest potions
• 2-3 cures (preferably ones that can break an 8
• Genie Jafar
• Hades
• Card Soldier
• Dragon Maleficent
• Hook

General/Boss Strategies

This section will go over the overall route and your plan for each boss. It will assume you are using the risky route outlined above (the casual speedrunning section will touch on the consistent route and it's differences) I will touch on the map card management strategies here as well, but that will be explained in more depth in the game mechanics section

Level up plan:

• Take exactly 1 HP upgrade before Agrabah (doesn't matter when)
• Other than this, you should only take CP before Ursula
• After defeating Ursula, Use the ~2 levels you get before Hook to level HP (so you can survive a sleight)
• After this, resume taking CP until you hit ~850, then alternate between HP and CP (adjust as needed if your deck is particularly expensive)
• Finally, when your CP hits 1000, you can comfortably take HP the rest of the way

Traverse Town: