April 2025 Archipelago (In progress)

[Setsuna]

I've finished and released both Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Kirby Super Star! I'll be working on finishing FFV, but that's just the final boss, so I'm essentially done! Thank you all!

 

[Arcaneum]

Annnnd Leaf Green is complete! It tried very hard to stop me at the end, as the Elite Four were rocking things like this:

However thankfully Blue had the easiest team ever, complete with this absolute irony of an Ace Pokémon:

So after a quick battle, we finally made it!

Thanks again Deva for hosting, and great job everyone! Had lots of fun with this one and LG I'll definitely be using in the future. I will also make sure my YAML is correct (I realised so far in that I set the progression for FF12 to be easier than normal when I intended to make it the other way around oops).

EDIT: I forgot to post my HoF, here you go!

 

[Setsuna]

VendilyOW's Scout is at SetsunaFFV's Phoenix Tower - Phoenix Tower Pot (15000) @Setsuna
You get me this, and I can goal instead of opening up my remaining checks (but I'll be working on those still until I get it).

You have your Scout! I've completed FFV and released everything, so I'm all done! I'll start typing up an ending post with my thoughts on the whole thing.

 

[Devalue]

@Explorer of Time Also got the Waste Tunnels Map. Kindly showed that one on the first Sunday available.

Becomes increasingly curious what was even in Link to the Past beyond the Sphere 1 items.

Also now just Artichoke Seeds from done (well, and some farming/fishing). Picked up Amaranth Seeds from Jas's birthday while going to Sunday.

 

[Vendily]

So I goaled just a little bit ago, I was just running through the ending sequence because I love the music and the atmosphere of it. (Thank you Setsuna for the Scout!)

I forgot to write up my deaths from throughout today's multiple sessions.

Death 4: Walked into a patch of ghost matter that I didn't realize was there, because I forgot I turned on randomized ghost matter locations.
Death 5: Plot required, would be spoilers if I explained it. Made a friend though.
Death 6: I ran out of time in the area I was in and thanks to a combination of checks I was going for during that time, it killed me. Explaining it would be puzzle spoilers.
Death 7: Vendily fell from a high place.
Death 8 & 9: The hardest part of being in GO mode always seems to be the very first step in the sequence (normally the easiest part). Turns out walking in a straight line is very hard when everything is spinning and will gladly smash you to bits if you get pinched.

Other interesting things was getting horribly horribly lost while using the Scout to find the location of my goal (it was randomized), which involved some really fancy high speed flying to keep myself from instantly dying (very grateful for having played a number of story mods set in the same location as where the goal would be found, as I learned a tip to effectively do that fancy flying thanks to them).

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

I'm back and will be blitzing M&L. I'll update this once it's finished!

 

[Setsuna]

Before I get to my yap session I want to say thanks to Deva for hosting and everyone else for joining! These are always a really fun opportunity to play games I love in a new way and get to do something with this community that I can just sorta fall into and enjoy on my own time, so they're very comfortable and enjoyable for me. I was really happy seeing more games get added as signups went on. It was super fun and I hope we can do one again sometime soon!

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk went okay, I think, but I definitely started feeling the burnout around the halfway point. I'm not entirely sure why, but something about having to reach every single graffiti spot in every map just made me lose my motivation and when I got to Pyramid Island (which is usually the area where I start to lose track of where I am and it can take a while to go back to a spot you missed) I started thinking I'd just rather wait for REP to come in and rush to the end, which is what I ended up doing. I grabbed no check in Pyramid Island and almost no checks in Mataan unless I thought they were necessary for my own progression. However, I did have to backtrack all the way to Pyramid Island from the end of Mataan because I didn't have the graffiti necessary to fight the final boss, which I thought was really funny after I've been saying "You're always overstocked on graffiti the entire time" this whole Archipelago.
I picked BRC in the first place because I was thinking I'd take it at a slower pace and just play in small amounts as the REP came in, but this Archipelago felt very fast-paced and I think I ended up telling myself I needed to play catch-up and not fall behind. No one's to blame for that, it just didn't go the way I expected.
I had fun when I was playing, though! I ended up getting a mod to play Jet Set Radio Future music and nothing hits those vibes like blasting songs like Teknopathetic or Concept of Love. Definitely how I'm gonna play BRC in the future when I go back to it, and I'll continue to play it for Archipelagos in the future, it'll probably just be a "once every few runs" kind of game.

Final Fantasy V was a dream to play in an Archipelago again! I'm so glad the 0.6.1 update didn't just leave it unplayable or something. Being able to play more of FFV is really why I signed up for this Archipelago and it's great to continue to learn more about the game from the weird and varied situations you find yourself in (a boss that stops you from casting magic right before a boss that stops you from anything that isn't magic? Interesting) and I ended up using a completely different strategy to fight the final boss than I did last time. I realized Spellblades are actually really good and can pump out crazy damage, Break can be really useful, Quarter has some niche uses, and it just continued to strengthen my love for FFV. It always feels like there's some kind of strategy or thing you can use to help you win a fight and situations like not having Mighty Guard, not having good healing spells, or fighting a boss really early on that requires some complicated late-game strategy is really interesting. Last time I had fun, but I definitely just depended on having lots of Gil to win me the game. I really want to say that I wish I got to play more of it, but when I released the game after finishing it I think I had something like only 10 checks left. There's really no game like it. I'm glad I'm a lot more familiar with the randomizer and playing it in an Archipelago now, I want to play it every single time.
My final party was a Mystic Knight with Equip Ribbons, a Samurai with X-Fight, a Blue Mage with !Black, and a Time Mage with !White.

Kirby Super Star was also really nice to play, not because the randomizer was particularly great, but just because it's an incredibly important childhood game to me that I know like the back of my hand. Being able to have some sort of fresh experience with it was nice, and besides Aqualiss and Hammer being at unfortunate spots (par for the course) it was really just an excuse to play a game I love again, and be proud of the knowledge I have of it. It's nice as a short addition to Archipelagos.

Leaf Green was something I was excited to play because I finally started playing Pokemon in Archipelagos last time and I really want to get to know FRLG a lot better, I think they're some of the Pokemon games I know the least about, and the randomizer for it is absolutely fantastic, there's so much you can add with this new version and it made it really interesting to play. This was definitely something I would've loved to play a lot more of, but I really didn't want to keep people waiting so once I got my last badge I just ran straight for the end and released something like 300+ checks. I played through the entire thing with a Kingdra since I got a Dragon Scale and the Link Cable very early on, but I realize there's a lot of water types out there and I would've loved something that could've been more generally useful. I got the idea of using Magneton in my head and while I never ended up catching one I would love to in the future. It was really interesting starting in Vermillion and trying to find my way out of that whole loop around Saffron, and I think Kanto is built really well to where using something like Cut to access Viridian through Digglet's Tunnel or Strength to access Cinnabar from Fuchsia through Seafoam Islands is really interesting. I had a lot of fun, though I think it could've been better at a slower pace.

I think this entire Archipelago has been really fast paced, but I don't want to say that sounding like I'm complaining! Releasing games like FF12 or StarCraft or a Pokemon game with a lot of checks remaining just tends to do that. I had tons of fun!

 

[Explorer of Time]

Doom 2 has been cleared! Now, all I have to do is finish LttP. Apart from any missing Keys, the only thing I need is the Hookshot at AlexM&L's Joke's End Northeast of Boiler Room 2 Digspot.

Becomes increasingly curious what was even in Link to the Past beyond the Sphere 1 items.

As it turns out, among a bunch of Useful items, I found your Stardew's Linus Heart, Mining Level, Progressive Raccoon, and Wood Sign Recipe so far.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

Doom 2 has been cleared! Now, all I have to do is finish LttP. Apart from any missing Keys, the only thing I need is the Hookshot at AlexM&L's Joke's End Northeast of Boiler Room 2 Digspot.


As it turns out, among a bunch of Useful items, I found your Stardew's Linus Heart, Mining Level, Progressive Raccoon, and Wood Sign Recipe so far.

You now have that along with anything else in my games, cause they're all done!

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

Okay, proper long type up time.

I'll start with Zelda 1:
I started my run with the big shield and the best sword in the game, and not much else lol. But even just those made very short work of any accessable Levels and overworld monsters. The pacing for it felt really nice too as I good refresher in-between huge RPGs lol. I'll likely keep it on as a staple of my runs of this since it's pretty short and I know it so well.

Pokemon Emerald:
This one was a surprise for me. I've never even so much as played the original, and I'd have yet to run a Pokemon game in the AP format either. (not to mention Gen 3 being one of my lesser liked Gens overall) But I ended up having an absolutely wonderful time with it, and the only thing needing adjusted for future runs being the number of item notifications I was getting. I set it to full so I wouldn't miss anything and that ended up getting... Let's say 'tedious', so setting it to only the major items in the future will likely make things perfect.
Though the next Pokemon game I'd like to run during one of these is Fire Red, I'll be keeping Emerald around as a general mainstay.

Mario & Luigi:
This one was fun as usual, though I think I'll be turning off Bowser's Castle going forward. Joke's End is more than enough of a final gauntlet of challenges without needing to more or less 'just do it again with more bosses this time'. But with exception to one of my items being in an especially cursed spot in another of my games, I had a good time with it!

Metroid Prime...:
Yeeeaaah... There's a lot I could say here about being insanely rusty and biting off more than I could chew with new 'features' I didn't understand, but I'm not really in much of a typing mood lately (as is apparent with my less than stellar record keeping of my sessions over this event), so I'll get to the point. I LOVED actually playing Prime again after so long. It was really fun getting things in odd orders and seeing all the cool suit colors as such. That being said... It's likely it's either going to be a 'special cases' game, or one that I'll need to modify significantly before I ever consider running it in one of these huge APs loaded with 600+ check RPGs again. Having one of my major M&L items locked behind one of my most importand basic items for Prime that just so happened to get placed in super late game FF5 is something I never want to experience again in my life. I'm not in the mood to type out and break down the full list of exactly why it bothered me, I'm just gonna leave it at 'it just did' and call that good enough.

Anyway... Overall I had a really fun time not only playing the games (for the most part >.>), but also getting to run them along with all of you! Thanks to everyone who played along and went so hard on clearing stuff! It was like lightning lol!

And lastly, thanks again to Devalue for all the extra help with getting Prime set up. I literally never would've had it ready in time without it.

 

[Explorer of Time]

@Devalue, I found your Artichoke Seeds. Could you get the Prismatic Jelly, too? It has my last Big Key, which is my Go Mode item. I also found you a Kent Heart and Traveling Merchant (Wednesday).

 

[Devalue]

@Devalue, I found your Artichoke Seeds. Could you get the Prismatic Jelly, too? It has my last Big Key, which is my Go Mode item. I also found you a Kent Heart and Traveling Merchant (Wednesday).

Got it.
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Stardew Valley (Update 5)

Signed in to do the hint...maybe. Obtains that item by doing a quest from the Special Order Board (received just recently). Gives you a choice between 2 quests out of a pool of...12? Could be a while.

1st look: Nope. Took River Fish to (maybe) clear it out. Seemed faster than doing the trash cleanup quest.

Already planned to fish. Figured "Why not catch the Octopus for the bundle while it is raining? And why not get the legendary fish at the same time?" Did that. Also needed to catch Sturgeon (a river fish) for the Fish Pond. Combos with the quest well. Continued until getting two of them.

2nd look: Yes. Not bad. Went to the mines. Dealt with two problems:

1. Accepted the correct quest. Mistook it "A Curious Substance", for whatever reason, which is killing ghosts for an Ectoplasm drop.
2. Is not shortened by the settings (probably). Dropped river fish from 20 to 4, for example. Relies on finding a single rare spawn for this quest.

Had bad luck (or, perhaps normal luck). Never saw the Prismatic Slime, even while looking for the wrong thing. Got the Artichoke Seeds before even entering the mines. Weighed goaling now versus doing the quest quickly. Flipped the switch to completing the seed.

Sold a big stockpile of the most valuable items. Pawned off 35 silver-quality Golden Eggs, 29 gold-quality Golden Eggs, 57 batches of Dried Common Mushrooms, and a couple more items for about 100,000 gold. Raided the fruit tree chest containing 40+ of each fruit (130ish of Mango) for another chunk of cash. Never even touched the stockpile of diamonds and rubies churning out of the Crystalariums.

Forked over 22000 gold for 110 Vinegar and around 50000 for the straight cash bundles. Grabbed the Amaranth, Artichoke, gold-star Summer Spangles, Kale, and Purple Mushrooms for the other bundles. Plugged in the Caviar last for the victory.

Extra note: Saw Myth Talents on the Hyper Speed-Gro craft. Requires taking a Qi quest to go into the dangerous mines. Feels very deep in logic (Pre-post edit: Sphere 15. Places it in the last 40 checks of Stardew Valley. Yep.). Locked the Balfonheim Aeropass for Final Fantasy 12 beyond the Myth Talent Stage Clear. Could have been nasty. Also basically never went into Skull Caverns. (Popped in for three quick checks. Quit without saving.)
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Still enjoys playing Stardew Valley. Wishes it took a little less time. Has the problem of wanting to hint for speed-based items (Movement Speed Bonus, Greenhouse, Gold Clock, Return Scepter, better tools), not progression items. May start with one Movement Speed Bonus next time. Keeps it valuable, but less pivotal.

No complaints about the mods. Gives the Automate mod a thumbs-up. Enabled some money strategies that would be too much of a hassle otherwise. Ended up being a good seed for it too. Expected to automate putting stuff in Preserve Jars and maybe Kegs. Turned out to be a bad seed for farming (no big cash crop and a long, slow walk from Ginger Island). Saved time on putting eggs into the Mayonnaise Machines instead. Received some Moss, syrups, and Purple Mushrooms easier. Makes the raccoon bundle checks so much better.

On the settings:

• Craftsanity: Good. Looked forward way more to skill level increases besides a select few. Would add it again.
• Skillsanity: Pairs well with Craftsanity. Felt much better with it.
• Friendsanity: Eh. There. Not good or bad. Cares very little about receiving friendship hearts, usually. Suits a run that cares about cooking far more.
• Fishsanity: May need to drop this. Might be contributing to the time issue. Pushes you to fish without bait. Already fishes plenty. Also means running around (slowly) to deal with Crab Pots. (Does not receive the check if automated into a chest.)
• Museumsanity: Already felt iffy about this. Ought to drop it from future playthroughs. Inevitably holds something good early. Delays someone for no good reason.
• Powersanity: Needs to turn this off too. Still save-scummed most of the books, even at 48% of the normal price. Forgot about how absolutely awful some books are too. 999 Fiber for a book? Ew. ~10 Prize Tickets for another? Eh. (Still got that, mainly hoping for a Fish Smoker later. Nope.)
• Very short Special Order Board: Keep this? Handles things like 4 River Fish just fine. Cuts down Qi quests without shuffling them in. Becomes halfway reasonable.

 

[Explorer of Time]

While I am in Go Mode for LttP now, I have the Bosses goal and had not beaten a single boss before today because my other four games kept me busy with hints. So it's going to be a bit until I can actually goal. I've cleared all the non-Agahnim Light World bosses today as well as the Ice Palace and Misery Mire bosses, so if I can keep up the pace I should be able to goal tomorrow evening.