Monster Rancher Battle Card - Episode II - TAS ( 51:05

This is an improvement over my previous TAS (the 57:45 video). Timing is from name entry confirmation to last button input. I was planning to submit this to TAS Videos but in preparing this description I've realized I should probably do a third run... so I'm going to start on that and submit that one instead. Still, enjoy the shout out for the tournament team name in the second Champion's Cup! I think there are still some time saves yet to come. In the process of making this video I figured out where the Ranking data was stored, and how it works to determine opponents for the tournament. I think I could theoretically end, in the A rank tournaments, facing only opponents who could be beaten in 2 turns. (This doesn't mean it would be able to happen every time, because the deck RNG space is absolutely gigantic, but it would probably save some time overall.) There are potentially glitches in AI behavior that could be exploited more often. One thing I learned in this run was that Tesca doesn't use Mocchi's Round to keep Combination from killing his GentleMocchi. He does use Roll, if he has it, though. Also, if an opponent can choose between a Breeder card and an Attack, the RNG advances much further if they choose an attack, and it can be manipulated by delaying A presses. I still have yet to dive into how the AI actually makes decisions, but it seems like for the attacks they end up needing to decide which attack to use and who to target, which means more calls to the RNG function. See the description from the first TAS for more info about what I've discovered. New discoveries are: In any non-Champion's Cup tournament, opponents can only beat each other if they are INITIALLY ranked within 50 points of one another. If they are apart more than that, the player initially ranked higher will always win. This doesn't apply to the Champion's Cup for reasons I've yet to investigate; Leon always beats Ryan, even though in a tournament Ryan would always win. I tried to manipulate this but couldn't. The Champion's Cup bracket is relatively easy to manipulate. I could theoretically fight Elizabeth or Schmitz instead of Rascal if I got my team, BCB, Fire Dragons, and Blue Wolves all on the same side of the bracket. Elizabeth's team seems very dodge heavy but her monsters are also all pretty weak, so it could be a possibility. Ellie and Miller are basically fixed -- they occurred at the exact same places this run as they did in the previous one. Ellie appears after two skipped tournaments, and Miller after some number of skipped battles. Route changes: I manipulated Pabs's rewards, thus removing the need to modify the deck another time. I realized very belatedly that I may be able to skip another tournament before the Pabs fight, which would make it easier to employ the Combination strategy, so I would probably implement that in the next run. I added Pixie back in sooner. Scratch and Thunder are quite key to several battles here. I'm still debating the starting monsters. I could theoretically get Golem and try to manipulate Miller for Chop/Kick, which could save me some time, but the "three Dragon skill cards" reward I get is pretty essential; it's the exact same reward set here as it was in the first run. Other improvements: Early game battles are, on average, 2.25x the length of the later game battles. This is somewhat expected (because Dragon's Combination is fantastic) but it's a really big difference. It might be enough of a difference to justify using Miller's rewards to speed them up -- the five fights between Miller and Dragon are really long. But I'd need to try to find something reliable, which is difficult. As always -- if you have any feedback, questions, suggestions, let me know in the comments.