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Doing the personal resolve thing would make it no different from a speed run.

I don't do speed runs.

You could make all kinds of personal resolves as to how you're going to finish the game.  It's a pandora's box you're opening if you go that route.  One could abolish star powers too, because believe me those are all kinds of cheap too, just not as cheap as life shrooms.  Then one could resolve to never use FP

See where I'm going with this?

If you start setting rules like that for your runs, it becomes about how far you're willing to go.  What's the best you believe you can accomplish.

And know what?  There's no cap.  You can always go a little bit better.  That's why it's like a speed run.

Now I know there's people who do speed runs and care about how far they can push their own boundries of 'how far can I take it'

I'm not one.  I don't care about doing something as best as I can.  All I care about is doing something as best as anyone can.  Things with set limits and caps.  Tangible goals to reach for that cannot be surpassed.

I take an all or nothing approach to my games.  If you can do better, then what you did was worthless, that's how I work.  Prime for example, 23% is worthless if you can do 22, and 22 normal is worthless if 22 hard is possible.  That's why I don't care about speed runs and I wouldn't care about runs made with arbitrary rules set on the particular WAY you finish the game.  You can always do better, making whatever was done always worthless from my view.

Now I don't expect that everyone or even anyone else have this perspective.  But as it goes for me, just resolving to not use items is worthless.  There has to be in-game incentive for it.

So to address the comment, yes one could just resolve not to do a rollover.  But from my perspective it's pointless.  One CAN rollover, therefore the in-game incentive for avoiding items is removed, therefore there's no reason to avoid them.
I've paused my llg game at the start of chapter 6 for a few days... I used the backup file I had in chapter 4 and finished chapter 4 again, and then set out on a 'low level pit of 100 trials run'.  I've pretty much written up the commentary i'm going to include with this when I post the video at archive, so I'll just go ahead and post it now ;-)  For now I have a vid of just levels 98-100 and will have a full vid later when I have this at archive.



My goal was to complete the entire Pit of 100 trials at the lowest entry-level & stats possible, giving every level up to BP to remain at 10/5.  I am at level 4 after chapter 4, which requires using fright masks on A LOT of battles to get only 1 star point from them, and of course avoiding unnecessary battles.  I bring a select set of badges that I felt were necessary to survive Bonetail.  The only really optional badge I brought was peekaboo, to see the enemy HP without tattles.  Knowing how much HP they have is pretty important in the lower levels.  I have yoshi leveled up so he does five attacks instead of four, and Koops leveled up to make the upper levels go faster. I used Goombella and Flurrie once each I think, and never Vivian.

The reason I wait until after chapter 4, is I think it's humanly impossible to beat the pit before then, when you get art attack.  With save states you could do it with just earth tremor (after chapter 2) but you'd have to super guard hundreds of attacks... I can't do that.

Art attack of course uses 4 star power, so having it to do at the start of every battle would require a lot of appealing and running.  Well, if you do the "can you find me" trouble, you get the first parlor card and you can buy more super appeal badges for 34 piantas.  If you have 12 of them, a single appeal brings back about 3.4 star power.  Throw in some stylish first strikes, and an appeal by your partner, and you get all 4 back... so now it's just one appeal and run.  I should note that I use the classic 'shirt stretching' method for pressing A fast, and in this run I never failed a single run, which would usually be deadly.

An ideal art attack only does 15-18 damage to all enemies, and some of them have more, namely the d.koopatrol and the swampires.  The d.koopatrols aren't a problem if I have spike shield, which I also use for spiked parabuzzies.  For the swampires, since them attacking is BAD, I bring along thunder rages and buy more from Charlieton if I can. I like to call Charlieton "con-artist guy" because of his pricing scheme.

Then there's bonetail.  I layed out a plan to massacre him with the use of power/mega rush [p] badges.  After chapter 4 you can have one of each, unless you've gotten more from enemy drops, but I didn't want to go around trying for that.  After chapter 5 you can get more power rushes from the casino, but I wanted to do this right after chapter 4.  The plan required 2 boo's sheets to make me and yoshi invisible, and there's only two you can have at this point (again, ignoring item drops or audience members).  One from the twilight town shop storage, and one from con-artist guy.  Then I just needed a way to have me and yoshi at 1 hp for the fight.  For yoshi it was easy... he's at 1 HP when I enter the pit, and I never use him until bringing him in at the end of 99.  Level ups only max your current partner, so he stays at 1.  Mario was a different story.  The only way to get to 1 HP is to take damage, which is too risky; use trial stew, which also drops you to 0 FP; or use point swap when you have 1 FP.  I decided point swap was the best, since I could double dip to go from 5->1 FP and then the point swap to give mario 1 HP and restore the FP.  If I do that at the end of level 99 and then thunder rage to finish 99, i'm set right?

Wrong. I forgot all about the possibility of a level up on 99.  That ruins the point swap and brings mario back to 10 HP.  I realized this when I first made it down to 99 and got that level up, and proceeded to get destroyed by bonetail because of my lack of a plan.  So, I layed one out in case it happened again.

I tried and tried... and kept screwing up.  I probably took 12 hours of attempts in a week before I succeeded.  One time I died on level 99 due to a huge brain fart.  Instead of leaving one enemy alive, I left all 5.  Another time I arrived at bonetail with no level up on 99, and had the battle ruined due to FOG.  The next time I made it to him, it was with a level up on 99, but I was disoriented from having thrown away the point swap already and managed to forget to change my badge layout... so I could barely hurt him at all and was quickly dead.  The next time, I finally finished.

I don't want to start the appeal->run chain until after level 50, because that's when the enemies get a lot harder.  So, before then I just use normal fighting... although I do use art attack a few times, namely on the hyper clefts, because they take too long to take out otherwise.  I never use earth tremor or sweet treat in the entire run.  I brought along 2 life shrooms as insurance, and one of them was used on level 48 because of some failed blocks.  Other than the boo's sheets and the point swap, the rest is one shooting star (from con-artist guy) and four thunder rages.  After picking up the item sack on level 50 I buy more thunder rages if I see him.  I also got two free ones, but it turns out I didn't need any of them, I only used four due to the way the fights turned out.  What was more important was a free boo's sheet; I don't believe I'd have beat bonetail if I hadn't got it.

I ended up with a level up on 99 again, but I was prepared for it now... right?  Wrong.  My strat had a flaw, which I didn't realize until I was about to use the point swap on mario.  Because of the flower saver p, I still had 2 FP left, so mario would get 2 HP which would only increase his attacks by 2.  I bailed and just did a normal attack, then when the boo's sheets ran out, used the free one on yoshi so he wouldn't die.  One power bounce from mario did a lot less damage than it would have if I had the +7 from the badges, but yoshi made up for it.  Bonetail attacked again, and I got lucky.  The attack would have killed me (unless I had guarded it), but since I still had the life shroom it actually didn't matter.  One more yoshi attack kills him, even though the power lift has wore off.

I end up level 23 at the end, though in one attempt I was level 25 due to amazee dayzees giving tons of experience.  I never saw any in this trip, and in fact I got a mover on level 95 which would have taken me straight to bonetail.  I ignored all movers I saw though because I wanted to show the whole endurance thing of doing all the fights.  If anyone thinks that they can do this without art attack... I'd really love to see it.