Good one yesterday -- brought DW4 down to 5:42. First improvement since 2022. youtu.be/kSFahTh5h9w

I had two different sub-6 Dragon Warrior 4 speedruns in June (5:55 and 5:56) after switching to a dynamic Level 9 / Level 11 metal slime grind approach, combined with all the other routing updates I made over the last year. We're still looking for good luck, but I believe this is the 5:37 route.

With RPGLB wrapping up, that's pretty much the end of marathon season for me (everything kind of lands in April & May). Been a lot of fun. Here's some stuff I did:

DrMisterHomes and I are racing DW4 tonight for Retrothon in the traditional DQ "overnight" slot. There's no way he's ready for my Venomous Dagger strats, which "raises the odds of killing a 4 HP metal slime from 10% to 13.5%" (source: cowness.net) horaro.org/retrothon202...

For a little over a year I've been building a "background music" playlist of chill /calm new music from Japanese artists, mainly based off new releases from artists / human-curated playlists I follow. Always updating but it's at about 35 hours today. open.spotify.com/playlist/2Mb...

I'll be racing my friend crimson_ytb in DQ4 as part of a Zenithia Relay Race (DQ 4-5-6) in DQRTA Marathon this year. Because crimson and I both tend to end up organizing events, we've only ever raced twice before. I won the first time (2021), and he absolutely demolished me the second time (2022).

2024 was a great speedrun year. Took 10 minutes off Ever Oasis, had a lot of fun with DQ2 x-version races, especially the one in DQRTA Marathon, lived the dream of DW4 at RPGLB with Cowie & Deaner, hit my goal time for 2 new speedruns (DQ8 3DS and FFL2), and came back full circle to DW4. Good stuff.