Run Information

Run Information
Completion Date			June 9, 2021
State			Published
Runner			Phillip 'ZELLLOOO' Shanklin
Tag			Deaths
Links
Verification Thread

Run Comments
Hi everyone and welcome to my Mega Man Network Transmission Any% run! This run simply completes the game as fast as possible and is timed to 54:07 with community timing (first control at first textbox to loss of control at final hit). So remember how I said I was done with the 55:39? Let's just say a combination of competition and marathon practice really does help drive a time down, haha. Big shoutouts to fellow runner Verallix who set up a bunch of optimizations and helped push me to grind the time over the last month while prepping for some marathon showcases, I honestly cannot believe this is a minute and a half faster than my previous submission. My current sum of best segments sits at 52:36 and way too much of that is getting lucky chip draws now, so I'm (hopefully) 100% done with this category unless a new skip is found. Other quick shoutouts go to fatkid, SmogBN, and Dalus_EXE for joining in weekly NT races and making this game fun to casually race and chill out on, as well as the rest of the TeamBN discord for the support. Here's a quick glossary of terms copied from my 100% comments: BMD: Blue Mystery Data, one-time items that usually contain upgrades, sometimes chips GMD: Green Mystery Data, items that regenerate when jacking out and contain random contents depending on the map and location in said map PMD: Purple Mystery Data, one-time items that require an Unlocker subchip to open and contain upgrades or rare chips YMD: Yellow Mystery Data, one-time items that contain either key items or hints to special secrets PA: Program Advance, a special attack formed by selecting three specific chips in order at the chip draw menu. In this run, only Z-Canon is used at the end by selecting Cannon, HiCannon, and M-Cannon in that order Reg: Setting a chip to always appear in the first slot of the chip draw screen, requires enough MB from RegUps to set chips with higher MB values Subchips: Buyable / findable consumables that can heal HP (energies), open PMDs (Unlockers), or manipulate the Custom gauge speed (FstGauge / FullCust) HP Memory: Increases max HP by 20 MemUp: Increases max MP/MB by 8 and speeds up regen rate Backup: Increases maximum live count by 1 Powerup: Can be used to add points to Mega Man's buster stats RegUp: Increases Reg memory max by 8 MB Most of the remaining comments will be the same from my previous submission with some changes here and there as needed. Movement, mechanics, and routing: - Like classic Mega Man games, sliding is pretty much always the fast way of moving horizontally. I want to keep my jumps as short as possible so I can spend more time on the ground sliding unless I need a particular position or setup. Ladder climbing is INCREDIBLY slow in this game and I skip as much of it as possible by jumping up or dropping down as far as possible. - It is possible to cancel some chip animations by attacking while in the air and landing on the ground. I get immediate control of Mega Man when I do this successfully so it saves a small bit of time everywhere I can do this and is incredibly helpful for optimizing the first half of the game when I'm reliant on chips. - Corner boosts aren't used often but are still useful; if you jump at the corner of a ceiling or block then you get pushed forward slightly. This mostly comes into play when jumping up past narrow platforms but also has some use in a few other areas (like getting the first TreeBomb in Garden Comp 1 more consistently by pushing towards the KillPlant faster) - With a bit of testing, I figured out the exact damage formula for the buster: -- 3 * A * C -- A = Attack stat for buster -- C = Charge level, which breaks down to the following: --- Lemon / no charge, C = 1 --- Half-charge, C = 3 --- Full-charge, C = 6 -- This means we're doing a pitiful 3 damage per normal shot at the beginning of the game and the buster is almost worthless, so we wait until the halfway point of the run to max upgrade our Attack and Charge levels. This allows EXTREMELY fast charge shots that can do 45/90 damage and makes the buster the best overall source of damage in the back half of the run, especially for bosses as the buster will not trigger any flinch animations or counter-attacks for most of them. - On entering a stage, the game selects 5 of the 20 chips in your folder at random for you to pick from. Reg'ing (presetting one chip in my folder to always appear in the first slot of the custom screen) allows some nice manipulation to get exactly what we need in parts both for movement and for attacking. That being said, Reg'ing does take some time to edit the folder as needed so if I need other chips later in a stage and can get them in my first random draw, that's a pretty significant time save I have no real control over. - Standby Mode freezes the action and allows you to switch between active chips, this gets toggled a couple of times by accident in this run due to my controller grip but one intentional use is for the Shadow Man fight to pause during his duplication attack and safely figure out where the real one is. - Text mashing is a bit rough in this game; the optimal way to skip text is by pushing confirm to draw the text out in one frame and then immediately cancel to the next box with shoot. This requires a bit of a thumbroll at a very fast rate to hit the inputs without dropping rhythm, so my text mash varies from "kind of fast" to "zooming fast" depending on how well I can rock back and forth. - The upgrade route is incredibly tight at this point: -- I pick up as many MemUps as I reasonably can as not only do I get immediate upgrades to my MP for using chips, the game regens MP at a percentage-based rate and I will recover more when my max is higher; this is needed for a few stages where I just barely have enough MP to use every chip I need. -- HP Memories are really tight: unlike classic MM games, damage from enemies scales up quite a bit as I progress so I need HP Memories to avoid getting one-shotted by later enemies and take some useful damage boosts. Even still, I only pick up some from Number Man's shop and those on the way of the direct stage route so I'm running pretty low the whole run and can't afford many mistakes (if any in some parts). -- RegUps increase the default memory used for Reg'ing chips and I need several to preset some of the more costly chips I use. I pick up three so I have 24 and 32 MB at the points I need them most. -- 8 of the 12 PowerUps are grabbed for powering up the buster, several of these come from a shopping trip at Number Man while the remaining ones I pick up on the way during the first half. Due to needing these PowerUps, some other upgrades, and other chips from Higsby's shop, the money route is tight and there's not much room for missing cash. - Just like the normal Battle Network games, viruses have a rank system and can give item drops depending on your rank. Fast kills and not taking damage are the factors in getting drops (virus's primary or secondary chip drop, health, money, or nothing) so I approach enemies in ways where I can defeat them as fast and safely as possible to get chips I need. For more information, refer to MegaRockEXE's excellent drop table: https://pastebin.com/Vi8yNaYA - Speaking of tight money routing and enemy rank, bosses also drop different amounts of money based on their rank. This makes fighting bosses extra scary as I need good fights to have money for later or otherwise it can easily be a reset at the halfway point. Even worse is the money can land on the edges of the stage where Mega Man can't reach! I try and keep bosses as centered as possible to make sure this doesn't happen but it's still a tossup if things go out of bounds. Stage breakdown: - Fire Man - As before, Sword is regged at the beginning of the game for Fire Man and I get Cannon and V-Gun automatically for the first draw due to the tutorial. Cannons from the Canodumbs are grabbed where possible and I take the MemUp as before but some slight strat changes are added to get in more slides where I can. This time around, the Heat Armor is not equipped as it saves roughly 8 seconds from not needing to menu at the cost of making the Fire Man fight scary if I get more than one Fire Arm attack (I start with 80 HP and it does 50, not something you want to see more than one of...). A missed Sword on Fire is saved by backup LongSwrd and the rest of the level goes fairly well with only minor mistakes. - Guts Man - Enter one of Verallix's new strats for Global 1 here: With a DashAtk draw or a damage boost off a bomb on the last Beetank, the wavy bridge can be reached just in time to catch the cycle and slide across, saving several seconds over having to slowly walk through. Due to missing a Cannon shot in Outer Net, I'm paranoid about my MP use and forgo using the second DashAtk in favor of ensuring I can use the LongSwrds I drew during the Guts fight. Fight goes nicely with a Cannon, the two LongSwrds, and reg'd normal Swords so overall a pretty good split. - Quick Man - Still using the same stage order here by going to Bank first, nothing different really happens here as far as route is concerned: Grab the RegUp in Bank 1 and book it to the end of the level. My random chip draw this time was unfortunately pretty awful, I drew literally nothing useful and had to resort to only Cannons for the entire stage and boss fight. Quick Man also gives a pretty mediocre pattern for using only Cannons, so a few seconds were lost in this stage through bad luck. - Needle Man - The shopping trip is still the same (again): Buy an Unlocker for the locked PowerUp and enough Heat-Vs to reach 5 copies. 4 TreeBom1s are scavenged from the KillPlants and I grab the HPMem, locked PowerUp, and MemUp as usual; this time around the stage is played close to perfect and I get the important damage boost at the end to save a good chunk of time. The Needle fight is now a bit less scary: Verallix pointed out that most of his attacks do 60 damage but contact damage only does 30, so I stay close on the 4th Heat-V so I can damage boost off his body and prevent him from using the desperation move, then pop him with the last Heat-V for a fast kill. - Ice Man - 3 ElecBldes for Ice Man are bought and I dive into Waterworks; this is perhaps the strangest Waterworks I have ever played in an Any% run. The first chip draw was terrible with the only attacking chips being Wrecker and ShockWav and I had a huge panic moment, so I make do with what I have until after grinding the Pepe viruses for DoubJump. After dropping down, I miss my second Wrecker throw towards the Shrimpy and quickly improv a backwards damage boost off the bubble to get by, then mash the Recov10s I drew so I could get pass the ColdBear, what a save to get in a finished run! As I have no good attacking chips to get rid of the Shrimpy2 in Waterworks 3 later, I do the folder edit before entering area 2; this edit is slightly different from before as I keep DashAtk for possible other uses later on and toss a different chip instead. The new chip draw gives me DoubJump which allows me to skip some of the second Yoku block room so that was a nice way to gain some time back. Puffy miniboss is pretty standard, nothing super fast or super slow due to my lack of bombs but a decent moving pattern on the splitting enemies. ElecBlde is reg'd before deathwarping and I deal with Ice Man nice and easy, this stage could definitely be 15 seconds faster with better chip draws but not a lot of control over that and I did mostly okay with what I had to work with. - Bright Man - No real changes here, TreeBom1 is reg'd for Bright's fight and I get a few items along the way. I'm able to get ahead of the first laser at the end of Shopping 2 which is nice and the Bright fight is standard by baiting his taunt and chaining Treebombs together. Somehow this was also a gold split like my last run but I'm not really sure why since I didn't get anything really useful like Heat-V/Bub-V to speed the stage up , not complaining though! - Color Man - Arcade 1 has a new strat while going to grab the HeatCode: Manuevering around the Fishy2's flames and sliding under is just a bit faster than damage boosting through, and since I'm not wearing Heat Armor this run anyways I'm essentially forced to try for it to ensure I have HP for later. The rest is mostly the same with using DoubJump to skip to the first key and then grabbing the MemUp in Arcade 2 before diving into the boss fight. Unfortunately, the Color fight is by far the ugliest part of this run due to a missed Bub-V and two missed LongSwrd slashes on his awkward hitbox, ugh. I'm fortunate enough I got around all the Fire Towers because those are incredibly damaging without armor and still I finished the fight in one piece but yikes, that was probably 15 seconds lost compared to an optimal fight with that draw... - Elec Man - More DoubJump abuse again, still no changes to this level due to the MP usage so I get the two PowerUps and make all the needed cycles despite taking a blaster hit. Elec fight was a little scary but got the job done fine with TreeBombs and Heat-V, that's about as good as this stage gets without getting the TreeBomb in the first draw. - Shopping & Sword Man - There is a possible route change now that hasn't been extensively looked at by going to Outer Net first to buy equipment then going jacking out and going straight to Old Area from Global 2: The 100% run's buster strat used to destroy the Spikey3 in Global 3 saves enough DoubJumps to do Old Area with optimal strats and this can possibly save time now due to having one less warp transition, but timing the extra walking may roughly cancel it out so that's an idea for future runs if anybody tries. Still, standard strats are done here to damage boost past enemies and open Global 3's warp before backtracking to Number for three PowerUps, equipping everything, and heading back with a Jack Out. The buster strat on the Spikey3 is used every chance I get while returning to Global 3 as it allows me to slide instead of slowly leap over and adds up over the course of the run to several seconds of timesave. Old Area was a little finicky this run: I accidentally clipped the GMD in area 1 and had a couple of jump scares almost pushing me into spikes. Due to increased confidence in playing the ending pits, I go for a few more slides to squeeze out some frames and play the stage really well even with the early minor mistakes. Sword's fight also goes extremely well as I do not get the desperation attack and am able to get a quick kill, this split was another gold due to overall strong play and good luck! - Gravity Man - 5 Barriers are bought at Higsby's again and are even more useful for this run due to slight strat changes later on, so I nab them and set off for Strange Grav area. Still no shooting chips nor DashAtk in my draw for optimal strats but the buster strats work out well and I get ahead of the roller cycle in area 1, then pick up the RegUp and HPMem before aggressively pushing to the end of the stage with little trouble. Folder edit is done to throw both remaining Cannon chips and Barrier in, then Barrier and a lucky M-Cannon take me to the boss fight against Gravity Man. No issues here and M-Cannon really caps the fight off nicely so I get yet another gold split as a nice surprise. - Star Man - Another relatively unchanged stage this run due to not getting a lucky draw with a shooting chip, so I make the DoubJump skip in area 1 as usual and abuse my Barrier draw in area 2 to take it slow and preserve my HP since I have to wait for the custom gauge to refill before the Yort miniboss anyways. Careful Bub-V shots take out the Yort quickly and I pop into a fairly odd Star fight; some of the positioning during the half-charge shots got a bit strange and I tried to force different things through triggering his teleport and using Bub-V to cancel his animations, it worked out though since I lived and didn't get any long star shower attacks so overall a good enough stage for needing to reg a chip. - Zero - Here's a significantly changed strat that I came up with a mere two days before this run was completed: Barrier is now reg'd instead of DoubJump for this stage. While reg'ing DoubJump and getting Barrier in a random draw is optimal luck, that typically doesn't happen and more often than not Zero ends up using his Phantom Zero attack, forcing a menu to reg Barrier and not die. Barrier is instead now reg'd as it saves needing to menu when that attack happens (which is like...90% of runs that get here), so despite needing an extra 2.5 seconds to climb up to the Zero Account portal it generally saves time by not needing to menu mid-fight. The extra Barriers are also really nice for the stage: Two uses help me skip the Megalians by sliding through instead of having to slowly jump over so some of the time is made back up this way which is quite nice! Zero has some new strats as well thanks to Verallix and Terraj's observations and I use all of them in this run: - After forcing a teleport, two full charge shots can be fired off if you release the charges optimally and jump past the sword slash between shots in order to move closer for the second shot. - A strat dubbed Fast Zero, forcing a guard at point-blank range makes Zero do a rising slash that we can quickly slide under and release a full charge before he can block again. - At low HP where he would likely trigger Phantom Zero, I instead put Barrier up and simply wait nearby to try and bait a different attack due to having more options. This is a much safer and generally faster way to approach as it greatly lessens the chance of getting Phantom Zero chained over and over until I run out of Barriers and die. I accidentally shot and got blocked at the end to pick up one Phantom Zero then had to wait a few more seconds for him to slash again, but otherwise this fight went quite well with the new strats and was still a great stage! - Prep and Pharaoh Man - Another slight route change with items here: I never really needed the extra 2k zenny that I saved from not buying the second HPMem at Number, so I decided to skip the HPMem that was in Zero's stage and buy the second one here which saves some time from traveling and reading text. Most stuff for this split is pretty much the same with DoubJump used to skip large chunks and lots of careful slide movement to avoid enemies in Legendary 1, I especially got lucky at the Spooky2 + Ratty3 combo this time and was able to not take damage so that was a good confidence booster. A slight strat change is done in area 2 to kill the first KillFleur and save a Barrier use instead for the Ratty3 + KillFleur combo at the end of the level which makes this room far safer at a minimal time cost, I reg Barrier after the kill and get through this area with the cleanest movement I have done in a run. Pharaoh fight was a bit weird due to him dropping a Ratty early on and it made for some awkward dodges and charge cancels from getting hit. No Anubis statues were summoned though and the fight was still reasonable so this was still okay especially since the stage was essentially perfect. - Shadow Man - StrArrow still gets reg'd to do the large skip in the second area but I also get incredibly lucky with drawing M-Cannon for the boss fight as well as DashAtk for a free move past the first Snapper. I grab my 5th and final M-Cannon and do the StrArrow skip fine to hit the early cart cycle at the end, then lock Shadow down with M-Cannon plus buster for a super fast kill, superb stage here! - Endgame - This is perhaps the most significant change for strats: I move away from the luck-based 5 FullCust strat for drawing the Z-Canon PA and opt for the consistent method by abusing an MPCharge with low-quantity chips taken from my pack. When all copies of a chip are used up during a stage, the game cannot put that chip back into the random draw when opening the chip screen again, so I can simply delete chips until I have looked at everything in my folder and guarantee I have what I need for the end of the run. The folder edit does not take a huge amount of time with some practice and I can avoid gambling and likely losing time or an entire run to not getting stuff, making it a much better strat to set up! Money also works out nicely, I actually need even less money to buy 1 MPCharge and 3 FullCusts over buying 5 FullCusts so no money route changes were needed, quite convenient. DoubJump is Reg'd and I leave only the Cannons, Heat-V, and TreeBom1 while tossing everything out into the pack. I quickly resort the pack in reverse quantity and add everything 24 MB and below until my folder is filled with 20 chips again, then run to the shop to buy items before heading to the map. DoubJumps are used to get through all of Undernet and burn all copies before dropping down to the portal of no return; here I use MPCharge to refill my MP for chip burning and go through my FullCusts until I have my 5 needed chips. In this run, I have decent luck and get everything in my draw at the second FullCust which saves about 10 seconds over needing to use the last one so definitely a nice little timesave. Z-Canon is assembled with Heat-V and TreeBombs also taken and I head into the final boss rush. HP and chips are still restored between each major section so Z-Canon gets maximum use again. - Firewall dies to Z-Canon, a little sloppy getting a 6-3 kill instead of an optimal 8-1 but it's barely any time loss since cannons are so fast. It's important to know that Firewall does have some invincibility between hits and a very specific rhythm is used to time the shots, otherwise the shot will just go right through the eye (if this happens you will see blue sparks pop out of the wall). - Refights went well again, no major issues and only a couple of less optimal boss patterns, Color decided to be extra nice during the refight too and spent most of his time trying to run away, haha. - LifeVirusR 1 dies quickly to Z-Canon + full charge combo still, LifeVirusR 2 has fairly optimal charging and is about as good as it gets. Unless someone actually manages to beat this run, I think I'm very done with this category again. I really wasn't expecting to save so much time over my previous submission but having an active and supporting community helps so much in grinding a speedrun down and I'm super happy that the world record has been wittled down by over 3 1/2 minutes in the last 1 1/2 years of running Network Transmission. I'll still be doing the occasional community race with others but my days of actively grinding this are over until a major skip or glitch is somehow found and I am moving to other games until then, thank you all for reading and I hope you've enjoyed this journey as much as I have!

Run Comments

Hi everyone and welcome to my Mega Man Network Transmission Any% run! This run simply completes the game as fast as possible and is timed to 54:07 with community timing (first control at first textbox to loss of control at final hit).

So remember how I said I was done with the 55:39? Let's just say a combination of competition and marathon practice really does help drive a time down, haha. Big shoutouts to fellow runner Verallix who set up a bunch of optimizations and helped push me to grind the time over the last month while prepping for some marathon showcases, I honestly cannot believe this is a minute and a half faster than my previous submission. My current sum of best segments sits at 52:36 and way too much of that is getting lucky chip draws now, so I'm (hopefully) 100% done with this category unless a new skip is found.

Other quick shoutouts go to fatkid, SmogBN, and Dalus_EXE for joining in weekly NT races and making this game fun to casually race and chill out on, as well as the rest of the TeamBN discord for the support.

Here's a quick glossary of terms copied from my 100% comments:

BMD: Blue Mystery Data, one-time items that usually contain upgrades, sometimes chips
GMD: Green Mystery Data, items that regenerate when jacking out and contain random contents depending on the map and location in said map
PMD: Purple Mystery Data, one-time items that require an Unlocker subchip to open and contain upgrades or rare chips
YMD: Yellow Mystery Data, one-time items that contain either key items or hints to special secrets
PA: Program Advance, a special attack formed by selecting three specific chips in order at the chip draw menu. In this run, only Z-Canon is used at the end by selecting Cannon, HiCannon, and M-Cannon in that order
Reg: Setting a chip to always appear in the first slot of the chip draw screen, requires enough MB from RegUps to set chips with higher MB values
Subchips: Buyable / findable consumables that can heal HP (energies), open PMDs (Unlockers), or manipulate the Custom gauge speed (FstGauge / FullCust)
HP Memory: Increases max HP by 20
MemUp: Increases max MP/MB by 8 and speeds up regen rate
Backup: Increases maximum live count by 1
Powerup: Can be used to add points to Mega Man's buster stats
RegUp: Increases Reg memory max by 8 MB

Most of the remaining comments will be the same from my previous submission with some changes here and there as needed.

Movement, mechanics, and routing:

- Like classic Mega Man games, sliding is pretty much always the fast way of moving horizontally. I want to keep my jumps as short as possible so I can spend more time on the ground sliding unless I need a particular position or setup. Ladder climbing is INCREDIBLY slow in this game and I skip as much of it as possible by jumping up or dropping down as far as possible.

- It is possible to cancel some chip animations by attacking while in the air and landing on the ground. I get immediate control of Mega Man when I do this successfully so it saves a small bit of time everywhere I can do this and is incredibly helpful for optimizing the first half of the game when I'm reliant on chips.

- Corner boosts aren't used often but are still useful; if you jump at the corner of a ceiling or block then you get pushed forward slightly. This mostly comes into play when jumping up past narrow platforms but also has some use in a few other areas (like getting the first TreeBomb in Garden Comp 1 more consistently by pushing towards the KillPlant faster)

- With a bit of testing, I figured out the exact damage formula for the buster:
   -- 3 * A * C
   -- A = Attack stat for buster
   -- C = Charge level, which breaks down to the following:
        --- Lemon / no charge, C = 1
        --- Half-charge, C = 3
        --- Full-charge, C = 6

   -- This means we're doing a pitiful 3 damage per normal shot at the beginning of the game and the buster is almost worthless, so we wait until the halfway point of the run to max upgrade our Attack and Charge levels. This allows EXTREMELY fast charge shots that can do 45/90 damage and makes the buster the best overall source of damage in the back half of the run, especially for bosses as the buster will not trigger any flinch animations or counter-attacks for most of them.

- On entering a stage, the game selects 5 of the 20 chips in your folder at random for you to pick from. Reg'ing (presetting one chip in my folder to always appear in the first slot of the custom screen) allows some nice manipulation to get exactly what we need in parts both for movement and for attacking. That being said, Reg'ing does take some time to edit the folder as needed so if I need other chips later in a stage and can get them in my first random draw, that's a pretty significant time save I have no real control over.

- Standby Mode freezes the action and allows you to switch between active chips, this gets toggled a couple of times by accident in this run due to my controller grip but one intentional use is for the Shadow Man fight to pause during his duplication attack and safely figure out where the real one is.

- Text mashing is a bit rough in this game; the optimal way to skip text is by pushing confirm to draw the text out in one frame and then immediately cancel to the next box with shoot. This requires a bit of a thumbroll at a very fast rate to hit the inputs without dropping rhythm, so my text mash varies from "kind of fast" to "zooming fast" depending on how well I can rock back and forth.

- The upgrade route is incredibly tight at this point:
   -- I pick up as many MemUps as I reasonably can as not only do I get immediate upgrades to my MP for using chips, the game regens MP at a percentage-based rate and I will recover more when my max is higher; this is needed for a few stages where I just barely have enough MP to use every chip I need.
   -- HP Memories are really tight: unlike classic MM games, damage from enemies scales up quite a bit as I progress so I need HP Memories to avoid getting one-shotted by later enemies and take some useful damage boosts. Even still, I only pick up some from Number Man's shop and those on the way of the direct stage route so I'm running pretty low the whole run and can't afford many mistakes (if any in some parts).
   -- RegUps increase the default memory used for Reg'ing chips and I need several to preset some of the more costly chips I use. I pick up three so I have 24 and 32 MB at the points I need them most.
   -- 8 of the 12 PowerUps are grabbed for powering up the buster, several of these come from a shopping trip at Number Man while the remaining ones I pick up on the way during the first half. Due to needing these PowerUps, some other upgrades, and other chips from Higsby's shop, the money route is tight and there's not much room for missing cash.

- Just like the normal Battle Network games, viruses have a rank system and can give item drops depending on your rank. Fast kills and not taking damage are the factors in getting drops (virus's primary or secondary chip drop, health, money, or nothing) so I approach enemies in ways where I can defeat them as fast and safely as possible to get chips I need. For more information, refer to MegaRockEXE's excellent drop table: https://pastebin.com/Vi8yNaYA

- Speaking of tight money routing and enemy rank, bosses also drop different amounts of money based on their rank. This makes fighting bosses extra scary as I need good fights to have money for later or otherwise it can easily be a reset at the halfway point. Even worse is the money can land on the edges of the stage where Mega Man can't reach! I try and keep bosses as centered as possible to make sure this doesn't happen but it's still a tossup if things go out of bounds.

Stage breakdown:

- Fire Man -

As before, Sword is regged at the beginning of the game for Fire Man and I get Cannon and V-Gun automatically for the first draw due to the tutorial. Cannons from the Canodumbs are grabbed where possible and I take the MemUp as before but some slight strat changes are added to get in more slides where I can. This time around, the Heat Armor is not equipped as it saves roughly 8 seconds from not needing to menu at the cost of making the Fire Man fight scary if I get more than one Fire Arm attack (I start with 80 HP and it does 50, not something you want to see more than one of...). A missed Sword on Fire is saved by backup LongSwrd and the rest of the level goes fairly well with only minor mistakes.

- Guts Man -

Enter one of Verallix's new strats for Global 1 here: With a DashAtk draw or a damage boost off a bomb on the last Beetank, the wavy bridge can be reached just in time to catch the cycle and slide across, saving several seconds over having to slowly walk through. Due to missing a Cannon shot in Outer Net, I'm paranoid about my MP use and forgo using the second DashAtk in favor of ensuring I can use the LongSwrds I drew during the Guts fight. Fight goes nicely with a Cannon, the two LongSwrds, and reg'd normal Swords so overall a pretty good split.

- Quick Man -

Still using the same stage order here by going to Bank first, nothing different really happens here as far as route is concerned: Grab the RegUp in Bank 1 and book it to the end of the level. My random chip draw this time was unfortunately pretty awful, I drew literally nothing useful and had to resort to only Cannons for the entire stage and boss fight. Quick Man also gives a pretty mediocre pattern for using only Cannons, so a few seconds were lost in this stage through bad luck.

- Needle Man -

The shopping trip is still the same (again): Buy an Unlocker for the locked PowerUp and enough Heat-Vs to reach 5 copies. 4 TreeBom1s are scavenged from the KillPlants and I grab the HPMem, locked PowerUp, and MemUp as usual; this time around the stage is played close to perfect and I get the important damage boost at the end to save a good chunk of time. The Needle fight is now a bit less scary: Verallix pointed out that most of his attacks do 60 damage but contact damage only does 30, so I stay close on the 4th Heat-V so I can damage boost off his body and prevent him from using the desperation move, then pop him with the last Heat-V for a fast kill.

- Ice Man -

3 ElecBldes for Ice Man are bought and I dive into Waterworks; this is perhaps the strangest Waterworks I have ever played in an Any% run. The first chip draw was terrible with the only attacking chips being Wrecker and ShockWav and I had a huge panic moment, so I make do with what I have until after grinding the Pepe viruses for DoubJump. After dropping down, I miss my second Wrecker throw towards the Shrimpy and quickly improv a backwards damage boost off the bubble to get by, then mash the Recov10s I drew so I could get pass the ColdBear, what a save to get in a finished run! As I have no good attacking chips to get rid of the Shrimpy2 in Waterworks 3 later, I do the folder edit before entering area 2; this edit is slightly different from before as I keep DashAtk for possible other uses later on and toss a different chip instead.

The new chip draw gives me DoubJump which allows me to skip some of the second Yoku block room so that was a nice way to gain some time back. Puffy miniboss is pretty standard, nothing super fast or super slow due to my lack of bombs but a decent moving pattern on the splitting enemies. ElecBlde is reg'd before deathwarping and I deal with Ice Man nice and easy, this stage could definitely be 15 seconds faster with better chip draws but not a lot of control over that and I did mostly okay with what I had to work with.

- Bright Man -

No real changes here, TreeBom1 is reg'd for Bright's fight and I get a few items along the way. I'm able to get ahead of the first laser at the end of Shopping 2 which is nice and the Bright fight is standard by baiting his taunt and chaining Treebombs together. Somehow this was also a gold split like my last run but I'm not really sure why since I didn't get anything really useful like Heat-V/Bub-V to speed the stage up , not complaining though!

- Color Man -

Arcade 1 has a new strat while going to grab the HeatCode: Manuevering around the Fishy2's flames and sliding under is just a bit faster than damage boosting through, and since I'm not wearing Heat Armor this run anyways I'm essentially forced to try for it to ensure I have HP for later. The rest is mostly the same with using DoubJump to skip to the first key and then grabbing the MemUp in Arcade 2 before diving into the boss fight. Unfortunately, the Color fight is by far the ugliest part of this run due to a missed Bub-V and two missed LongSwrd slashes on his awkward hitbox, ugh. I'm fortunate enough I got around all the Fire Towers because those are incredibly damaging without armor and still I finished the fight in one piece but yikes, that was probably 15 seconds lost compared to an optimal fight with that draw...

- Elec Man -

More DoubJump abuse again, still no changes to this level due to the MP usage so I get the two PowerUps and make all the needed cycles despite taking a blaster hit. Elec fight was a little scary but got the job done fine with TreeBombs and Heat-V, that's about as good as this stage gets without getting the TreeBomb in the first draw.

- Shopping & Sword Man -

There is a possible route change now that hasn't been extensively looked at by going to Outer Net first to buy equipment then going jacking out and going straight to Old Area from Global 2: The 100% run's buster strat used to destroy the Spikey3 in Global 3 saves enough DoubJumps to do Old Area with optimal strats and this can possibly save time now due to having one less warp transition, but timing the extra walking may roughly cancel it out so that's an idea for future runs if anybody tries. Still, standard strats are done here to damage boost past enemies and open Global 3's warp before backtracking to Number for three PowerUps, equipping everything, and heading back with a Jack Out. The buster strat on the Spikey3 is used every chance I get while returning to Global 3 as it allows me to slide instead of slowly leap over and adds up over the course of the run to several seconds of timesave.

Old Area was a little finicky this run: I accidentally clipped the GMD in area 1 and had a couple of jump scares almost pushing me into spikes. Due to increased confidence in playing the ending pits, I go for a few more slides to squeeze out some frames and play the stage really well even with the early minor mistakes. Sword's fight also goes extremely well as I do not get the desperation attack and am able to get a quick kill, this split was another gold due to overall strong play and good luck!

- Gravity Man -

5 Barriers are bought at Higsby's again and are even more useful for this run due to slight strat changes later on, so I nab them and set off for Strange Grav area. Still no shooting chips nor DashAtk in my draw for optimal strats but the buster strats work out well and I get ahead of the roller cycle in area 1, then pick up the RegUp and HPMem before aggressively pushing to the end of the stage with little trouble. Folder edit is done to throw both remaining Cannon chips and Barrier in, then Barrier and a lucky M-Cannon take me to the boss fight against Gravity Man. No issues here and M-Cannon really caps the fight off nicely so I get yet another gold split as a nice surprise.

- Star Man -

Another relatively unchanged stage this run due to not getting a lucky draw with a shooting chip, so I make the DoubJump skip in area 1 as usual and abuse my Barrier draw in area 2 to take it slow and preserve my HP since I have to wait for the custom gauge to refill before the Yort miniboss anyways. Careful Bub-V shots take out the Yort quickly and I pop into a fairly odd Star fight; some of the positioning during the half-charge shots got a bit strange and I tried to force different things through triggering his teleport and using Bub-V to cancel his animations, it worked out though since I lived and didn't get any long star shower attacks so overall a good enough stage for needing to reg a chip.

- Zero -

Here's a significantly changed strat that I came up with a mere two days before this run was completed: Barrier is now reg'd instead of DoubJump for this stage. While reg'ing DoubJump and getting Barrier in a random draw is optimal luck, that typically doesn't happen and more often than not Zero ends up using his Phantom Zero attack, forcing a menu to reg Barrier and not die. Barrier is instead now reg'd as it saves needing to menu when that attack happens (which is like...90% of runs that get here), so despite needing an extra 2.5 seconds to climb up to the Zero Account portal it generally saves time by not needing to menu mid-fight. The extra Barriers are also really nice for the stage: Two uses help me skip the Megalians by sliding through instead of having to slowly jump over so some of the time is made back up this way which is quite nice!

Zero has some new strats as well thanks to Verallix and Terraj's observations and I use all of them in this run:

- After forcing a teleport, two full charge shots can be fired off if you release the charges optimally and jump past the sword slash between shots in order to move closer for the second shot.
- A strat dubbed Fast Zero, forcing a guard at point-blank range makes Zero do a rising slash that we can quickly slide under and release a full charge before he can block again.
- At low HP where he would likely trigger Phantom Zero, I instead put Barrier up and simply wait nearby to try and bait a different attack due to having more options. This is a much safer and generally faster way to approach as it greatly lessens the chance of getting Phantom Zero chained over and over until I run out of Barriers and die.

I accidentally shot and got blocked at the end to pick up one Phantom Zero then had to wait a few more seconds for him to slash again, but otherwise this fight went quite well with the new strats and was still a great stage!

- Prep and Pharaoh Man -

Another slight route change with items here: I never really needed the extra 2k zenny that I saved from not buying the second HPMem at Number, so I decided to skip the HPMem that was in Zero's stage and buy the second one here which saves some time from traveling and reading text. Most stuff for this split is pretty much the same with DoubJump used to skip large chunks and lots of careful slide movement to avoid enemies in Legendary 1, I especially got lucky at the Spooky2 + Ratty3 combo this time and was able to not take damage so that was a good confidence booster. A slight strat change is done in area 2 to kill the first KillFleur and save a Barrier use instead for the Ratty3 + KillFleur combo at the end of the level which makes this room far safer at a minimal time cost, I reg Barrier after the kill and get through this area with the cleanest movement I have done in a run.

Pharaoh fight was a bit weird due to him dropping a Ratty early on and it made for some awkward dodges and charge cancels from getting hit. No Anubis statues were summoned though and the fight was still reasonable so this was still okay especially since the stage was essentially perfect.

- Shadow Man -

StrArrow still gets reg'd to do the large skip in the second area but I also get incredibly lucky with drawing M-Cannon for the boss fight as well as DashAtk for a free move past the first Snapper. I grab my 5th and final M-Cannon and do the StrArrow skip fine to hit the early cart cycle at the end, then lock Shadow down with M-Cannon plus buster for a super fast kill, superb stage here!

- Endgame -

This is perhaps the most significant change for strats: I move away from the luck-based 5 FullCust strat for drawing the Z-Canon PA and opt for the consistent method by abusing an MPCharge with low-quantity chips taken from my pack. When all copies of a chip are used up during a stage, the game cannot put that chip back into the random draw when opening the chip screen again, so I can simply delete chips until I have looked at everything in my folder and guarantee I have what I need for the end of the run. The folder edit does not take a huge amount of time with some practice and I can avoid gambling and likely losing time or an entire run to not getting stuff, making it a much better strat to set up! Money also works out nicely, I actually need even less money to buy 1 MPCharge and 3 FullCusts over buying 5 FullCusts so no money route changes were needed, quite convenient.

DoubJump is Reg'd and I leave only the Cannons, Heat-V, and TreeBom1 while tossing everything out into the pack. I quickly resort the pack in reverse quantity and add everything 24 MB and below until my folder is filled with 20 chips again, then run to the shop to buy items before heading to the map. DoubJumps are used to get through all of Undernet and burn all copies before dropping down to the portal of no return; here I use MPCharge to refill my MP for chip burning and go through my FullCusts until I have my 5 needed chips. In this run, I have decent luck and get everything in my draw at the second FullCust which saves about 10 seconds over needing to use the last one so definitely a nice little timesave. Z-Canon is assembled with Heat-V and TreeBombs also taken and I head into the final boss rush. HP and chips are still restored between each major section so Z-Canon gets maximum use again.

- Firewall dies to Z-Canon, a little sloppy getting a 6-3 kill instead of an optimal 8-1 but it's barely any time loss since cannons are so fast. It's important to know that Firewall does have some invincibility between hits and a very specific rhythm is used to time the shots, otherwise the shot will just go right through the eye (if this happens you will see blue sparks pop out of the wall).

- Refights went well again, no major issues and only a couple of less optimal boss patterns, Color decided to be extra nice during the refight too and spent most of his time trying to run away, haha.

- LifeVirusR 1 dies quickly to Z-Canon + full charge combo still, LifeVirusR 2 has fairly optimal charging and is about as good as it gets.

Unless someone actually manages to beat this run, I think I'm very done with this category again. I really wasn't expecting to save so much time over my previous submission but having an active and supporting community helps so much in grinding a speedrun down and I'm super happy that the world record has been wittled down by over 3 1/2 minutes in the last 1 1/2 years of running Network Transmission. I'll still be doing the occasional community race with others but my days of actively grinding this are over until a major skip or glitch is somehow found and I am moving to other games until then, thank you all for reading and I hope you've enjoyed this journey as much as I have!