Misc. Game Mechanics
General gameplay/speedrun info that is not particular to any one technique or area, or techniques that don't have enough content for their own page.
Item use frame count
When you have a choice of which character you can use an item with, such as healing Geno in turn 4 vs Bowyer, go for the character with the faster item animation (in that example, Mallow instead of Mario).
[Fastest]
Koopa: 177
Mallow: 185
Peach: 188
Mario: 209
Geno: 220
[Slowest]
Run Away Chance
~50.5% per Run Away usage, regardless of character, enemy, etc. (Thanks KirkQ!)
Relevant Item Freebie Chance
Red Essence: 13%
Everything else: 26% (Thanks KirkQ!)
Misses
Relevant Boss Evasion (according to the SMRPG patcher, may not translate to actual miss chance):
Hammer Bro: 10%
Croco: 20%
Valentina: 10%
Czar Dragon: 20%
Axem Red: 10%
Most special attacks seem to ignore evasion rates.
cleartonic has done some testing on enemy evasion. Check out his findings here if you are interested.
Some physical attacks appears to have a ~1/256 chance to miss any enemy in the game. If this happens to you in a run, you are truly never lucky.
RNG & Soft Reset
The game's RNG is pseudo-random, and it always uses the same static seed after a reset. There is no resetting to find a good seed in this game. (Do note, however, that some benign in-level actions can unexpectedly shift the RNG seed. This is why all three RNG manips in any% are done near save points, and why no other fights have manips yet so far.)
Press L, R, Start, and Select at the same time to perform a soft reset. As far as the game is concerned, this is no different from a hardware reset.
Timed Hit speed
There are some parts of the route which will explicitly state to use an untimed attack. There are a few reasons for this:
Timed hits, and some timed specials like Jump and Geno Boost, have a slower animation than untimed hits. During fights like phase 2 of Bundt, for example, completing this phase does not depend on your damage output and depends instead on counting your attacks, so you use untimed hits to save time; you also use untimed Geno Boost if you are not expected to take significant damage during the fight and you can skip the animation for Defense Up (this is because this game does not truly have "crits", and damage from enemies follows a static formula with no randomness - generally, damage in SMRPG has a dependable expected value).
Timed blocks are 2 frames slower if perfectly timed and 1 frame slower if half-timed than if you do it untimed. This is why during the Bowser fight you don't block since you are guaranteed not to lose.
You can perform timed hits with any of the B, A, Y, or X buttons.
Timed blocks & Timed attacks
Timed blocks
On every single one of these clips where an enemy is attacking, look closely at the character who is defending. When they defend, colourful stars fly out of their sprite for about a second and dissipate quickly.
This will always happen whether you perfect block, half block, or don't block at all, as long as the attack IS blockable. This is an indicator that you were hit by a blockable attack.
All physical enemy attacks are blockable. Every blockable attack can be reduced to 0 if you press a command button within a specific 5-frame window.
Some skills (like Skewer and Pierce and Chomp) are blockable, some are not (like Poison or Croco's bombs). Pandorite's Carni-Kiss is not blockable, but Earthlink's Carni-Kiss is.
No spells (like Lightning Orb, Meteor Blast, Blizzard, Petal Blast...) are blockable.
If you're ever unsure if an attack can be blocked, try it anyway, and pay attention to see if the stars appear or not. Use the link above to learn the proper time to attempt to block.
You can block with any of the B, Y, A, or X buttons.
Timed attacks
The above link also includes the frame windows on which you can double your damage output from any A or Y attack. These windows are 7 frames long, so very slightly easier than blocks.
EXP
Following the EXP route as outlined in every route (except Beginner Route) is extremely important to properly set up for the Swap Glitch. Without the Swap Glitch, your characters will not have the proper spells for future fights.
Unlike in other RPGs, you cannot switch a character out of your party or force them to get KOed in battle to avoid them gaining EXP in an attempt to fix botched EXP routing.
The EXP displayed at the end of the battle is the EXP that all of your characters, whether they were in the battle or not and whether or not they were standing at the end, receive (unless they're wearing EXP booster in which case the wearer receives 2x that number).
It is imperative to follow the EXP route to a tee, pay close attention to the backup strats explained in World Areas, and avoid inescapable encounters. You do not need to worry about this if you are using the Beginner Route, but all other routes and categories must be careful to keep their EXP correct.
Refer to DatXFire's chart below for correcting your EXP.
Equipment hidden properties
Taken from here.
Note: Despite looking similar to Blizzard, Diamond Saw is not considered an ice attack and is thus not affected by any equips that nullify or halve elemental spells.
Peach Chart:
Amulet: Cuts ice, fire, and lightning damage in half.
Attack Scarf: Blocks OHKO moves like Fear Roulette, Magnum, and Shaker.
Exp. Booster: Wearer gains 2x EXP.
Fearless Pin: Prevents Fear status
Jump Shoes: Ignores enemy immunity to jump. Also disables the Super Jump counter, do NOT attempt 100 Super Jumps with Jump Shoes on!
Safety Ring: Nullifies ice, fire, and lightning damage; Blocks OHKO moves like Fear Roulette, Magnum, and Shaker; prevents Fear, Sleep, Scarecrow, Mushroom, Poison, and Mute statuses.
Super Suit: Nullifies ice, fire, and lightning damage; prevents Fear, Sleep, Scarecrow, Mushroom, Poison, and Mute statuses.
Troopa Pin: Instant boost to wearer's attack and magic attack, as if they have received an untimed Geno Boost. Vulnerable to Shredder.
Others (may be seen in Most Of The Stuff):
Antidote Pin: Prevents Poison status
B'tub Ring: Cuts ice, fire, and lightning damage in half.
Coin Trick: Doubles the amount of coins received at the end of the battle when worn.
Hammer (Seaside): Forces Lucky minigame to spawn at the end of the battle when used.
Ghost Medal: Instant boost to wearer's defense and magic defense, as if they have received the second half of a timed Geno Boost. Vulnerable to Shredder.
Jinx Belt: Blocks OHKO moves like Fear Roulette, Magnum, and Shaker.
Lazy Shell: Nullifies ice, fire, and lightning damage; prevents Fear, Sleep, Scarecrow, Mushroom, Poison, and Mute statuses; sets base speed of wearer to 0.
Quartz Charm: Blocks OHKO moves like Fear Roulette, Magnum, and Shaker; instant boost to wearer's Attack, Magic Attack, Defense, and Magic Defense, as if they have received a timed Geno Boost. Vulnerable to Shredder.
Safety Badge: Prevents Fear, Sleep, Scarecrow, Mushroom, Poison, and Mute statuses.
Scrooge Ring: Wearer only has to use half the FP for any Special attack they use.
Signal Ring: Indicates the presence of a hidden chest in the overworld when equipped.
Trueform Pin: Prevents Mushroom and Scarecrow statuses.
Wake Up Pin: Prevents Mute and Sleep statuses.
If not listed here, the equip has no special effects beyond stated atk, def, m. atk, m.def, and speed boosts.
Game Over Abuse
Used in the No Super Suit and Safe Strats routes. Not used in the main Any% route.
When you get "Game Over" in a battle, you warp back to your last save point and all of your progress in the overworld since then has been undone, EXCEPT you will retain your levels and EXP.
This is why some routes make a save point beside the Land's End star: you can run around and gain tons of EXP knocking out all the Geckos and dogs, and then intentionally lose a battle to one of them. You respawn, with all the enemies back where they were before you got the star, but all the EXP you gained from the star is still retained.
Respawning vs. Resetting
As your EXP is not reset upon losing a fight, you should manually reset (soft reset or hardware reset) if you've gained any EXP since your last save and then game over unintentionally. If you fail to do this, and then continue on, your EXP route will be incorrect and likely have bad consequences for skill swap.