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r/ChangingTimes ⠂Posted 5 days ago
u/NerdIsabeauTruther

There's been plenty of controversy over the post made by OutOfTheLoop that details a supposed secret character in Changing Times in a Frozen Land named "Siffrin," and I felt the only reasonable course of action was to see if I could verify their claims myself.

I can now say for certain that Siffrin is a real character, so here's a pseudo-tutorial on the steps I took to unlock them.

Step One: Skipping Paper Quest

Now, there is a bug found by speedrunners that allow you to skip Paper Quest, but that makes use of bit manipulation to force the game to think you've done Paper Quest, and it still results in Isabeau gaining Paper Craft.

Glitches probably wouldn't be done by a new player anyway, so I tried to find a non-glitch way to skip Paper Quest, starting out by making a list of all possible ways to start the quest.

Paper Quest can start by looking through books, interacting with certain NPCs, viewing items made of paper, and, if all else fails, Paper Quest automatically starts when Isabeau reaches level 18.

However, I did figure out that, if you manage to get the second orb before reaching level 18, you can safely level Isabeau to level 18 and above without Paper Quest activating, so long as you avoid any other methods of triggering it.

I think the game just makes the assumption that, if you've gotten the second orb, you've done Paper Quest because to get to that point in the game without even triggering the questline means avoiding the great majority of intractable objects, NPCs, and Sadnesses.

Which results in being severely underleveled by the time you make it to the second orb. Given that, it's no wonder that op struggled with constant TPKs.

Step Two: Skipping Louise

I don't actually know if skipping Louise is a requirement for getting Siffrin, but I made sure to do so just in case since it was something op mentioned. (However, I might do some more testing later to see if you can get both Louise and Siffrin in the party.)

Skipping Louise is pretty easy to do. You just don't do Library Quest. Moving on.

Step Three: Recruiting Odile

Okay. Getting to Odile with only two underleveled party members was a nightmare. It was like doing the challenge run where you only use Mirabelle and Isabeau except so much worse because Isabeau didn't have Paper Craft, and they were both underleveled.

Honestly, I couldn't find any good trick for getting to Odile like this other than to stock up on tonics and save often. I'd love to know if anyone finds an easier way though.

Once I actually managed to get to Odile, recruitment was actually a lot easier than normal? I didn't even need to do her usual recruitment quest — she helped the party find information on the third orb and then practically demanded to be allowed to join, saying "leaving the fate of a country to a bunch of young ones would give me an ulcer".

Which Odile doesn't even do in the Mirabelle and Isabeau only challenge run! So I can only assume something in the being underleveled, not doing Paper Quest, and only having two party members raises some kind of flag that makes Odile join you instantly.

Step Four: Encountering Souhait Early

Like op said, Souhait is only supposed to appear after you get the fourth orb, and it won't spawn in until that happens, even if you go to its spawn location early.

However, I still went to the Matisse Ruins, and, low-and-behold, Souhait was there when I only had three orbs.

Ordinarily, attacking Souhait at this point would've been an idiotic move given that my party members were all around level 28 at this point, and Souhait is a level 37 Paper Sadness.

But, regardless, I triggered the battle.

I reached the point where both Isabeau and Odile were knocked out, and Mirabelle was on almost no health when Siffrin arrived, slicing through the Sadness and killing it instantly even though it still at least half of its health left.

And, of course, he said the titular line "Mind if I...cut in?"

Here's a screenshot of him for prosperity's sake:

Siffrin joined the party immediately after saving them — no recruitment quest required.

Hopefully this pseudo-tutorial can help others unlock Siffrin.

I'll make another post soon about anything I find notable about Siffrin, so keep an eye out for that in the next few days!

Edit: No, I did not try to recruit any characters other than Odile. Op only mentioned recruiting Odile, and I didn't want to risk missing Siffrin because I recruited someone that would prevent Siffrin from joining the party.

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r/ChangingTimes ⠂Posted 3 days ago
u/NerdIsabeauTruther

(Spoilers ahead for the secret character Siffrin. Here's the post I made about how to unlock him.)

I promised I'd make a new post about Siffrin, and here it is! My thoughts about Siffrin! And any scenes with him that stood out to me.

And y'all...

Siffrin is so cute???

They have a kind of cool and mysterious silent rogue thing going on for them at first, but it really didn't take long for them to start making jokes and puns at every opportunity.

They're also kind of ditzy and forgettable — they have a lot of dialogue where they start talking about their past, only to forget what they're talking about in the middle of speaking, and if you go through the same dialogue, Siffrin will act like they have no clue what you're talking about (potential tragic backstory???).

However, Siffrin is incredibly useful for skipping a lot of the more difficult puzzles and traps. If they weren't such a hassle to get, they'd be an excellent tool for speedrunning the game (especially since getting him also increases the whole party's movement speed by a little bit).

And did I mention the trinkets??? Every now and again, I'll open up Siffrin's inventory, only to find it's filled with random junk.

And when I say random junk, I mean random junk. Sometimes he'll have some extra tonics, but most of the time its things like a Nice Rock (description: "It just looks nice!"), a String of Yarn (description: "It's soft."), and a Stick (description: "It's a stick.").

These are all actual things that I found in Siffrin's pockets. I love him.

He keeps losing the random trinkets he finds, so the items would cycle out and be replaced by new random junk, so I kept periodically looking in his inventory just to see what he'd found.

(Personally, I imagine that Siffrin picks stuff up to show to the party members later. There weren't any scenes to indicate this, but it's a charming idea.)

Speaking of scenes though, Siffrin had a lot of fun scenes.

For instance, early on, I had Isabeau and Odile hang out at a bar, and I got a set of dialogue where Odile gets drunk and tells Isabeau about her theory that Siffrin is an assassin sent by the King to kill Mirabelle.

Which was, frankly, hilarious. Because, for one, Siffrin is too much of a ditz to be an assassin. For two, Siffrin literally saved the group from a Sadness at their first meeting? If his plan was to kill Mirabelle, he could've just let the Sadness kill her.

Not to mention that, even if Siffrin was an assassin, he gets attached to the party too quickly to ever go through with.

And Siffrin does get along with the party almost scarily well. I didn't even have to try to raise their relationship with anyone. It practically happened automatically.

Siffrin and Mirabelle would have late night chats; Siffrin and Odile would go on "secret quests" together; Siffrin would help Bonnie cook; and Siffrin and Isabeau would pun and joke at each other constantly.

At a certain level of friendship with Siffrin, Isabeau unlocked the ***** Quest.

And, yes, it's written exactly like that in game. "***** Quest."

Because Isabeau noticed that Siffrin says "*****" every now and again and wants to know what it means (I am once again plugging my nerd Isabeau propaganda — if he was a true himbo, he wouldn't have gotten so curious), and doing this quest took ages.

Don't get me wrong — I had lots of fun on the quest, but it was kind of anti-climactic to do all this research and searching only to overhear someone other than Siffrin say "*****" and ask them about it just to find out that it meant "stars."

However, it did lead to a bit where Isabeau thinks about taking Siffrin star gazing, which is adorable.

While there's no romance routes in the game normally, Siffrin seems to be the exception. And this isn't just shipper brain talking — when Isabeau has high enough relationship with both Siffrin and Odile, Odile starts teasing Isabeau about his crush on Siffrin.

There's even a scene where, when Siffrin and Odile have a high enough relationship, Siffrin carves a little wooden Odile figurine (which is so cute!!!), and after Odile is gifted the figurine, the moment Siffrin leaves, she lifts it up to show Isabeau and smirks, and then Isabeau glares at her!!!

Glares at her!!! Our kind and sweet and helpful protagonist!!! Glares at Odile for subtly bragging about getting a wooden carving Siffrin made!!!

And Odile and Isabeau's relationship was high at this point! They're very good friends!!!

I wasn't expecting Isabeau to be the jealous type, but it's kind of really cute that he is? He deserves to be a little jealous sometimes I think.

(I will note that the wooden figurine scene actually raised Odile and Isabeau's relationship slightly. I love their good natured teasing of each other. They're so silly.)

Then, as we all know, there's always something before the Sadness Incident that makes you lose all the tonics you have as a deterrent against just hoarding them (and as a in-game explanation as to why Bonnie can't be healed using tonics when they're attacked).

And, apparently when you have Siffrin, he ends up mixing all tonics together to make a "Super Potion" that does absolutely nothing because the components of the tonics end up negating each other when combined like that.

(You even get to keep the "Super Potion" in your inventory, even if you can't do anything with it. The description says "Useless potion that tastes terrible.")

Objectively, this is the funniest possible way to lose all your tonics. I greatly prefer it over the whole "oh no, we dropped the bag that held the tonics, and now they're broken" scene that usually happens.

And then the Sadness Incident happened. I already knew what would happen because of the post that OutOfTheLoop made, but I guess I was still skeptical of their post because I really was surprised when Siffrin jumped in to protect Bonnie, losing an eye in the process.

(I do wonder if Siffrin would still protect Bonnie like that if their relationship wasn't so high, but I'd have to actively try to keep their relationship at a low level. Might try a low relationship run with Siffrin at some point just to see what happens.)

(And, yes, Siffrin and Bonnie's relationship does tank after this incident.)

Isabeau does make an eye-patch for Siffrin, and even made sure to Craft it so that it was comfortable to wear and kept the injured eye free of debris. (NERD ISABEAU PROPAGANDA — isn't that supposed to be really difficult Craft??? How would Isabeau know how to do that if he wasn't smart? Checkmate, nonbelievers!)

Of course I make the decision to take Siffrin with the party to fight the King. For one, I love Siffrin. For two, fighting the King with only three party members would be a headache (although I might do some testing later to see what happens if you leave Siffrin behind.)

I basically went straight to Dormont after that. I did check Siffrin's inventory before arriving in Dormont (as I got into the habit of doing just to see what he's picked up), and I was surprised to see that it was empty except for a single Silver Coin (description: "It's a coin. Siffrin flips it in the air sometimes.")

Genuinely I don't think I'd ever seen Siffrin's inventory so empty. It was weird.

Regardless, I made it to Dormont and reminded everyone to wish at the Favor Tree, and Siffrin decided to go take a nap (as they commonly do; they take a lot of naps. They're a sleepy fella.)

I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of dialogue for Siffrin at the House, so I'll make another post transcribing some of the more fun dialogue later.

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r/ChangingTimes ⠂Posted 2 days ago
u/NerdIsabeauTruther

(HUGE warning ahead for Siffrin spoilers.)

The events in Dormont don't really change aside from a few bits of flavor text depending on which party members you recruited, what side quests you've done, and your relationship level with your party members.

You wish at the Favor Tree, you go to the Clocktower, you go to the House, you defeat the King, and then you get an ending depending on things you've done.

This. Did not happen.

It started out normal with the Favor Tree. Mirabelle wished for Vaugarde to be saved, Odile wished to win a coin flip, Bonnie wished for their sister to be okay.

But then??? Mirabelle showed up to say that Siffrin was acting really weird? And then Odile showed up to also say that Siffrin was acting weird, and she said something about how Siffrin found a book that he shouldn't have known anything about?? And then Bonnie arrived crying and barely able to speak, but clearly it was something about Siffrin as well.

I checked the relationship panel right at this point, and Siffrin's relationship with everyone had tanked.

Mirabelle, Odile, and Bonnie all went to the Clocktower, and Isabeau stayed at the Favor Tree, and, soon enough, Siffrin showed up.

Or at least something like Siffrin showed up.

WHY IS THEIR FACE DARKENED LIKE THAT???? WHY ARE THEY SMILING LIKE THAT??? WHERE IS MY CUTE AND PLAYFUL ROGUE???

I'm not going to transcribe the entire conversation Siffrin has with Isabeau (it's long), but I'll note down the important bits of it.

For starters, Siffrin dismisses Isabeau's concerns on if something is wrong, and then asks Isabeau to go stargazing. Which would be cute if it wasn't for the absolutely terrifying smile plastered on Siffrin's face when he asks.

And then I tried to get Isabeau to comfort Siffrin, only for Siffrin to very obviously be not paying attention to anything Isabeau says?

And then Isabeau starts desperately asking what's wrong! Because Siffrin is acting weird!!!

And then! And then!

I can't describe this with the justice it deserves. Here's the transcribed dialogue:

Isabeau: What's happening, Sif? Is something wrong? Can you tell me?

Siffrin: Yeah, something's wrong.

Isabeau: I knew it! What is it, can I help?
Isabeau: If you tell me, we can go and talk to everyone, and—

Siffrin: What's wrong is that you're getting on my nerves.

Isabeau: H u h . . . ?

Siffrin: Oooh, Mr Amazing-Wonderful-Funny-Buff Isabeau!
Siffrin: Look at you.
Siffrin: You're acting as if you're so calm and reasonable...
Siffrin: When all you are is weak and useless!

Isabeau: . . .

Siffrin: Nothing to say this time?
Siffrin: It's just fine.
Siffrin: You never could say it, anyway.
Siffrin: You never could say anything.
Siffrin: I know what kind of person you are, now.

Isabeau: What kind of...Person I am?

Siffrin: A coward, Isa!
Siffrin: Never able to say what you mean, never able to do what you want.
Siffrin: Because it's easier, isn't it? To not do anything?
Siffrin: To only project a facade of confidence, but not doing anything to back it up?

Isabeau: . . .

Siffrin: It's easier to let people do everything, isn't it.
Siffrin: To just encourage them, while staying on the sidelines.
Siffrin: Poor Isabeau.
Siffrin: You keep changing and changing, from a nerd to a jock to a clothing designer...
Siffrin: But deep down, you know you can't escape yourself.

AND THEN ISABEAU AGREES WITH SIFFRIN THAT HE'S WEAK AND A COWARD AND THAT HE CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT AND I—

THIS IS NOT HOW I EXPECTED TO GET CANON CONFIRMATION THAT ISABEAU'S A NERD!!! I AM VINDICATED BUT AT WHAT COST????

Isabeau heads over to the Clocktower, and then there's a scene (without Siffrin) where the party discusses possibly leaving Siffrin behind and fighting the King without them.

I don't even get a choice in whether or not to bring Siffrin because Siffrin doesn't come to the Clocktower.

The party gets worried, and they start looking around for Siffrin, but he's not anywhere.

And eventually Isabeau reaches the Favor Tree and finally makes his wish —

To find Siffrin, to help them, and to save them.

And then a star came out of the Favor Tree.

They introduce themself as Loop (they/them), and they reveal that they know where Siffrin is.

They also say that Siffrin is a time loop. It comes off as kind of joking and like they're exaggerating but like. I'm pretty sure they're not joking.

(But also a random time loop storyline out of nowhere??? And it's not even the protagonist looping??? This is so weird???)

Regardless, apparently Siffrin's stole all the orbs and went to the House solo which is concerning because the entire party was pretty underleveled, and there's no way Siffrin is strong enough to solo the House.

But I stand corrected because I check his stats page to see if I can get any insight from it, and he's Level 99???? What??? The max level is 75??? He was Level 45 before??? How long was he in the time loop for???

Siffrin's main Craft skills are also gone (they were all cute puns like "Knife to Meet You" and "Too Cleaver By Half"!), and they're replaced with (Rock.), (Paper.), (Scissors.), (Breathe.), and (Heal.).

So Siffrin learned Rock, Paper, and Healing Craft in the loops. Haha. I can be normal about this. Okay.

Siffrin's equipment page was also weird? There was an extra slot for a "memory"? I looked at it, and I couldn't see what other options there were, but the one he had equipped was called "Memory of Emptiness," and it just had the description "Nothing comes to mind, hahahahaha!" which is terrifying.

(Siffrin also has a new hat equipped - the Starry Hat which boosts DEF, ATKSPD, and CritChance, and it heals 5% HP every turn. Siffrin where did you even find that???)

I was, however, relieved when checking Siffrin's inventory to see that there was more than just the Silver Coin in it, so it's good to know he's still picking up random things as usual.

At the moment I checked, he had the aforementioned Silver Coin, a Friendship Doodle (description: "a static drawing of you and your friends."), a Bell Pendant (description: "ding ding!"), a Sharpening Stone (description: "makes things sharper!"), and a Drawn Card (description: "A tarot card of The Fool").

After doing that, I went to the House, and it was. Not correct.

The layout kept changing as I went through it, and rooms weren't where they were supposed to be (for example, the tonics room and the circle key room were swapped), and some hallways were definitely longer than they should've been, and I kept seeing Siffrin ghosts???

Like I'd see the figure of Siffrin up ahead, but when I got close to them, they'd fully disappear.

And the weirdest part of all of this was that there wasn't a single Sadness in the House. Like Siffrin had taken out every single one of them.

I did have to take a detour to find the Shield Craft book for Mirabelle (I skipped the typical shield quest because it is honestly easier to just get the Shield Craft at the secret library in the House), but it wasn't the normal Shield Craft? It was a reflection based shield instead of a protection one?

But whatever. The different shield is probably the least weird part of this whole run.

I got to the King, and low-and-behold, Siffrin was fighting him solo.

You know. Except for the fact that Siffrin was on the ground clearly knocked out!!!!!

The King also had like. Ten hit-points left. Which is. Frankly insane that Siffrin did that solo without Shield Craft???

Mirabelle wakes up Siffrin, and the party all asks if Siffrin is okay, and SO MUCH happens in terms of dialogue, but the King is like "[The party] must not care about [Siffrin] very much, do they?" and Isabeau immediately shuts that down with "Dude, just shut up. We may be upset, but we wouldn't leave Sif behind."

And then!!! The King does his whole "you see a vision of the future" attack, and Mirabelle puts up the reflection shield, and the King starts to freeze, and he has a lot of interesting dialogue as he freezes actually? Says some stuff about how he can "remember it, now" before becoming completely frozen?

I'm sure people really into lore would really love to dissect that scene, so I'll save it for a different post, especially since even more happens.

The party all yells at Siffrin about how mean they were, and then Siffrin collapses, so of course I make Isabeau sure holds them up as we walk to Euphrasie .

Except??? The sky is red.

You heard me correct. The sky was red. An actual color.

And then another one of Siffrin's ghosts pops up??? Disappears pretty quickly, but still.

I get to Euphrasie, and she reveals that Siffrin probably has Craft Sickness because he used too many Crafts at once, which makes sense because he did solo the entire House.

But then???? Euphrasie starts??? Like??? Glitching out??? Starts saying that something is rotting, and then starts repeating some of her lines from a normal ending, and ends it off with "Finally, you'll all be able to go home!!!" like she normally does but...

Um.

Something other than the normal end game epilogue happens.

This post has gone on a little too long, so I'm gonna make a new post to talk about the rest of what happens because.

That was not the end.

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r/ChangingTimes ⠂Posted 2 days ago
u/NerdIsabeauTruther

(HUGE warning ahead for Siffrin spoilers — See Part 1 of this post here.)

Like I ended off in my previous post, Euphrasie started acting weird, repeating her lines, and ending it off with her usual "Finally, you'll all be able to go home!!!" like you get in the normal ending.

Except. Siffrin shouts "NO!!!!!!" and then turns into a giant starry version of themself???

I'm thrust into combat, and Odile immediately attacks Siffrin, and what???? What??? What????

I DON'T WANT TO HURT SIFFRIN!!!!!!!! I DON'T WANT TO HURT MY PRECIOUS LITTLE (NOW VERY LARGE) ROUGE!!!!!!!

The rest of the party agrees with me that they don't want to hurt Siffrin, but apparently SIFFRIN DIDN'T GET THE MEMO BECAUSE HE STARTS STABBING HIMSELF!!!!!

And Siffrin shouts "I WON'T LET YOU GO HOME, I CAN'T, WON'T!!!"

Siffrin starts shouting about how he has nowhere to go back to when everyone else does, saying that the King was right all along, and that this is a "perfect ending"

I just start getting Mirabelle to heal Siffrin anytime his health gets low since it seems like I can just wait this fight out instead of killing Siffrin.

Isabeau finally figures out and points out that all the evidence points to the fact that Siffrin has actually been looping in time (ISABEAU IS SMART AND INTELLIGENT ALERT!!!), and something weird starts to happen with Siffrin (apparently Siffrin tried to loop back???), but Odile stops him from looping back.

Finally, the party starts demanding for Siffrin to tell them what he wished for, and Siffrin becomes normal-sized again, and you have to be really insistent on asking Siffrin about what their wish was.

And then, after all that, Siffrin finally admits that he wished to wear clothes Isabeau made.

But that, deep down, he wished that he could stay with everyone.

WHICH IS SO CUTE????

And Siffrin starts apologizing so much, that he didn't mean to trap everyone in a time loop, and then the entire party reassures him, and it's actually kind of similar to the True Ending where you agree to keep traveling with everyone in the party?

Except. You know. With the fact that Siffrin nearly ended the world because he wanted to stay with them so bad.

(Siffrin is the last character I expected to turn yandere, but that's okay!!! I forgive him!!!)

Siffrin has also lost their hat, but that's also okay because they're really cute without it.

And then Isabeau gets to have a final chat with Siffrin, and Isabeau says that all the hurtful stuff that Siffrin said the day before was kind of cool??? And thanks Siffrin for saying mean things to him???

Isa, I pegged you as a nerd I didn't realize you were such a freak???

It's incredible. I love Isa so much. Truly the guy of all time.

And then something insane happens.

Isabeau confesses his love for Siffrin.

Yeah. Yeah, you read that right. Not a single romance route in the game except this one apparently. And it's such a cute, ramblely confession too?

Isabeau calls Siffrin "small and cute but like in the way a very sharp cooking knife with flowers and little hearts is small and cute" which is??? Adorable???

And Siffrin says "I love you too" but isn't actually sure if he loves Isabeau back in the same way, and Isabeau tells them to take all the time they need, and ough they're so cute I have a brand new favorite pairing (get out of here Vicbeau!!! Isafrin is the new OTP!!!).

I chatted with Siffrin again and he said "Congrats on finally saying it" and revealed that apparently Isabeau got interrupted every single loop.

AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN

SIFFRIN KISSED ISABEAU ONE LOOP??????? AND THAT IT DIDN'T GO WELL??????

And so obviously I pick the dialogue option that says maybe they just need to get more practice, and Siffrin says "Maybe we should" with such a flirty look I'm???

So I talk to Siffrin once more, and I get the most important possible information I ever could of dreamed of.

Siffrin says "Isa, you're so smart!" and then!!! Isabeau basically admits to playing down his intelligence!!! He says "I don't like to show off! Being too smart puts people off, I think."

And then Siffrin says that "We wouldn't like you any less if you were smart, you know." and Isabeau goes "Sounds fake, but okay." I'm!!!!

Isabeau finally says "Let me become a clothing designer first, and then I'll go up to being a smart clothing designer."

YOU ALL LAUGHED AT ME FOR SAYING ISABEAU WAS A NERD!!! YOU ALL THOUGHT I WAS CRAZY!!! BUT HERE I AM. VICTORIOUS. CORRECT. VINDICATED.

I did talk to Siffrin again, and they told me a joke that Isabeau apparently told "sometime yesterday."

The joke was "Why shouldn't you take up time travel? Because there's no future in it!"

Siffrin told this joke like it was the funniest thing in the world. They're such a dork. I love them.

I could go up to Siffrin to say hi again and blow them a little kiss (insanely adorable), and the rest of the ending was very similar to the True Ending which is wild because I did not meet the requirements for getting the True Ending. More of a "True" Ending.

That's the Siffrin run though!!! I'll do some extra testing later to see if anything different happens on low-relationship runs or a True Ending run.

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r/ChangingTimes ⠂Posted 1 hour ago
u/NerdIsabeauTruther

Okay, so I did some testing with the Siffrin route and found a few interesting things.

First off, you can recruit characters other than Odile, but only after you get Siffrin (I couldn't get Siffrin's recruitment to trigger if I gathered any other recruitable character, so that was a bust.)

I tried my best to do a low-relationship run (which was so difficult I got Louise on purpose to get his friendship slowing side effect), and I found that Siffrin will still save Bonnie even if their friendship is at rock bottom.

So Siffrin is a guaranteed way to make sure Bonnie doesn't die.

However, it does seem like having too low of a relationship with Siffrin locks you out of being able to take them with you to fight the King, and when you defeat the King without Siffrin, all you get is the normal ending with a bit of flavor text saying that you did try to go back and check on Siffrin, only to find that he'd left already.

Which is so sad???? You don't even get to send letters to him like you do for the rest of the characters???? He's just....gone.

(I'm gonna have to write a fix-it fic for this because it's too sad I can't hand that they never contact Siffrin ever again.)

And, of course I did a True Ending run. It didn't have any of the weird time loop stuff that was in the "True" Ending (someone will have to figure out what the exact triggers for that ending are).

Isabeau does confess to Siffrin in the True Ending, so that's a confirmation on the one singular romance route, and it's Siffrin.

I did also find you could still get True Ending with other characters recruited, but I think you get locked out of the "True" Ending.

On a different note, Miraspeedstrats did find an interesting speedrun tactic for getting Siffrin!

Namely, she found an alternate form of the Paper Quest Glitch that tricks the game into thinking you got the second orb. Basically, if you do the glitch with Mirabelle instead of Isabeau, Isabeau won't get Paper Craft, but you'll still get the second orb, and you can level up to 18 without worrying about triggering Paper Quest.

Usually that wouldn't be useful at all since Isabeau learning Paper Craft makes things so much easier, but in the case of a Siffrin speedrun, it's a godsend.

I'm sure people will find more speedrunning tricks as time goes on. I think it's only fitting to speedrun our speedy rogue!