This only works on submaps, such as Towns, Castles, Ambrosia. This was discovered by accident by Gyth in his TAS of the game (he originally believed, and wrote in his TASVideos submission, that speaking to the Time Lord did it, but in fact what happened was that the TAS's optimal movement, combined with going to the STATUS screen to group the party, triggered the glitch). It turns out that if you hold a D pad direction while leaving the STATUS screen, but before the map appears again, no wandering monsters will move on the map until such time as the D Pad goes neutral again. The key glitch that saved many minutes in the NES Speed run is the status screen glitch. This limits the options for a Segmented run. Saving can only be done at Lord British's castle, and at the secret inn behind a door in Ambrosia. It is possible to get a ship, then replace your Level 5+ character with a different, lower-leveled character, or even a new Level 1 character, but this is unlikely to matter in a speed run. The highest level in your party determines the maximum type of overworld encounters that will appear. This includes ships, which appear at level 5. More importantly for a speed run, gaining levels also changes what kinds of wandering monsters appear in the main Sosaria map. Gaining levels only increases a character's max hit points. 5 Skip the opening credits and opening cutscene (NES).

Ultima iii end