Still haven't achieved my goal, but this was today's progress:
ACSeraph - 48,437,210 - ALL - Lilith - Default
I died on Graham, which absolutely murdered my score. Worst part was that it was a spot I pretty much never die at. Just a fluke, story of my life.
However today has been a productive day in this game. I've cleaned up a few parts of the run with some new discoveries, and more importantly, I've solved the final mystery of Caladrius' scoring system which I never understood. Specifically why sometimes my score would be great and my multiplier would be high, but I would end up with even less skill gems than usual. But now I know, the multiplier and score has
nothing to do with your weapon leveling. Weapon experienced is gained for all damage dealt with your magic weapons, and is unrelated to magic weapon kills. So basically, you want to use them as much as you can to deal damage to bosses even when it isn't necessary. In this way, I was able to have an additional skill gem by stage 3, which made a massive difference in my score. A perfect run now yields me over 52 million, I just have to pull it off. I'm going to send some messages to the guys who remain above me once I finally reach the score, to see whether they were running default or not. I have a feeling the world record score can't possible be all that much higher than what I've devised (I can score maximize stage 6 for god's sake).
On the topic of the 56 million record for AC, I went and played last night (though not original mode because it's boring). I never noticed when I was scrubbing it with Lilith, but now that I know her perfectly in Vanilla it's clear she is a vastly superior character in AC. She does a lot more damage; her magic weapons appear to do almost double what they do in Vanilla. And she's faster, and the magic recharge rate is far higher, so there are definitely far more scoring opportunities available to her than their are in Vanilla. Considering that, and also how precise my run is, I'll be surprised if the 1rst and second rank players on the Vanilla boards got their scores default. I believe the 65 mil is actually impossible. If the 54 was default, it had to be an insanely godly run, using different strategies from my own.
Oh and also I got this arcade score last night, it wasn't a no miss, but it was pretty good performance. I died on the final boss unfortunately. There's a lot of room for improvement though given Lilith's impressive new abilities, and I think to get god tier scores you have to get perfect rank on the bonus stages, which I have no idea how to do.
Caladrius AC: Arcade Mode
ACSeraph - 74,370,369 - ALL - Lilith - Default
(Forgive the blurry pic, my hands were really shaky from adrenaline after this run)
, it's a shame this game doesn't save replays.
I'll definitely be aiming for the top with her in that one too.
That's one of the reasons participation is so lacking on our scoreboard here probably...