Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Enkaybee

Edit history:

Enkaybee: 2014-06-03 02:14:59 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-06-03 01:04:57 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-06-03 12:59:21 pm

2014-06-02 02:41:08 pm

twitch.tv/enkaybee

I went and took out load times for the top 4 times just to see exactly how much variability we're talking about here.

Here's the sum of load times:

Spike Goldfish Enkaybee Kruncha
World 1 2:15 2:12 2:18 2:14
World 2 3:29 3:17 3:26 3:20
World 3 3:18 3:14 3:20 3:11
World 4 2:40 2:37 2:39* 2:41
World 5 3:27 3:21 3:25 3:19
World 6 3:59 3:49 3:52 3:52
Total 19:08 18:30 19:00* 18:37

Adjusted
Run Time 1:19:57 1:21:41 1:20:35* 1:23:57

*One of my load screens in world 4 got skipped in the stream. Capture card problems. I used an average of the other's times to fill the spot for that world.
Note also that I didn't take out the spinning banana screens before bosses, at the shop, in levels like 2-3 and 4-B, and in those with secret exits.

So in these four runs you have a 38 second spread in load times. If one person gets the 6 worst load times and another gets the 6 best ones, you're looking at a 47 second difference. I really didn't expect it to be this big and maybe Ghoul is right - maybe we should petition Retro to add an in-game timer that skips load screens.

I went and took out load times for the top 4 times just to see exactly how much variability we're talking about here.

Here's the sum of load times:

Spike       Goldfish     Enkaybee    Kruncha
World 1       2:15        2:12        2:18            2:14
World 2       3:29        3:17        3:26            3:20
World 3       3:18        3:14        3:20            3:11
World 4       2:40        2:37        2:39*          2:41
World 5       3:27        3:21        3:25            3:19
World 6       3:59        3:49        3:52            3:52
Total           19:08      18:30      19:00*        18:37

Adjusted
Run Time    1:19:57   1:21:41   1:20:35*      1:23:57

*One of my load screens in world 4 got skipped in the stream.  Capture card problems.  I used an average of the other's times to fill the spot for that world.
Note also that I didn't take out the spinning banana screens before bosses, at the shop, in levels like 2-3 and 4-B, and in those with secret exits.

So in these four runs you have a 38 second spread in load times.  If one person gets the 6 worst load times and another gets the 6 best ones, you're looking at a 47 second difference.  I really didn't expect it to be this big and maybe Ghoul is right - maybe we should petition Retro to add an in-game timer that skips load screens.

Ghoul02

2014-06-02 03:47:20 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Welp.... That sucks.

I timed the first two worlds of my run: 2:12 and 3:29 respectively.

Basically, we're looking at 30 seconds plus or so of variance in loads. We don't know if these are consistent across runs on the same console either, so it's likely that we'll have to do these anytime we're within 40 seconds of WR. I don't think we really should care about other positions on the leaderboard... But damn, that sucks.

spikevegeta

2014-06-03 09:11:08 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

damn, was really hoping this wasn't the case. Thanks for doing the research though Enkay.

The worst part is this kind of rains on our parade of competition we we're having between the 5 or so of us. Now instead of excitement every time the record switches hands, it's only going to raise questions and call for timing. The only thing I hold onto is that maybe each version could have similar load times itself. Like Maybe I get 19:08 load times almost every time, and Goldfish gets 18:30 almost every time. So we could just apply that every run and know.

Also, I don't want to be that guy, but this might explain why Goldfish's Sum of Best is already so much better then everybody else's. Not to take anything away from him, but those load totals are notable to say the least, and it's worth pointing out.

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2014-06-03 09:47:15 am

2014-06-03 09:21:45 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

I hate to say it, but it's actually a bit of a relief to me. I've got enough attempts with what I felt were at least okay strats and my sum of bests is barely under the 1:38 mark. That's really scary in a game like this; I'd have to play almost perfectly the entire time with these strats then.

But I'll agree, it's definitely a hype killer. "Okay, I just went 9 4 9 deathless on Frederick, but we need to make sure that my loads aren't too bad before I can call this WR". I was also hoping that my research was good too; I was getting relatively consistent loads if I either waited before 1-1 or dove right into it... but I guess there was a variance of 1-2 seconds on the latter...

michael_goldfish

Edit history:

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-05 01:06:01 am

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-05 01:05:28 am

2014-06-05 12:21:47 am

Two green and a figurine

Not sure who or how many people have discussed this already but I'd like a legitamite conclusion so I can stop derping about it.

The very last split. last bounce or last punch? As you can tell I prefer ending the time on the last punch, I have time to ready my hand to do the split and it looks a lot more flavourful for the run I find. I could pull the "it's the last game input to punch him" but really I just think it looks really cool that you beat the game when you punch fredrik into oblivion :P.

So everyone gather your thoughts and let's come to a final decision! Smiley

Let the peeps know which timing you prefer and why it works well. I'll start doing at final bounce if the community prefers it but right now it seems a bit divided which is just confusing.

Also, how would we go about getting Retro to add an in-game timer? I think Ghoul had the idea (I think) and it sounds amazing, I'd highly approve of an in game timer.

Edit: To Ghoul's post below about 100%, I support the cutscene since it's always nice having full completion runs start on a fresh file instead of a copied one. If everyone riots about it then obviously not but I like the idea of having the cutscene there for 100% and if it ever gets super optimized it can always be changed so there's no real harm Tongue

Not sure who or how many people have discussed this already but I'd like a legitamite conclusion so I can stop derping about it.

The very last split. last bounce or last punch? As you can tell I prefer ending the time on the last punch, I have time to ready my hand to do the split and it looks a lot more flavourful for the run I find. I could pull the "it's the last game input to punch him" but really I just think it looks really cool that you beat the game when you punch fredrik into oblivion :P.

So everyone gather your thoughts and let's come to a final decision! :) Let the peeps know which timing you prefer and why it works well. I'll start doing at final bounce if the community prefers it but right now it seems a bit divided which is just confusing.

Also, how would we go about getting Retro to add an in-game timer? I think Ghoul had the idea (I think) and it sounds amazing, I'd highly approve of an in game timer.

Edit: To Ghoul's post below about 100%, I support the cutscene since it's always nice having full completion runs start on a fresh file instead of a copied one. If everyone riots about it then obviously not but I like the idea of having the cutscene there for 100% and if it ever gets super optimized it can always be changed so there's no real harm :P

Ghoul02

2014-06-05 12:35:34 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

I'd prefer final punch as well. While retiming is technically an option, it's tricky with Twitch dropping frames or cutting sections of the run. The final punch is predictable, and you don't need both hands on the controller to do it. It eliminates the race to the final split. Most of my times have been me splitting pretty much between the two because I just can't get there in time.

Also, I suppose we could send a letter to Retro. We're a pretty damn small part of the overall community, so it's clearly unlikely, but truly, it shouldn't hurt to ask.

One more thing; I'm probably going to move towards routing out 100% after I get a 1 4 0. So we can look forward to the 100 death, dreadful sub 5 time that's on the leaderboards because why not do a random 200% run. It may seem weird, but would it be too odd to standardize the opening cutscene as part of 100% runs? I just feel like it'd add something there, while really not preventing resets as much, because we're still looking at 3 hours of platforming afterwards. I feel like we could adjust it later if need be. Any thoughts?

I'd prefer final punch as well. While retiming is technically an option, it's tricky with Twitch dropping frames or cutting sections of the run. The final punch is predictable, and you don't need both hands on the controller to do it. It eliminates the race to the final split. Most of my times have been me splitting pretty much between the two because I just can't get there in time.

Also, I suppose we could send a letter to Retro. We're a pretty damn small part of the overall community, so it's clearly unlikely, but truly, it shouldn't hurt to ask.

One more thing; I'm probably going to move towards routing out 100% after I get a 1 4 0. So we can look forward to the 100 death, dreadful sub 5 time that's on the leaderboards because why not do a random 200% run. It may seem weird, but would it be too odd to standardize the opening cutscene as part of 100% runs? I just feel like it'd add something there, while really not preventing resets as much, because we're still looking at 3 hours of platforming afterwards. I feel like we could adjust it later if need be. Any thoughts?

Enkaybee

2014-06-05 07:23:20 am

twitch.tv/enkaybee

I've always advocated for splitting at the punch as well, for all the reasons you stated. I split all bosses at the punch - Fredrik should be no exception.

As for contacting Retro, I wouldn't even know how. Their website has no contact information. I agree that it's worth a shot though. Even if we are only ~10 people.

Amazing Ampharos

2014-06-06 01:54:54 am

Another thing with load times to look at would be digital copies. Do digital copies (saved to the Wii U's internal flash drive) load faster than discs, and if so, how much and what is the variance between different digital copies or different runs of the same copy? In this new era of digital games, that's a big question in general, but given your issues with load time variance, it may be especially significant here.

Manocheese

2014-06-06 02:24:30 am

Yes, a cucco riding the ground.

Quote from Amazing Ampharos:

Another thing with load times to look at would be digital copies. Do digital copies (saved to the Wii U's internal flash drive) load faster than discs, and if so, how much and what is the variance between different digital copies or different runs of the same copy? In this new era of digital games, that's a big question in general, but given your issues with load time variance, it may be especially significant here.

I read somewhere that a digital copy stored on an external solid-state drive loads even faster than a copy on the built-in drive. It might be worth looking into, especially if someone already has an SSD to test with.

michael_goldfish

Edit history:

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-06 06:00:45 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-06 02:45:51 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-06 12:34:30 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-06 12:30:25 pm

2014-06-06 12:23:35 pm

Two green and a figurine

I'm gonna post about 2-Boss, even if you guys know this stuff already, because I'm working on him right now. (Also watch kenpero's WR IL run it's nuts, this post talks about those strats and are not my own).

First thing, if you pogo the birds with shells they die instead of being grab-able. I'm sure most/all of us knew that already, but I bring it up because I though pogo-ing at their position when they were in their pick-up-able state killed them, which is FALSE. They die when they're in pick-up-able state when they come in contact with the owl you're holding (I didn't realise that interaction until now).

With that said, we should all be doing the strats for 2-Boss that the WR does. So for the first phase, when throwing the second bird, instead of:
bop -> grab -> jump -> pogo -> throw, we should be doing:
bop -> pogo -> air-grab -> throw, it saves about 2-2.5 seconds on the first section and doesn't seem more difficult than grabbing them quickly in general.

For second phase, the above applies as well. Grab the first mini-owl as normal and follow standard procedure, but after throwing the first owl into the boss, you'll want to pogo into air-grab the owl that is waiting on the ground instead of landing and picking him up. Doing the pogo -> air-grab gets you enough height to throw the owl into the boss right away and is fast enough so that the boss won't fly above your thrown owl. Just be careful not to go forward when throwing as you also need to land on the 3rd owl (if you miss the 3rd owl you can roll jump left and still have time to hit him, good back up if you mess up). Missing any of this is quite costly but again with practice it's definitely consistent enough to go for in runs.

For third phase, the positions that the owls fly in are RNG but there are set patterns they have (I think there are 4, each pair seem like mirrored versions of each other). Two of these patterns have the second throw-able owl fly in on the right side of the screen. The reason that even matters is because the boss seems to ALWAYS fly in from the right side of the screen after the owl brigade flies in. This allows us to bounce off of the second grab-able owl (don't pogo!) to get enough height to throw the first owl into the boss without having to wait for him to fly down. After the boss shoots down the eggs and you jump on his head, which side he shows up on seems completely random so just wait to see what side he's on and chuck dat bird at him.

About the second hit in the 3rd phase, the IL WR has insane strats that I don't understand and manages to bounce on him AND hit him with the owl he's holding at the same time. I'm not going to go for this anytime soon as I don't understand how he does it but if it's consistent that may also be worth going for as well. Again sorry if everyone knows this already, it's just none of us seem to do this in runs. Happy owl hunting!

Edit: Been practicing some more, the pogo to grab is more tricky than I thought, just a heads up Tongue

I'm gonna post about 2-Boss, even if you guys know this stuff already, because I'm working on him right now. (Also watch kenpero's WR IL run it's nuts, this post talks about those strats and are not my own).

First thing, if you pogo the birds with shells they die instead of being grab-able. I'm sure most/all of us knew that already, but I bring it up because I though pogo-ing at their position when they were in their pick-up-able state killed them, which is FALSE. They die when they're in pick-up-able state when they come in contact with the owl you're holding (I didn't realise that interaction until now).

With that said, we should all be doing the strats for 2-Boss that the WR does. So for the first phase, when throwing the second bird, instead of:
bop -> grab -> jump -> pogo -> throw, we should be doing:
bop -> pogo -> air-grab -> throw, it saves about 2-2.5 seconds on the first section and doesn't seem more difficult than grabbing them quickly in general.

For second phase, the above applies as well. Grab the first mini-owl as normal and follow standard procedure, but after throwing the first owl into the boss, you'll want to pogo into air-grab the owl that is waiting on the ground instead of landing and picking him up. Doing the pogo -> air-grab gets you enough height to throw the owl into the boss right away and is fast enough so that the boss won't fly above your thrown owl. Just be careful not to go forward when throwing as you also need to land on the 3rd owl (if you miss the 3rd owl you can roll jump left and still have time to hit him, good back up if you mess up). Missing any of this is quite costly but again with practice it's definitely consistent enough to go for in runs.

For third phase, the positions that the owls fly in are RNG but there are set patterns they have (I think there are 4, each pair seem like mirrored versions of each other). Two of these patterns have the second throw-able owl fly in on the right side of the screen. The reason that even matters is because the boss seems to ALWAYS fly in from the right side of the screen after the owl brigade flies in. This allows us to bounce off of the second grab-able owl (don't pogo!) to get enough height to throw the first owl into the boss without having to wait for him to fly down. After the boss shoots down the eggs and you jump on his head, which side he shows up on seems completely random so just wait to see what side he's on and chuck dat bird at him.

About the second hit in the 3rd phase, the IL WR has insane strats that I don't understand and manages to bounce on him AND hit him with the owl he's holding at the same time. I'm not going to go for this anytime soon as I don't understand how he does it but if it's consistent that may also be worth going for as well. Again sorry if everyone knows this already, it's just none of us seem to do this in runs. Happy owl hunting!

Edit: Been practicing some more, the pogo to grab is more tricky than I thought, just a heads up :P

spikevegeta

2014-06-06 02:51:14 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I'm cool with final punch being the final split.

Personally I think it's weird to change watching the opening cutscene in different categories, and I feel it's just determining that 100% is a "casual' category. Do what you want, I'm not going to run the category, but if you ever want to optimize the category, I think it's silly to discourage runners by making them watch the opening 150 second cutscene every time. Especially since we already skip it in any%. Just feels like something that WILL change for the community later, but again, if you want to for your runs, no one will stop you, I just don't think it should be made the standard for all 100% runs.

Ecko65

2014-06-07 12:04:02 pm

DK + Mario Kart 8 = <3

Quote from spikevegeta:

I'm cool with final punch being the final split.

Personally I think it's weird to change watching the opening cutscene in different categories, and I feel it's just determining that 100% is a "casual' category. Do what you want, I'm not going to run the category, but if you ever want to optimize the category, I think it's silly to discourage runners by making them watch the opening 150 second cutscene every time. Especially since we already skip it in any%. Just feels like something that WILL change for the community later, but again, if you want to for your runs, no one will stop you, I just don't think it should be made the standard for all 100% runs.

i agree with spike

Ghoul02

2014-06-07 12:44:40 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Fair enough, I'll use a race file then.

On 2-Boss, I've gotten the last hit... From what I can tell, the key is standing right next to him, jumping and letting go of the throw at the same time. I don't know if we can get consistent with it, but if we're practicing that fight anyway, it might be fine to go for anyway; it's not like the last hit is particularly hard.

Enkaybee

Edit history:

Enkaybee: 2014-06-08 11:26:48 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-06-08 09:53:02 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-06-08 03:31:54 pm

2014-06-07 09:41:02 pm

twitch.tv/enkaybee

You didn't trust in Master Cranks. Why didn't you trust him?

EDIT: It's not me. It's some guy named ORAORAORAORA who routed this. I've adopted his strats and I find them far easier.

EDIT 2: WR is mine now. There's still time to save. A 1:16.XX might be possible.

Le Hulk

2014-06-09 01:53:17 am

SNES rules!

Sick strats... Shocked

michael_goldfish

Edit history:

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:24:27 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:22:24 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:21:09 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:20:12 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:20:09 pm

michael_goldfish: 2014-06-16 12:20:08 pm

2014-06-16 12:18:23 pm

Two green and a figurine

To get ready for this post you'll want to watch this video first:

Now that you're ready, here are the little somethin' somethin's you should know about fighting Fugu.

Fugu has 3 cycles (just like every boss) and it takes 3 hits to get him to the next cycle (just like every boss). What's nice about Fugu is that not every hit needs to be as fast as possible. What this means is you can afford to be slow on some hits without Fugu going into some crazy mode where he loses you two minutes. With that said, the most important hits to get are:

Cycle 2 - 3rd hit
Cycle 3 - 1st hit
Cycle 3 - 2nd hit

If you take too long on any of these hits, Fugu will act as annoying as he looks. If you get these 3 hits, you're guaranteed to have at least a decent Fugu at worst. Miss any of these, and you'll have an average to awful Fugu depending on which hit you missed. So lets explore what happens if you miss any of these three hits.

1. Cycle 2 - 3rd hit OR Cycle 3 - 2nd hit:
Missing either of these hits has the same result. Fugu will face his exposed butt diagonally towards the ceiling or floor and start ricocheting off the two. This isn't too bad to handle. If he first aims for the ceiling, swim horizontally and towards the bottom then catch him on the way down. If he first aims towards the floor, swim horizontally and towards the ceiling and catch him on the way up. If this was the 3rd hit of cycle 2 he will then roll towards whichever side is closest to him (note: this is not always the left side!). If this was the 2nd hit of cycle 3 then he will immediatly expose his butt again so you can whack him for the finish. Again easy to handle if you don't panic.

2. Cycle 3 - 1st hit:
DON'T MISS THIS HIT. EVER. This is the most important hit of the entire fight because if you miss it, you're in for an onslaught of time loss, from ~50 seconds up to ~2 minutes. If you miss this hit, Fugu will start inhaling the water and getting super big. The problem is that his hitbox completely disappears while he's doing this. He then starts to slowly roll around the screen (again, no hit box). This is horrible and awful and has incredible run killing potential, so be very careful to get that first hit on the 3rd cycle. The best backup is to reset your run, but if that's not an option all you can do is wait for him to show his butt and smash into it, or if he's throwing enemies at you to spin-swim into the enemies and bash them into Fugu. Again this shoud never ever happen as it's your #1 priority during this fight to make sure it never comes to this.

As for fighting him, you guys know what's up but I'll explain anyways in case any new peeps read this. You want to smash Fugu into the wall rather than up or down as it causes him to expose his butt right away instead of having to roll back into place. It's just about getting used to where you should be swimming and where the easiest places to hit his hit-box are, but that's just practice.

The other important thing about this fight is managing your invincibility. To any future new people, banana juices are used during this fight to abuse the 20 seconds of invincibility they provide. As such, managing when you get hit is rather important since getting hit still puts DK in his "getting hit" animation (and can't do anything) even when invincible. This is a problem when you get hit right when Fugu exposes his butt. You try to whack him but you're busy recoiling from a hit, then when you can smack him Fugu runs away and craps all over you. The easiest way to manage this is to run into the spikes/crabs on the walls right before Fugu shows his goods, so you can get the recoil out of the way before Fugu has a chance to run.

With that being said, the only thing left is 2 juices vs. 3 juices. Please use only 2 juices!! It breaks my old little heart seeing a perfectly good juice go to waste on 1 hit right before beating Fugu's face in. It's true that if the fight is optimal you'll still be invincible from the 2nd hit, but bringing the 3rd juice does absolutely nothing other than risk wasting it. In any situation, you will never be taking more that 3 hits after using the second juice. If you do, you've lost enough time or something's gone horribly, horribly wrong where you should be resetting anyways. The worst case scenario would be losing juice #1 after the first cycle, then losing juice #2 during the second cycle and missing hit #3 of cycle 2 (missing hit 1 of cycle 3 is worse but that's a reset on it's own). In this scenario, you'd do the backup to get the 3rd hit and take 0 or 1 hit if you mess up pretty bad. Right before Fugu shows his butt for cycle 3 you'll take a hit for the invincibility (2 hits total) and if you miss the 2nd hit you may take another hit during backup strats (3 hits total). Fugu then exposes himself right away so you can get the last hit and beat him.

Even in the above realistic-worst-case scenario, you still don't need a 3rd juice. Also keep in mind that Fugu has a chance of giving you a heart each time you hit him (same as other bosses, 75% chance I believe?), so the above is truly a rare situation. In addition you don't even need to start 5-1 with Cranky, solo DK is almost identical and you usually wait for the first barrel anyways as you almost always take a hit on your way to the first barrel. This is why bringing only 2 juices should be the norm. Even though 3 juices feels a lot safer it's truly a waste of 15 coins that is better used for the Damage Juiced on 6-2.

tl;dr Don't miss the 1st hit of Cycle 3 and bring 2 juices instead of 3 #Fugupls

To get ready for this post you'll want to watch this video first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lkt9FQtAoU

Now that you're ready, here are the little somethin' somethin's you should know about fighting Fugu.

Fugu has 3 cycles (just like every boss) and it takes 3 hits to get him to the next cycle (just like every boss). What's nice about Fugu is that not [b]every[/b] hit needs to be as fast as possible. What this means is you can afford to be slow on some hits without Fugu going into some crazy mode where he loses you two minutes. With that said, the most important hits to get are:

Cycle 2 - 3rd hit
Cycle 3 - 1st hit
Cycle 3 - 2nd hit
 
If you take too long on any of these hits, Fugu will act as annoying as he looks. If you get these 3 hits, you're [b]guaranteed[/b] to have at least a decent Fugu at worst. Miss any of these, and you'll have an average to awful Fugu depending on which hit you missed. So lets explore what happens if you miss any of these three hits.

1. Cycle 2 - 3rd hit OR Cycle 3 - 2nd hit:
          Missing either of these hits has the same result. Fugu will face his exposed butt diagonally towards the ceiling or floor and start ricocheting off the two. This isn't too bad to handle. If he first aims for the ceiling, swim horizontally and towards the bottom then catch him on the way down. If he first aims towards the floor, swim horizontally and towards the ceiling and catch him on the way up. If this was the 3rd hit of cycle 2 he will then roll towards whichever side is closest to him (note: this is not always the left side!). If this was the 2nd hit of cycle 3 then he will immediatly expose his butt again so you can whack him for the finish. Again easy to handle if you don't panic.

2. Cycle 3 - 1st hit:
          [b]DON'T MISS THIS HIT. EVER.[/b] This is the most important hit of the entire fight because if you miss it, you're in for an onslaught of time loss, from ~50 seconds up to ~2 minutes. If you miss this hit, Fugu will start inhaling the water and getting super big. The problem is that his hitbox [b]completely disappears[/b] while he's doing this. He then starts to slowly roll around the screen (again, no hit box). This is horrible and awful and has incredible run killing potential, so be very careful to get that first hit on the 3rd cycle. The best backup is to reset your run, but if that's not an option all you can do is wait for him to show his butt and smash into it, or if he's throwing enemies at you to spin-swim into the enemies and bash them into Fugu. Again this shoud never ever happen as it's your #1 priority during this fight to make sure it never comes to this.

As for fighting him, you guys know what's up but I'll explain anyways in case any new peeps read this. You want to smash Fugu into the wall rather than up or down as it causes him to expose his butt right away instead of having to roll back into place. It's just about getting used to where you should be swimming and where the easiest places to hit his hit-box are, but that's just practice.

The other important thing about this fight is managing your invincibility. To any future new people, banana juices are used during this fight to abuse the 20 seconds of invincibility they provide. As such, managing when you get hit is rather important since getting hit still puts DK in his "getting hit" animation (and can't do anything) even when invincible. This is a problem when you get hit right when Fugu exposes his butt. You try to whack him but you're busy recoiling from a hit, then when you can smack him Fugu runs away and craps all over you. The easiest way to manage this is to run into the spikes/crabs on the walls right before Fugu shows his goods, so you can get the recoil out of the way before Fugu has a chance to run.

With that being said, the only thing left is 2 juices vs. 3 juices. [b]Please use only 2 juices!![/b] It breaks my old little heart seeing a perfectly good juice go to waste on 1 hit right before beating Fugu's face in. It's true that if the fight is optimal you'll still be invincible from the 2nd hit, but bringing the 3rd juice does absolutely nothing other than risk wasting it. In any situation, you will never be taking more that 3 hits after using the second juice. If you do, you've lost enough time or something's gone horribly, horribly wrong where you should be resetting anyways. The worst case scenario would be losing juice #1 after the first cycle, then losing juice #2 during the second cycle and missing hit #3 of cycle 2 (missing hit 1 of cycle 3 is worse but that's a reset on it's own). In this scenario, you'd do the backup to get the 3rd hit and take 0 or 1 hit if you mess up pretty bad. Right before Fugu shows his butt for cycle 3 you'll take a hit for the invincibility (2 hits total) and if you miss the 2nd hit you may take another hit during backup strats (3 hits total). Fugu then exposes himself right away so you can get the last hit and beat him.

Even in the above realistic-worst-case scenario, you [b]still[/b] don't need a 3rd juice. Also keep in mind that Fugu has a chance of giving you a heart each time you hit him (same as other bosses, 75% chance I believe?), so the above is truly a rare situation. In addition you don't even need to start 5-1 with Cranky, solo DK is almost identical and you usually wait for the first barrel anyways as you almost always take a hit on your way to the first barrel. This is why bringing only 2 juices should be the norm. Even though 3 juices feels a lot safer it's truly a waste of 15 coins that is better used for the Damage Juiced on 6-2.

tl;dr Don't miss the 1st hit of Cycle 3 and bring 2 juices instead of 3 #Fugupls

Ghoul02

2014-07-01 03:24:11 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

I made this route while at SGDQ. Got it on video. I'll break it down a bit here.

You start with Cranky, but the level also has no issues with putting Cranky on cycle at the start. Dixie is not, and you should be coming from either 1-3 or 1-4, where Dixie is very much out of the way. The IL difference is 3 seconds, but this is mitigated due to grabbing Kong letters.

:17 is the K. Super easy to grab, and much faster with Cranks than Dixie.
:22 is a bit finnicky. Hit him towards the right and you shouldn't have any issues pogoing all the way through the section, all full bounces.
:29 Hitting the bird sets up full pogos to grab the O. Dixie can't do this, and the backup is to hit the bush as he walks across. It's a lot slower.
:38 Walk, don't roll. At least, it works better for me that way,
:45 Hardest trick in the level. If you don't grab the N at the end of the chain, you have to die, since there is no other way to get it if you skip pulling the plug. These are not full hops. They're just below full. Visual cue for starting the bouncing is the ferns in the foreground. You need to start bouncing as soon as you cross the first one.
:58 can be handled a lot of ways. I think it's slightly faster to roll off the top of the tree, but pogoing the bush gets you in as well. I fell, so I did the Pogo instead.
1:05 Everything lines up really well for cranks here. I missed the barrel initially, but still, pretty solid as you can see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5I7pvoaU8k&feature=youtu.be

I made this route while at SGDQ. Got it on video. I'll break it down a bit here.

You start with Cranky, but the level also has no issues with putting Cranky on cycle at the start. Dixie is not, and you should be coming from either 1-3 or 1-4, where Dixie is very much out of the way. The IL difference is 3 seconds, but this is mitigated due to grabbing Kong letters.

:17 is the K. Super easy to grab, and much faster with Cranks than Dixie.
:22 is a bit finnicky. Hit him towards the right and you shouldn't have any issues pogoing all the way through the section, all full bounces.
:29 Hitting the bird sets up full pogos to grab the O. Dixie can't do this, and the backup is to hit the bush as he walks across. It's a lot slower.
:38 Walk, don't roll. At least, it works better for me that way,
:45 Hardest trick in the level. If you don't grab the N at the end of the chain, you have to die, since there is no other way to get it if you skip pulling the plug. These are not full hops.  They're just below full. Visual cue for starting the bouncing is the ferns in the foreground. You need to start bouncing as soon as you cross the first one.
:58 can be handled a lot of ways. I think it's slightly faster to roll off the top of the tree, but pogoing the bush gets you in as well. I fell, so I did the Pogo instead.
1:05 Everything lines up really well for cranks here. I missed the barrel initially, but still, pretty solid as you can see.

Enkaybee

2014-07-01 08:09:56 am

twitch.tv/enkaybee

That was really cool and made me consider for a moment doing 100%. How fast do you think a run would be once optimized? 2:45?

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2014-07-01 12:06:51 pm

Ghoul02: 2014-07-01 08:32:22 am

2014-07-01 08:31:08 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Sub 3 should definitely be the first goal. Really, there's just a lot about 100% we don't know, as shown in Kruncha's run last night. Where does using different Kongs from the ILs matter, what's the shopping list? Kruncha shopped to make the K stages more manageable; in theory, that *shouldn't* be needed. It takes about 40 seconds to shop though, a death can cost 50 seconds on K stages... There are a LOT of hard decisions here. We pass the shop in every world; when's the optimal time to use it? So many questions we don't have haha.

EDIT: Also, are all exits needed for 100%? For example, do we need to clear both the normal and secret exits in 1-2? Kruncha and I both did; is that category technically 100% all exits?

EDIT 2: More vids inc

1-1

Crappy level, especially to get this video. Not very optimal at all, but you get the idea. K is a bit out of the way, but shouldn't throw anything off. O is in a crappy spot, make sure to hover before going back into the water to prevent a dive. N means you have to wait on the barrel. The one redeeming thing is that the G is pretty fun imho. Otherwise, bleh in every way.

1-2

Not the most interesting level, but cool to route. Lap one gets the secret exit and not all Kong letters. Diddy's advantage is mitigated when grabbing Kong Letters, so he's best used going as close to any% as possible.

The K is hard but not impossible to grab with Diddy; you just have to wait for the swing to come back around. Dixie can get up there slightly sooner. The O is annoying; I'd like to run instead of roll, but there's a handle there, and on D-Pad, run and grab are the same button. N is free with Dixie. G is actually pretty cool but a bit tricky. Also, note the new ending, minus the errors. I think that'll be marginally faster than getting back to the raft, but both are plenty viable I suppose.

1-3

This is technically lap 2, but I'd recommend going for Kong Letters both times; they're not really out of the way and if you miss one, no big deal, just get it on the second lap. The K is a bit bleh, but the O means that the ever so slightly faster IL route shouldn't be used (it's frames if anything). The N is free with the based Enkaybee, and the swing loads while you grab the G, so really, we could swag it up and grab all 4 Kong letters on this stage in any% with minimal time loss.

Sub 3 should definitely be the first goal. Really, there's just a lot about 100% we don't know, as shown in Kruncha's run last night. Where does using different Kongs from the ILs matter, what's the shopping list? Kruncha shopped to make the K stages more manageable; in theory, that *shouldn't* be needed. It takes about 40 seconds to shop though, a death can cost 50 seconds on K stages... There are a LOT of hard decisions here. We pass the shop in every world; when's the optimal time to use it? So many questions we don't have haha.

EDIT: Also, are all exits needed for 100%? For example, do we need to clear both the normal and secret exits in 1-2? Kruncha and I both did; is that category technically 100% all exits?

EDIT 2: More vids inc

1-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flT2nKqUfQk

Crappy level, especially to get this video. Not very optimal at all, but you get the idea. K is a bit out of the way, but shouldn't throw anything off. O is in a crappy spot, make sure to hover before going back into the water to prevent a dive. N means you have to wait on the barrel. The one redeeming thing is that the G is pretty fun imho. Otherwise, bleh in every way.

1-2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POCzxOnyTTk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRGkwL3aJks

Not the most interesting level, but cool to route. Lap one gets the secret exit and not all Kong letters. Diddy's advantage is mitigated when grabbing Kong Letters, so he's best used going as close to any% as possible.

The K is hard but not impossible to grab with Diddy; you just have to wait for the swing to come back around. Dixie can get up there slightly sooner. The O is annoying; I'd like to run instead of roll, but there's a handle there, and on D-Pad, run and grab are the same button. N is free with Dixie. G is actually pretty cool but a bit tricky. Also, note the new ending, minus the errors. I think that'll be marginally faster than getting back to the raft, but both are plenty viable I suppose.

1-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWY-fZ9ZeZU

This is technically lap 2, but I'd recommend going for Kong Letters both times; they're not really out of the way and if you miss one, no big deal, just get it on the second lap. The K is a bit bleh, but the O means that the ever so slightly faster IL route shouldn't be used (it's frames if anything). The N is free with the based Enkaybee, and the swing loads while you grab the G, so really, we could swag it up and grab all 4 Kong letters on this stage in any% with minimal time loss.

Enkaybee

Edit history:

Enkaybee: 2014-07-01 09:57:41 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-07-01 03:29:44 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-07-01 02:35:25 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-07-01 02:35:05 pm

Enkaybee: 2014-07-01 02:34:11 pm

2014-07-01 02:29:43 pm

twitch.tv/enkaybee

Obviously, I don't run the category, but why would 100% not simply be 100% by the file? i.e. all levels, not all exits? Correct me if any of this is wrong:

1-2: Shouldn't be repeated. Grab the G and backtrack.
1-3: Shouldn't be repeated. Both exits are at the end of the level.

2-4: Both exits needed

3-5: All 3 exits needed

4-1: Needs to be repeated because the secret exit is before you have all of the KONGs. Unreasonable/impossible to backtrack.
4-A: Same as 4-1

5-3: Shouldn't be repeated. Grab the G and backtrack.
5-4: Both exits needed

6-7: Shouldn't be repeated. Grab the G and backtrack.

If you and Kruncha both did all exits, then yeah - I'd say that's 100% all exits and it should be its own category because 100% by the file would be 4 stages (and 8 load screens) shorter.

EDIT: Here are the three levels where you have to backtrack. Nothing too difficult.

spikevegeta

2014-07-01 03:58:15 pm

I agree with Enkay. I personally feel that repeating levels for "All Exits" would over-bloat the category, which is already pretty long. Might as well just backtrack a few times after grabbing late KONG letters then repeating an entire level twice. 100% on the title screen would be the best 100% category imo.

Ghoul02

2014-07-01 07:43:25 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

I actually didn't know that you didn't need to get all exits for 100% to count... *shrugs*So yeah... The 1-3 vid is fine; starting with Dixie there is easy enough

I'll see about other levels as I go.

NotSoNewby

2014-07-01 11:31:47 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need to get all exits anyway to unlock every level in each world?

TheGamePixel

2014-07-02 12:55:25 am

Hi, I'm new to these forums, but I knew that I wanted to speedrun this game from day 1 and on that day even went out and got gold on World 1. I've been off and on with the game since then, but I'd like to starrt speedrunning this again and thought the best way to do that would be to join this little community. I'll help with play testing any new strategies and can stream them on Twitch if needed. I hope I'll be helpful.

Enkaybee

2014-07-02 07:23:13 am

twitch.tv/enkaybee

Newby: No. Some levels' secret exits send you to a secret level that sends you back to the level that the normal exit would have sent you to anyway. Example: 5-3 normally sends you to 5-4, but the secret exit sends you to 5-A which then sends you to 5-4. Similarly, 6-7 to 6-A to 6-B to 6-8. 1-2 to 1-A to 1-3. 1-3 to 1-B to 1-4.

TheGamePixel: welcome.
If you're going to be learning the game, you may find the shiny gold time list useful so that you don't have to watch the world record replays in-game.
Leaderboards are here.