The NLE route revolves around collecting 100 golden bananas in order to enter Hideout Helm, so the only differences between the routes involve switching slow golden bananas for faster ones. This means that after getting some experience running NLE with the beginner route, you can easily swap in faster, more difficult golden bananas that are in the harder routes. It is common to see runners all use slightly different routes from each other as they choose to collect different golden bananas.

Beginner Route: N64 and VC Highly recommended to start here if you are new to the game. Will assist in learning the basic fundamentals of the game while removing a lot of the inconsistencies and hard tricks of the more advanced routes.

Intermediate Route: N64 VC Around 5-10 minutes faster than Beginner Route If you’ve run any DK64 category before, then this is probably the best place to start. Includes a few skew sections along with a lot of in-level movement being changed.

Advanced 40BPs Routes: N64 VC Around 20 seconds faster than Intermediate Route This is a step up from the Intermediate route. Most things stay the same between the 2 routes. However, the new thing with this route is a second gun skew section in Caves. This section saves 20s and can easily kill a run.

Helm Escape Routes: N64 VC VC: Around 1m faster than Advanced 40BPs | N64: Around 2m faster than Advanced 40BPs With the other routes, 40 Blueprints are collected throughout to exit MMM so you can reset out of Key 8 room. With this route, the major difference is that it collects less than 35. This means that a clip out of Key 8 Room is required to carry on the run. Before you learn this route, make sure you can clip out of Key 8 Room.

801 IQ Route: N64 [VC](https://docs.google.com/document/d/102A9Ii0M4ZnCHg_obKMCrL6UUvsG7_yP0MJAo7JCJnQ/edit} This is the current fastest, most advanced route. It saves approximately 6-7 minutes over Helm Escape on N64. Approximate time save for VC is unknown, but certainly faster than Helm escape. In comparison, this route makes use of a multitude of phase walks, tag barrel storage, takeoff skip, and Camera Before Aztec. Additionally, a lot of Golden Bananas that were previously attained in Helm Escape are no longer in the route.

PAL/JP Routes: PAL N64 and VC JP N64 and VC The PAL and Japanese Versions of DK64 are patched to a great extent, most notably STVW. If you don’t have access to a US copy of the game, these are the routes you’ll want

Tutorials: Beginner Tutorial by theballaam96 Intermediate Tutorial by Cybermel0n