I'm just going to throw this out here in case I can't figure out how to replicate it. I would make a video of it, but I am going to wait and see if I can replicate the skip. I was doing some practice in Shore, and you can go OOB quite easily once you have gone through the last triangle and go back into Shore using seeds. I was wandering around seeing what was loaded when i ended up past Cove and into a valley area that was around where Swamp or Woodlands would be. I headed straight and found a triangle along with some other geometry that unlocked Rainforest. I've tried replicating it but can't find the valley area that I went through. If someone wants to try finding it or if I find out how to replicate it, I will update here. I don't want to get any hopes up, but I will say that if this skip doesn't lose any time or saves time it would be the best route as it skips Cove, Swamp, and Woodlands and you would chapter select into Rainforest, which should always load Caves.

At a certain point if things like this get figured out more thoroughly we may have to split the leaderboards into two for any%, one with chapter select allowed and one without.

This was kind of what I was afraid would happen with this chapter select stuff. Right now it's used as a time penalty for the sake of run consistency, but if it turns out chapter select saves a lot of time or lets you skip huge sections of the game, it probably needs to be a separate thing.

Yeah, I would definitely split it into two. Probably any% OOB and any% skipless where OOB and chapter select are not allowed, but I would take suggestions for rules and have to take time to consider all the rules. I don't think the skip I found will save that much time if any time, but it would change the run considerably. It does work on a new save file so, NG+ wouldn't really be the term to use at the moment.