Hey everyone! I have recently become curious about looking into what the optimal strategies for particular reoccuring sections are. I'm talking about the sections such as the T-Rex cave, waterfall, Ankylosaurus pit ect. Usually at least some of these sections occur during a run of the standard challenge, so I thought attempting to test them all would be benificial.

As for my first test of this I have been looking at the T-Rex Cave! (The one where the T-Rex super egg is found.) I tested this using the speedrun map Raining Lizards, with the seed 314776 and attempted to compare how long it took to get past using all possible routes. In my test I found that the fastest route was to go through the middle hole, followed by jumping over the top. An example video of what I mean is here:

In my tests this was on average about 1 second faster than all other routes and all of my fastest times used this route too. Although obviously given the choice of speedrun the Lizards had a potential impact. Most of the speedrun levels that contain this section however I believe have some sort of special effect in some way or another so this was unavoidable.

I'd wondered this myself and was always unsure about the T-rex cave, but going over takes too much vertical distance and going under leads to too many bumps that cause resistance. The only challenge with this optimal route is making the jump for the last part. I'm also pretty certain going straight through the bottom of the waterfall is the fastest route, its straight, flat and full of lizards, but it might still warrant a test.

Yeah missing that jump hurts a lot. Using the shift boost just beforehand however makes it a bit easier to make. It is also very easy to fall into the bottom route in the beginning as well. I’m also not sure what would happen if there were no birds on the end. And of course the lizards could have changed things. I think it would still be faster, but it could lose its advantage.

I assume you are right about the waterfall too. Jumping over takes a very long time and I highly doubt it is worth it. I also want to test out a few other things on that though, such as checking if jumping to hit the ceiling actually makes you go faster.

Doing tests during level 6 and the apocalypse ive found 2 optimal routes for some landmarks. There is one small volcano in level 6 that has a meteor strike the side of it allowing you to go in through the side (This is the magno egg landmark). It's usually much quicker to go through this entrance the meteor creates and damage boost of the central hot stone than to try and jump that hole, climb the small volcano and then try and jump the mouth of the volcano. I've also found that at the point where a meteor can hit causing you to fall down into a cave its always faster to jump over the hole created (This is the area you can find the pixeljam mascot easter egg). You can usually see its coming because the ground will have an orange part before the meteor strikes to show where the entrance to the cave will be.

Hi Toastie! Thanks for the work with those! Just adding onto the Mango Egg volcano I tend to use a shift boost just after leaving it, as I believe there is normally a pack of Para's right outside that can be difficult to get past. I find it can be very helpful, as without it they have the potential to slow you down quite significantly should things go wrong. The only time I could see going over the volcano as being advantagous is if you were able to use a dactyl to fly across it, in which case I'd imagine it would be faster. That is down to luck though of course. :)