The speedrun categories for All Loves and All Ham-Chats has always had a roadblock deep in the run (almost 2 hours in, right at the end) that requires you to obtain the Star Key in order to open the locked door in the Spat Tower Rock Room and complete the 20th love of the game.

In order to get the key, you need to present the queen (I think she's the queen? Not sure) in Wildwoods with a pair of Pooie Earrings, and the only way to get these earrings is to make them at the Jewelry Shop using 1 Banana Stone, 2 Glass Beads and 1 Ammonite.

Fortunately, there is a 100% guaranteed Banana Stone available already that most people know about. It is inside the rock that the monkey leaves behind in Sunny Peak after you feed him the questionable bunch of bananas.

This means that you need to obtain 2 glass beads and 1 ammonite in order to complete the run. The previous best strategies for this were as follows:

Ammonite:

• Digdig in the hot spring. 1st dig is an onsen egg, 2nd is a music track, and every dig after this is a rock. This rock will either be an Ammonite (about 40%), Crystal (about 40%) or Peridot (about 10%) or
• Attempt to find an Ammonite in one of the Rock Rooms in Boo Manor or Sandy Bay

Glass bead:

• Attempt to find 2 glass beads in the Fun Land Rock Room. (Note: Only one glass bead can be found at a time, so getting 2 beads requires at least two entries into the room).

Inside the rock rooms, only the bottom left, middle and top left rocks actually have a chance of being an Ammonite or Glass Bead. So each time you load the room, you have three chances to find 1 of what you need.

You can ignore any of the long flat rocks which saves some time, as the Ammonite and Glass Bead will never be inside these. However, it is complete RNG if you will get the gem you need even when picking up the correct rocks. The rocks from the rooms have a chance of also being Crystals, Sunflower Seeds, Acorns or even nothing at all.

To mitigate this, usually the best tactic is to collect more rocks than you need to increase the RNG chance you'll get what you want. Every additional rock you collect is roughly a 6-8 second time loss by the time you Hif-Hif the rock and pick it up, plus additional timeloss every time you get a different gemstone than what you are looking for (something like another 8 seconds per rock).

If you fail to get what you need the run is basically dead at this point, as back tracking to try get more rocks will cost too much time.

ALMA ROCK:

Fortunately, a new discovery has been found. I'd like to introduce you all to Alma Rock:

I was watching the streamer Almagamae play a casual playthrough of Hamham Heartbreak and was surprised when they went to Sunny Peak, entered the door and used Tack-Q on the large rock in the corner to find a rock. The streamer did not actually know the significance of this rock at the time, they just knew if you tackled the large rock then the game gives you a rock that you can pick up.

As I didn't even know this rock existed, I did some testing on the rock to find what gems it held. To my surprise, this particular rock will ONLY EVER be an Ammonite OR a Glass Bead. Which you will note are the exact two gems you need to complete the speedrun.

Better still, not only are these the only two gemstones that you can get from this rock, but the rock also NEVER has a chance to be a Sunflower Seed, Acorn or Nothing. It also NEVER has a chance to be that pesky Crystal that ruins so many runs.

You can only collect 1 rock per visit to Sunny Peak, however you can collect multiple if you leave back to the minimap and re-enter the level.

On a standard run of All Loves or All Ham-Chats you need to come back through this room multiple times, so it should be possible to collect 4 or 5 rocks here without needing to go out of your way at all.

The only downside to this rock spawn is it seems to more commonly give you Ammonite rather than a Glass Bead (which you need 2 of), so there is still a little RNG required. But the odds are much more in your favour by collecting this rock rather than using previous methods.

In honour of the streamer that found it, I'm dubbing this to be "Alma Rock" henceforth.

I was planning on using this in my own runs in order to try and push the world record time down (particularly for All Ham-Chats), but life is getting in the way of me putting in the time to do full runs.

As such, I'm sharing this with anyone who still reads the forums or may be active on the boards here so that it will help push down the time for future runs in these categories.

I've shared this with the current multiple category world recorder holder small__town on his most recent stream, and his reaction was quite funny for those who are interested:

Hey all,

An update to this strategy has been found which has been used by small__town in his most recent All Ham-Chats submission.

I'm unsure as to who discovered this, but it seems more investigation was done on the room after the above was revealed. If anyone has any details I would love know how this discovery was found. Anyway, here we go:

In the same room as Alma Rock, if you Hif-Hif behind the rock in the wall just next to the Digdig hole then you can find this rock.

The rock has all the same properties as Alma Rock above, in that it gives you either a Glass Bead or an Ammonite with a 100% success rate.

This particular rock is even better than the above, as you aren't required to use Tack-Q in order to make it spawn (you can just walk right up to it and Hif-Hif to collect it immediately). I'd estimate you save around 4-5 seconds per rock you collect by picking up this one rather than by using Alma Rock.

You still need some RNG to get the Two Beads / One Ammonite that you need, but if you collect 4-5 rocks along the way you should be fine on the majority of runs to get the luck you need.

If you wanted to push the limit, you could try getting lucky by picking up just 3 rocks and hoping you get what you need. The backup strategy of heading back to Sunny Peak and collecting one more rock + Alma rock (you can collect both in a single visit if you wish to do so) wouldn't cost too much time if you missed out.