I was watching the new TAS before it was taken down and there was an interesting glitch. If you threw an apple at the exact right moment, you could interrupt the fruit merchant before he did his slashes. It's pretty tricky and I tried it in my run just before and got it something like 4/6 times but I had to get extra apples for the glitch (so I'd have some at the end of the run for other skips) and it gave me a net loss. Unfortunately I know of nowhere where there are apples that do not take time, as none are in the autoscroller level. Good trick though.

In the TAS this saves 20 seconds on that split and later apple throws are replaced by damage boosting. If the run ever gets really really close to optimal using current strats this is the next step. Right now it's kinda hard to get consistent in runs.