Egg Dealer is quite possibly, the most annoying boss to speedrun. And, at the same time, the most complex. In order to fight this boss optimally, it requires a heavy amount of improvisation and execution in order to deal with any pattern he can possibly give you. As such, there are a lot of techniques used in the fight that are not obvious from just watching an IL or watching the full-game WR. The goal of this guide is to explore the many intricacies and nuances of speedrunning Egg Dealer.

For the record, this guide will primarily be focused on the Lava Shelter version of Egg Dealer. The other versions of this boss put the Egg Pistol in different locations. The Cosmic Fall version in particular has this weird bridge structure with the middle being slightly elevated. Most of the strats mentioned will still work on the other stages, but keep the differences in mind if you are to use this guide to run a different version of Egg Dealer.

Furthermore, this guide assumes that you alreaady understand the basics of how Egg Dealer and his roulette works. Play through the boss casually a few times to get the basics down.

Here is a diagram of the battlefield:

The star represents where you start on the battlefield, and the gun represents where the Egg Pistol will spawn if you follow the route.

So, here's a basic overview of the route.

1. Hit one or two of Egg Dealer's buttons. You want to get either Shadow or Rings on the buttons. ->1.5) If you get bomb, hit the third button to complete the roulette, and then hit a single button on the next cycle, guaranteed to be Shadow or Rings.
2. Spin Dash Jump to the middle platform of the battlefield.
3. Pay attention to where Egg Dealer stops, and manipulate his next movement direction if possible.
4. Spin Dash Jump to the box with the Egg Pistol. (Which spawns when Egg Dealer stops)
5. Break the box, grab the Egg Pistol.
6. Hit the roulette buttons immediately if the step 3 manipulation was successful. Otherwise, wait for Egg Dealer to stop again.
7. Complete roulettes until you get Shadow in order to get Chaos Fever. 8 ) Manipulate where Egg Dealer lands by hitting the last Shadow button at a certain location.
8. Jump and shoot at his cockpit. Mash hard.
9. If he gets out of your gun range before you destroy him, hit a button/complete a cycle and repeat step 9 to finish him off.

Easy, right? Let's go into these steps more in depth and go over the more complicated nuances of this fight.

STEP 1) Hit two of Egg Dealer's buttons. You want to get either Shadow or Rings on the roulette.

The goal of this is to force the Egg Dealer to fail a roulette, which causes the box with the Egg Pistol to spawn. Because getting Shadow or Ring Fever can only benefit the player, Eggman cannot land on it when he stops the roulette himself. Thus, by forcing him to stop the roulette when you've already landed on one or two things he can't land on, he will be guaranteed to stop the roulette, spawning the Egg Pistol box. (This is also why the player can't stop the roulette on Egg Pawns.)

I recommend starting with the rightmost button and then the center button, because if you end up getting bomb, it's easier to hit the third button to complete the roulette to move on to the next one. (It's imposible to land on Missile because Eggman lands on it during the opening cutscene.)

STEP 1.5) If you get Bomb, hit the third button to complete the roulette, and then hit a single button on the next cycle, guaranteed to be Shadow or Rings.

Because Egg Dealer can stop the roulette on Bomb, you need to complete the roulette yourself so that he can start a new cycle. Because of how the game handles getting repeats, you are guaranteed to get Shadow or Rings on the cycle afterwards.

When Egg Dealer falls over to drop the bomb, you can get in a jump dash or two on his cockpit to do a small amount of chip damage. It's not a lot, but there's not much to do while waiting for the next cycle to start. Don't worry about taking damage from the bomb, as you start the fight with 10 rings.

STEP 2) Spin Dash Jump to the middle platform of the battlefield.

When Egg Dealer fails the roulette, the location of the boxes that spawn depends on where you are located. When you're on the outside curve, they spawn in the middle. When you're in the middle, they spawn on the outside.

STEP 3) Pay attention to where Egg Dealer stops, and manipulate his next movement direction if possible. STEP 4) Spin Dash Jump to the box with the Egg Pistol. (Covering these two together)

Whenever Egg Dealer stops moving, his next direction is dependant on where you are in relation to him. In particular, he always travels away from you when he starts moving. However, when you're on the middle platform, you can much more easily manipulate him to go wherever you want him to. And for an optimal speedrun, we want to manipulate him to travel towards the Egg Pistol, so we can immediately hit one of his roulette buttons from the behind before he turns around and puts his buttons on the front.

So, how do you manipulate his movement from the center? Well, look at where Egg Dealer stops moving, and imagine a line coming out of Egg Dealer, perpindicular to his line of direction. The direction he starts moving will be the opposite of which side of the perpinicular line you are on.

See the Diagram below.

As mentioned, we want Egg Dealer to travel towards the location of the Egg Pistol spawn. So, if Egg Dealer lands where he does on this diagram, we want to be on the part of the center platform colored green the moment he starts moving again, as that will cause him to move towards the box as desired. If we are in the red section, he will move away from the box, which will force us to wait a cycle until he stops moving before we can hit him again.

So, the ideal situation is to look to see where Egg Dealer stops, get into a location behind the invisible perpindicular line, charge up a spin dash, and let go of spin dash and jump towards the Egg Pistol box the second he starts moving again.

Now, let's go over a few different permutations that complicate things.

Sometimes, Egg Dealer will stop on the corners of the map, causing him to have a more diagonal line of direction than on the normal sides. However, the technique still stays the same. Imagine a perpindicular line from his direction of movement, and get on the side opposite of the Egg Pistol spawn.

In certain instances, he will land in such a location that you cannot manipulate his movement from the center platform. As such, you'll just have to work with what you're given, and just accept the time loss if he lands in a location that forces him to travel away from the Egg Pistol.

Make sure you always remember where the Egg Pistol is going to spawn! Look at the diagram posted near the beginning of this guide to see where it spawns relatively to where you start.

STEP 5) Break the box, grab the Egg Pistol.

Once you've gotten to the box, punch it open and short jump into the gun to pick it up. Jumping into it can sometimes skip the pickup animation. If you mess up and end up on the wrong side, an Egg Bazooka or Egg Lance will spawn out of the box instead.

6. Hit the roulette buttons immediately if the step 3 manipulation was successful. Otherwise, wait for Egg Dealer to stop again.

If Egg Dealer moves far enough without the player hitting a button, he will turn around and make it impossible to chain all three buttons at once. As such, the movement manipulation we did will allow us to hit a button before he turns around, as he'll be close to the gun once you pick it up.

So, once you pick up the gun, try to hit one of the three buttons as fast as possible in order to prevent him from turning around, and then immediately hit the other two buttons. (You are then immediately on step 7)

If you fail the manipulation, or are otherwise unable to hit a button before he turns around, wait for him to fall and land on something on the roulette before hitting any of his buttons. DO NOT hit any of the buttons while he is travelling around until he falls. It resets the timer that determines how long until he stops moving himself, and it costs much more time to hit all three buttons as he goes around (as you can't chain all three together) than to just wait for him to stop and hit all the buttons at once.

If you're lucky, he'll land on Bomb when he stops himself, letting you finish the Bomb roulette and get it for yourself. Most of the time though, he'll get Egg Pawns, forcing you to fail the roulette and just start a new cycle.

STEP 7) Complete roulettes until you get Shadow in order to get Chaos Fever.

Not only does Chaos Fever give you the ability to use Chaos Blast/Control, it also gives you invincibility and infinite ammo! After grabbing the Egg Pistol, we want to use this infinite ammo mechanic to get rid of all of his health.

However, there is no known way to guarantee you land on the roulette you want. As such, we just have to hit the roulette repeatedly until he land on Shadow. If he lands on Rings, this is nothing but a straight time loss. If he lands on Bomb, you can use the opportunity of him falling over to fire 19 shots of your gun into his cockpit before his bomb blows up. With at least one bullet left, you have enough to be able to fire infinitely once you get Chaos Fever. (Once again, don't worry about the explosion, you can take the hit easily.) It is impossible to land on Missile before you land on Shadow. during this step.

Like step 1, I recommend starting with the outermost (relative to the center of the battlefield) button during each cycle after the first cycle, whenever possible. This is because it is easier to chain from the center button to the innermost button than from the center to the outermost button. (The first cycle, assuming you were able to manipulate his movement, you should hit the innermost button just to make sure you can hit any button before he turns around)

STEP 8 ) Manipulate where Egg Dealer lands by hitting the last Shadow button at a certain location.

Once you've seen that you've gotten Shadow on the roulette, you want to time the last button press so that Egg Dealer stops moving right as he turn to a new side of the battlefield. This is because when you start shooting him repeatedly, you want him to be on a straightaway in order to keep shooting him more easily. If you're shooting him as he's going around a corner, it is much harder to hit him. If you end up stopping him right before he goes around a corner, I'd honestly recommend waiting another cycle to start shooting him, once you've actually gotten him in a good location.

See the diagram below for a visual representation of this.

STEP 9) Jump and shoot at his cockpit. Mash hard.

Once you get Shadow Fever, just jump up in the air and mash the shoot button until he reaches the half-way destroyed cutscene. Once the cutscene plays, once again just jump up and mash shoot until he dies.

However, sometimes you won't be fast enough to do all the damage before he gets out of your range! A very helpful skill is to know when to abandon shooting him so you can stop him again, because if you wait too long, he'll turn around as he moves away from you, making you wait until he stops before you can set him up again.

STEP 10) If he gets out of your gun range before you destroy him, complete a cycle and repeat step 9 to finish him off.

Basically, just complete a cycle in order to put him in a position so that you can shoot him some more, and then jump mash shoot at him again until he's dead. You can also, if you're fast enough, hit a button and immediately start shooting him from the bounce of the homing attack. It's hard to pull off, though.

And that's Egg Dealer! There's a lot of complicated nuance to fighting this boss, and it involves a lot of improv around the various patterns he might give you. Take a lot of time to practice various patterns, and how to best deal with the boss! And if you have any questions, feel free to ask on the Sonic Speedrunning Discord in the Shadow channel!