Great to see another run on the boards! Congrats on the free WR :D

To answer your questions (assuming no one else has yet), yes, you can put the difficulty on easy/relaxed to make the enemies have less health (it makes the boss fights significantly easier). In general, you can mess around with all the settings as much as you want. The only one that makes a difference is the invulnerable toggle for categorisation purposes.

(Though keep in mind that lower difficulty automatically sets your skill prisms when you get them. So you'll have to decide if you want to leave it like that or set them to manual.)

Well done for persevering despite the invulnerability toggle frustration and the crash! A previous WR had a crash in it, so you can just keep playing if that happens again.

Looking forward to seeing where you take it from here!

Great to see another run on the board! Interesting to see the Bowser clipping used too, that's a definite timesave.

I've got a couple of guides for the strats I use in the DLC speedruns, if anyone else would like to have a go.

The Last Spark Hunter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A1UEUs7V6ZDx7Jg1amWKEbvid1PadXdjMhsPe_8h5aU/edit?usp=sharing

Rayman in the Phantom Show: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lSx2W_9-UC6svLp81twG6cgligCHTtjxXHkRWDiKIEk/edit?usp=sharing

Let me know if anything could use cleaning up (I know my puzzle notes are fairly thin) or any potential improvements on routing.

That's an incredible 1 round! Congrats!

I hadn't thought about the combo of Rabbid Luigi's weaken and Rabbid Rosalina's ennui extra damage skill. Definitely going to have to figure out if I can work that into my run.

(For A Cold Greeting, another method is to get Luigi's Steely Stare damage fully upgraded and he can take out a Sea Stooge as long as he's at a reasonable distance from the spawn point. Though I've had very bad luck with it when recording runs.)

Wow, that's some absurd movement tech there!

I can't use either of those exactly (you only have enough money for 1 move boost at the start), but there's definitely some useful bits in there - I always forget about Mario's stomp ability. Thanks!

Edit: Making use of Edge's dash increasing movement skill, I have managed to get it down to 3 rounds! I think it's possible with Mario's stomp too, but the last jump is really tight. Guess I'll have to do another run and see how much time I can save with this.

I started my time when pressing A on the warning about the Melodic Gardens being dangerous (the one that pops up after file select) and finished after skipping the credits. The game saves as soon as you're back in exploration mode, so I figure that makes sense.

I just completed a run of The Last Sparkhunter (39:49 IGT!), could we make that a category?

The current version (according to my switch) is 1.5.2, you'll have to revert to the earlier version to get the glitches (I'm not sure how to do this though).

I have a google doc with all the necessary levels and notes on sparks/skill point allocation and character choices that I'm trying to edit into something readable by other people (it's slow going). I try to stick to that when I'm doing a run because the time difference between 2 rounds and 3 rounds can be quite a lot and some levels can be fiddly to get right.

That said, there's still room for experimentation! My route for the Daphne fight is 1 round shorter than in the WR, but also it involves a fair bit of movement which slows it down a bit (I properly haven't checked which is faster overall).

There's a nice readable route here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15PaZnm4UjXW8XRqgjeiTKyNwTNZmBnrNUNQS1SxCsvQ/edit

which might be a good place to start (having a 2-round Bedrock kill is very important for run overall and that has an easy one to follow).

I haven't tried the glitches myself, but I think following these videos (mentioned in a previous post) might be the best place to start? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfkLp9UTTzSjwxJm2r6dbBb0CPemJE-7T

Would've been faster if I'd used Edge for the dash and hadn't faffed around switching in Rabbid Rosalina when Mario could have made the jump too - always somewhere to improve I suppose!

It turns out that Electroid + Steely Stare makes for a deadly combination.

This can be used on Darkmess Bowser and Bedrock too (takes a bit more to defeat Bedrock entirely though).

In the second tutorial mission (destroying 3 eyes), if you only hit one eye in round 1 then it skips Beep-O's dialogue and the team jump explanation at the beginning of round 2. Plus there's no delay before you can end round 1.

Here we go:

Necessary levels (any%) - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yLjp7K6nFF7puCTQp_EmPWoOhEZUbwmwXKBmCv01nfk/edit?usp=sharing

Skill Trees - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fXVRBoSvgap2uyyr_qNnMifiEP5iXwvd2I6lPcwSmqI/edit?usp=sharing

Feel free to suggest anything on the spreadsheets.

I started working on a skill tree spreadsheet after posting this, so good to know that'll be useful once it's finished.

Hold B to skip cutscenes is on by default. In the settings (+, options, settings, camera) you can toggle the technique cinematics off.

I'm trying to put together a spreadsheet with stats on all the necessary levels in an any% run and wanted to check that I wasn't missing out anything obvious. I currently have:

-level name -level goal -enemies you have to defeat -enemies you don't have to defeat -minimum rounds it takes to complete the level (currently just based on my attempts) -level rewards (xp, coins, star bits, sparks, hero level)

Is there anything I'm missing/other people would like to see?