Any%
Route options and benchmark times: hyena first + vine finish (or gorilla jump finish): ~2:00 gorillas first: ~1:35
It is recommended not to attempt a faster route until your time is close to the benchmark time for the current strats you are using. If you are using faster strats and your time is still slower than the benchmark for a route with worse strats, it is recommended that you simplify your route.
New route:
- Rotate the camera so that you are facing the two barrels in the swamp and boost under them. You'll end up near where the gorilla path is. Take that ramp out of the swamp and go fight a gorilla.
- Be the gorilla, pick up a barrel and run into the wall by the magic rope. Hold up, rotate the camera clockwise, and then jump out of the gorilla and land on its shoulders. Do a gorilla jump to hit the magic rope and then swap back into the gorilla.
- Head back to the hyena area. You can take a shortcut through the middle if you have enough health (see video).
- Drop your barrel to the left of the hyena on the left and buttstomp the hyena to death.
- Swap into the hyena and back out again, then pick up the barrel and gorilla jump to the teleporter as Evo.
Notes on the gorilla fight: Spam B. Good luck.
Notes on the hyena fight: The hyena cannot move to the left of its position (where you put the barrel). Try to stay to on the other side of it so that it gets stuck against its invisible wall thing. Spam A so you do your spin attack to make landing your buttstomps easier.
Old route: Rotate the camera so that it is facing behind you, then boost forward through the swamp. This brings you to the hyenas. Rotating the camera left and right are slightly different here, rotating right causes you to bump the tree and rotating left does not. Both work, but not bumping the tree is preferable. If you like rotating right, then over-rotate once and then rotate left again to avoid hitting the tree. Once on land, kill a hyena and take control of it. The hyena ahead and slightly to the right is easier to kill than the hyena on the far right. As the hyena, move toward the gorillas. Take the 3 small platforms leading to a small area of dry ground, then jump through the poop to the gorilla area. The safe place to jump is straight across from the far point of the dry land. The swamp is shallow where you land and you take less damage. However, there is an instant-kill area a little bit before the gorilla area, so you'll have to jump again to get over it. Kill the gorillas. Remember to use fast recharging and the laughing strategy describe in the Swamp of Eternal Stench guide (keep animals off-screen to keep them in their "laughing" state). Use the gorillas to perform a gorilla jump at the energy cell close to the nearby wall. This brings you up to the magic rope. Free the magic rope and ride it to the exit. You can perform an RTA rope or a TAS rope if you like.
Notes on the hyena fight: If you keep boosting past the hyena that we recommend attacking, you see a pipe with a power cell in it. Try to keep the hyena between yourself and the pipe, such that your attacks push it toward the pipe. This pushes the hyena away from where the game wants it to be, so the hyena will run towards you trying to get back to its normal area. It is much easier to hit the hyena from the front than from the back, so you should be able to kill it faster. Current strats are to simply spam the B button so you're constantly popping into and out of your shell attack. This will continue to be the strat until we understand how to use the shell attack effectively. The shell attack also protects you from the hyena's laugh attack, but not forever. If you start laughing, there are three things you can do: 1) ignore it and try to kill the hyenawhile using wonky controls, 2) jump out of the turtle and back into it (not ideal, you'll get a new animal cutscene that you wouldn't normally get), 3) grab one of the nearby energy cells (good idea if it is really close by). Option 1 works if you're confident and you're close to killing the hyena already. Option 2 and 3 are both methods for removing you from the "laughing" state. Do whichever you feel is fastest. If you run out of energy to use your shell attack, don't do a fast recharge; it causes an unnecessary new animal cutscene. An "ideal" hyena kill would be killing one quickly AND killing it at close to the gorillas as possible. Given how difficult it is to kill things with the racing turtle, going for a fast kill is best, regardless of where the hyena is.
Notes on the gorilla fight: The gorillas should take 3 "cycles" to kill: the first cycle where you use all of your laughing energy and 2 other cycles after fast recharges. You want to kill both gorillas at the same time. Sometimes the gorillas have small amounts of health left after the third cycle. If this happens, then just press and release B a couple of times to do small bits of damage, no need for a fast recharge. If one gorilla starts laughing later than the other, you may need to do one longer fast recharge to gain more energy so that you have enough to kill the gorilla that delayed taking damage. The "ideal" gorilla fight will end with both gorillas in good position to do the gorilla jump (killing speed isn't usually a factor here because of how easy it is to use the laugh attack). This means one gorilla should die very close to one of the three nearby barrels and the other one should die close to the energy cell by the wall. Because the gorillas are immobile while laughing, it isn't too hard to push them around to get them into good positions. The gorilla that is pushed toward the wall should not be pushed too close to where the gorilla jump is performed or else you will swap directly into it from the gorilla holding the barrel and the gorilla jump will fail. The gorillas will still perform jump attacks if you stand in front of them. These attacks are usually not dangerous, but they make it impossible to push the gorillas backwards. Take this into account when you are pushing the gorillas around. Furthermore, don't spend so much time pushing the gorillas that you run out of laughing energy. You shouldn't do a fast recharge while the gorillas are on screen. If you do, they will break out of their "laughing" state and take longer to kill. This means that if you run out of energy while pushing a gorilla, you have to waste time running away again and rotating the camera to regain your energy. Best to do the running away and recharging while you still have energy to keep killing the gorillas. Pushing the gorillas around is not exactly difficult, but its also a very small time save. If the gorillas are facing in bad directions (that is, they jump whenever you try to push them where you want to go), or if you just don't have success with the strat, or if you just don't feel like it, then don't do it.
Vine surfing (fun strat): If you gain enough height to land ontop of the bush that the magic rope is connected to, you can stand on it and it will carry you to the exit. This is slower than using the rope because you can't swing off the rope to get to the end faster, but its kinda fun I guess. You can also get the hyena to the exit using a vine surf. This is often easier because the hyena gains more height from the gorilla jump than gorillas do.
Techniques
Fast recharging: Swapping out of an animal to play as Evo for a bit to take advantage of his faster recharge rates so that you can refill your energy faster. A normal fast recharge involves swapping out and immediately back in to regain about 70% of your energy. Longer fast recharges involve swapping out of the animal, but delaying the swap back in so that you regain more energy.
Gorilla jumping: Jump onto the back of a deactivated gorilla that is holding an object, then run into the object to gain lots of height. You can gain more height by jumping at the same time as the game launches you upward. When you are playing as a gorilla that is holding an object and you swap directly from it into a different animal, the deactivated gorilla will drop the object. If you are swap out of the gorilla to play as Evo, the gorilla will not drop the object. Therefore, make sure no deactivated animals are nearby while setting up the gorilla jump.
RTA rope/TAS rope: Basically if you swing on the magic rope just right, you can jump off it to land on the teleporter area faster than just waiting for the rope. An RTA rope is when you swing onto the grassy area near the tree trunk with the teleporter on it. A TAS rope is when you swing directly onto the tree trunk or even onto the teleporter. If you miss, you lose something like a minute of time. Overall, not worth doing unless you're confident. Also, you'll have to figure out the swinging yourself because I can't explain it.
