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Route options and benchmark times: vulture finish: ~1:48 kangaroo finish: ~1:39 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.

You're mostly playing this level through normally, but with small optimizations that will be discussed below.

Moving as the desert fox: It is currently believed (not confirmed) that the desert fox moves faster while using its spin attack. Spin attacking for too long results in a dizzy state that you want to avoid. Therefore, as the desert fox you want to alternate between spinning and not spinning to move faster without getting dizzy. It IS confirmed that spinning off an edge will usually give you a small push forward. Sometimes you don't get this effect and sometimes you actually bonk off the edge, but generally spinning off edges is a good idea. Spinning and jumping at the same time lets you jump a little higher than normal, allowing you to jump onto the pillar section (right before the kangaroos) halfway through it instead of at the start. This is called the "Sha jump" after Sha_lightning. One other thing is that the scorpions' lightning attacks can be dodged by jumping right before the lightning is created.

The Kangaroo fight: This fight can be tough sometimes if the kangaroos decide not to take damage from your attack or if they decide its time for you to die. Crackerbean has a setup that involves walking toward the kangaroo on the right, causing it to move away from you. Use this to get it stuck in the far right corner, then start attacking it. Swap into the kangaroo once its dead.

The vulture fight: As the kangaroo, you can jump straight onto the vulture area without crossing the river. Do that to make it up to the vultures. The vultures require seven butt-stomps or one punch and six butt-stomps to kill. Take your pick. If you're having problems, you can de-aggro the vultures by standing on the edge of the platform. If a vulture is also near the edge, you can butt-stomp it without aggroing it for an easy kill. Swap into the vulture once its dead. This area has lots of lag, but the lag can be decrease by pointing the camera at the wall between the kangaroo tower and the exit.

Moving to the exit: The easy way to get to the exit is to fly there as the vulture, but this is slow so only do it if you are uncomfortable with the kangaroo movement. Otherwise, the optimal route requires you to swap immediately back into the kangaroo, then falling down to the lower level of the vulture tower facing the wall between the kangaroo tower and the exit. From there, jump to shore and move to the exit. The jump up to the exit can be difficult, but not so bad. If you jump to the left and try to get up from the the diagonal edge, it seems to be more consistent. Perform a pillar squeeze to get onto the teleporter.

Note on the desert fox's dizzy effect: Dizziness is actually not caused by spinning for too long, it is caused by spinning while having sufficiently low ability energy. I guess the developers only expected you to spin if you had full energy or something, so having low energy means you've spun long enough to be dizzy. For example, if you drain your B button energy as the kangaroo, then swap into the fox and spin for an instant, you will be dizzy. Not the biggest deal (especially in this level), but can catch some people by surprise if they don't know.

Techniques

Pillar squeeze: Some levels in the desert have pillars around the teleporters that only the desert fox can fit through. The game expects you to use the vulture to carry a desert fox to the exit. Instead, if you exit a large animal like the vulture or the kangaroo and move onto the animals corpse as Evo (using the height you get from the exit), you can walk from the animal's corpse onto the teleporter.

Sha jumping: As the desert fox, push A and B at the same time to jump and spin at the same time. This gives you a slightly higher jump.