^ Exact same situation + question for me.
The heavens portal is the most common thing. I would say it happens to me maybe 75% of the time. To get moat skip instead you should mash A and/or B just before hitting the wall (or time it once you know the timing). The correct timing is pressing A or B 4 frames before touching the wall IIRC. You can also get it by hitting the wall at the same time as hitting the water, but I feel like this is incredibly hard to do consistently.
Most of this I have either got from experience or from the description of the TASes so I'm not 100% sure whether this is correct, but I seem to get it somewhat consistently using this info.
You could also try this method if you are still having trouble (I have no idea whether it is consistent or not though) @4:30
As soon as you clip go neutral for a second or 2. After that you just manoeuvre mario to somewhere above the endless stairs (use the map to judge this). Also if your slide kick is too late you will die.
Ajarmar, seeing that Melis didn't get her visa (really sucks btw :/ ), I assume you are still looking for a roommate? I may be considering looking for last minute flights.
35 star has never really been a thing. 50 is when you ban rabbit clips, 8 is when they are not banned. 35 would be when one of them is banned but not the other, which doesn't really make any sense. Also it would be the easier of the 2 rabbit clips that is banned, which means it would make even less sense.
Honestly the knowledge base has been written and edited by a lot of people that don't know the game very well or haven't really done any runs. I may fix it up a bit at some point over the summer.
The SDA knowledge base is very outdated and there's no tutorial. I never really bothered to make any tutorials or to update the KB as I thought this game would never be very popular so it would be pointless, although if it gets launched on wii-u VC I could definitely see it growing a bit.
It really depends which category you want to do. 80 star shouldn't be too difficult to learn just by watching mine or fox's run. For 50/8/1 you might get stuck on a few skips so feel free to ask about them. 150 is probably the hardest to learn right now as there's no solid run videos out there (and I'm probably not a ton of help there as I have only done it a few times without learning/practising it).
Just seeing if anyone is around that wants to do some SM64DS races over summer. Not sure how many runners will actually see this thread, but its probably the best place out of any to gather people.
I'm going to be available for most of summer and will race pretty much any category, so if you wanna race just post here or contact me on speedrunslive's IRC.
Also, if anyone wants to talk about running SM64DS there is #sm64ds on irc.speedrunslive.com but its pretty quiet for the most part now :/ (just tends to be me, fox and occasionally other runners).
Small suggestion for api_records.php?game=....
If you enter a game's url code, it should go to that game rather than searching for it in the title. For example http://www.speedrun.com/api_records.php?game=sms should give the super mario sunshine records because http://www.speedrun.com/sms is the super mario sunshine page.