This is not a full tutorial. If you don’t know how the game’s movement works, go watch The8bitbeast’s video. Even if you think you do know, go watch it anyway if you haven’t. And if you need movement strats, go reference the top few runners. This is mainly a dump of cycle info that should probably be written down somewhere outside of a handful of people’s brains. Some of this isn’t even relevant to anyone not approaching 43 or low 44 so haha

Before the run, death abuse to reset the global cycles in order to make them predictable. Optimally, you should also wait a bit afterward before starting the next run to push the cycles forward a bit further, to reduce waiting in 2. Throughout this guide I’ll be mentioning specific times on the timer a lot for the sake of describing cycles, but note that this depends on all of the following olo

• How good your movement is from the point where I mention the time to the point where the cycle actually matters
• The amount of time you delay between death abuse and starting the next run, offsetting the relationship between your timer and the global cycle timer
• The amount of time you spend in the pause menu turning off sfx (cycles don’t run while game is paused)
• Loading times (cycles don’t run during these either)

WARP 1

As mentioned above, death abuse before run to reset cycles. The immediate goal is to get past the electric plates in 2 with minimal waiting. Adjust the amount of time for which you wait after the death abuse accordingly. After 2, the rest of warp 1 has no global cycles worth caring about so you can really do whatever you want (as long as 4 is done after 1 because masks).

WARP 2

The primary cycle concern here is the position of the scimitar enemies in 7. If you get past the first one while he is walking away, then you can also get past the last one while he is walking away. If the first enemy is swinging and you have to go over him, then there’s a good chance you’ll lose a mask to the last scimitar, and even if you don’t, the movement is slower anyway. If you do lose a mask, you can get the extra mask from the changing crate at the start of 6, losing about 2 seconds.

In order to ensure a good cycle in 7, the warp 2 level order should vary, with a few possible options. Here is my general approach, starting with the powerup textbox time on Tiny (i.e. the splitting method used by Koji and Zoey but not me because I just really wanted to confuse everybody I guess): 7:52-7:53 -- 7 first, followed by either 9 or 6 depending on the weather in China and the amount of food I've eaten that day 7:54-7:56 -- 9 first, usually followed by 7. If on the lower end of this range and 9 was good (so probably 9:12-9:13 touching the portal at end of 9), you may be too early into 7, so do 8 next to push the cycle forward a bit. If 9 was bad such that you’ll be too late into 7, do 6 next and pray I guess? 7:57-7:58 -- 8 then 7 Anything slower -- either go time how long it takes for the scimitar guy to walk back and forth once and add that cycle length to all of the above times or just go faster

WARP 3

The primary concern here is the electric plate near the start of 12. If you know you’re going to just barely miss a cycle, you can do 14 first. If that goes well enough, it’ll reduce the amount of waiting you have to do at the start of 12. A Dingodile powerup time of 15:00 + multiples of 4 seconds roughly marks the cutoff point between one deep trouble cycle and the next. For example, if I got 15:03, I knew I could make the cycle I wanted, but with high 15:04, I knew for sure I would miss it by a little bit.

Aside from that detail, there are two possible relevant routes for warp 3: 12 (no damage abuse, no god cycle) -> 13, or 12 (one damage abuse, god cycle) -> 11 -> 13. I do the first route, Koji does the second. The second route is marginally faster (less than a second) when everything goes well, but this requires 12 movement to be very good, and also then needs 11 to be good enough to get favorable cycles in 13. The first route gives free consistent cycles in 13, along with 12 obviously being easier. Since the difference is so small and the non god cycle route is so much easier (seriously, 13 is a pain), I honestly don’t recommend the god cycle. 43:43 is possible without it anyway so what more you do want???

Oh yeah and make sure you damage abuse once in N. Tropy, saves like 2s or something

WARP 4

The water in 20 is not connected to global cycles, and there’s a god cycle in there that saves ~3s. It’s the most difficult thing that exists in this category right now, my PB doesn't do it, and it looks roughly like this:

18 is first to get the mask, and then we always do 20 after this for some reason but it doesn’t really need to be that way. 17 is last because it takes away your masks. Anyway the primary global cycle is that of the doors in 16. The laser gates in 19 are also global cycle and kinda matter, but they only slow you down somewhat if they’re on a bad cycle since you can go around them. You can’t really do anything about their cycle anyway since 16 doors matter more and you don’t have any other choice here unless you defy this pointless trend of doing 20 first every time.

Rough plan based on the time touching the portal at the end of 20: 28:22-28:24 -- 19 -> 16 28:25-28:27 -- 16 -> 19 For times outside this range, add or subtract multiples of 6 seconds to the above (the length of a full door cycle in 16)

N. Gin sucks, please discover warp 5 gate clip so we can skip fighting him, thanks.

WARP 5

The 3 platforming levels basically have to be done in the order 25 -> 21 -> 23, so the only thing we can really care about is the door cycles in 25, which again are 6 seconds. Doing 22 first pushes the cycle forward by ~1.5-2s, or more if your driving sucks; doing 24 first pulls the cycle backward by like a second or something. If you don't do 22 first and are on a cycle where you know 21/23 will suck, you could try doing 22 in the middle there somewhere and see if it improves things but I never got this far.

You want to make it through the first door in 25 with enough leeway to also make it through the second door before it closes, and you can damage abuse on the mummy if it’s going to be close. Once you’ve made it through the second door, there’s a fair amount of leeway to make the last door: “perfect” movement gets you to the last door moments after it closes. If you are slow enough that the last door doesn’t spawn until after it would have already closed, the closing won’t happen and so it may remain open for an unusually long amount of time. This phenomenon doesn’t save time since it requires you being slow at getting there in the first place.

If you barely make it through the first door, you probably won’t make the second door. And if you don’t make it through the second door, it is then much tighter, but still possible, to make the last door before it closes again (losing ~2-3s since you are barely making the end of the same door cycle you would have made if you hadn’t gotten stuck behind the second door).

Rough plan based on N. Gin powerup time: 33:59-34:00 -- 25 first 34:01-34:02 -- 24 first 34:03-34:04 -- 22 first Again, add or subtract multiples of 6 seconds for times outside this range.

Ta-da the legendary goal of 43:43 is now in your hands thank you.