I posted my routing for low% in the first thread, getting only 11 stars and 2 items I think this is the limit for humans, but I also have found a theoretical way to do it with only the bomb defuser.

This would be absurdly difficult, I have barely made any progress even with save states and TAS tools but it may be possible.

I will post updates here in case any crazy people want to try and make this human viable.

I did end up TASing it a while ago, and the time goes down drastically, here's the video

I did end up testing if it was possible to skip invisibility, and I remember almost doing it, I don't have my TAS file from back then tho so I dunno if I was able to or not

looks like I did manage to do it, but never recorded or saved the TAS

What makes it not RTA viable?

it requires using explosion clones to prolong your invincibility and it is INCREDIBLY precise timing along with using a ton of bobomb clones although those are made very easy with the new mechanics of bomb defuser

I don't think it will ever be possible rta just because of the final shell hits being so fast I literally had 1 frame of invincibility left to hit it and then I think i had to get burned on the last hit.

along with rng manipulation by the way because you don't know when bowser is going to use the shell and the angle and distance have to be good as well

although you might be able to use fire clones to prolong invincibility instead.... which would be muuuch easier to do rta... I think... cuz the fire is not hard to clone at all, and the biggest fire clones should be a much bigger hitbox too. I dont think fire clones extent hit stun tho. I'll have to TAS and test it some more

I made a TAS that only uses Bob-omb clones to hit the shell. The final shell attack still sucks, but at least it's easier to get there RTA.

oh wow that's awesome! I couldn't figure out a pattern close enough to make that realistic, nice job. so definitely at least somewhat rta viable cuz thats not even that bad tbh

oh thats also a waaaay faster bomb duplicating strat, awesome find

by the way which version are you on? the bobombs dont seem to be chasing you even when you're very clearly in their home and line of sight?

Bob-ombs can only start chasing if you are in their 400-unit home radius. That's a relatively small area, so it's pretty easy to avoid it

Reference (approximate):

yeah for some reason I thought it was bigger, I've been testing trying to do this even with savestates and I actually found an even faster way to clone bobombs, in the time it takes bowser to recover from one shell stun I was able to get off 5 or 6 clones but this still really really sucks RTA

also you happen to have a discord where maybe we could talk more easily?

update for anyone else following, I found an rta viable explosion clone strat! I will attempt to do a run with the new route sometime soon but I just finished the new TAS up until the bossfight and threw together a quick proof of concept, I will upload the strat soon!