General movement optimization

You wanna go fast eh ? 
Well this guide is there for you! 
There are several ways you can gain time in the game, most of them are pretty easy to execute but it is important to use them whenever you can. 

Eat your fruits!

All items in the game have a primary fonction which is usually made to... Hurt your opponents and make them lose. 
In our case, we do not want anyone to slow down since, as you may know, the game stops to make everyone respawn when there is only one player alive. Thankfully, all the fruits in the game can be eaten for a small speed boost! It is done simply by holding the item button instead of pressing it fast. 
You usually want to eat bananas every time since dropping it does not really do anything good for you in a speedrun. 

The same can almost be said for watermelons but they can still be thrown in some cases. When thrown, a watermelon will target the player who is considered to be first in the current round (in terms of racing positions not scores). 
It can be used on bots if they are too far in front and may kill you. It is important to note that the angle at which the targetted character will get launched is pretty random and you may end up giving them a speed boost which will end up killing you. On that note though, on multiplayer runs, you may be able to use a watermelon on another human player to give them a boost but it is extremely unreliable most of the time.
It is also technically possible to use them for skips but I will talk about that later.

Mushrooms are pretty bad for a speedrun. All they can do is hurt you or your opponents which is always negative. Holding a mushroom for too long will stun you. Breathing the gas from another player's mushroom trail for too long will stun you. Eating a mushroom will stun you. You usually want to drop the mushroom as soon as possible but remember that any character who walks on the mushroom you dropped will pick it up and have to drop it aswell etc. The only "usefull" thing you can do with mushrooms is to try and kill a computer player if you only want to stay at 2-3 players alive but it is usually faster to just outrun them.

Pineapples are usually the best item you can get. Jumping with a pineapple baloon in activated is almost always the fastest option. It is not always worth using though. Using a pineapple baloon while the other players are stuck on the floor may just end up killing them all and force you to wait for the race to restart. 
Pineapples are also extremely good for skips. They can either let you fly over obstacles made to slow you down, or skip entire parts on maps with chicanes and such. 
The best way to use a pineapple is usually to keep it until at least 2 (human) players have one, and then use it both at the same time on a skippable or obstacle heavy part. 
You can also eat them if the section you are in is bad for pineapple baloons. Don't save a pineapple for too long if it means dying because the other players are faster than you. It is usually pretty great to close the gap if you are far behind everyone and probably better than forcing the first player to wait for you to catch up. 

Jump faster!

There are a lot of instancies in the game where jumping is actually faster than just running. Almost every time you need to go up, it is faster to spamm jump. The difference between running and jumping when going up a staircase or slope if usually REALLY huge. In fact, when you have the choice between staying on a flat road or taking the stairs you should pretty much always go for the stairs. 
Jumping can also be faster when there is a drop down. 
In general, if the surface you are on is not flat, try to jump and you may end up being faster. Just don't forget that being fast yourself is useless if it means the other players are dying behind you so always keep an eye on where everyone is.

Skippidy skips!

There are a lot of small skips possible in the game. Most of the skips are done with the use of a pineapple baloon but some of them can be performed with a watermelon or precise jumps. 
Skips are pretty unreliable in the game. A lot of the time, the game won't understand you are already further in the level and will end up killing you instead of the people who are actually behind. The best way to provent that is to only skip stuff if every single currently alive character can do it at the same time. If not, you mostly will need to experience how to do them without breaking everything or pray for the RNG gods to be with you. 

Naruto running! 

There is not a single occasion of naruto running being faster than running normally. Naruto running is only useful to go under obstacles or to look cool.

And with that I think that's it! I will update this guide whenever anything else has been found. 
I hope this has been useful! Please tell me if anything needs to be updated or if I forgot some stuff. 

Thanks for reading and GL on your runs !

Daraxys

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