First off, thank you for responding to this.

From my understanding, it doesn't mean you play each episode with the Any% digusie level in mind just that you cannot have entered the episode you are attempting before on that save file ("which means that all treasures for the episode are unopened to start.)

Meaning you could grind the levels up after completing episode 1 by grinding the gems in episode 1 before you go on to attempt any of the next episodes after that.

Also this is hard to track nataurally if it was disguise levels they would reach in an any% run as the gems you are given are random from enemy drops so one person could have a cosmic wario with more shots and another have more damage on thief wario's shoulder bash at different points in the run.

Finally, my understanding of indiviudally levels comes from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which allows the players to have access to anything they can achieve before entering an untouched temple (glitches included but not cheats) so I just took the view of the episodes as being temples and previous episode we have access to can be fully completed as many times as the player deems fit to prepare them for the next episode.

If you disagree then I am happy to hear it and thank you again for engaging with this.

So I was thinking about doing some IL level speedruns but there isn't a rules button to state what the rulings are for upgrading the different disguises to lvl 3 before the next epsiode?

For episodes 1 you wouldn't be able to do this but the rest of the episode you could level up the disguises available in the previous episodes to have them deal more damage.

Will attempt the IL's at some point next month but just wanted to gauge anyone that wants to add their two cents on this.