The Yukon Trail – best route (January 2021)

Below is a guide for how I have gotten my best runs for The Yukon Trail (Windows version). I think this is the best possible route/strategy that can be had until significant new skips are discovered (RNG manipulation, glitches, ext). The guide is broken down into several sections to make everything as easy to use as possible.

	Section 1 – Detailed Guide
This is the reference guide you can use to get through the run. It is presented without much detail as to be easy to reference while learning the run.

	Section 2 – Strategies
This discusses in detail some of the strategies referenced in the Guide. I would recommend reading through this so that when you see something like “Click-Through-Skip on sign” you know what that means.

	Section 3 – Advanced, Unknown, and Misc findings 
This section talks about some of the research I have done, and some of the things I’ve found that don’t have a use (yet), but I think could lead to something.



							SEACTION 1 – DETAILED GUIDE

STARTING
Load up the game
Enter the name of the Journal (length of the name does not affect the time)
Time begins when you hit “ok”

SEATTLE
Click “Done” in the journal
Click sign for Downtown Seattle
Click door on front of ticket office.
Click on Linda (lady sitting down)
	Option 3 (Let’s be partners)
	Option 1
Click on lady behind the counter
	Option 3 (Tickets to Dyea)
	Option 1 (The Alliance)
	Option 1
	Option 1
Click on the door to leave
Click on the sign to “Wharf”
Click on the Boat
	Option 1
	Option 1

ON THE BOAT
Click all pop ups and sign posts

DYEA
Click-Through-Skip on Outfitters sign
Wait 3-4 seconds (no choice) then click on shopkeeper
	Option 1
	Option 1 (buy an outfit)
	Option 1
	Option 3 (2400 lbs of food)
	Option 1 (buy sled)
	Option 1
	Option 2 (buy whipsaw)
	Option 1
	Option 1 (buy food)
	Option 1 (400 lbs)
	Option 1
	Option 2 (done shopping)
Click door to exit
Click sign post to Chilkoot Trail
	Option 1

CHILKOOT TRAIL
Click on speed gauge
Click Heavy Load then OK
Click all popups and sign posts

SHEEP CAMP
Click-through-skip on trail sign
	Option 1

CHILKOOT TRAIL CONTINUED
Click all pop ups and sign posts

BOARDER CROSSING
	Option 1
	Option 2
	Option 1
	Option 1

CANADIAN TRAIL
Click all pop ups and sign posts

LAKE BENNETT
	Option 4 (Good-bye)
Click Boat Plans sign
Choose Plan #2
Click Build
	Option 1

RIVER
Click all sign posts (no pop ups)

RAPIDS 1
Turn your boat all the way around clockwise and sail sideways to crash into the first rapid
Turn your boat sideways and crash into the same rapid 4 more times (total of 5 crashes)
	Option 3 (when you are back on the map)

RAPIDS 2
Ram right into the first rapid 5 times
	Option 3 (when you are back on the map)

RAPIDS 3
Ram right into the first rapid 5 times
	Option 3 (when you are back on the map)

DAWSON
Click-through-skip on the claims paper
	Option 1
Click No. 1 Above French Gulch claim Icon (it is directly under Option 1 on the left side of the map)

CLAIM	
	Option 1
Click the Trail Sign
	Option 4

(Wait for gold mining to complete)

Click pop up
Click trail sign
	Option 1 (unless you get prospector skip)
Click newspaper pop up
Time ends when you see the score page.



								SECTION 2 – STRATEGIES

OPTIONS
A large portion of the game is navigating through various dialog menus. These menus always appear at the bottom on the screen and will have between 1 and 4 options to click on. The guide above outlines which of these options you should click on. Note that Option 1 is the most common and it will always appear in the same spot, so you should intuitively know where to click on the screen to hit Option 1.


POP UPS AND SIGN POSTS
These are two things that will happing often while you are traveling. A “pop up” is an event that will happen that will cause you partner to give a dialog box. You will ALWAYS want to select option 1 with every popup. 
Additionally, as you are traveling there are sign posts that will show a graphic on the screen. You can click anywhere on the screen to remove these.

Because of the frequency of these two things, it’s best to keep your mouse in a location ready to click Option 1. That way anytime something happens while you are traveling, you can just click that spot and skip through it no matter what it is. 


RAPID CRASH
There are three sections in the game where you must “navigate” a series rapids. By far the fastest way to get through these sections is to just crash into the first available rock 5 times. After you have crashed 5 times it will kick you out to a dialog box where you can choose to just keep going. This is much much much faster than trying to actually get through the mini-game.


CLICK-THROUGH-SKIP
There are 3 separate times in the run (with potential for more) where you can skip some dialog by clicking something fast enough. Each time you entre a town for the first time your partner will have a dialog box where they tell you “this is (insert city)”. However, if you click something before this dialog shows up, you just skip that dialog entirely. 

For example when you arrive in Dyea, if you click on the Outfitters sign before the “This is Dyea” dialog box loads, you will skip that dialog and go right into the store. Each one of these skips saves about 1.5 seconds.


QUICK CLICKS
There are two sections early in the run that take quite a bit of practice: Seattle and Dyea. Both of these towns require very quick and accurate clicking to get through. Additionally, they have sections that can be a little confusing where you have to (as an example) select options 1,1,1,3,1,1,2,1,1,1,1 in all in the same dialog box. The only way to get fast at these sections is to practice. Through repetition you will learn the movement and cadence of the clicks. These two sections are the highest skill portions of the run so take your time learning them. 


ONE STOP SHOP
As I was routing the game I discovered a strategy that allows you to only enter one shop the entire game. You do this by not buying anything in Seattle, and instead buying everything in Dyea. In that store you can purchase an outfit with 2400lbs of food, a sled, a whipsaw, and another 400lbs of food. This gives you everything you need for the entire run, you only have to shop once, and leaves you $4 to spare!

The Mountie at the boarder crossing says he needs $100 for you to pass, but if you have less than that, he will just take whatever money you have left and left you go through. 


FAST TRAVEL
While you are on foot you can increase your travel speed. If you click on the speed gauge at the top right corner of the map, it will give you options to adjust your load. If you choose Heavy Load it will increase how fast you move on foot. You will only need to do this once as it will save the setting for all the trails. You should do this IMMEDIATELY after leaving Dyea to maximize the effect of faster travel.


EARLY ROCK
On the first set of rapids it’s possible to crash into the very first rock you seen on the screen. To do this you have to turn the boat clockwise AWAY from the rapid all the way until you’re sideways on the screen. If you just try and turn towards the rock, you will miss it. After the first time you have crashed, you can turn normally into the rock to keep hitting it.

This is a section where I did some research. I noticed that if crash into the 2nd available rock (after the island), it will respawn you in a better spot than Early Rapid for getting the next 4 crashed needed to skip the area. I ran a bunch of tests and found that Early Rapid is about 0.5 seconds faster than Second Rapid. They are surprisingly close, by Early Rapid is the way to go. 


NO DIGGLET DIG
When you’re finally in a claim, there are two different ways you to stake the claim. You can either dig test spots until your partner asks if you want to stake it, or you can click on the signpost and stake the claim that way.

This is another area where I did some testing because there are several factors that affect the speed of this section. While clicking the signpost with get you to staking the claim earlier, digging has the added affect that it removes days from the calendar. No matter when you stake the claim you will be forced to mine until the calendar shows November 1st. Therefore, less days on the calendar means less time in that final sequence.
Again, I timed everything out, and just clicking on the signpost is faster by an average of 1.5 seconds.



				SECTION 3 – ADVANCED, UNKNOWN, AND MISC FINDINGS

PROSPECTOR SKIP
At the very end of a run, after you have finished mining gold, you get a message that you need to pack up for the winter. You click on the signpost and what normally happens is that a Prospector will pop up, say something about how much gold you got, you click option 1, then click through a newspaper and that ends time.

However, what can happen sometimes is that you can repeatedly click on the signpost and it will skip the prospectors dialog box and the newspaper and take you right to the end of the run. The problem is I’ve not found a reliably way to do this trick. Most of the time the trick does not work, but every now and then it will work and that cuts about a second off the end of the run. Finding a way to consistently hit this skip would reliably remove that second from the run. 


RESTARTING GAMES
As you are making runs on this game you will often have early restarts. The most common reason for this is hitting an iceberg/rock early on the boat ride. Early Berg should be an automatic restart as it costs the run almost a full minute. Hitting something in the boat cuts its speed in half for the rest of the trip.

However, if you restart a run you should completely exit out of the game. Do NOT use the “new game” option to start a new run. The reason for this is some game data holds over when you select new game. One of the data hold overs is damage to the boat. If your boat hits an iceberg, and you hit new game, when you get into the boat to Dyea it will already be considered damaged and traveling and ½ speed. 

At this point we don’t know how much data carries over when selecting New Game (more on that later) but it’s safe to say that you should always fully exit the game to clear the data between each run. 


STARVATION RUN
This is an advanced strategy that will change quite a bit of the routing in the first two cities (Seattle and Dyea). The core concept of this strategy is that you only buy the outfit with 2400 lbs of food, and you DON’T buy any more food. This strategy will cut about 5 seconds off the guide run above because you still only need to visit one shop (now Seattle) but you don’t have the shopkeeper delay that occurs in Dyea. 

The reason I consider this an advanced strategy is because of the risk. If you get a thief event at any point before the Boarder Crossing the run is over. You won’t have enough food at the border and you will be turned away. Using this strategy will result in you having runs with great RNG, then you get a thief event, and you have to throw the entire run out and restart. In my limited playtesting so far, it seems like about 50% of your runs will be abandon when using this strategy. 

My recommendation is to use the normal strategy listed in this guide until you feel very confident with the run, then you can switch to this strategy when you are going for new PBs.


MORE POSSIBLE CLICK-THROUGH-SKIPS
In the guide there are currently three click-through-skips implemented, however I think there is the possibility for more if we can find a way. I list the potential ones in case it helps someone find a way to use them. (so far I have not)

The first one I think might be impossible is when you arrive at Lake Bennett. When you get there, the Mountie greats you and you have to close out his dialog box before clicking on the Boat Plans sign. I have tried the Click-Through-Skip to the Boat Plans sign but it has not been working. The Mountie’s dialog box just pops up too quickly.

The others are around the claim map and claim field in Dawson. We already have a click-through-skip into the claim map when we first arrive in town. But I think there might be potential for 2 more in this section. As soon as you are on the claim map your partner will have a dialog box pop up, but I feel like you might be able to click a claim before this happens and skip it. So far I have not been able to do it, but it might be possible.

Then after you have clicked on a claim and are taken to the claim field your partner will again have a dialog box. I feel if you could click the trail sign before it pops up you could skip that too. Again, so far no luck.
If we could find a way to incorporate theses skips into the run, each one would save another second.


DATA CARRYOVER
This is the place where I think we will eventually find something significant. As I talked about earlier, I discovered if you’re in the middle of a game, and you hit the “New Game” option to start over, some of the data will carry over into that new game. I think there is potential for stetting up some better runs by using this data carryover to manipulate the game.

So far, I have only found two examples of this occurring. First is the previously mentioned boat damage. If your boat gets damaged between Seattle and Dyea, and you start a New Game, the boat you get on will already be considered damaged and traveling at half speed. Obviously, this does not help us, but it does helps us to know about the right way to restart a run.

The other time we can use this is if you are traveling in the boat and you hit “new game” the current state of the trip will be EXACTLY the same when you start your next boat trip. If it was storming when you hit New Game, it will be storming as soon as you board the boat in the next game. This is actually how I discovered this trick, because I chose New Game right when I hit an iceberg, and soon as I got into the boat for the next trip I was already hitting an iceberg.

The one way this can be used for good is if you hit New Game in an undamaged boat while the weather is good, that will give you optimal starting conditions for your run. This even works with save files. So you could save a game in this good condition, load that game, immediately hit new game, and then each of your runs will have optimal starting conditions for the boat trip. However, this is more of a cool thing than an actual time save as you start all trips with an undamaged boat, and most trips don’t start with a storm. So I see this as more of a proof of concept than an actual strategy at this point.

One of the places I saw that had potential for a time save, but did not work, was maintaining travel speed on trails. When you first get on the Chilkoot Trail you must change your load to “Heavy Load” in order to increase your speed. I was hoping that if you hit New Game after selecting this option, that choice would be maintained.  Unfortunately, that is not the case. 

Overall, I think knowing that some information is maintain between runs has potential for finding a time save somewhere. At this moment I just have not found a way to use it yet.


CONCLUSIONS
I hope this guide will help anyone who is just starting to run The Yukon Trail, and I hope it will help those that have already posted records. There are quite a few new strats that will help bring everyone’s times lower! I also hope that people will use what I have found so far to discover new exciting things!

For being a short mostly menuing run, it’s really cool finding a bunch of strategies and skips. I think as we keep discovering stuff, this will continue to be a more and more fun game for people to run!

ZechsMerquise

The Yukon Trail

Question for Zechs