With only the World Record video, and Sinner's AGDQ run; sadly there's very limited resources to observe for this speedrun. I wanna say right off the bat, MaturedSinner's run and strats he has developed are VERY impressive.

I'm considering giving this run a look. I'm no one special by any means lol, but I do like to lab out strats and room movement in new games i learn. And I guess I'll just use this topic to share anything I've found, and also have it for easy tracking down for myself. Also to note, I try not to make long videos, and Fluidity has nice loading points in stages that resets room cycles each time and makes them consistent, so I'll be using those as much as possible.

This one I found while grinding up to the first Influence stage ( Drop #9), I feel like it is already known, and perhaps Sinner either missed the bottom flower first trip or just had bad luck nabbing the 1st fish during the timeframe, and was forced to do a 2nd cycle. Either way, if not, this is what I found on that Drop.

And another, Drop #14, managed to find a way to skip having to transform into Ice block altogether. This is is tedious, and you DON'T have to gather the other half of your puddle, I just do it trying to get used to it if its useful later on other strats.

Fixing to start grinding from Ice Block to 2nd Influence so I'll share what I find.

I was just considering running it to, but I can only get it on emulator. See you on the leaderboard lad.

In my PB run, Drop 9 was a combination of missing the first fish and the flower. Ideally, you would hit both, with the majority of your water hitting the fish or the door, but with enough water in both the fish and flower to activate both. The timing window for the bridge isn't much of an issue, since you can make that jump back with the second fish without the bridge, I just had to backtrack since I didn't get enough water on the flower.

Looking at it now though, you don't have to hit the switch for the bridge at all for the entire Drop. Hitting it is nice for safety, but the main thing you're waiting on is the goop slug to become vulnerable. All the other jumps are doable, so skipping that might save a second or probably a little less.

As for Drop 14, that's a good time save, since even if I had hit the trick proper in my PB, you still save time for two transformations. What can happen is when you jump into that wall as Ice, your jump cooldown wears off and you can sometimes jump again and get onto that upper area without the moving platforms. It's a weird trick, and I had like 50/50 odds of pulling it off sometimes. So regardless, this saves time and headache.

On the subject of testing and timing things, one thing I never really got around to testing though was the difference when cycles start between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio. I suspected for a long time it might have an effect on when things come on screen and become loaded, but never really tried it out, since I was more worried about getting a solid route done and ironing out kinks first.

Like I said above, the things I've seen in this run that you came up with are madness and crazy good. I couldn't have the patience for all that, especially with no save states or something. Resetting Levels on Wii are so tedious, which is why I'm doing some grinding on Dolphin then testing on Wii. Ya, I kind figured something went wrong on your Drop 9, i knew there was no way that was unknown with all the crazy things I've seen you discover in your run. And that's interesting on Drop14, when I seen you go for that jump i wigged out, and tried myself and never made it ... I didn't realize there's a jump cooldown that could allow an extra jump. I'm assuming an extra jump can only be done if you bounce off an object or environment? Or I guess I'd need to see it done to understand how it works, sounds neat tho. May be something I need to test and learn. I'm up to Chapter 4 now in learning the Route, where you go back and start revisiting the previous chapters for the rest of the Drops. After chapter 1, I kinda just focused on learning the rest of the route and then moving onto testing new ideas on puzzles once I get familiar with it all. A few Drop sequences I hate lol, and Chap3 Influence stage is cruel; my brain just goes bonkers when tilting and rotating wiimote at the same time navigating lava, enemies, and spikes. A lot of your strats I wanna call out the brilliance of them, like Drop35 where you keep the duck in the rotating pipes and just turn the switch so duck and small water finish the puzzle, very cool.

This is very minute and probably dumb, not so much a time save as for safety or convenience. I do a gather hop so I push the gear higher as I get sucked in the spout, giving the gear a push to rotate the platforms for better position for movement across. Other places I found doing a gather hop at the end of spinning gears is helpful, cant recall at the moment, tho.

I went back through my run to see how much time I could save by cleaning up mistakes (it's a lot) and also implement free time saves via changing small things like above. Among free time save via route changes, so far, what I've found is:

In Drop 14, if you turn into Ice, hit that switch, and immediately go back right to turn into Water, it is pretty much the exact same amount of time as staying as Ice and changing into water at the bottom of that room. However, if you change into water at the top, getting that Orange Droplet is guaranteed. The route had given two opportunities to get it as Ice, once in Drop 14 and once in Drop 19 when you get Stick, because that jump is weird and sometimes you don't get the height with Ice. However, it's probably a lot easier to beat the platform in the room with Stick if you don't have to worry about getting that Orange Droplet. So, turning into water up top in Drop 14 loses no time, always gets you the Droplet, and might help in Drop 19.

Something that's really difficult to time without getting a file up to that point is in Drop 27, when you get Cloud and Suction, if there's enough time to rain on top before the first gust of wind pushes you back. I mean, the wind is gonna push you back in the middle of raining if you try, but the amount of water you get onto the top area could be enough to be considered your main puddle. If the timing is too tight, I would still wait for the second cycle, but it is an idea to try.

Lastly, Drop 54, I would switch the first Rainbow Flower and the Green Droplet. The ideal route would be Cloud to the Flower, make that jump as Water, and then Squirt up to the Green Droplet, then continue as normal. However, if you miss that weird jump over the lava, you can take an intentional death instead of squirming with Squirt like I did in my PB. When you respawn, the cycle on that exhaust pipe/chimney thing will line up so you can immediately collect the Droplet without waiting and then continue. (Assuming I'm correct in remembering that it will save that you hit the flower after you die) This route change would easily save at least 6 seconds, and doing so without the death would save about 14 seconds over my PB.

Ya, i kept having issues nailing that Orange droplet as Ice consistently, so I started turning back into water after hitting the Switch, since you turn back into water at the bottom anyways I felt it should be concise. And, yes, removing need for Orange droplet 'backup' during STICK pickup does allow you to beat the platform cycle, nice call.

And I can easily test things on Dolphin/Emu ... I've done a play through of the route and made save states through each level so I can load up at any point. I'll check out the Cloud/Suction part. (EDIT:: best I can do is get just enough water for the flower, then it evaporates. Not sure what the door trigger is to get to Suction chamber, cause it never opens for me, must be the amount of water you get in with; which isn't enough, least how i'm doing it. Plus, you need to do a Gather splash with the small amount of water you have to make it over (tilting and hopping takes too long and all water doesnt make it), which kinda cancels out any time save over the wait for the wind to stop after first wind cycle. Unless I'm doing it wrong, this was my best attempt out of about 15-20 attempts thus far :( With my Cloud position against the Wind, I feel this is the best this coulda been pulled off, with little time worked on it, and the amount of water wasnt near enough to get through to Suction.

And I'm still working on the Chapter 4 "Section" with all the REVISITS, so once I get to Drop 54 I'll keep that in mind.

Here's another super small optimization, the over world climb up to Influence Chapter 2, I accidentally used Stick on this tire swing on a different task, but flung myself up perfectly to the Spring on the roof; and figured it's gotta be faster than tilting/hopping 3 roofs or so to get up there. My movement is currently trash but you get the idea :P

Well, this sux. though I found a 3-4 second time save on this pop-up box skip ....

But turns out, the pop-up STILL activates when you come back for the Hammer Drop, even with the Book warp activated

Here's a nice chunk of timesave on Drop 18 (roughly 10 seconds or so). Path divergence once you grab the first duck, as shown on the Left in the video below ...

I hope SR dot ban me for multiposting, editing just seems a waste since noone gets updated. Anywhoo, got new setup to show and it may be pointless but it looks so good when pulled off at the end. added commentary as well to explain as i go. but ya 3 different drop levels to set up this one droplet puzzle towards the end game. it may suck and be worthless but wanted to share.

I got an idea to try optimizing that concept, might take me a little bit of time to edit a video together, because I would like to time it against my run to be certain about the time difference.

While I'm waiting for YouTube to download my run, I can try explaining the idea. On the way to the Duck puzzle, you would get the Green and Yellow Droplets, and then circle back down to the Duck puzzle, blowing away the Goop Mist over the Blue Droplet. On the way up to the Tower Puzzle, you would blow away the Goop Mist over the Purple Droplet and the bottom portion of the Pink Droplet. Then on the Droplet puzzle itself, collect Red and Orange, blow away the Goop Mist over the Pink Droplet and then rain to collect Pink, Blue, and Purple, and then the Drop.

Edit:

Updated video with proper timing

i actually have a vid of me doing that as well. what you';d do is blow the blue mist first, then get above the green droplet and blow down, then just rain to get both droplets and proceed to the duck puzzle. and cool, like i said im not sure on the timesave but you see how during trips through you can get some of them along the way. ill load up the raining one to duck real quick and edit it in here for ya.

Edit:: i didnt open up mist to blue on this cause it was just random testing but this is how i'd got for early yellow/green so you go straight up to clear blue then rain geen into the duck zone ...

Also i do plan on doing runs soon. i had a major medical issue hit me out of nowhere back in july and im still dealing with it. no covid, actually worse. but im able to get back down and do more practice and such. i actually did test run, its private on youtube, but died during final influence level, my time was around a 1:58 for first run. im addicted to this route/run and hopefully i can get to actually doing sessions soon. Also out of the blue i did hit up curve digital on twitter about porting to switch; i mean joycon or switch pro gyro would be ideal :) doubt it'll happen but would be a dream

Bleh, I didn't save the project file and I don't know if I wanna remake that again to fixe the timer on my old run's comparison, but long story short, doing this new swag strat saves about 7 seconds.

oh nice. i see you even upgraded it a bit with the other upper 2 droplets. Nice. Also, i trust your timing but making sure the instant drop grab was timed in, since no waiting for the drop reveal animation but if you check the video i edited in above, i think goin straight up and blowing blue/pink droplet goin up the raining down on yellow/green might be a couple more seconds to save?

I updated the video to have proper timing. I didn't include the idea of raining onto Green and Yellow because I'm slightly lazy and would have to get a file up to that point to rerecord that in, but I trust that it would save time simply because it gets rid of the Goop Mist in one shot as opposed to two and eliminates some travel time.

Maybe you can use this, its bad but probably worth testing with cause whatever time it saves there's still time to save with better movement. issue with myst on green yellow is you gotta be riding as close to the corner of the floating platform to nail a piece of myst below that will eat alot of water you'll need for the duck water split up. ( my previous video of it i loaded a state AFTER I went through and blew out the bottom geenyellow myst before going to duck zone. ) honestly if anything doing your original way isnt gonna break my heart lol. But here's a set up. i made sure to come in from reloading the room so bats dudes were constant, and hittin the book since thats priority one comin though

Also, i messed around with the Stick quick fall for the platform skip. After many trials and tribulations i found this setup that works roughly 75% or more i'd say. Also just pointint out you can skip the text above by jumping at the 2nd & 3rd bubble going left. I added a handcam to show , i basically full tilt left as im icing up, then full tilt right as a i pass the upper green dot for the gate. The video is a few minutes dont have to watch the whole thing, but once it was gettin consistent i wanted to show the successes and fails. 1 fail was me testing a quick double til.

Also to add, i have found a couple more text box skips, one in particular when you pick up Lighting upgrade, the first one you have to, but if you get far enough right and tap "2" a couple times its prevents 2nd text box poppin up. if i get a vid i'll edit it in here.

While doing this Drop again, i just decided to try some gather splashes and spent about an hour or so finding 3 different ways and this is the most consistent to get the upper fish at the start. The area with the lower fish and flower can definitely be cleaned up ( and i derped collecting the drop for some reason xD). But even with my sloppiness saves almost 5 seconds over the first video in this topic i posted above, which wasn't that great either .. prob saves more time overall. And if you miss the splash to upper fish, no harm, just continue as normally, barely any time loss if any since you got to delay a second or so for the goop bug anyways.

I can't seem to find anywhere that it was posted, but I've been doing some research lately and remembered discussing a strat for Drop 14 at some point in time that I'm kinda ashamed I didn't remember about earlier. It's only now that I'm unable to find it on SDA or in my own accounts that it makes sense it has been forgotten.

Basically, do a Gather explosion to skip the Orange Gear puzzle, get some water up to the H2O sign and grab the Drop. I feel it's pretty explanatory, so I'm not making a video to demonstrate, but can later if I need to illustrate it.

but what about the flower right past the orange gear gate? would you get that on drop 25 instead? since we do d14 iceless anyways, i feel like it would be a waste of time to transform into water just to get the gear for the flower that's on the route of the normal solution for d14.

picture of flower: https://muffin1634.s-ul.eu/6HcRFAc3vusA9KNj/oQmmTokECSeiq6Vm

Ah, I forgot about that. That is my mistake, I remembered the one on the loop to the left but not that one after the locked door. It's quite likely there aren't many other Drops that could match the Flower Drop for this Page in speed considering how most of the work is done in areas we have to visit already. I'll keep it in the back of my mind should a viable route change eliminate the need for the Flowers here.