INTRO + TERMINOLOGY Ty 2 is a unique speedgame in that there are nearly infinite ways you can route each specific section of the game. For the remainder of this post, I will be referring to the game as having 4 "chapters", each of which coincides with a boss battle. For example, chapter 1 contains the missions leading up to and including the Patchy fight, chapter 2 leads to the Oil Rig/Buster, chapter 3 leads to Fluffy, and chapter 4 leads to Boss Cass.
BASIC ROUTING First, most casual players don't realize that a mission does not need to be "unlocked" via dialogue/callsheet, or visible on the map with a star, to be completable. In other words, all missions for a specific chapter will be available at the start of the chapter, with only a few exceptions, notably the second Sub Bunyip mission in chapter 3 and Truck Stop in chapter 4. This alone already expands on routing options, as we can determine a driving route and go from mission to mission through the map with minimal backtracking.
The next thing to know is that in each chapter of the game, there is a specific set of missions that are offered to you for completion, and you are always allowed to skip 1 of these missions. For example, chapter 1 contains 5 story missions (Tree Rescue, That's a Croc, Crouching Birrel Hidden Squeaver, Explosive Cargo, Metal Menace). As soon as you complete the 4th mission in chapter 1 (it does not matter which 4 you do in that list), the Patchy fight will unlock. This can clearly be taken advantage of in many ways depending on the category, to leave out the mission that costs the most amount of time to complete. In some categories, we might not necessarily want to skip a mission forever, but it can be useful to delay it until later to avoid backtracking.
ADVANCED ROUTING By far, the most useful discovery we've come across with Ty 2 is that there are certain "optional" missions that exist in the game that can be used to substitute story missions. Throughout the game there are a variety of missions that exist on the map or in larger levels that are never referred to on the callsheet and are not intended to be related to the story. For some of these, they were accidentally made to work for story progress as if they were a main mission. On all platforms, the Bird mission in The Never Never is an example of this. On PC, the Stone Beetle of Rhinocarnook is another example. Completing either of these missions can allow us to skip 2 story missions instead of just 1, which is a huge advantage to us as routers. When we discovered the Stone Beetle worked for this in 2019, nearly 2 minutes were shaved off of the Any% (PC) route.
Opal routing is another aspect of the routes that comes into play with varying degrees of intensity depending on the category. In Any%, we take a bit longer than necessary in the first area of the intro level to ensure we have enough opals leaving to perform the rest of the route. Sometimes, losing time in one area is beneficial if it saves time overall. In 95%/100%, we take that to the extreme and also take time to get opals that are completely out of our way in Burramudgee Town because there is no better time in the run to do the mission that we require those opals for. Don't discount a route idea just because it seems slower from something like this, as the payoff can be unexpectedly large sometimes. If there's anything I've learned in routing this game, it's to never give up on an idea until it's tested.
