Pea, wake up.

Huh?

You've been sleeping for a while, now. Any more than that, you'll die of starvation.

*Grumble*

Well, maybe thrist would come first.

I don't wanna.

Lots of things we don't wanna do. You said you'd start enjoying life more, right?

It's tough.

You're not going to discover more things in your sleep.

It's comfortable here.

That comfort is but an illusion. It'll be gone before you know it the moment you take it for granted.

Still comfortable.

Suit yourself. By the way, you still got a Garrison to do.

God damnit.

My life consists of breathing, sleeping, drinking and eating. Also doing my job to obtain money. The rest ends up in procrastination. At this point, I've been guilt tripping myself into making more things, but even then, it's still hard. If I could find a better motivator to create content, I'd be using that method by now, but for the time being, it's all about getting my ass to do the thing I said I'd do. I don't like to not go by my word and not get something done, it's not a me thing to do such things.

I'm saying this because we all have had moments where we wanted to make something ambitious and then just give up before planning phase even ends, or perhaps you lose all drive to continue a project that you started. Speedrunning a game is a project, too. It's something you want to learn and apply, it becomes a hobby once you apply yourself to it, and with any other hobby/project, the beginning is always tough to get through. It's also tough when you're stuck HAVING TO LEARN WORLD 2 UUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Your adventure starts here.

Welcome to World 2: Crocodile Cauldron. This level is named Hot-Head Hop. Whoever came up with these level names is a genius, because you are hopping on heads in a hot place. Very appropriate level.

What's not appropriate are these guys.

Fucker Supreme Strikes Back

Fortunately, Fucker Supreme can be taken advantage of in this level. I don't think my pathing is the most optimized when using them as bumpers, but in exchange, I get a bit of schadenfreude from them.

Thanks for the boost, see ya in hell.

The crocodile heads are sort of a new mechanic here? They're just platforms, sometimes trampolines. See what they mean by Hot-Head Hop, now?

Just chillin', although I don't see much chill in this image.

Green heads are platforms, Brown-ish heads are trampolines. In the previous gif, you saw me bounce from the first head into the second. Fortunately, Fucker Supreme made it so that I don't actually bounce from the first head, rather that I used it as a landing pad for Fucker Supreme to bump me into the second one, saving me from bouncing higher from the first head. Little fun time saver, there. Like I said, I don't think it's the optimized way to do that level quickly, but it feels good to do.

I think that's why I've been procrastinating this update so much: World 2 sucks, many of the tricks require practice to do or are tight jumps to save a decent amount of time. I'm trying too hard to get the best route going, but it's been frustrating me for a while now. If you've seen my messages on the discord channel, you know what's up.

This is why you shouldn't try too hard. I've been going by these words for a while now: "Don't try too hard or you'll lose your way". It's a bit baffling how I've been practicing these levels and not finding satisfaction when I realize that I could just do a certain tough trick to look cool, but that's just a destructive way to end a speedrunning project.

You should never attempt the harder tricks on your first runs.

Feel free to try them, at least. Perhaps you'll get a feel for them some day. Just know that if you keep on failing the trick despite you succeeding once is NOT an indicator that you're ready to use it during a run. Doing so is just a one way ticket to never wanting to finish a speedrun. Finish learning the run before fully learning a difficult trick.

Last little trick that's used more often now is the jump you can make in the air when you're dashing... Rolling, whatever. Diddy does a cartwheel and magically jumps from thin air. It's cool, it's fun, it's used a lot.

Jesus wishes he could jump from the air.

Slowed down a bit so you can see what's going on. When you roll down a cliff or a hill or whatever high place that you can fall down from, you're allowed to jump while in mid-air, so long as you haven't jumped beforehand. Yet another little fun fact to add in the arsenal of things you can do with the cartwheel.

You now know how to run this level, more or less! Just know when to jump under or over some of the enemies.

A box.

No idea what this is. I'm gonna ignore it tbh

And so, we arrive at yet another dreadful vertical level. Kannon's Klaim is less about ropes and more about using barrels to get to the top. Using barrels is much easier than ropes in general. However, a new trick is learned in this level that makes it harder to route. It all has to do with Team Up.

Jesus wishes he could double jump from the air.

This trick is called the Team Throw Super Jump. Speedrunners also call it DaBigBoi. I'm a fan of calling tricks silly names, but this one... I don't really approve. It feels awkward to say more than it is funny.

Anyways, the TTSJ has you throw your Teamed Up kong into an enemy as you jump. Right before the projectiled kong comes back to you, hold the jump button. If you time it right, you have the rights to either;

• A: From the ground, you get to do a funny big jump.

• B: From the air, you can double jump.

That's how I've been noticing how it works, at least. I might be wrong.

Using this trick, I hang from the hook until the Teamed Up kong hits the enemy. Once that happens, I immediately jump left and, right before my ally comes back to me, I let go of the jump button and hit it again, letting me double jump and throw the kong again to a barrel above me. That way, I am able to skip a few barrels and even a platform! That's a big time saver and it took me a while to get it right. I'm fairly consistent at it and, if I were to fail it during a run, it's no big deal. I'd theoretically get only one try at this before having to give up and take the intended route, which would lose a lot of time. Anyways, this is the only instance of this move that I get to use on this level, and it's at the beginning, so it wasn't that tedious to practice. It was fun to do, actually!

Some tricks are tougher to do than others. If you get to learn a trick properly, it feels so good. This trick alone motivated me to keep on learning this run, albeit at a slow pace, still. I can't wait to use this on a later level, cause I know that trick will be used later on.

Next on the list of cool things, the first instance of a damage boost!

Jesus did die so that others can move on. Why am I making comparisons to Jesus??

Going inside a barrel takes a while for you to get launched out. Even with that, there's a small time lapse where you can't move left or right, so overall, if you can avoid using barrels to go forward, you should do so. I avoid three barrels, which could save a few seconds. It's very easy to do, you just need someone to get hit by the bee while holding a DK Barrel. Once you get hit, the barrel hits the enemy and, since you have a Kong that is technically "eliminated", the barrel respawns them very shortly after. Alright I'll stop with the Jesus metaphors now.

Dixie is also very useful for hovering. You get to see more of her from now on.

A new enemy enters the fray.

Can someone ask Diddy to stop looking directly at me?

The bird is an enemy that swoops downwards in an attempt to dive bomb you. However, bird brained as they are, they are vulnerable to being jumped on and, since they're in the air, that means you can do a nice little vertical boost to get where you want faster than what is intended.

And with that, here's what the level looks like in signature Pea routing format.

The level is huge help: Show

Red = Regular Movement
Blue = Team Up Movement
Green = Throwing a Kong... movement

This makes for a great segue towards the next level. Surprise, it's made of water! Very hot, scalding water.

It's red, therefore, it's hot.

As much as I hate swimming in cold water, I don't think I want to burn my skin (fur?) in very hot water, either. Since this is a water level, how am I supposed to swim in it?

What's up

Oh fuck, a seal. What can they do?

Gross.

Seal spit solves that problem, I guess. If you do it right, you can use only your cartwheel to bump the seal to make them spit into the water. Saves a bit of time overall, as you should do it more than once in this level. Score one more for cartwheel tricks.

There are also some seals that are skipped in this level, due to the fact that we go way too fast for the water to catch up at times. We're just that good. Some tricks that are done within the level can also break it a bit. It's weird.

Where'd that fish come from?

Some points of the level have a trigger point where if you pass it, the water will start rising or going down, depending on where you are. By jumping over the seal here, then going back, the water is triggered to rise, regardless of if you hit the seal or not. Doing so will make a random piranha spawn out of nowhere as you go up. Tricky little bastard.

The level ends with Fucker Supreme, because fuck you.

Fuck you.

Initially, I was planning to make this update encompass the entirety of world 2, but due to my procrastination and unexpectedness over how tough learning World 2 would be, I'm cutting this into two parts. So look forward to the next update when I start pulling my hair off or something.

Until next time!

Good to see another update and that you're learning some of the major timesaving tricks.

That hot water seal level breaks even when you're playing it normally because it's pretty easy to move too fast through it. Remembered that aspect quickly when I saw you had moved onto it. Did not know about the cartwheeling working on triggering them.

The DK barrel damage boost thing is smart, I'm gonna have to use that if I ever play this again.