RTA Guide/70 Star

< RTA Guide
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The goal of the 70 Star category is to beat the game as fast as possible without bypassing star door requirements, or using techniques that may allow for it (e.g. BLJ or MIPS Clip).

Category Rules

  • All forms of BLJ are banned.
  • All forms of MIPS Clip are banned.
  • Any other means of bypassing star door requirements is banned.

Suggested Routes

It is recommended, regardless of your skill level, to do some variation of the HMC Late route, which involves initially skipping HMC during basement and returning to it later to collect the second MIPS star.
The HMC Early routes refer to any route which does HMC on the first (and only) trip to the basement, and does not collect the second MIPS star.

HMC Late

Standard Route (CCM 18)

Lobby

  1. Lakitu Skip
  2. Bob-omb Battlefield
  3. 1st Slide
  4. Whomp's Fortress (all stars)
  5. Castle Stars
  6. Bowser in the Dark World
  7. Bob-omb Battlefield
  8. Cool, Cool Mountain
  9. Big Boo's Haunt

Basement

  1. MIPS (first star)
  2. Shifting Sand Land
  3. Lethal Lava Land
  4. Dire, Dire Docks
  5. Bowser in the Fire Sea

Upstairs

  1. Wet-Dry World
  2. Tiny-Huge Island
  3. Upstairs Toad (near TTM)
  4. Tall, Tall Mountain
  5. Snowman's Land

Basement 2

  1. MIPS (second star)
    • Go to HMC after MIPS, and get the Toad star before entering HMC.
  2. HMC Toad
  3. Hazy Maze Cave

Tippy

  1. Rainbow Ride
  2. Tippy Toad (near TTC)
  3. Tick Tock Clock (all stars)
  4. Bowser in the Sky

Advanced (CCM 17)

In CCM, rather than doing the 100-coin star with Big Penguin Race, do Slip Slidin' Away + 100 Coins. Then replace the penguin race star with Pyramid Puzzle. This way you'll have 30 stars when finishing LLL, which allows you to enter DDD past the 30 star door. Additionally, one can opt for Island Hop to skip visiting BOB twice.

HMC Early

The HMC Early routes do not make a second trip to the basement in order to get the second MIPS star, and thus do HMC along with the rest of the basement. Optimally, these routes are comparable to the standard HMC late route, however they are generally considered harder to optimize. They may be preferable in some situations, since they allow more flexibility in routing from not being bound as tightly to the 30 star door requirement before DDD.

Differences from HMC Late

The differences between this route and the standard HMC Late route are as follows:

  • After LLL, go directly to HMC. Get all of the HMC stars, then HMC Toad, and then proceed to DDD as normal.
  • In SL, you'll have to get Shell Shreddin' for Red Coins to replace the second MIPS star. Once finished with SL, go to Tippy as normal instead of exiting the course.

The route above is the most common HMC early route, but a few modifications can be made to make the route faster and/or more consistent.

Replacing CCM100

Since meeting the 30 star door requirement is not an issue with HMC Early, you are allowed more flexibility in early-game routing. Typically, people will replace Big Penguin Race + 100 Coins and Slip Slidin' Away with Slip Slidin' Away + 100 Coins and one alternative star. Also, since SL Reds already replaces the second MIPS star, you will need to add in another alternative star if you decide to skip TTC100.

General Route Variations

The following route variations apply to both the HMC early and HMC late routes.

TTC100

Instead of Stomp on the Thwomp + 100 Coins, you can do Stomp on the Thwomp on its own along with an additional alternative star:

Note: if you do HMC Early, SL Reds is already in the route; thus, you will have to choose a different star to replace TTC100.

Island Hop

Rather than doing Shoot to the Island in the Sky after Dark World Reds, you can save time by getting this star without the Wing Cap in the first split by doing Island Hop. This saves approximately 5-6 seconds in castle movement, as you only have to enter Bob-omb Battlefield once.