RTA Guide/70 Star

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The goal of the 70 Star category is to beat the game as fast as possible without circumventing any castle door or star requirement or using any form of BLJ or MIPS Clip.

Category Rules

  • All forms of BLJ are banned.
  • All forms of MIPS Clip are banned.
  • Circumventing any castle door or star requirement via any other method is banned.

Recommended Routes

It is recommended, regardless of your skill level, to do some variant of the HMC Late route, which involves initially skipping HMC during basement and returning to it later as part of collecting the second MIPS star. The HMC Early routes are those that do HMC on the first (and only) trip to the basement, and so do not collect the second MIPS star.

There are three options that are usually taken in this (HMC Late) route. They are independent, but in practice usually implemented in order of increasing skill level.

  • Beginner: No TTC100 + CCM18 + No Island Hop
    • This is the most basic route, though it is still possible to replace stars with slower and easier ones, as outlined in General Route Variations.
  • Intermediate: TTC100 + CCM18 + No Island Hop
  • Advanced: TTC100 + CCM17 + No Island Hop
  • Expert: TTC100 + CCM17 + Island Hop
    • Shoot to the Island in the Sky typically requires wing cap and so must be done after its unlock in Tower of the Wing Cap. At top level, a hard trick known as Island Hop can be done to finish the level without the wing cap, and so it's moved to the start of the run, with the other Bob-omb Battlefield star. This skips backtracking to Bob-omb Battlefield later on and so saves time on castle movement. Overall, it's about 5–6s faster than the advanced route.

These options will be flagged in the next section, which details the standard (HMC Late) route.

HMC Late (Standard Route)

Route Variations

This route has three standard options, ordered by increasing skill level at which they are typically taken:

  • No TTC100 vs With TTC100
  • CCM18 vs CCM17
  • No Island Hop vs With Island Hop

These are explained in the previous section.

Route

The square brackets "[option]" below show parts of the route that are only done on the specified route option (from the list above).

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
  4. Bowser in the Sky

HMC Early (Alternative)

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.

Star Substitutions

Hard stars can be substituted for easier and slower ones. The most common substitution is Stomp on the Thwomp + 100 Coins, replacing it with Stomp on the Thwomp on its own along with an additional alternative star from the list below. Another common substitution is Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow for another star from the list.

Island Hop

See the expert route for an explanation.