[TAS] Scale the Mountain 0xA - 2377

This star was quite a journey. The previous WR by lemon (no YouTube video, but her channel is here: /channel/UCoZ8JbiXlq_Zh0DGvaGRTDQ) uses the breeze to get to the second level, uses the log to get to the steep slope, and gets the star using an unusual kind of rollout discovered by Tyler Kehne ( /watch/wuIJX7zvW6OvJ ). Lemon had also demonstrated that it was possible to use the fly guy to skip the log and get straight to the really steep slope, so there was a known improvement over the previous WR. Lord Snek wondered whether it was fast to use the TTM water upwarp to get to the second level more quickly. Here is an example non-ABC TAS by FramePerfection that does this: /watch/49yKf9TXCtTXK I tried it, and initially thought it wasn't possible 0xA. Mario needs to get airborn to clip through the steep floor. Mario can dive recover to the bottom of the slope where the clip happens, but he loses speed rapidly as he runs, and he doesn't have enough speed to dive by the time he gets to the sufficiently steep triangles. There's shallow water available, though, so Mario can use that to dive again and DR again, keeping 48ish speed much higher and enabling him to do the clip. After that, Mario can enter the high water. I had a hard time avoiding the low water near the starting area, but I was eventually able to dive directly to the high water and upwarp to the waterfall area. However, I couldn't see a fast way to leave the water. It's way too slow for Mario to swim to a slope he can walk up. I was able to swim out of the Western side of the water into air and dive onto a slope, but it was a slope that led toward the bottom, and Mario inevitably slid back down. Fortunately, there was also the possibility of groundpounding. Mario can exit the water and groundpound to gain height. The floor triangle above where Mario upwarps is a little bit tilted, and it happens that he can get high enough to groundpound in some areas. Those areas were far South of where Mario upwarped, though, and the lower-down water section was blocking Mario's direct path there. So after the upwarp to the high water, I had Mario turn around, swim to the South (and also swim upward, as his water plunge with very negative vertical speed took him well below the top of the water) and then exit the water and groundpound. This was close to being competitive, but still a little too slow compared to the breeze strat. So I set out to get Mario to upwarp further South. I decided to land in the lower water after all, because when Mario exits water into air, he gets 1f of turning up to 11.25 degrees. So Mario can enter water, exit water, turn right, and continue with a better angle. This costs some speed, as Mario can only get back up to 32ish instead of 48ish due to drag barriers, but it's worth it: with enough straining, Mario could upwarp much further south. Then he just had to turn around and go upward. Turning around and going upward still took a long time. Mario was at terminal velocity before the upwarp, so he plunged very far down. I was able to save some time by having Mario upwarp to the high water, turn, exit the high water, strain back in to upwarp again (with only a little negative vertical speed this time), and exit again. This was now extremely close time-wise to the breeze strat. The final improvement was entering the lower water not once, but four times, changing Mario's angle each time. There's a small strip of space between the Southernmost part of the high water and the Northernmost part of the low water. (Note: this is not a float-perfect "water seam" as discovered by ds; it's 14 units thick.) This can be exploited: in the final TAS, Mario turns to face roughly East via four water upwarps on the North of the low water, does an upwarp to the high water on the South side, exits, and then upwarps again with very little negative speed. Mario no longer has to spend time turning around in water or going way upward, and he is facing in a good direction to swim out quickly and groundpound. As a cherry on top, Mario's groundpound spot is within reasonable slidekicking range of an edge, and it's possible to get to the fly guy pretty quickly to bounce to the slope. All this considered, the water upwarp is definitively faster. That was quite a mouthful! I might try to put together an explanation video if I have the time (though realistically I'll probably just want to continue TASing rather than working on a video).

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