Method Credit: Deadcode, Bloopy, Nekton

Turn 1: Walk left and bow the two mines on the tower. It's not too difficult to freehand these shots. However, if you're going for a consistent run, it's good to have fairly precise locations to shoot from, because small changes in distance/angle will result in big changes to the power the bow imparts to the mine.

1st shot: a spot I like is on the head of your left worm. Crawling up the back slowly, it would be the first spot where you can't get any higher on the worm. From there, just aim at the mine. Two angles will hit it, but go with the one where you see a sprite change, as you're adjusting from low to high. For the second shot, barely touch your left worm and do a backflip, as shown, then just shoot at max angle to do away with the 2nd mine. As for the retreat, I'm favoring jumping forward to act as a walkway for your next worm.

Turn 2: Start by jumping forward, which gives you air time to place a long vertical girder, then end your turn about halfway up that first stretch of the tower. This placement should be pretty exact, here's one that works well:



One way to memorize this placement is looking at the red cursor; its rightmost column of pixels is horizontally just 1 pixel away from touching this feature of the tower. And the top pixel in that column is vertically lined up with it.

Turn 3: After climbing up the first stretch of the tower by jumping on your worm's head, climb up the second stretch the same way every time, as shown. Backflip as high as you can onto the tower, then backflip bounce off the tower (make sure you're pressed up against it), then backflip bounce off the girder. From there, just snag the Aqua Sheep and do a quick double tap at the right spot to kill the AI; the sheep penetrates deeper when released than when flying.

Added: yes I think I should include more backup strategies.

Method Credit: SpideR, zippeurfou

Turn 1: Jump/skipwalk right, and do a backflip to grab the rope crate. Now to jump from shroom to shroom, and try to memorize this position; you're a little ways into the lighter blue area of the shroom. Luckily there's some margin for error on this jump.



Now you're on the purple shroom and need to backflip. Some pros aren't aware of this, but you can make these backflips every single time, by taking just a tiny bit of time to prepare. If you haven't learned about this before, read the Jumping and Pixel Alignment section of Dario's worms guide: http://www.normalnonoobs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3. If you want to see all the images, just click on the download of Dario's normal school in the first post.

Bow the first worm with a straight shot, and make your way to the second. On this worm, it's ideal to aim up a bit, to bounce off the red flower and ensure the kill. You should stand pressed up to the enemy worm here. This will lure the rightside AI into standing near the mine on the frog's head.

Turn 2: Do some deft roping to the right frog, and activate both mines, one at a time. This will kill the right worm every time. Now rope fling left to the final worm. There are 3 viable ways to kill this worm in 1 turn; grab the old lady crate and release it just a little to the left of the apex of the leaf, uzi into the mine, or a 3rd comedy option I've included.

Right now, I'm strongly in favor of the granny route, because you don't have to land from rope, which risks extra time from the right worm's grave animation. Plus you can get this kill every time. Uzi bullets however have some randomness, making the Uzi route a bit of a hassle, it's hard to make work consistently. Uzi can be the fastest route if you land and quickly shoot however, so it's worth considering depending on the amount of risk you crave. One technique is shown in the replay; bump the worm forward a bit at a lower angle, then aim up to get it over the pixels.

Method Credit: Deadcode, Quasi Qubit

Turn 1: As you attach the first rope, I think it's a bit better to just aim without jumping. This ensures your rope stays about as long as it can get. Now grab the crate, extend 100%, and try to let yourself slide just a bit right of the vertical. At this point, quickly use the girder pack. I find it easiest to start at the right, placing the last girder right as you gain the most speed.

The placement of the girders is up to you, but I find it to be less cluttered if you place 2 right next to each other in the upper right. After that, it's just 1 girder per mushroom, all at the top and fairly equally spaced; the locations I use seem pretty easy. Once you get going on rope, you need to pick up a lot of speed. Keeping your rope long also helps, as this means less travel time to the crate. This one is worth practicing until you can do it more often than not in 1 turn.

Backup Strategy: The crate just to the right of all the mines is a teleport, which you could use if you fell near.

The knock in turn 1 takes a little practice, but turn 3 is actually not too hard if you keep your eyes glued to the fuse of the nade.

Credit to c0ol and Wyvern for parts of this one:

Turn 1: Select Worm twice, then rope fling to activate the mine, killing the left worm. A good method here is getting your rope to a reasonable length early on, coming down a bit slowly, then just using right arrow on the fling. It's also not a major loss to use two ropes and not risk the fling.

From there, skipwalk right and look at the shading on the pyramid slab the enemy worm is standing on; you can zook just under it to get both worms piled. Your worm should be standing a little above the enemy worm. If your worm lands left, and not in the zook hole, it seems a bit more likely the upper right worm will nade/zook you.

Turn 2: If the enemy worm naded or zooked you: kill the pile by extending rope, and dropping a 3 sec nade a little to the left of your attachment point. Now to rope knock the remaining worm, start to bring the rope in right after 2 secs of retreat (and nade fuse time) are left. It's important to remember you can knock once retreat time is over, so you have to release right before your nade explodes.

If the enemy worm walked right instead, which seldom happens, you may have to rope and kill this worm, possibly with flamethrower. Then the following turn you'll need to kill the pile.

Turn 3: The most reliable method by far is laying a 3 second nade, with your eyes on the fuse. Keep your rope still, then knock the last worm into the water, releasing right before it gets to 0.

Possible Improvements: There may be a way to fine tune the position your worm lands in at the end of turn 1, so the next worm never uses shotgun.

Thanks to Lex for pointing that out, I'd forgotten chute was even used there!

c0o1's method stands here, for sure.

Turn 1: blowtorch right (just enough to make it through), backflip and try to stand on the enemy worm's head. Use skip walking when you can (I'm still figuring out how to do this without using my right hand). Keep in mind this is a speed run, so extra angles, skip walking, telecows, etc, are allowed.

Turn 2: Bungee toss yourself to get up. A soft landing generally does save time, as shown in Alex13's run here, but I attached two examples of a hard landing, not much slower. I think it's fine to prioritize just getting up there in general.

Turn 3: Not much to say, try to bungee to efficiently grab the jetpack and snag the crate.

The skill needed here is really memorizing your bungee motion to get that first bounce, otherwise you won't have enough power. And you need to use just 2 bounces off the wall, or it won't save time. My swing thought right now is hold down/left the whole way down, then switch to up/right just a moment before the worm reaches the bottom of the bungeeing, the last moment they still have a tiny bit of downward velocity. It's working pretty well at the moment, I think I can get it almost every time.

Last Updated: 3/29

With uzi method credit to Run and Deadcode, I think the most optimal method is:

Turn 1: collect uzi, hope it kills. As you land from jetpack, try to use chute, this will skip the landing frames. At least, this is the way that gives you a chance at the optimal run. It's probably not going to kill though, only does maybe 10% of the time. So, in the retreat time on the first turn, try to get closer to the flamethrower crate. You can do a forward jump from right on the corner spot, and a backjump if you have time (can land on the crate if you're good).

Turn 2: Then kill with flamethrower, hitting yourself to shorten the turn.

Possible alternate method: You can actually use flamethrower to kill 1st turn, as in the 3rd replay below. It works often at this angle, but not 100% of the time. This is slower than if uzi succeeds, faster than if uzi fails by maybe 5-10 seconds. And of course, if it this method fails, you're kind of screwed. So I'm not sure I'd feel safe using it if I had a good run going. Maybe everyone can try it a bit and judge whether it's run-worthy.

Glad to hear Wally, I'ma do all of 'em in the next couple weeks hopefully, then I might finally get to the point of doing actual full runs!

So, I think this 3 turn route is about as safe and repeatable as it gets. First off, I'm using alt f4 and space to skip to the 5th try of this mission, where a crate spawns allowing you to get a triple in the first turn. And there doesn't seem to be any other way to get a triple like this.

Turn 1: Grab the 2 crates, then bat the worm to get a triple. To memorize this angle, it's the first sprite change above the 45 degree position, then 1 more notch. My worm ends its turn in a spot making the AI guaranteed to hit my 2 worm pile/walk right.

Turn 2: Just a bat to pile, doesn't have to be totally exact. I tend to walk left on retreat, which I believe makes the AI more likely to pick the right two worms as targets next turn.

Turn 3: Just double damage and airstrike, I've found aiming left best. Now here, it's assumed the AI worm will have walked right. Depending on wind though, it won't do this 100% of the time; at least I'm not sure there's a way to ensure this. I think later I'll include what we might do in this case, though we may have to just say the run is no longer viable if that happens.

Possible Improvements: There may be some way to force the AI right every time, but I'm simply not sure.

I think the best/most achievable goal here is a 4 turn run. 3 turns is possible as on the mission records page, but only if you have some incredible luck with the right Grenadier worm hitting itself. So my main route is the triple kill method attached, I'll just go over some of the rationale for each turn:

Turn 1: The goal is a quick, repeatable full power shot, setting up a pile. I memorize it by looking at the crosshair; first spot where there's some black showing through the upper left quadrant. Also note that the enemy worm lands in a spot that prevents the other worms from walking right. The spot you stand in is pretty ideal for not getting knocked down, and also makes sure the AI don't aim for your right worm.



Turn 2: Also a quick, repeatable full power shot, the goal is a triple kill. But since mines only check for worms every 10th frame, the worms won't fly the same way every time, and half the time they'll live. Luckily, those worms like to kill themselves; the run should still be viable if they do this. I also remember this angle by looking at the land, it's where that light purple spike is centered in the upper left part of the crosshair.



Turn 3: If the lower right Grenadier hasn't moved, you can stand still and toss a 4 sec full power. But if it has, don't do this, or the worm will be sent to a really annoying spot. Instead, just aim down 3 notches, and move forward 3 nudges to do a full power shot; this traps the worm and makes it skip, saving some time. I haven't found a more reliable/quick shot here. If your bank off the flower has been totally destroyed, or you've been knocked down, the only way to salvage the run is probably a fast shot by feel.

Turn 4: A full power shot off the ground; I remember it as one notch up from where the dark purple on the flower shows through the bottom right part of the crosshair. Or just 2 sprite changes, 1 notch (10th position if straight down is position 1), useful if your worm has been moved.



Also, I attached an example of a missed triple scenario. You might lose 4 to 10 seconds, but the run may still be viable.

Possible Improvements: This method could definitely be made more reliable if the triple kill was guaranteed every time. But still, any changes to the 1st two shots would be pretty hard, they're already quite reliable and fast. One possibility is finding a way to time your 2nd shot so it lines up with a certain frame in the mine's cycle of 9 frames off, 1 frame on; you might not even have to get the exact frame. I think I'll mess around with that.

So there are really a number of ways to approach this one depending on your rope skill, I have 4 routes here.

The easiest method is extending all the way; you can get this basically every time. And actually, it's pretty reasonable, tends to clock in around 28 seconds (of turn time). I think it's about as efficient as the fling then extend method.

The medium difficulty one is the fling and then mexi, which is just slightly faster. I think with practice it's highly possible to get this around half the time.

The hardest is the Big Mexi; it basically saves a good 5-6 seconds, but can only be done, say 5-10% of the time, being optimistic. If someone is live streaming and doing a bunch of runs, this may not be worth attempting, but it's probably gotta be part of a solid World Record. Also, since it's the first mission, the speed run can easily be restarted until someone nabs it (unless we're including training first).

I just memorize the distances Joe. What you're describing is notching + cheating, since visual aids are banned. 4 sec full powers for example, you practice pointing to the spot you're aiming for until you have a good idea where each notch lands.

We're not the cancer Sensei, it's just using a game mechanic (one that non-notchers constantly use as well) and playing the scheme optimally, within the rules. Nobody should be faulted for doing that when the goal is to play to win.

Quote from: j0e on March 04, 2017, 08:40 PM

Quote from: TheKomodo on March 04, 2017, 11:40 AM
Do you hire someone to tie your shoelaces in the morning too? Or hold your hand while you cross the road.

Good for you 

Lol, I wasn't talking about that kind of aides. Maybe I am thinking about aids. Not positive which term is correct tbh.

I thought all of us had our own worms caddie, was it just me? I guess I'll have to let Winston go then. Back to the wild, you rapscallion.

I haven't seen anyone actually say they're using such things, but it probably wouldn't be that hard to do, sadly.