Paper Mario: All Cards Chapter Order

The order that we complete chapters for the Paper Mario All Cards category is very unintuitive, and many people new to Paper Mario speedrunning (and many not so new, I imagine) don't know why we do it the way we do. I'm going to do my best to explain why here.

So first off, this is the order we do the Chapters:

1, 3, 5, 4, 2, 6, 7, 8

Beating Chapter 1 first makes sense, as does going from 6 to 7 to 8, but that stretch of 3, 5, 4, 2, 6 is the confusing part. There are a few points to consider when routing this.



- Bosses don't appear in their respective chapters unless you're in a story position before you're supposed to have fought them. Otherwise, you just see an empty room.

- Chapter 5 can be triggered an infinite number of times from a previous state by triggering the cutscene with Kolorado by the volcano.

- Chapter 4 can be beaten significantly faster than normal by entering it in a later story position. This is because the train is already there, and the Frying Pan acts as a trigger to put you back in a Chapter 4 state to go straight to beating the bosses.

- Chapter 2 can also be beaten much faster by entering it in a later story position. The sand has already been drained, so you can skip some of the locks and the Pokey fights. In addition, if you enter with the Ultra Hammer, you can skip straight to the Stone Chomps. The Super Hammer also acts as a trigger to put you back in a Chapter 2 state to fight Tutankoopa. Since the Ultra Hammer block guarding the Ultra Boots is the only time we need the Ultra Hammer after Chapter 5, and we can skip the block with Clippy Boots, the hammer downgrade isn't a problem.

- There is no benefit to entering Chapter 3 in a later story position. You need the Super Boots to beat the chapter, and the only way to do that is by completing the mansion normally. Also, Chapter 3 contains Mega Rush, which makes fighting the bosses in most other chapters considerably faster.

- If you have all 4 Magical Seeds, you can trigger Chapter 6 at any time just by planting them. Thus, you can finish the previous chapters in any order you want and then continue with 6, 7, and 8.



Now given all of that, here's how the routing goes. We beat Chapter 1 first because there's no known way to retrigger it quickly, plus we need Bombette a lot in many places. After 1, we want to complete Chapter 3 first because there's no benefit to doing it later, and getting Mega Rush early speeds up all other Chapters. The fastest way to get there is to use BHS to get to Chapter 5, but for the sole purpose of getting Sushie (and Power Quake). We can then use Sushie to cross to the Chapter 3 pipe in the sewers, and entering the Mansion is a trigger to put us back in a Chapter 3 state. We then beat the Chapter as normal.

So now we have 2, 4, and 5 left to beat. 2 and 4 can be beaten faster if the story is in a later state, so it makes sense to trigger Chapter 5 with the Kolorado cutscene again, beat the Chapter (also giving us the Ultra Hammer), then beat 4 in a completed state, and then beat 2 in a completed state. After 2 is completed, we can simply plant all the magical seeds, and then continue on with Chapters 6, 7, and 8.