Throughout the past couple years, we have found countless tricks and timesavers in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Since 2012, we've shortened this game by 2 hours. It has been our goal to make this game shorter and shorter than previously possible. Therefore, we're always thinking of different glitch theories in order to save time in runs. Most recently, we've theorized the Ultra Hammer Early, Yoshi Skip, Bobbery Early, and Teleporter Room Early glitches, all of which became possible thanks to extensive glitch hunting within the community. At this point, the game has been broken quite a lot, but we're not done yet. A current optimal Real Time Attack run would be around a 4:15. That's still pretty long, even considering how far we've come from 2012. Well, how can we save more time?

There are two remaining glitch theories that haven't been cracked yet. The first is a Chapter 6 skip. Make sure to check out my previous video about this. We're able to get underneath the spikes in Chapter 8. So what? This is the last remaining room in the game that requires the use of Ultra Boots to Spring Jump up to the ceiling pole and shimmying across to the next platform. We can hover from the second platform to the loading zone because the gap isn't as far across as the first pit is. Since we can get underneath the spikes in this room, we're able to jump across into the second pit. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do from here. Well, you could do a Mowz glitch like I did at the start of the room, which causes Mario to regain control midair once Ms. Mowz's text box closes after getting hit by spikes. Except the spike hitbox is positioned above the floor of the pit, meaning I need to do a 5 frame jump in order to get hit by the spikes. Jumping right before performing a Mowz glitch, like I did at the start of the room doesn't produce a high enough jump to get hit by the spikes. If we somehow gained enough height though, we could land on the platform between the two pits and yoshi hover across. Using tube mode you can make it across to the third pit, but you can't do anything from here. You can't use a Mowz glitch to get on top of the ceiling pole because it isn't exactly a platform that you can stand on. Obviously, Goombella Buffering and Flurrie Supersliding won't work in any situation in this room.

The second glitch theory is Palace Skip. This glitch has been theorized for an incredibly long time. Essentially, this glitch would allow us to skip parts of chapter 2 and all of chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6. In addition, it would cut out Riddle Tower and Gloomtail from Chapter 8. We estimate this to be a half hour to a 2 hour timesaver. Woah woah woah, why the big range? Well first let's explain the glitch itself.

In the room right before Gloomtail in Chapter 8, there's actually an entire room below it. If you've played TTYD, you'll remember the cutscene that occurs once you complete the Riddle Tower. The staircase of the Palace lowers to reveal a completely different set of rooms. Well, the room below this is actually the one right before Grodus and Bowser. Wait, it's not here? Well, most elements in the room aren't there. What's always loaded is the spring all the way on the left and a loading zone right in the middle. Entering this loading zone and grabbing the key all the way to the left progresses the game to a state in which the room below is completely loaded, which means you can unlock the door to Grodus's lair and fight the Shadow Queen.

Ok ok I get it. So what's with the large range of the timesave estimate? Well, depending on what we need in order to perform this glitch, we may have to complete certain chapters that could be otherwise skipped. If we need Vivian or tube mode, we'll have to complete Chapter 4. If we need Yoshi but don't need Vivian or tube mode, we'd need to fight past the Minor League in Chapter 3 to get him normally. If we need Ultra Boots in order to Spring Jump, we'll have to complete Chapter 6. And if we have to complete Chapter 6, we'll actually need to complete Chapter 4 in order to acquire Vivian because of 2 missions on the Excess Express in Chapter 6. If we need Bobbery, we'd have to warp to Keelhaul Key and get Bobbery, which wouldn't really cost too much time. Assuming we don't need to do any of this extra stuff, the route would be Prologue -> Chapter 1 -> Chapter 2 up until Super Boots -> Chapter 7, which is accessible due to Teleporter Room Early -> and finally Chapter 8. Ok wait, why do you need to go through Chapter 2? In order to perform Teleporter Room Early without Bobbery, you need Super Boots. TRE works because you used a paper mode glitch via Bobbery to enter the bar while staying out of bounds. You can get this same paper mode glitch by running behind a fallen pillar in the same room. Since you need to jump, you have to end your jumps with a Spin Jump in order to maintain the paper mode glitch. Jumping normally cancels the effect and brings Mario back to his normal state. What this means is that optimally, we would have Goombella, Koops, and Flurrie as our partners and plane mode (irrelevant) and paper mode as our abilities.

How can we get to the loading zone below? There are a couple things that would allow this to work. First off, Mario has a hitbox value of 20. When he turns into paper mode, his hitbox decreases to 6. This is why paper mode allows Mario to squeeze in smaller places. You can actually clip into the wall by the doorway when Mario's hitbox is set at a very low 1.6. The only problem though, is we don't know of any way to decrease Mario's hitbox value below 6. The other theory is changing Mario's angle when entering the room. When Mario enters from the left or right door, his angle value upon entry is 90 degrees or 270 degrees  respectively. If this value changes to 15 while Mario enters the room, he will walk towards the back of the room onto the seam. 0 doesn't work because Mario starts off slightly to the left or right of the room's seam, so he would fall out of bounds. The problem with this theory is that we do not know of a way to either store or modify this value in any way.

Other than that, all we have to work with is 2 embers and a save block. You can't get high enough using a double jump to get on top of the save block. Even from there, there isn't anything you can do to get out of bounds. As far as we know, it isn't possible to get multiple jumps off of the embers. Even if we did, the room has a ceiling that you can't jump through.

To be perfectly fair, this seems like one of the most solid rooms in the game. We haven't found a way to get out of bounds at all. We haven't given up hope yet though. We're constantly working on new ideas and theories to hopefully make this skip real some day. I honestly believe that this will be found someday and we will have a sub 2 hour TAS. The only question though is when. When's Palace Skip? We don't know, but as long as we're working towards it, it will be found.