FAQ:

Q: what is this/what is NLE?
A: NLE is no levels early, basically 70 star for this game.  this category forbids entering any level or lobby without the prerequisite required keys or gold banana counts.  the really short version of the requirements - collect every key in the game, and collect 100 GBs to unlock hideout helm.


Q: what's going on at the start/how have you unlocked every move without buying anything?
A: it's complicated, but short version is we can trick the game into pulling us into DK's house directly from the title screen, which allows us to carry in several moves alongside a bunch of useful flags (eg: several boss cutscenes are skipped, since we view their intro cutscene while setting up the glitch so the game assumes you have seen it before when you fight them "legitimately")

this actually ends up shaping the entire route - as a consequence, we can no longer save or pause.  this means that in order to exit every level, we need to directly return to the level entrance portal, rather than just pausing and quitting out.  this means most levels will end by going out of bounds and hitting a void plane, which will automatically send you back to the start of the level.

this is most important in hideout helm - the room containing key 8 cannot be escaped unless you either quit out, or clip out.  clipping out either requires an RNG dependent lag clip with finite tries, or a triple frame perfect trick that i cannot do currently lol.  so, we'll have to disable this glitch to be able to collect key 8 and finish out the run.

the only viable way to disable this glitch is by collecting all 40 blueprints, which unlocks a selection of minigames - by failing one of these minigames, you are brought out of the pause-locked state and can freely pause and save your game.


Q: isn't having to collect all 40 blueprints a ridiculous ask?
A: not really - blueprints tend to be in super fast spots and they contribute to our 100 gold banana goal.  routes that do not need to collect 40 blueprints end up collecting ~35 anyway lol.



Q: why turn in blueprints before you have all of them, wouldn't that skip visits to snide?
A: entering each level has an individual GB requirement.  we would be forced to get a lot of slow golden bananas just to secure progress into the next level, which is already a problem in early game (15 GBs without revisiting japes to enter factory is pretty steep).  in fact, by the time we could enter creepy castle (80 GB requirement), we would already have so many blueprints that we would not need to enter the level at all if not for the key.  it's best to route in a way to where we enter every level effectively as soon as possible, and then harvest the fastest GBs from that specific level alongside 5 blueprints before moving onto the next.


Q: is it really worth it to revisit japes?
A: yes, revisiting with 5 kongs opens up a ton of very fast GBs including 3 very fast blueprints. just the hillside area alone has 4 GBs completely in the open, and we collect them all in under 2 minutes - this is an insane rate compared to the rest of the game.


Q: is it really worth it to revisit aztec?
A: we're absolutely forced to revisit the level in this route to collect the final blueprint.  this is comfortably the slowest blueprint in the game, and would skip it if the route didn't depend on it.