Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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I was grinding this on and off offline for months, so lets start at the beginning. The first achievement already took me nearly 2h and it's only worth 5 points, so you can already imagine how much time I had to spent on this set in total.
The first big cheevo was weathertenko. There was a pretty decent tutorial, but it still took me 3h to get it once with states.

When I started attempts I somehow got it on my 2nd attempt. The lap counted, but for some reason the achievement didn't trigger. I had to do it again and I actually got it 2nd try again.
One of the biggest grind was the royal raceway shell skip. I spent 9h on and off trying to get it. I tried from new positions, hitting different spots on the wall and trying all kind of angles, but I always spawned in front of the finish line. At some point I figured out how you drive to the item boxes determine where lakitu drops you off, so I really just wasted all that time for nothing.

The other big one was desertenko and to me it felt way harder than the weathertenko.
There was a tutorial, but it didn't help me at all, since I couldn't really follow along the visual cues. For example you had to get next to a V shape in the sand, but I couldn't see that in my game. I tried to come up with own setups, like driving backwards for a certain amount of time and then turning with a visual cue, but nothing ever worked. I tried to get it on and off for like 2 weeks, but I just felt hopeless.
Now this will sound like I am exaggerating, but I was literally about to close the game and delete the file, when by some miricle I actually ended up getting it. From there I was able to find some kind of setup for myself. It was nowhere near consistent, but felt good enough to attempt the thing. Sadly I got scammed 4 times, where I clipped through, but for some reason the lap didn't count. I went back to practice many times and even redid the entire setup and it always worked. I have no idea what I did different, but eventually I finally got it.

The flower cup was by far the easiest cheevo left to beat and it already was quite hard. I practiced it a TON and also did some offline attempts. It was the first thing of the set I also streamed and on stream I actually got it quite fast.

The Special Cup was a lot worse already. I got 3/3 skips without falling in the water once in practice a bunch of times, but attempts went miserable. I already went for low reset and I still barely got attempts going. I also lost runs to the next 2 tracks, but rainbow road was the worst. Livesplit was opened twice for some reason, so the choke counter didn't update on stream, but I lost multiple attempts there. Twice I hit the shell skip 2/3 times and once all 3 times and it somehow was still too slow, because I got such miserable rng. Up to that rng hell that run was actually pretty good, since I had a perfect DK Jungle and the other 2 tracks went solid as well. This attempt was a lot worse, but this time I got incredibly lucky and got 6 red shells, so I was able to make it even after missing the skip once.

The final 2 seemed impossible, but I gave mushroom cup a try. Even with states I couldnt get sub 5:40 at first.
I wanted to learn that strat where you go into the wall with a mushroom on the first track to skip the entire lap. However even after spending hours and hours I didnt get it once. I took a long time to optimize stuff enough to start attempts, but I also found some nice strats, like the buffer strat right at the beginning. In total I spent 10 days with practice and attempts. On day 9 I got a 5:40.75, which was such a massive pain to deal with. I tried for another hour without success, but on the next day I started streaming attempts and I somehow got it on my first attempt I got going.

Only the hardest cup was left.
I tried like a month earlier, but was over 10 sec off with states. I guess I improved a bit at least, so now I beat it by 10 seconds with states. I optimized it more, but attempts went absolutely horrible. I lost like 20 sec on every track on every attempt I got going.
However I barely got any attempts going at all and at some point I was only stuck on warios stadium and even in practice it didnt work at all anymore, so I decided to give up.
However since I came so far and this was the only thing I had left, I came back at some point.
During the 8 days I was grinding this, I didn't improve in the slightest, because stuff like warios stadium is nothing but rng. I tried a shitton of different strats, but it always remained luck. I even learned a setup for the triple red shell skip in royal raceay, which I was going for if I didnt get a sub 2:25 on the previous track.
I lost TWO attempts in the final track to a lightning, which is a 1% chance and another 2 attempts to random bs.
I am not joking when I say this was one of my worst grinds of all time.
I eventually got it offline and showed it on stream a bit later. I explained everything there, because this desc got too long.