User:BeatrizPride6

Aquatic Mine is the 8th stage in the Hero story on Sonic Adventure 2. Knuckles is used to play this stage.

Speed Tips

Mission 1

This is a treasure-hunting stage. The general hunting tips apply. The best locations are:

Piece 3: "Three fans" Of course, there are 3 fans to the left in the starting hall. Piece 3 can actually be in front of any one of them, among its other locations, and the middle fan can also house piece 1. But if you want the best time, you'll want the closest fan. Wait for the piece to appear there, then glide left. Because the ground there is an upslope, it's actually possible to jump high enough to reach the piece with a simple jump, but you can also do a quick Spiral Upper and gain height faster. Both ways are roughly equivalent.

Piece 2: "Switch No. 1.5?" Just behind the start, of course, are switches #1 and #2. So naturally, switch #1.5 would be between them. Head back there, and dig into the ground between the two switches for a possible piece.

Piece 1: "Skull pulley" Not much "pulley" about this one. It's on the water wheel just to the left of start. The radar will start out yellow for this piece.

Record video: 0:06.97 by SadisticMystic

Mission 2

There are two drastically different ways of doing this mission, which are believed to be almost equivalent in their time potential. They will be referred to here as the "traditional" route and the "exploit" route, of which the latter is Dreamcast-exclusive. The current record was set on the exploit route, but there may be room to improve on it with either one.

Traditional method

Get the 8 rings in the circle around you (start with the one in front and work around in either direction for the best line). Use the upslope to jump high enough that you can glide forward to the pulley without having to climb the wall at all.

When you grab the pulley, you'll also get ring #9. Ride it up to the top room, and do two things there: get the 10 box, and hit switch #3. Once you're done with both, dive back down and head for the near right corner relative to the starting point. Put on the sunglasses there (you can use rapid pause to speed up this process) and you'll see 10 rings appear in a line in front of you. Get all of these, and as soon as you see the ring counter hit 29, head for the back corner.

On the second floor in that corner, you'll see the opening of a shaft. Dive down through it, without hitting the spring at the bottom, and enter the opening. From here it's a natural path that would lead to the Air Necklace, but there are also 71 rings along the way that will give you a total of 100 and the completion.

Best video using this method: 0:35.49 by SuperSonic101

Exploit method

Start by tapping A twice then B twice, to accelerate quickly to full speed using a punch. You'll go through only one of the rings in the starting circle, but you can safely ignore the rest. Use the small upslope of the floating platform to get a high jump, so that you can land on the center block without climbing (you'll also collect a second ring here). Turn around and jump immediately to grab the pulley, and jump off once you have a clear path to the top level.

Run to the mystic shrine, and try to come to a complete stop just as you get there. You don't want to be running when you get there, as B would then cause a punch instead of the Mystic Melody, wasting time. Try to play the melody at about 4 seconds, then turn the camera to face the door that opens. Once you regain control, head toward that door, going slightly out of your way to grab the 10 ring box, for a total of 12.

Run down this hallway, punching the single cart in the tunnel. At the end, press A and B to jump then dive...and hold both buttons. You'll also want to be in one of the corners of this shaft, so hold forward as you fall to give yourself the greatest chance of that.

The camera angle as you descend into the ghost room is practically random, but you may notice that where the enclosure of the chute ends, there are bars on two sides that can form ledges to block your diving progress. Normally this would be bad, but to get the most out of this route, you need to land on one of the ledges. I invariably pause here, in order to shift index and middle fingers to A and B (without letting up on A while paused) and dedicate my thumb to the Start button.

Since you're still holding A and B, you can walk off the ledge. After a short while, you'll bust out into a glide--even though you're underwater! Yes, the exploit route has that name for a reason. What you want to do here is glide over to the 20 ring box in this room, since gliding is much faster than swimming. It's a tight squeeze between the wall and a pillar, especially when moving at glide speeds. If you aim incorrectly, you'll grab the wall and be unable to resume your glide without wasting far too much time. From the ledge, you'll usually go left to reach the ring box, but occasionally you'll drop onto the ledge that makes you go right. Learn to distinguish the two and look for clues to determine which direction you need to go. Also, a beeline to the 20 box may result in you not hitting it by virtue of being too high up. You can't Drill Claw while underwater, and you can't resume an underwater glide after breaking it, so if you think this might be the case, wiggle the control stick back and forth to add to your distance traveled so you delay your arrival at the 20 box until you're low enough to reach it. Using rapid pause as you get close, in order to control your steering and avoid grabbing onto the wall, can help a lot here, but remember you still have to hold A and B at all times, so that's why I suggested the pause earlier on to realign your fingers.

After turning around from the 20, you'll want to locate a vertical line of rings, and keep up your glide as you approach it. When you can do so without losing time, break your glide and press A to resurface. You have 32 rings now, and at least 34 are needed for a shot at a slight timesaver later on--but the more you have, the better your chances. As you resurface, try to go through at least some of the rings in the vertical line.

When you arrive at the top of the chute, on the corridor that leads to the Chao, start holding B, preferably accompanied by control stick Down, though the camera can shift spontaneously here and you'll have to adjust your movement for the new direction. Your goal is to be next to the pile of logs here. With B, you'll be running along the ground. Don't release B, but throw in a tap of A, causing you to jump. As you start to fall, move the control stick in the direction of the pile of logs, and you may grab onto the logs while underwater. The target time for grabbing the logs is 18-19 seconds.

Once you've grabbed on, release B. Press control stick Up and you'll climb up the short pile. At the top, you'll go through the ledge grab animation...but since the top of the pile is so close to the ceiling, this puts you through the ceiling. Furthermore, the top of the water level is just barely above this ceiling, so that the animation hits the surface of the water, and it interrupts the animation so as not bring you back down. The net result is that you've now clipped through the ceiling, and can roam the free depths of blackness.

Right now the camera is stuck in bounds, so you'll have to free it by getting far enough away that the walls leave draw distance. Glide forward as if you were headed toward the Chao, but take a left so as not to land back on the water. Eventually the path will turn so that you'll want to be headed right; do so. Try diving and gliding in the (new) forward direction after a while, and eventually the camera should break free. You'll want to be far enough to the right that you don't go back in bounds at the main room, but you want to be just a bit to the right of it. Eventually, through glides and dives, you'll see a structure which turns out to be the Air Necklace shaft. As you play this route more, you'll learn to recognize what it looks like and where it is. Interestingly, the shaft is submerged when the water level is at 3, the lowest point; but right now you haven't touched the water level switches so it's at its highest point (1), and the shaft is dry! At least this means you aren't stuck at swimming speed.

As you get low enough, you'll see a long horizontal tunnel. Try to re-enter at the left side of that tunnel, because there's a boost plate there which will send you zipping along the tunnel. Keep an eye on the ring count; if it's 45 or higher after you're done with the tunnel, you'll be able to skip one of the next two 5-ring boxes.

The shaft can completely destroy runs, mostly by having you grab onto walls you don't want to. After the boost tunnel (with 11 rings), there's a 5 box in midair right before the first downstep, another 5 box below the overhang on that step, a 20 box as you fall down to the second downstep, 10 rings in a tunnel by reversing back in the direction you came at the bottom of the downsteps, and then a 20 box above the exit to that tunnel, which you'll use Spiral Upper to reach and which ends the run. You may want to practice the shaft separately from everything else until you come up with a streamlined path for finishing off the 100 rings with minimal time loss. Eventually, you'll follow up a run that's fast to get out of bounds with a decent (or better) shaft, and you can finally lay your claim to the exploit route here.

Record video: 0:32.32 by SadisticMystic

Mission 3

Save for a few optimized hunting mission 1s (its own level not even included!) this is now the shortest level in the game.

Simply glide over to the right wall, into the small corner formed by the water level 1 sign and the wall. Jump and glide when you reach the top of that sign, and occasionally you'll pop right through the wall, rather close to the Chao (continue going toward the back, angling right about 30 degrees).

If you stay close to the wall after breaking out, the camera should follow you and make it easier to see where you're going, or once you've learned the out-of-bounds path you can attempt to hit it even when the camera doesn't follow. In any case, you want to land in the Chao tunnel as close to the pulley as possible, to minimize the amount of time spent swimming. Once you hit it, just jump off at the top and you're done.

Record video: 0:06.54 by SadisticMystic

Mission 5

The fastest way to do this mission involves getting pieces 3 and 2 in one life, and 1 in a different life. These segments can be switched around in either order, but attempting to get 1 first can lead to scenarios where you get 1 presumably wrapped up, only to get 3 and then botch 2 to force either a restart or lost time. 3+2 first doesn't have the risk of undoing finished segments in this way.

Start with the AABB turbo start, and carry the momentum into the lip of the water-powered lift, which you'll use to perform a ramp jump up onto the center platform without having to climb. Don't take the pulley up this time, but instead land on the right corner so you have a clear route to jump and glide over to the water wheel in the back right. Get on the beam in front of the wheel, at the very left edge, and put on sunglasses (rapid pause will help cycle through the actions quickly with Y). You'll shoot through piece 3, preferably around 6 seconds, and then it's time to prepare for a breakout right away.

You're flying toward the wall with three fans. Go ahead and glide onto the wall, then climb it so that Knuckles' feet are at the same level as the top of the fans. Now climb right, toward the nearest fan, and if you were lined up just right then Knuckles will think he's supposed to ledge-grab onto the fan. However, from this spot that puts him through the ceiling, and collision detection is disabled during the ledge grab animation, So now you're out of bounds.

Start a glide right away (so that you don't just get pulled back in), and you'll want to head left from here. Dive down to see what you're dealing with more clearly, and you'll come to a long vertical shaft with a horizontal interruption. Piece 2 will be at the lowest point of that shaft. However, if you try to approach it head-on you'll be stuck navigating to it at swim speed. Gliding around the right side and then picking it up from the side will be faster. Once you have the piece, this segment is done with, so just rise up and get killed by the spikeballs.

Piece 1 can be obtained in the same way as the Chao in mission 3, with the exception that you're not aiming for the pulley; instead you're aiming further back at the very end of the tunnel, behind the spikeball.

Record video: 0:22.34 by SadisticMystic