KDL2:Mechanics and Tech

 This page will be for explaining and showing this games mechanics and other useful tricks and techniques as a whole.

Goal games

 If you are familiar with some other Kirby games goal games, you might be happy to hear that KDL2 has probably the best and easiest goal games in the series. This game has 100% consistency in their goal games and the ability to get HP from them with complete ease. If you need health, you have a few options. You can either time it for whatever you need or you have the option to sacrifice a little more time in exchange for a completely consistent way of getting health!

Fastest possible goal game

If you don't need health and just want to complete the goal game quickly and efficiently, all you need to do is hold down the A button and you will buffer the absolute earliest and fastest goal game possible. That's it, completely free.

Goal game if just holding A

Timing the goal game for HP

Like goal games in most Kirby games, you can time them to receive rewards like 1ups, stars, and most importantly, Pep Brews and Maximum Tomatoes. It is slower than just holding down the A button, but its still better than dying if you are in need of health.

Timing the goal game for HP

The main bad thing about timing the goal game is the potential chance of getting a ledge grab, which wastes a little less than 2 seconds more.

Goal game ledge grab

Using the special goal game for HP

The special goal game is a little secret thing the developers put in for... whatever reason. When the goal game starts, if you are holding down the A button and press Up, then Down, then Up again (you can mash up and down back and forth instead if you want) you will get a special goal game! While this goal game is quite slow, it will guarantee that you can get to full HP at the end of each level and is great for new runners!

The special goal game

Door entrances

 Kirby, Kirby floating, Coo, Kine, Rick, Fat Kirby, Fat Coo, Fat Kine, and Fat Rick all enter doors at differing speeds. This is due to how long each states door entrance animation is and is one of the few disadvantages that Coo has in comparison to the other characters. This animation also allows an autoscroller glitch to occur where if you can potentially take damage when entering a door.

Method	Frames	Seconds
Kirby	54	0.904
Rick	69	1.155
Kine	69	1.155
Coo	71	1.189
Kirby floating	78	1.306
Fat Kirby	78	1.306
Fat Rick	93	1.557
Fat Kine	93	1.557
Fat Coo	94	1.574

Soft resetting

 Soft resetting is a way to quickly reset the game by pressing and holding A+B+START+SELECT at the same time in roughly that order. In this game when resetting the game or turning it off, you will keep your ability, animal friend, HP, score, and progress as long as the game saves. Because of this, soft resetting is very good in KDL2 especially for learning and for beginners. When starting off with runs of the game and something goes terribly wrong, it is recommended to use soft resetting as a safety net if you do not know a backup to something or what to do without a certain ability/animal combo.

Where the game saves

 KDL2 saves after completing each level, exiting a level, dying, finishing a bonus stage, completing the game, or by defeating a boss once the scoreboard comes back (more on this below). If you die and you don't know a backup to recover from your death, you can soft reset before the screen fully fades to white to recover your previous ability and animal friend that you had when you last left a completed stage.

Resetting on bosses

 The main practicality use for soft resetting resetting on bosses, as you can skip the Kirby dance that occurs after defeating each boss fight. However, by skipping the Kirby dance by soft resetting, in return you do not get healed after a boss fight. If you need health, you can go ahead and watch this dance to get to full health and in return you would lose 5 seconds.

The Kirby dance that gets skipped

Soft reset timing for bosses

 The reset timing for five of the bosses are the same and you do not need to reset for King Dedede or Dark Matter, so that leaves one boss with a different timing from the rest. Whispy Woods is the only boss that has a different visual cue for the reset.

When you start a boss fight, your scoreboard will be replaced with the boss HP and when a boss is defeated, Kirby's scoreboard will come back after a short period and you will lose control of Kirby, this is used as an indicator to see if its ok yet to soft reset. For Nruff, Sweet Stuff, Ice Dragon, Mr. Shine & Mr. Bright, and Kracko, on the GUI if you see the "E" with a health bar under Kirby's HP, empty or not, it is NOT safe to soft reset and resetting will lose the progress of the boss being defeated. If you see a variety of numbers under Kirby's health bar, it IS safe to soft reset (reminder that this doesn't apply to Whispy Woods).

It is NOT safe to reset!

It IS safe to reset!

Whispy Woods soft reset timing

 Whispy doesn't abide by the same rules as the other bosses apparently, as when Whispy's scoreboard comes back, you still have control of Kirby and the game hasnt been saved yet. The timing for when to soft reset for Whispy is slightly later, when the scoreboard comes back, Whispy's face animation will show both of his eyes closed and a tear coming from the right closed eye. This means it is NOT safe to soft reset yet as the game hasn't saved yet.

It is NOT safe to reset!

When you lose control of Kirby and Whispy's facial expression changes to having his left eye open with the tear drop slightly further down, it is now safe to soft reset as the game has been saved.

It IS safe to reset!

No one knows why Whispy's soft reset timing is different compared to the others.

Full jumps vs non full jumps

 When you you jump in this game, if you don't do a full jump (holding A all the way through until the start of Kirby's descent) you will freeze in the air for a single frame. This frame is basically never noticeable and hardly matters, but you can technically shave off frames by trying to reduce the amount of times you jump, changing those jumps to full jumps, or making sure you bonk your head when jumping with something above you.

Video example and explanation:

Maintaining speed ("Hill Boosts")

Conserving slope state

Coo+cutter in upwards drafts

Moving left vs moving right

 This mechanic is one that you will probably never need to know about, but might be interesting for a few people. When you walk to the left, your speed will get set to the highest value its supposed to be, however for whatever reason, in this game when you walk to the right your speed will fluctuate between two speed values. When walking to the right, your speed will jump to the highest value its supposed to be but for the next frame it will drop a slight amount of speed and it will repeat this process for every single frame you are walking to the right. Because of this, moving to the left will always be faster than moving to the right.
The main applicable places this can be utilized is when you are first actionable when going into the 1-1 door, the world 2 hub when going into 2-1, and the 5-5 rainbow drop room in the Best Ending/100% categories.
While being a very small piece to the Coo clip puzzle, it technically makes Coo clips slightly more complicated when trying to make Coo clips consistent.
Video demonstration and explanation:

This does not apply when you are mashing fast enough with either Coo or Kine as their speed will not get a chance to alternate dropping.

Coo mashing

Slope cancelling (Burning)

Projectile abilities

Wind rooms

Coo's hitbox

Enemy spawns offscreen (I.e influenced by your position)

Animal bag knockback

Stone Tech