KDL2:Animal Friends and Abilities

Animal Friends

KDL2 is the first game in the Kirby series to introduce the animal friends, and each of the categories heavily revolve around them. Each animal friend has unique movement options that are different from the other three and every ability has a different function with each other with each individual animal friend, because of this the run will be trying to alternate between the best and/or mandatory animal + ability combo.

Rick the Hamster

Rick the hamster is the first animal friend you can receive in KDL2. Even with the change in abilities compared, Rick is unfortunately comically worse compared to Kirby, Coo, or Kine.

Movement

While Rick is supposed to be the "land" version of the animal friends, Rick operates the worse on land compared to Kirby or any of the other animal friends.
For starters, Rick gets worse mobility options compared to Kirby. When you grab Rick, you are no longer able to float and only get one jump (wall jumps wasn't a thing for Rick until KDL3) while also having a MUCH bigger hurt box. Because of this, it is very easy to lose Rick if you aren't careful, if you fall into a pit you have to quickly slap select twice and drop both your ability and Rick and then hold up and hope you make it in time to survive. Additionally, while Ricks walking speed is slightly better than Kirby's, Kine is still noticeably faster when you are constantly jumping. On top of everything else movement wise for Rick, none of Ricks abilities give any useful additional mobility options, unlike all the other characters.

Abilities

Overall, Rick has the worst set of abilities. However, he has one giant exception.
Like previously stated, Rick gains no useful mobility options; in fact, the majority of the abilities will completely halt your momentum. The exception to this is the stone ability, while not being very useful it does allow you to move around once you are halted on the ground, however you still go the same speed as Rick normally would and you are no longer able to jump or move around in air at all. Stone is only useful for getting grounded enemies out of the way as the Rick part of the hurt box is no longer there (Kirby still has a hurt box on top of Rick).
Damage wise across all the abilities, Rick still gets mostly shafted. Alongside these abilities completely halting your momentum, most of these abilities are slow and hard to use even remotely well, they also just don't do a whole lot in terms of damaging bosses or mid-bosses. The one singular giant exception to this all is Rick + Needle, while still halting your momentum and having a backwards hit box, it is legit the best boss killing combo in the entire game. Doing a whopping 8 damage per hit, it melts mid bosses and its also comes out quickly and can be let go quickly as well, making it spam-able. Legit one of the best ability combos in the entire game.

Rick%

Because of how garbage Rick overall is, a "meme" category that is sometimes ran called "Rick%" is sometimes played. The idea of this category is to grab Rick in 1-2 and carry him until you enter the Dedede door in world 7 and beat King Dedede, soft resetting anytime you might lose Rick. This category has been ran for a long time and (as of right now) I dont know who came up with it, but if you want to use more of Rick and deal with a lot of his terrible features and abuse needle, why not give this silly category a try? :)

Coo the Owl

Coo the Owl can be first found in 2-1 and he is notoriously the most broken animal friend in this game. For the most part, Coo is used pretty much whenever and wherever you can possibly use him due to his strengths compared to anything else in the game.

Movement

Coo while also being able to fly, he also has the fastest horizontal speed out of anything in the entire game. Whenever you have Coo, before you even have an ability, you can mash the A button to make Coo go faster. Basically what pressing the A button does is set Coo's X speed value to his top speed, then for the next twelve frames Coo will lose a small amount of speed, because of this it is ideal to mash the A button as much as you can. While mashing the A button faster does speed you up, it doesn't make as big of a difference as you might expect, so it is best to mash at your own pace.
While our bird is extremely fast most of the time, he does have some disadvantages. When you are in a wind room, no matter your animal friend or however fast you are mashing, your speed will always be the same amongst the characters. The disadvantage actually comes with Kirby with the burning ability, as Kirby is able to use burning and go quite a bit faster than Coo. While Coo excels at moving upwards, Coo moves the slowest out of the characters going downwards, but in return is able to be controlled in the air. Alongside Rick, Coo moves a bit slower underwater unfortunately.

Abilities

The bird has some stellar ability combos overall. While needle and ice are not the greatest, every other ability functions super well. With the exception of needle and stone, all the other abilities can have momentum or even move when using them. Parasol is essentially the tornado ability from Kirby's Adventure, making Coo spin around while being able to move wherever you want, only problem is you don't move any faster like in KA but is still really useful. Stone, while not being very mobile, creates a huge hit box to damage enemies with and doesn't do the worst damage. Burning is super useful as it makes Coo invincible for a short period and lunges him forward and downwards.
One thing that might seem lacking compared to the other animal friends is that Coo doesn't have an ability that deals 8 damage, and while it is technically a hinderance, cutter makes sure to make up for it. Cutter at first glance might seem pretty weak, as it only does 2 damage normally, however if all 3 cutter blades hit on the same frame (in other words be really close to a boss) that damage is instead tripled. Up close cutter deals 6 damage and making it technically tied for third highest damage per second out of the ability combos. While cutter is spam-able, it is best used when timing hits as each boss and mid-boss have i-frames that take too long to just spam cutter. Cutter + Coo is the best ability combo in the game and requires to play dangerously close to bosses and mid-bosses whenever you have Coo and carefully timing hits to maximize damage output as fast as possible.

Kine the Fish

Kine the fish can be first found in an optional door in 3-2. Kine, while being outpaced by Coo in a few ways, is still a very solid animal friend with lots of cool toys to play around with and is even better than Coo in a few ways!

Movement

As you might be able to guess, Kine the fishes biggest plus compared to the others is his controllably fast water movement. By mashing the A button underwater, much like Coo in air, Kine will go faster, having his speed maxed for one frame and then slowly drop in speed for the next few frames. While Kine moves fastest underwater horizontally, he is unfortunately the slowest character moving downwards underwater. On land, Kine might seem pretty bad at first and on paper you would be right but if you can simply jump as soon as you are able to, you actually move faster than both Kirby and Rick on land (assuming Kirby doesn't have burning)! However with a fairly big hurt box and how awkward moving with him on land can be, it can be pretty easy to get hit and much like Rick, if you fall into a pit you have no way of flying with Kine so you have to mash the select button and hold up if that happens.

Abilities

Fishy friend's abilities are a mixed bag, about half are good and the other half are kind of bad. Parasol with Kine might be the worst animal friend to use parasol with and while needle is fairly strong, its low range and momentum halting properties makes it harder to use.
On the subject of movement options and momentum, Kine really only has two abilities that somewhat help with this... plus stone. Like with every other character, stone drops you straight downwards really fast and halts you to a stop until you wait long enough or press B again. Spark is a pretty useful ability, as holding down the B button puts a fairly large hit box in front of Kine and can easily clear out enemies in front of you in levels. On land spark might feel a bit weirder to control but is still really useful and can be used in a few spots in the run. Ice Kine is a really fun combo, ice puts a shield around Kine and you can move and jump while using it. Because of that its one of Kines most useful abilities and a lot of runners find it pretty fun to use, however holding B for too long will turn Kine to ice for a few seconds.
Fighting bosses with Kine might seem a bit tricky as your options are a bit limited a lot of the time. As mentioned before, while needle does good damage it is pretty bad with Kine and there is more than likely a better option around than using needle. Burning, while being weaker than needle, still does solid damage and is actually really good for boss fights. Because of its range you can basically sit back and mash the B button or just pay attention to timing your hits correctly a lot of the time. Cutter is basically a much worse version of Kine's burning attack, it is slow in every way and is weaker than burning.
Stone is the last ability to talk about when damaging foes. Stone is probably one of the more obnoxious abilities to use for bosses or at all really, however it is special, as Kine + Stone is one of two ability combos in the game to deal 8 damage, the highest amount of damage an ability can do. Using Kine and stone to fight Sweet Stuff underwater while a challenge, especially at first, it can become pretty fun and can shred him pretty quickly. The other fight you might see this combo used on is the Mr. Shine & Mr. Bright fight which is possibly the worst fight in the entire game, however if done without getting hit too many times, it is extremely fast in the Best Ending/100% routes.

Abilities

Burning

Also called Fire sometimes,

Cutter

Ice

Needle

Parasol

Spark

Stone

X Speed Table

Most horizontal speed methods in KDL2. Sorted fastest to slowest.
When moving left the speed (USUALLY) locks at the highest value, but moving right it alternates between 2 speeds.
Coo mashing explanation:
Once the A button is pressed, Coo speed will be set to 1.173 then he will lose 0.012 speed every frame for the next 12 frames or until the A button is pressed again.
Note: Coo parasol doesn't effect Coos speed.
Kine mashing works in a similar way but only underwater and with slower speed values.
1.0 in X speed is the equivalent to 1 pixel per frame, and the decimals that go up to 256 represent the sub pixels per frame.
"Frame delay" is the amount of frames after the A button was pressed.

Character	Method	X Speed	Description
Kirby	Fire (right)	3.00, 2.244	Its not as useful as it may seem because of how many frames Kirby ends up being frozen or in-actionable
Kirby	Fire (left)	2.256	Its not as useful as it may seem because of how many frames Kirby ends up being frozen or in-actionable
Kirby/Rick	Sliding down a slope (max)	1.244, 1.212
Kirby	Parasol boost initial	1.179, 1.167	When jumping while Kirby has parasol.
Coo	A pressed holding left or right	1.173	Only first frame after pressing the A button
Coo	1 Frame delay	1.161	Still holding left or right
Coo	2 Frame delay	1.149	Still holding left or right
Kine	Swimming. A pressed holding left or right	1.146	Only first frame after pressing the A button
Coo	3 Frame delay	1.137	Still holding left or right
Kine	Swimming. 1 Frame delay	1.128	Still holding left or right
Coo	4 Frame delay	1.125	Still holding left or right
Kirby	Parasol boost linger	1.115, 1.103	After 8 frames of the max boost with parasol, it drops in speed a bit
Coo	5 Frame delay	1.113	Still holding left or right
Kine	Swimming. 2 Frame delay	1.110	Still holding left or right
Coo	6 Frame delay	1.101	Still holding left or right
Coo	Burning	1.096
Kine	in air/jumping	1.096, 1.084	Can jump immediately to almost constantly conserve this speed with Kine
Kine	Swimming. 3 Frame delay	1.092	Still holding left or right
Coo	7 Frame delay	1.089	Still holding left or right
Coo	8 Frame delay	1.077	Still holding left or right
Rick	Walking	1.076, 1.064
Rick	Stone	1.076, 1.064	Can't move side to side in air and has a long startup when used so its slower than walking.
Kine	Swimming. 4 Frame delay	1.074	Still holding left or right
Kine	Walking	1.074 (Max, for 1 frame only)	First frame of him moving only. While currently not listed he gets drastically slower.
Kirby	Parasol boost longer linger	1.067, 1.055	Kirby gets slower after another 8 frames of his parasol jump.
Coo	9 Frame delay	1.065	Still holding left or right
Kine	Swimming. 6 Frame delay	1.056	Still holding left or right
Coo	10 Frame delay	1.053	Still holding left or right
Kirby	Walking	1.051, 1.039
Coo	11 Frame delay	1.041	Still holding left or right
Coo	Moving (no A mashing)	1.038, 1.026	Holding left or right
Kine	Swimming. 6 Frame delay	1.038	Still holding left or right
Kirby	Parasol slower linger	1.035, 1.023	Kirby floats even slower after another 8 frames
Coo	12 Frame delay	1.029	Still holding left or right.
Kine	Swimming. 7 Frame delay	1.020	Still holding left or right
Kirby/Rick/Coo	Swimming	1.012, 1.008, 1.000
Kine	Swimming (no A button mashing)	1.012, 1.008, 0.250
Kine	Swimming. 8 Frame delay	1.002	Still holding left or right
Kirby	Parasol long linger	0.243, 0.231	Kirby floating via parasol gets even slower after 8 more frames
Kirby	Floating	0.192, 0.180
Kirby	Parasol slowest linger	0.179, 0.167	Kirby floating via parasol after another 8 frames. Slowest Kirby gets with parasol.
Kine	Spark while holding B and walking backwards (land)	0.074, 0.052, 0.030, 0.008, 0	Kine will freeze for 18 frames after moving for 4 frames and not even moving for a total of 1 pixel.

Damage Output Tables

General Damage Outputs

Non-animal specific means of damaging bosses or mid-bosses.

Animal Friend	Ability	Damage Amount	Short Description
General	Star	10	Inhaling and spitting something out
	Double Star	20	Inhaling 2 things at once and spitting them out
	Ice Block	8	Freezing anything into an ice block and pushing it
	Dark Matter Energy Magic (1 hit)	10	First phase of DM when a single piece of magic hits DM
	Dark Matter Energy Magic (2 hits)	20	First phase of DM when two pieces of magic hits DM at once
	Dark Matter Energy Magic (3 hits)	30	First phase of DM when three pieces of magic hits DM at once
	Dark Matter Orb (1 hit)	20	Second phase of DM when hitting back a single orb piece
	Dark Matter Orb (Double Hit)	40	Second phase of DM when hitting back two orb pieces at once

Kirby

When Kirby has an Ability without an Animal Friend.

Animal Friend	Ability	Damage Amount	Short Description
No Animal Friends	Burning	4	Kirby goes horizontally a short distance. Used for some fights.
	Cutter	3	Kirby throws a fairly weak boomerang. Usually used for the King Dedede fight.
	Ice	2	Kirby exhales ice breath out of his mouth. Does a little amount of damage, not great for fights.
	Needle	5	Short range but does good damage.
	Parasol (First Hitbox)	3	Kirby uses Parasol. When it initially comes forward it will deal three damage.
	Parasol (Delayed Hitbox)	2	Kirby uses Parasol. When its been out for a little bit it will deal less damage
	Parasol (Top Hitbox)	1	Unless Kirby is using Parasol, the top of the umbrella when its above Kirbys head has an extremely weak hitbox. Not good for bosses
	Spark	3	Kirby using Spark has a slow start up and is not very useful for boss fights. Only used when mandatory for Rainbow Drops.
	Stone	6	Kirby Stone makes you immobile but unable to take damage yourself. Used for a few fights because of its strength but its hard to use.
	Rainbow Sword	2	Only available for the Dark Matter fights. Terribly weak, used to finish off phase 2 usually. Can be used to finish off phase 1 but not very fast.

Rick

When Kirby has both Rick and an Ability

Animal Friend	Ability	Damage Amount	Short Description
Rick	Burning	3	Rick breathes fire. Does not too great damage. Not useful in the main categories.
	Cutter	4	Rick throws Kirby like a boomerang. Very slow and hard to use but has a few random glitches associated with this combo.
	Ice	2	Rick gets an ice "shield" put around him. Not very mobile and terrible damage and no invincibility makes it not too great.
	Needle	8	Rick extends spines out of his back. Has the highest damage per second out of any ability in the game. Ricks most useful feature.
	Parasol (First Hitbox)	4	Rick throws parasol and Kirby up for an upward hitbox. The initial "burst" from the move does the most damage. No mobility when used.
	Parasol (Delayed Hitbox)	2	When parasol has been out for a bit the hitbox gets weaker.
	Spark	2	Rick shoots out a beam that starts upwards then moves down. Not a great move for damaging. Most notably used in 5-5 to get the Rainbow Drop.
	Stone	2	Rick turns into a stone and Kirby stands on top of him and rolls him around. Has a few niche uses in Rick%, like giving the 4-2 jump a backup and making it easier.

Coo

When Kirby has both Coo and an Ability

Animal Friend	Ability	Damage Amount	Short Description
Coo	Burning	4	Coo is invincible for a short period while moving forward and downwards. Really useful in a fair amount of places.
	Cutter (1 Hit)	2	Coo throws out three feathers. If only one hits, it does 2 damage.
	Cutter (2 Hits)	4	Coo throws out three feathers. If only two hits, it does 4 damage.
	Cutter (3 Hits)	6	Coo throws out three feathers. If all three land on the same frame it does 6 damage. Highest damaging ability with Coo and is the most useful and prominent combo in the game.
	Ice	2	Kirby exhales ice out of his mouth while getting carried by Coo. Not very useful.
	Needle	4	Spines extend beneath Kirby and Coo. Not very useful.
	Parasol	2	Coo spins around and is invulnerable for a short period. Can be used as a safety strategy in a few spots.
	Stone	4	Coo drops down and stomps on the ground. Deceptively big hitbox and can be used in a few spots.

Kine

When Kirby has both Kine and an Ability

Animal Friend	Ability	Damage Amount	Short Description
Kine	Burning	5	Kine shoots a small fire breathe across the screen. Does a good amount of damage which makes it quite useful in a few places.
	Cutter	4	Kine shoots a slow wave across the screen. Pretty much a noticeably worse version of the Burning Kine combo
	Ice	2	Kine puts an ice shield around himself. Can be mashed and comes out very quickly and doesn't slow down when jumping. Very useful unless you are fighting a boss or mid boss.
	Needle	6	Kine gets a short hitbox of spines around his body. Because of the short range, it is hard to use and it is not very useful despite the damage output.
	Parasol	4	The parasol will stick out in front of Kine for a short period of time. Harder to use and there are much better options.
	Spark (Lingering Hitbox)	2	A lightbolb is held out in front of Kine and lights up rooms. When B is held, the lingering hitbox will only do 2 damage.
	Spark (Released Hitbox)	4	The lightbolb is relesed when B is released and will explode on impact with something. Does 4 damage instead.
	Stone	8	Kine drops and becomes immobile. Does an insane amount of damage. Really good for the one boss fight underwater. Hard to use to fight on land but its still Kines best damaging ability.