Castle Dedede

The last stage of the game that features a boss rush section with 4 doors that each have a picture of a previous boss. Entering a door leads to a short version of that boss' stage, ending with a door blocked by a special Gordo which will defeat Kirby in one hit. The Gordos can be destroyed by touching the impostor Kirby, but it's also possible to get into the doors while the Gordo is still there. Players can finish the bosses in any order they wish - although it's optimal to finish the Lololo & Lalala room first due to it being the closest room to Kirby's initial spawn point - before facing King Dedede for the final battle. Dedede has 4 attacks but only 2 of them (jumping and hammering) give out stars, further adding to the randomness of this already RNG-heavy run.

Castle dedede

Stage Directory

Green Greens

Castle Lololo

Float Islands

Bubbly Clouds

Castle Dedede

Normal Mode

Since the bosses for Normal Mode are comparatively easy (especially Kabula), runners are typically less wary of their health and can go for more aggressive strategies, such as damage boosting past the Gordos in the Whispy and Kracko rooms, which save a second each.

Runners can also go for double hits in the Lololo & Lalala fight it they get favorable patterns. Before fighting Dedede, runners should check their remaining health and can choose to take a quick intentional death if they are low (especially if they are planning on doing double hits on Dedede, as doing them damageless - while possible - requires much more precise spacing).

Doing the Gordo skip damageless was thought to be TAS-only until around 2022, but since then RTA-viable setups have been found for all 4 rooms. They are some of the most difficult strats in the run though and are not recommended unless a runner doesn't have any other timesaves left to implement.

Extra Mode

The bosses in extra mode is so much more unforgiving and therefore,runners mostly don't tend to go for any gordo skips(While whispy skip can be done with the same way as normal mode, kracko can't and took until 2022 to discover an RTA-viable setup for it ) (SHOW GIF of kracko gordo skip(EX MODE)) similarly, runner could do a quick intentional death in dedede fight if they are low on health (most runner would be due to kabula fight could drain most of the health ) plus dedede fights in extra mode attacks and moves way faster ,fighting it with low health would be very brutal in general. But there's an unique aspect for dedede as they can go off screen while they are rushing to the edge of it, some inspect shows that they are more likely to do the jump attack(only attack to give double star) in this situation ( but not 100% sure(?)) so some runners found lure dedede to be off screen helpful for getting a quicker fight. (may be a GIF for that?)

All Items

At first sight it seems to have no "items" in this stage but in the current ruleset, those impostor kirby is required to be collect for "all items" run so gordo skip would not be allowed in this category.