Fluttering
Contents
How To Flutter
In this video uploaded by Trix, he discusses how to do perfect flutters, consecutive flutters and the visual cue that he uses.
Perfect Flutter
Normally, a flutter is done by simply pushing the jump button and holding it until a flutter begins, however, this method does not give you maximum height. What you want to do instead is, release B at the peak of your jump and then, as quickly as possible, repress it to do a perfect flutter. Doing this will allow you to gain a few extra pixels of height. It is a 3 frame window to do a perfect flutter.
They can be used to access several areas that are otherwise too high to reach, such as:
- The area above the !switch in 2-4.
- The last room of the bottom-right room in 4-4 (after you shoot the cloud containing the key).
- Traveling over the stone column in 6-4.
- After obtaining the key in 6-6.
The video demonstrates how a normal flutter does not give you enough height to reach the ledge and then how a perfect flutter allows you to just barely make it with the extra height.
Extended Flutter
An extended flutter is performed by bouncing on an enemy and then holding B and there are a couple ways to get the most height out of an extended flutter:
- Hold B just before bouncing on the enemy to get a big bounce. Not holding B results in a much smaller bounce.
- Release B and manually initiate the flutter around the peak of the bounce, rather than just waiting for an automatic flutter. This is sort of the same idea as the perfect flutter.
- You can also follow the extended flutter up with a manual flutter to gain a bit more height.
Extended flutters are used in many levels to reach otherwise unreachable areas like in 1-1 to skip the beanstalk or in 6-4 to travel over the stone column, skipping the need for a key.
The video demonstrates an extended flutter, followed by a perfect flutter as part of the Warpless route in 6-4.
Sustained Flutter
Flutters can be chained indefinitely so that Yoshi does not lose height throughout consecutive flutters, in fact, a few pixels of height can be gained between flutters by doing perfect flutters. This is used to travel across areas where fluttering is faster, such as the water section in 3-4, the platform skip in 5-4 or the lava skip in 6-4.
Lava Skip
Lava skip saves about 3 seconds over riding the log. For some people, it's too risky to do, especially with late game nerves and how little time it saves. If you skipped both mid-rings up to this point, dying means you'll have to replay the entire level resulting in multiple minutes lost. Even if you get the mid-ring just before this room you'll still lose 20-40 seconds depending on where you fall in the lava. Doing multiple flutters over a long distance and maintaining height takes a lot of practice, but you know the saying, practice makes perfect! 
5-4 Skip
The notorious 5-4 skip is by far the hardest trick in the entire game, way harder than lava skip. It can take a very long time to land it even once, but the time it saves is very huge, making it totally worth learning. There are 4 different ways to do the skip. All of them are hard (Half Skip is a lot easier though).
A timing comparison for the skip in Any%:
- No Skip (Use platform): 2:27
- Half Skip (w/ Shy Guy): 1:31 (-56s)
- Half Skip (No Shy Guy): 1:24 (-63s)
- Full Skip (w/ Shy Guy): 1:10 (-77s)
- Full Skip (No Shy Guy): 1:03 (-84s)
Full Skip saves ~60s in 100%, whereas Half Skip would save ~40s.
