Minimum Captures Darker Side
Minimum Captures Darker Side is a subcategory of Minimum Captures that involves completing the Darker Side category while capturing as few objects or enemies as possible. This entails reaching the Darker Side kingdom without purchasing any duplicate moons, which is forbidden by the rules of the Darker Side category.
Captures and skips
The format of a Minimum Captures Darker Side run is to complete Minimum Captures Any% and collect as many moons as possible without capturing any additional objects. Depending on the rule set, it may be possible to obtain over 500 moons and thus reach Darker Side without any additional captures; however, in some two-player runs, this is not possible. This is because two-player Minimum Captures Any% runs utilize Morning Metro to reach the Metro Kingdom early in a state where there are not nearly as many moons available.
Two-player runs on versions 1.0.1 or higher cannot visit Bruncheon without any captures, meaning captureless Meat Skip cannot be performed for extra moons. This makes completing a two-player Darker Side run impossible on these versions without an extra capture until more moons are proven possible.
Note that it is not actually necessary in any case to capture an additional object to reach Darker Side, since after beating the game, the player can purchase extra Power Moons from each Crazy Cap shop and acquire as many as needed. However, since this is against the rules of the Darker Side category, a valid Minimum Captures Darker Side run must collect 500 unique Power Moons prior to traveling to Darker Side. Otherwise, the run would be considered a Darker Side Dupes run rather than a Darker Side run.
The following table shows the required captures for each subcategory, as well as any skips used to bypass captures not required in a particular subcategory.
✔️ = required capture
🟢 = choice between two captures
❌ = not used in route