Moon Cave Skip

Moon Cave Skip, often shortened to Moon Skip, is a jump that can be used to skip the entire interior of the Underground Moon Caverns in the Moon Kingdom from the outside. It involves jumping off of the head of the Sphynx in the overworld and exploiting wall jumping physics to reach the top of the cliff.

Moon Cave Skip is one of the single largest timesaving skips in the entire game. Since it bypasses the entirety of the large Underground Moon Caverns interior section, it saves around two minutes in total.

Execution

The approximate location for the first wall jump

To perform Moon Cave Skip:

• Perform a ground pound jump off of the Sphynx's head. (Other jump types are possible, but more difficult.)
• Throw Cappy toward the wall and hold forward without diving to bounce off of him.
• Wall jump off of a specific spot on the wall behind the Sphynx, shown at right. This spot has a texture that resembles a rectangle or L-shape.
• Hold straight left until Mario begins to slide on the wall on the left. If Mario is unable to slide, it means the first wall jump was likely performed in the wrong location.
• Wall jump again, throw Cappy and dive on top of the back wall.

Other methods are possible, but this is generally the most consistent, and is therefore used by the majority of players.

Variants

One-wall-jump

A variant referred to as one-wall-jump Moon Cave Skip is often used by advanced speedrunners. As the name implies, this version of the trick only involves doing a single wall jump on the wall behind the Sphynx, which is followed by a dive cancel against the sloped top of the wall. After the dive cancel, one can cap throw and dive again to the right to land on solid ground. Very advanced players can opt for a divevault after this final dive to begin heading toward the Wedding Hall.

Obtaining enough height to get a dive cancel against the top of the wall rather than bonking requires fairly precise inputs.

Speedrun usage

This is used in virtually all categories that progress through Moon Kingdom in any way. In categories such as Any% and World Peace, the skip saves a massive amount of time by eliminating the need to enter the caverns entirely.

In the case of 100%, All Moons and Darker Side, this skip allows the player to finish the Moon Kingdom quickly and then come back later to collect moons inside the caverns. Even in categories that require moons from inside the caverns to be collected, the skip saves time by skipping the long Madame Broode boss fight at the top of the cavern interior, which is completely unnecessary since her defeat here is not tracked in any way.