Nut jumping
Nut jumping, also known as infinite nut jumping or the wet nut glitch, is an exploit that allows Mario to gain unlimited height using a large seed. The trick has gained notoriety for being extremely difficult to repeat for many iterations, meaning very few players have become consistent enough to gain a significant amount of height with the trick.
This glitch only works on game versions 1.1.0 and earlier.
Setup[edit | edit source]
The glitch must be performed using a large seed, often colloquially referred to as a "nut", and does not work with standard seeds.
Normally, large seeds only allow Mario to bounce on them while they're resting on solid ground. When a large seed enters a body of water, it is postulated that a flag is set that allows the seed to be bounced on regardless of whether it is grounded, which has the intention of allowing Mario to bounce on it as it is actively sinking in the water. If the seed is retrieved from the water while sinking (whether by Mario grabbing it or it despawning), the flag will be reset.
However, on game versions 1.1.0 and earlier, the game fails to clear this flag if the seed is retrieved from the water while it is also in its grounded state. This means that allowing the seed to sink to the bottom of a body of water allows this flag to be "smuggled" out of the water. Once smuggled, this flag will persist until reloading the stage even if the seed despawns, unless the seed is later retrieved from water while not grounded. This setup is used to allow bouncing on the large seed in midair.
Since the flag is not cleared when the seed despawns, it is possible to throw the seed into water and simply wait for it to respawn, if the water is not too deep. This is often used when setting up nut jumping in Bowser's Kingdom.
Execution[edit | edit source]
After performing the initial setup, nut jumping involves repeatedly performing the following steps while in midair, usually after beginning the sequence at the peak of a jump:
- Throw the large seed by pressing X or Y.
- After a specific amount of time, dive into the seed. The timing for this is quite precise, since Mario must dive into a specific spot on the seed to be able to bounce on it.
- Continue holding X/Y after the dive or press it again just as Mario contacts the seed in order to grab it. Mario cannot grab the seed while in the dive animation, but he will do so instantaneously after bouncing on it and reverting to the jump animation.
- The bounce will propel Mario upward a bit, which is what allows the trick to be used to gain unlimited height. Around the peak of the bounce, the seed can be thrown again and the steps repeated.
The optimal rhythm for this trick is a triplet rhythm with roughly even spacing: throw, dive, catch, and repeat. For maximum consistency, the player should not touch the left joystick at all while performing this trick.
Uses[edit | edit source]
The most famous use of the nut jumping exploit is in Minimum Captures runs, most notably Minimum Captures Any%. This trick allows the final wire capture up to the RoboBrood arena in Bowser's Kingdom to be skipped entirely using a large seed that can be found in the Main Courtyard. The most efficient way to do the trick is to throw the seed into the pool at the bottom of the courtyard and wait for it to respawn, eliminating the need to climb back up to the seed's spawn point.
Nut jumping can also be used to climb on top of the ice walls surrounding the Snow Kingdom overworld. Some of these walls have an angle such that Mario can stand in place on top of them, including a wall on the south side of the kingdom near the Odyssey[1][2][3] and a wall on the east side near the outbound Warp Painting.[4][5] Although nut jumping is not the only way to reach the top of these walls, it is one of the easier ways to reach some of the few slopes where Mario can stand without sliding off.