Vault
A vault is a movement technique that involves bouncing off of Cappy while Mario is on the ground. Vaults can provide lots of speed if they are chained from a ground pound roll, making them very useful for trickjumps that require horizontal distance. Although they don't provide quite as much distance as a momentum-aided triple jump, they can be performed in a tighter space, especially if an up-down vault is used.
Reproduction steps
To perform a full-speed vault:
- Throw Cappy and stall him in place by holding X;
- Jump, ground pound (or perform a buffered spinpound if extra speed is desired) and roll forward into Cappy with Y all while still holding X;
- Continue to hold the joystick forward as Mario bounces off of Cappy.
This will cause Mario to be launched in the direction of Cappy.
Properties
A vault has a height of 496 units[1], which is the exact same height as the backflip and sideflip. This height is not affected by how long any buttons are held after the vault. Vaults take more time to execute than backflips or sideflips, but they can be used to traverse much greater distances since they can be boosted with momentum. Because of this, backflips and sideflips are rarely used for trickjumps, while the vault is an invaluable tool for trickjumpers.
The jump counter maintained by Archivist Toadette does not register vaults as jumps, meaning vaults can be used in various minimum jumps runs.
Up-down vaults
Up-down vaults are a variant of vaults that can be used to vault off of a platform with extremely limited space. First conceived by victoto, they involve using a midair downthrow to perform a vault that uses little to no horizontal space, and are therefore only possible to execute using joy-cons. To perform an up-down vault:
- Stand at the very edge of the starting platform facing the direction in which you wish to vault;
- Upthrow, and immediately jump and perform a ground pound jump while holding the cap throw button;
- Bounce off of Cappy at the top of the ground pound jump, and downthrow at the peak of the bounce;
- Ground pound and roll into Cappy.
This will result in Mario being launched in the exact same manner as a normal vault, but using much less space.
Uses
Normal vaults don't have many applications in speedrunning aside from trickjumps such as Snow Dram and Left Side, since they can take a bit of time to set up. However, a faster variant of the vault known as the divevault enables a vault to be performed almost instantly, albeit with difficulty.