Minimum Captures Darker Side
Darker Side Minimum Captures 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 more than one Power Moon from any shop, which is forbidden by the rules of the Darker Side category.
Categories
The format of a Darker Side Minimum Captures run is to complete Any% Minimum Captures and collect as many moons as possible without capturing any additional objects. In single-player runs, it is possible to obtain 500 moons and thus reach Darker Side without any additional captures.
However, two-player Any% Minimum Captures runs utilize Morning Metro to reach the Metro Kingdom early in a state where there are not as many moons available. Because of this, there is no known way to obtain 500 moons without additional captures, meaning one extra object must be captured to reach that total. The easiest way to do this is to simply exclude Morning Metro from the run, and fight Mechawiggler as normal, but the extra capture can theoretically be anything the player chooses.
Note that it is not actually necessary to capture this additional object to reach Darker Side, since after beating the game, the player can purchase extra Power Moons from each shop and acquire as many as needed. However, since this is against the rules of the Darker Side category, a valid Darker Side Minimum Captures run must collect 500 unique Power Moons prior to traveling to Darker Side.
| 2P, version 1.0.0-1.1.0 | 2P, version 1.2.0-1.3.0 | 1P, version 1.0.0-1.1.0 | 1P, version 1.2.0-1.3.0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capture Count | 5 | 6 | 13 | 16 |
| Madame Broode Skip | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Morning Metro | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Bowser's Kingdom wire skips | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Pokio Skip | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nut jumping | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| 500 moons without extra captures | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Darker Side dungeon skip | Frog Airswim or Cappy return cancel[1] | Cappy return cancel[1] | Frog Airswim | ✗ |
| Yoshi Skip | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Glydon Upflight | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |