This page is designed to explain the ins and outs of the hint system in DK64 Randomizer. This is a complex system that is of very high importance to quickly beat seeds, particularly when item randomizer is enabled. Each type of hint works a little differently so each will be covered separately and some common features will be listed at the end.

• The "Standard" hint system is recommended for most settings. This system is flexible and accounts for all kinds of win conditions, seed length, predicted fill difficulty, and many other settings.
• The "Cryptic" setting is identical to "Standard" with some light riddling in names.
• The "Item Hinting" setting is a separately designed hint system ideal for beginners.
• The "Advanced Item Hinting" setting is a twist on Item Hinting intended to increase the complexity of that hint system.

The following hints are in every seed, and are generally extremely helpful.

Entering Snide's with a Kong without any blueprints will have Snide inform you the Kongs required (in order) to shut off the Blast-O-Matic. This was previously on a hint door and is now found exclusively at Snide's!

Cranky will inform you if the item on the Jetpac game is foolish or not. For more detail on what "foolish" entails, see the Foolish Hints section below.

• "A foolish game" will mean it is a foolish item
• "Something you might need on your quest" is a non-foolish item. Note that this is not necessarily a required item, merely not foolish.

Upon obtaining enough medals to play the game, Cranky will be more specific about the type of item on the minigame instead.

The following hints are hint types that will show up in the Standard and Cryptic settings.

Path hints are critical to finding very important items across your seed. They come in the basic form of: "Something in the {hint region} is on the path to {a list of path endpoints}."

The goal with path hints is to pare down to the bare essentials (within reason) for the end item on the path. So if Key 8 is locked by Coconut, Key 8 will have Coconut on its path. This then applies to all other prerequisites, so all items needed to get Coconut will be on the path to Key 8. This repeats until the moves needed have no prerequisites. At this point you have created the path. Here's an example.

"Key 7": {
    "Factory Dirt Patch (Dark Room)": "Key 7",
    "Isles Vines Training Barrel": "Shockwave",
    "Isles Dirt Patch (Under Caves Lobby)": "Bongos",
    "Japes Cranky Donkey": "Coconut",
    "Castle Candy Tiny": "Homing Ammo",
    "Caves Donkey 5 Door Cabin": "Peanut",
    "Aztec Diddy 5 Door Temple": "Primate Punch"
}

The goal of the path is on the top of the path listed, and then items are generally acquired in order. Bongos + Coconut will get you Peanut out of Donkey's 5 Door Cabin. Then Peanut will get Punch from Diddy's 5 Door Temple. Finally you get Key 7 from the dirt patch in the Factory Dark Room.

Some assumptions are made to improve the quality of the paths. This is important to more efficiently hint more relevant things. These assumptions are critical to maximizing your understanding of how path hints will direct you. Assumptions made vary by settings.
For path generation it is assumed that:

• You have infinite coins. No moves will be hinted strictly for acquiring coins. This would be absolutely awful to get hinted, as it would intuitively point you in the wrong direction entirely.
• You have infinite GBs. Similarly to coins, a move needed strictly for GBs would point you in the wrong direction, making it an actively detrimental hint.
• You have access to K. Rool. This is essential to K. Rool paths. More on that later.
• You have access to all Kongs. This is to prevent significant retreading or duplication on paths. If Peanut is used to unlock Tiny, we don't want Peanut to be on the path to every Tiny check in the game. This is often stated as "Kongs are assumed," meaning that a Kong will never be on the path to anything but itself! Similarly, path hints will never hint the direct location of a Kong!
• You have access to all levels. Similarly to Kongs, Everything on the path to Key 5 should be aimed directly at that item to be as straightforward as possible. We don't want Key prerequisites to be on the path to Keys via another Key. This is often stated as "Keys are assumed" meaning that in Season 3, a key will never be on the path to a different key!
  In addition, if Helm is shuffled in your level order, access to level 8 is also assumed. This effectively removes the Monkeyport pad's requirement from being on the path to everything in level 8 (but not from things on the top level of Krem Isle!)
  Note for Loading Zone Randomizer: This assumption does not apply in LZR! This is because the impact of adding any given loading zone is significantly reduced.
• You can dive to get into level 4. This is to prevent a heavily-locked Diving from impacting every location in level 4. It would be unintuitive for Diving to be on the path to Forest Chunky Minecart purely because Forest was level 4.
  Note for Loading Zone Randomizer: This assumption does not apply in LZR! This is for similar reasons as the previous, as gaining access to a single random entrance is less impactful.
• You can get past the quicksand at the start of Aztec. We don't want that to overload or misdirect paths for everything in Aztec, regardless of the placement of Vines or Tiny & Twirl. However, Vines often ends up on the path to things in a Guitar-locked back of Aztec because you may need Vines (or Rocketbarrel) to get to the Guitar pad that opens it up.
  Note for Loading Zone Randomizer: This assumption does not apply in LZR! Much of the time you have access to Aztec via exiting the 5-Door Temple, and when you don't it is notable.
• You have access to upper Isles. Again, another Vines constraint to possibly save some headaches. This is far more niche and not relevant to Season 3 because with activated Isles warps you immediately have access to upper Isles.
  Note for Loading Zone Randomizer: This assumption does not apply in LZR! This is because it is again loading-zone-based in settings where these specific loading zones likely matter significantly less.

One half of your path hint is comprised of a region of DK64. These regions are arbitrarily created by us and utilize natural divisions in levels to help intuit reasonably-sized chunks of the game. All locations are in exactly one region with regards to path hints.
You can check the pause menu at any time and see the current region you are in!
The full list of regions can be found here.
A full list of location-region pairs for most major locations can be found here.
If the location that is being hinted is a starting move, it will directy hint the move itself instead of the location. e.g. "Rocketbarrel Boost is on the path to..."

Path hints are designed to pinpoint the location of various endpoints to your seed. These endpoints are generally focused on your win condition and you will almost always need to complete them to win. The endpoints are as follows:

• Each Key can be an endpoint. e.g. "path to Key 4."
• If your win condition involves beating K. Rool, each endgame fight can be an endpoint. e.g. "path to Final Diddy Phase."
• Having your collective Kong Family (all of DK, Diddy, Lanky, Tiny, and Chunky) can be an endpoint. e.g. "path to Free Kongs."
• If your win condition involves the DK Rap, each verse and the Fridge can be an endpoint. e.g. "path to Chunky Verse."
• If your win condition centers on the Fairy Camera (Kremling Kapture), then the Fairy Camera can be an endpoint. e.g. "path to taking photos."

In the Standard hint system, the number of path hints you will be given is a percentage of the number of distinct locations eligible for path hints, rounded randomly.
To build an example, here's a scenario:

• You have two path endpoints in your seed, Key 1 and Key 2.
• The path to Key 1 is four steps, and the path to Key 2 is five steps.
• There is one move on both paths.
• This leads to the number of eligible path hinted locations being 8. Four from one path, five from the other, minus the one shared between them for 8 distinct locations.
• The number of path hints you will receive is then 8 * .59 = 4.72
• 4.72 is then rounded, with a 72% chance to round to 5, and a 28% chance to round to 4.

Each hinted move is hinted to every endpoint path it is on.

• Hints can point to key and win condition paths at the same time. e.g. Something in the Lighthouse Area is on the path to Key 8 and Final Lanky Phase.
• Every endpoint (with the exception of the Kong Family path) in your seed is guaranteed to be on at least one path hint unless hinting it would be useless. A useless hint that could not appear might look like: Mini Monkey is on the path to Final Tiny Phase. (and nothing else!)
• All path hints will always point to different items. Identically worded path hints point to different items.
• You can get a LOT of paths hinted for a single item. Fear not! This is usually a very important item with broad uses and your path hints that point to single paths usually help focus in on your goals.
• If an item is on the path to All Keys, All Kong Verses, or All Verses, then the hint will shorthand it to such. e.g. Climbing is on the path to All Keys. In the case of Keys, "All" refers to every Key you do not start with.

Because ALL paths are hinted for the chosen item, you can use that information to deduce what an item is NOT on the path to. This may assist you as you track down your last items - remember what they cannot be behind!

• e.g. Something in the Main Isle is on the path to Key 4 and Final Diddy Phase. and therefore NOT on the path to any other Keys or K. Rool phases! If you only found Peanuts in the Main Isle, it would be wise to not use Peanuts to look for Key 7.

These are hints that point to distinct individual locations that are strictly required to logically beat the seed. Whatever item you find at that location will be essential in achieving your win condition. This is a riff on ZOOTR's Way of the Hero and functions identically.

A "strictly required" item means that every sequence of events that can logically complete the seed will always use that location. This means that either/or situations are often neither Way of the Hoard.
There are two cases that come up very frequently that highlight this:

• Progressive Slams: Often you need one slam upgrade for a blue slam switch. In many of those worlds, you could logically acquire either slam upgrade to beat the seed. This means that neither is "strictly required" because there exists a world where you did not go to each of the slams' locations and still beat the seed. If one slam locks the other slam, then all worlds will route through the first slam's location, making that location Way of the Hoard.
• Medals: Colored bananas are spread across levels with a wide variety of requirements. Often you need some moves to reach your medal reward threshold. If multiple combinations of moves could reach the threshold, then that means there exist worlds where you acquired each of those combinations to do so. Only the items contained in all combinations would be on the path to that medal reward and therefore Way of the Hoard.

Both Multipath hints and Way of the Hoard hints are aimed at specific locations. These two categories of hints are generated independently of each other. Two of your hints may be:
"Something in the Giant Mushroom Insides is on the path to Key 5."
"Forest Tiny Mushroom Barrel is on the Way of the Hoard"
It is possible for these to both be referring to the same location, but you cannot be certain until you have full cleared the region. It could be that Key 5 is on Forest Donkey Mushroom Cannons while Gorilla Gone is in that bonus barrel.

There is a mechanism which attempts to reduce the chances of a location being both WotH-hinted and multipath-hinted.
At a low level, each hint is looking at one specific location. If a location is randomly chosen to be hinted but is already hinted elsewhere (by a different type of hint), it will reroll that choice of location up to two times attempting to find an unhinted location. If the last reroll is an already hinted location, tough luck - the location will end up hinted by two different types of hints (e.g. path hinted and WotH hinted, Kong Location hinted and WotH hinted).

You will have the levels containing each of your Progressive Slams hinted if you did not start with at least Super Simian Slam (Blue Slam). This comes in the form of:
"Still looking for some super slam strength? Try looking in DK Isles or Frantic Factory or Crystal Caves."
You may have fewer than three levels hinted if you either started with one of the Progressive Slams or if multiple Progressive Slams are in the same level.
This hint is functionally identical to the Slam Extra Hint contained in Chunky Phase (see Extra Hints below).

You may find these hints if your goal is K. Rool and you have either fewer than 5 phases or the final fight can include T&S bosses. In addition to these hints, you can find the K. Rool fight order on the wall in K. Rool's throne room in Helm. Because of this, you are not guaranteed to find one of these hints if your seed is expected to route through Helm (usually via the Helm Key Lock).

• The Item Hinting hint system will always have one if you are not guaranteed to need to clear Helm.
• The existence of Multipath hints in a seed will prevent this hint from appearing, as you will get your phases hinted in portions through those hints instead.

You may find these hints if one or more of your Crown or Key Helm doors have a random requirement. For each door that is random, you will receive one hint telling you what the requirement is.

• The Item Hinting system abides by the same rules and will place these hints as necessary.

You may find these hints if you unlock your Kongs throughout your seed.

• If Kongs are in cages, you will find hints that tell you which Kong frees another in a level. This will not distinguish between cages in Aztec.
• If Kongs are not in cages (e.g. on GBs, in shops, etc.), you will find hints that tell you who finds each Kong and in what level. e.g. "Tiny can be found by Diddy in Jungle Japes."
  Sometimes they will not hint the Kong but instead hint the item type they are on (e.g. "Diddy is held by a fairy in Jungle Japes"). You will always get one hint per locked Kong.
  In some rare scenarios, you may see "{kong name} can find {him/her}self in {level}? How odd..." This means that the kong is on a check flagged for themself but is still available for other kongs, usually through the Free Trade Agreement.
• Note that if the kong is on a boss, your hint will point to the Kong the boss is for, but it will not tell you it's a boss!
• In progressive hints, your Kong hints will always appear on or before the 20th hint (the 5th pack of hints)

A region is "foolish" if the region contains no major items within. A "major" item is an item that can have logical impact on the seed:

• Potions, and this can include some niche scenarios like Third Melon having logical impact with lava water
• Keys
• Kongs
• Shopkeepers, including Snide
• Any non-GB item used for a B. Locker
• Any non-GB item used for a Helm Door
• Medals, if Jetpac has a major item
• Fairies, if Returning the Banana Fairies has a major item
• Pearls, if the Mermaid has a major item
• The Bean, if the Top of the Beanstalk has a major item

Notable always-foolish things:

• GBs, no matter how many you need or how tight a B. Locker requirement may be
• Colored Bananas, regardless of how required certain medals may be
• Banana Coins, no matter how tight prices may be
• Collectibles such as ammo boxes, homing ammo boxes, crystal coconuts, oranges, and film
• Events, e.g. If the Lighthouse is foolish, that does not kill every location that needs the water raised
• Entrances, e.g. If the Cabins Area is foolish it does not mean that all entrances in the region are foolish in LZR.

Some tips on leveraging your foolish hints to the maximum:

• You may find a hint that says "It would be foolish to collect colored bananas in {level}." This means that your medal rewards AND the boss in that level contain nothing useful.
• These hints do take into account items locking other items. For example if you find a crown in a foolish region, you know that neither Helm door requires crowns.
• The odds a foolish region will be hinted foolish is dependent on the size of the region. Larger regions are more likely to be hinted foolish.
• Knowing a region is foolish can reduce the odds of finding non-GB things in it, and may make it a decent play to acquire GBs if that is all you seek.

These hints tell you how many potions are contained in a hint region.

• The hint will look something like: Scouring the Forest Mills will yield you 2 potions.
• The hints have nothing to do with the quality of the potion. Instrument Upgrades and Ammo Belts are included in the count!
• Eligible hint regions are regions that are not shops and contain at least one potion.
• There is no bias to what eligible regions it will select.
• This only counts potions! You may find Kongs or Keys in that region that do not contribute to the count.

You may find these hints if you are in coupled or decoupled loading zone randomizer seeds.

In seeds where Shops are in the item rando pool (most seeds), your hints will point at entrances which "should be of great interest to your quest." The hinted entrances will lead you to a location that is Way of the Hoard.
Duplicate entrance hints point at different items! If an entrance is hinted multiple times, multiple items are needed past that entrance.

This can route you through connector loading zones, categorized as maps with exactly 2 entrances. Connectors include the following:

• Each Level Lobby
• Isles Training Grounds
• Forest Front of the Mill
• Castle Museum Behind Glass (the area between the Monkeyport pad and the Car Race)
• Castle Ballroom
• Castle Crypt
• Japes Mountain

This connector routing can go through multiple connectors! For example:

1. One entrance to Factory Lobby is found in the Igloo Area
2. The other entrance in Factory Lobby leads to the Ballroom
3. The other entrance in the Ballroom leads to the Anthill, where a WotH Bean resides

In this scenario, a hint pointing to the Igloo entrance would be a valid entrance hint that points at the Bean's location.

If Shops are not in the item pool, you will receive a basic form of Entrance hints:

• You are prioritized one hint that points you to Japes, Aztec, and Factory each.
• The remaining entrance hints will usually point to important locations, prioritizing useful connectors like Castle tunnels or Training Grounds.

This is an entirely separate hint system designed to be a streamlined experience. It is intended to be more approachable than learning paths while still maintaining complexity and depth in analysis. It is entirely separate from the Standard hint system. Of the above hint types, only Helm Door and Final Fight Order hints will carry over.

The hints have a 50/50 chance to be either:

• A: Looking for {item}? Try looking in the {hint region}.
  • Hint regions are the same ones used in path hints.
• B: Looking for {item}? Try looking in {level} with {kong}.
  • This style follows the same general hint structure as the Extra Hints (see Extra Hints below), meaning it could also be: Looking for {item}? Seek {location type} in {level} for this.
    • Location types include Kasplats, dirt patches, fairies, battle arenas, melon crates, and hint doors.

• The items that can be hinted are Kongs, Keys, Shopkeepers, the Bean, and non-junk moves.
• The priority of what gets hinted is the following:
  • Keys
  • Kongs that are on the Way of the Hoard
  • Eligible items that are on the Way of the Hoard
  • A slam if you have not received a slam hint from the above priority and you don't start with Slam 2
  • Eligible items that are not on the Way of the Hoard

This priority means that if a move is hinted, it is more likely to be required. If a move is not hinted, it is NOT required unless your seed has so many required items that not everything could get a hint (this is rare unless you're actively trying to make a seed awful).

• Every hint door available will be taken by these item hinting hints.
• Hints to required things will try very hard to not lock themselves.
  • e.g. A Rocketbarrel hint will not be on the Rocketbarrel-locked door in Caves lobby unless it is not Way of the Hoard.
  • e.g. A Key 2 hint will not be in lobby 3 or lobby 4.
• There are a few hints that will be placed before item hinting hints:
  • A Final Fight Order hint will be placed if K. Rool is random and required.
  • A Helm Door hint will be placed for each random Helm door.

All the same rules apply to Advanced Item Hinting except that the item to-be-hinted is instead hinted as a category of that item.

• For example, a kong would be hinted as Looking for kongs? Try looking... (the rest of the hint is the same as described above)
• Kong moves can be hinted as either Looking for {kong} moves? or Looking for {move type}?.
  • The move types are: Guns, Instruments, active kong moves (Punch, Grab, etc.), kong barrel moves (Mini, Rocketbarrel, etc.), kong pad moves (Blast, Balloon, etc.)
  • Even though you can now hint items in two different ways, there will only ever be one hint per item! All hints point to unique items! You can use this fact to crunch the numbers on whether or not an item is hinted or if an ambiguous hint points to a desired item.
• Barrels, Diving, Oranges, Vines, Climbing are always hinted as Looking for training moves?
• Other shared moves (Slams, Sniper, Homing) are always hinted as Looking for shared moves?
• Camera and Shockwave are hinted as Looking for fairy moves?
• A hint to the Bean will be unchanged.
• The category is plural for grammatical purposes. Each hint always refers to a single item!

Most Extra Hints follow the Direct Item Hint format:
"You would be better off looking in {level} with {kong} for this."
If the location is not tied to a kong, it will instead state the type of location:
"You would be better off looking for {item type} with in {level} for this"

• Location types include Kasplats, dirt patches, fairies, battle arenas, melon crates, and hint doors.

• Monkeyport: Touching the Monkeyport pad at the back of Krem Isle while holding enough items to enter the B. Lockers of any 7 levels (often, but not always, levels 1-7) will give you a hint to its location. If Switchsanity has randomized this pad, you will receive a hint for that item instead.
• Gorilla Gone: Touching the Gorilla Gone pad in Helm Lobby while holding enough items to enter the Level 8 B. Locker will give you a hint to that move's location. If Switchsanity has randomized this pad, you will receive a hint for that item instead.
• Slam: Entering the Chunky phase of K. Rool without the level of slam needed to beat the encounter will have the announcer tell you what levels you can find slam upgrades in. If two slams are in the same level, the level will only be listed once.
  Note that K. Rool progress is saved. You can progress up to this phase, get the hint, get a slam, and return straight to Chunky phase.

All of the Extra Hints from Some are included in addition to:

• Helm Instruments: Touching an instrument pad in Helm while not in possession of that instrument will give you a hint to its location.

The delivery mechanism for your hints is in one of two ways. The default is to have the hints be found as items in-game by default on Wrinkly doors, but Progressive Hints put all your hints on the pause menu. Progressive Hints unlock in bundles of 4 as you collect items. You can specify the type of item and the cost of the 35th hint. The cost of other hints will be distributed accordingly. The formula tends to weight towards giving more hints early to better match the hint door experience.

As an example, here's a progressive hint cap of 50 GBs (the Season 3 value):

• Hints 1-4: 3 GBs
• Hints 5-8: 3 GBs
• Hints 9-12: 4 GBs
• Hints 13-16: 6 GBs
• Hints 17-20: 11 GBs
• Hints 21-24: 19 GBs
• Hints 25-28: 30 GBs
• Hints 29-32: 41 GBs
• Hints 33 & 34: 48 GBs
• Hint 35: 50 GBs

For other hint caps, use the calculator.