I actually had a practice partial attempt where I got an extra 50 ruppees from lucky drops before buying bombs+tornado+hammer. If zander's route was faster by at most 3 seconds, then it'd be worth getting hookshot early and taking rheault's route; unfortunately it's not quite the case :/
Now, looking at the early hookshot route pre-Lorule, early hookshot from lucky 50 ruppees (aka no silver ruppee in kakariko) will roughly break even with non-early hookshot, and it certainly makes things a lot easier too. Up to the runner if the runner wants to add a conditional I guess, and it's rather rare to have an extra 50 ruppees too =/
Also, very minor strat but...You know the small key you get in Ice Ruins, where you have to light four torches (with 6 green penguins) to have it fall on a higher ledge? I timed how long it takes to go from collecting the key, to the intersection of the thin bridges in the southern room.
Strat 1: After the small key, merge into the right wall, and dash down the thin bridge (Basically go back the way you came from below)
Strat 2: After the small key, immediately fall off and walk manually south until the intersection.
Strat 1 takes about 7 seconds. Strat 2 takes about 5.5 seconds, assuming there are no penguins. So strat 2 is ideally faster, but taking into account penguins, you'll probably get hit once and lose about a half second to one second. If you killed all the penguins beforehand to be safe, then yes, strat 2 is definitely faster.
LORULE ROUTING - DUNGEON ORDERSo as of now, the starting dungeons are definitely:
1. Thieve's Hideout
2. Skull Woods
3. Ice Ruins
1+2 give you two easy master ores to temper your sword as early as possible. Thieves' hideout also gives at least 200 ruppees (more from the red statue miniboss fight), essential for purchasing the rest of ravio's stuff before skull woods.
After Ice Ruins, I checked the order of the rest of the 4 dungeons. The obvious thing is that Desert Palace must be before Swamp Palace, since the titan's mitts allow you to take the fastest route with the bomb flower. So ultimately, at a first glance, it shouldn't matter.
However, so far, I think it's fastest (by like one second) to do desert palace then dark palace right after. The reason is, at the end of desert palace, assuming you did the boss key skip, you're going to have the tornado and sand rods equipped. Both of those are needed for the stealth skip right before dark palace, skipping an item equip screen.
It's very minor, but one second can make a difference
I'm not sure if when you do turtle rock / swamp palace matters (Besides desert sometime before swamp), that might just come down to preference.
So unless I'm missing something, the routes with "equal timing" for the latter half of Lorule are:
-Desert, Dark, Turtle, Swamp
-Desert, Dark, Swamp, Turtle
-Turtle, Desert, Dark, Swamp
I'm also thinking about making a pastebin of the current up-to-date route so people can reference it easily and understand why it's routed like that (along with easier options too); think I should start one up?
EDIT:
Another minor strat I want to share, in desert ruins, that won't be quite intuitive. In the room where you're supposed to spin attack the four switches, there are two beamos at the bottom. The game intends for you to raise the sand to block their laser.
An easy way to not have to raise the sand, while still going at dash speed, is after hitting all four switches, drop down, line yourself below the bottom-right switch, then just dash down. You'll bonk the wall, but upon bonking the southern wall, you'll literally jump over both beamos lasers, then you can just continue through the door.
