Dust Man
Dust Man is traditionally 4th in the any% route, although it could be 3rd is you do Bright 4th. It features a very laggy room, and a crusher section.
Dust Man - First Half
There are two main strategies to the first half of Dust Man's stage - Bright Man's Flash Stopper, and The Pharaoh Shot. The Pharaoh shot saves a little time if executed well, but the Flash Stopper strat is significantly easier.
Both strategies dictate jumping over the first Shield Attacker enemy and bustering the first Met. You must decide on a weapon before jumping over the pit. Enemies jump out of the pits, which is one of the reasons to use a weapon.
Neither strat is tightly limited by ammo/weapon energy, so you should have plenty.
Flash Stopper
First Screen
Using Flash Stopper obviously freeze enemies, making them not jump out of pits. It also makes Shield Attackers vulnerable, so you can destroy them with 4 shots while sliding up to them. You do still have to jump over the Mets. This makes the first screen trivial, just remember to slide a lot to maintain Flash Stopper's duration.
(Video by Aurel)
Second Screen - The Lag Room
Wait until the big stomper to use Flash. Slide for speed until then. Once the stomper is in the air, trigger Flash Stopper and continue. For the rising blocks, the fastest way to proceed is sliding up to the pit, and making a full jump to the right, landing on a platform as it spawns. The fastest strat is then to jump to the next spawning platform above the spikes below the ladybugs. Mind the corner of the spikes as you do this.
For the last jump over the pit near the spikes, you can let the platform fully spawn for safety.
If you the first pit jump, perhaps because the platforms spawned and interrupted your slide, just go to the beginning and traverse the platforms normally.
From there, kill ladybugs as you are able to reduce lag, though drops will just generate more lag. Slide as you are able to maintain the Flash Stop. Get up the ladder at the end for the Eddie Checkpoint screen.
Pharaoh Strats
First Screen
Since you are not freezing the enemies, you have to kill the pit jumpers. This requires being in the correct position to fire a down-angled shot, and slide at roughly the same time, then jump over the pit. (The position is approximately 2.5 horizontal tiles before the pit. The slide triggers the spawn at the right time to be immediately destroyed by the pharaoh shot.
Keep in mind you have to dodge the Shield Attackers normally, though you can kill the Mets.
Second Screen - The Lag Room
Since the enemies are the main source of lag, the goal with Pharaoh Shot is to kill the enemies.
Fire diagonally up when you reach the first purple floor tile after the stomper to get the first ladybug enemy. The other enemies should be easier to find the heights and angles to fire at. The sooner you kill them, the better.
Immediately after killing the last enemy, switch to Ring (or your desired weapon for the crusher screen). This is to avoid an ammo drop refilling Pharaoh. This is only for the time loss directly related to watching the meter fill, it otherwise doesn't matter.
Be mindful again that drops will generate lag, so this strat remains tricky.
Dust Man - Crusher Room
The screen after Eddie and the Checkpoint is a crusher room. Strategies for this room tend to be cycle based.
This room in particular is covered by Chelney's tutorial videos.
Note you should switch to the desired weapon in the checkpoint room.
Fastest Strat - Ring
Things to keep in mind about this strat
- Jumping when the ring flies back causes the ring to snap back to Mega Man horizontally, destroying a second row of blocks as the crusher rises and falls.
- For the first set of blocks, wait until you see the 4th row before sliding through. If you go too fast, you will hit the Met.
- The last shoot-slide, made just as the crusher is about to get Mega Man, is safer than it looks (but not by much). Mega Man's sliding hitbox is tiny, and Mega Man's knees work in this game (he has a few frames after the ceiling touches him before exploding, unlike Mega Man 5).
