Despicable Me: Minion Rush

I was at area 7 when starting this solution, but I decided to put some general hints and tips on for starting players to get more fruits in (somewhat) less time.

- Edit 29-06-15: It was pointed out in the comments that there were codes to insert for some extra freebies. However, after the last update, this doesn't seem possible anymore. If you want to check, see the comments.

- Edit 12-04-15: If you are having trouble with the rotating cogs in the AVL (like I did for a long time), this tip might save your life sometimes: Don't look at the cogs themselves to figure out where you need to be to miss them, rather look at the bananatrail around them. The bananas will tell you which path is safe

- Edit 07-03-15: In later stages, like area 15+, ignore every power-up that does not help you get the fruit you need. By this time, you should have upgraded your power-ups to level 4 or more and there won't be much more upgrading (to get to level 6, you need to spend tokens). Next to that, I suggest using mom minion or referee minion every time you play, so the duration of every power-up should be much higher than when you started the game. With that being said, a power-up that you pick up and that does not add to your 'fruit-getting' will only lead to you waiting longer for a helpful power-up.
For example, when you need to run 5000 meters, play as mom minion and try to go for the rocket power ups (shields and freeze rays may also help). When you then pick up a banana vacuum, you will need to wait 20+ seconds for that useless power-up to end. When you already have a power-up, no others will appear; while when you run past a power-up, another one will appear relatively quick. So in the end, your chances to find a rocket (in this example) will be a lot better when you ignore non-necessary power-ups.

- Edit 07-03-15: Spare your tokens. You can buy a nice costume that can help you get fruits if you spare enough. The useful ones are expensive unfortunately, so it is only an option if you haven't spend a lot on revives.
I bought the valentines costume (a one day only deal unfortunately) which was 300-500 tokens and doubles every banana you get. But i bet that if you spare every token and don't revive often, you can get a good costume (like the 1000 token dancer).

- Edit 10-04-15 (I noticed I did not include this earlier and maybe you would miss this)
You can gain tokens through
- daily login bonuses (maxing out at 20 tokens per 5 days when playing consecutively for over a month), 29-06-15: this is apparently not possible anymore
- in-game achievements,
- a very small amount of tokens after getting 3 fruits and running further (I would not recommend this, the rewards are too little for the effort that you put in). 29-06-15: this is apparently not possible anymore, I now suggest to just let yourself die the moment you get the third fruit to spare time
- A very small chance of tokens in Golden price pods (I got 100 in one go once, but I've gotten more than 20 golden price pods already). The pods themselves are rewarded when playing consecutively for over a month (2 pods per 5 days) or through getting a lot of fruits in an area at the later areas.
- Playing 'events' in which you normally get 5 tokens when completing the normal requirements, but you also have a chance to get more through the leaderboards. I have to say that I do not have a good experience with this as my game crashes every time I try to claim such a price.

In general:
Edit: LOOK AHEAD! Following the bananatrail is not always the best path, it may not be the safest and not grand you the most stuff you need for your mission (jumping things, smashing minions). Look as far ahead as you can and you might just get those few extra minionsmashes you need or see a difficult part coming so you can choose an easier path. Remember: Staying alive will probably grand you more than picking up 10 bananas more.

Do not get every power-up you come across in a game! In some games, it will be harder to get the requirements for all the fruits when picking up some of the power-ups. I will name the power-ups to get and which one to avoid for some of the missions. The power-ups not named are not beneficial per se for the mission itself, but can of course be beneficial in a more general sense (there is no disadvantage for using the shield, banana splitter, banana-vacuum and freeze ray in almost every case).

Don’t try to get every fruit, just move on with the next level if you have a fruit and worry about getting an extra fruit only when you don’t have enough to get to the next area. When you do this, you can estimate yourself which mission you could have done better on and so which fruit is easiest to get.

When updating your power-ups and you have bananas to spare: Especially upgrade the fluffy unicorn. This one will get you a lot of bananas in a relatively short time, resulting in that you can upgrade every power-up sooner.

Edit: In game, you will be opted sometimes to pick 1 out of 3 paths that curve around each other for a short time and coming back together. In the AVL, I strongly suggest taking the left or right path! The middle path often has an obstacle right after you exit the boost, giving you little time to react accordingly. The other two paths give you more time to react when exiting your speed boost.

- Buy the Referee minion when you have enough bananas to do so (2500 I believe). It is cheap and will net you 10 seconds bonus time as the mega minion, making covering time, meters, doing despicable actions and so on easier.
Referee minion does not use random power-up spawning (at least at the beginning of a run), meaning that the first power-ups you encounter will always be the following:
1. Mega Minion
2. Fluffy Unicorn
3. Gru's Rocket
This is independent of whether you pick up any of these or not and what mission you are on. A bonus area (containing banana vacuums) will not break this trend.
So if you do not need any of these, (like when picking up x amount of moons) you may be better of picking the normal minion outfit.

- Buy Mom minion when you have enough bananas to do so (125000 bananas when I first looked at this, but it increases when progressing through the areas). This will increase every power-up to be 5 seconds longer and 10 seconds at level 4.
Use this one in favour of the normal minion outfit.
This outfit does spawn random power-ups


Objective specific hints:
When I don't mention a power-up, it doesn't help nor hinder getting the fruits. It will however be active for some amount of time in which you are unable to get another power-up (excluding bonus areas)(see edit 07-03-15, at the top of this page). It could also be possible that I myself do not know for sure if it is good or bad to pick something up, like the rocket in running for x amount of time. It does let you cover time invincibly, but it also propels you further down the road, possibly making it harder sooner.

‘Run for x amount of time’:
You’ll want to pick up stallers (as I call them myself), things that slow you down or let time pass without making it harder
Do pick up:
- Moon (lets time pass invincible)
- Fluffy Unicorn (lets time pass invincible). If you train a little with this, you can even stall for over a minute by just hopping up and down on a few bananas without actually climbing up.
- Mega minion (covering time invincible)
Don’t pick up/use
- Minion launcher (you will cover more ground in no time, making it harder sooner)


For every other objective, DON’T grab Moon (except of course when grabbing Moon is the objective…). It is only time-consuming and only counts towards score (this is never an objective to get fruits).
Fluffy Unicorn is also time-consuming, bananas taken this way will not count towards most of the ‘get x amount of bananas’. BUT, because you need bananas to upgrade your power-ups, it might still be beneficial to get this one whenever you encounter it in the early areas.



‘Run for x meters’
Do pick up/use:
- Gru’s rocket (covering meters invincible very fast)
- Minion launcher (obvious, 500m in no time)
- Shield and Freeze ray, both let you cover meters at a normal pace with a much smaller chance of 'dying'.

‘Commit x amount of despicable actions by smashing minions’
Do pick up/use
- Definitely use the referee minion or mom minion.
- Mega minion
- Freeze ray (smashing objects with this also counts)
- PX-41 serum (although more useful for increasing the multiplier)

‘Increase despicable multiplier by x amount’
Do pick up/use:
- Mom minion or Referee minion
- Mega minion (the main way to get the multiplier up)
- Freeze ray (smashing objects counts the same as smashing minions)
- PX-41 serum (makes you a very fast evil minion which can smash through anything). The despicable multiplier increases faster for every destroyed object than when using the freeze ray. (It is activated at any time by pressing space bar)(Only do this when you are pretty confident that it is not in vain, it takes 12 hours before you can use it again)

‘Use [power-up] for x amount of time’
- Mom minion (or referee when the mission is for mega minion)
- Ignore all other power-ups; no other power-up will spawn when you already have one activated.
- Avoid the bonus area (there are power ups in here which replace your active power up if you pick them up).
- Upgrade your power-up by at least 1 level right before this. If you do this every time, the amount of time which you need to get the first fruit will be roughly 2 times the duration of your power-up in the early levels.

‘Slide/jump x amount of times under/over obstacles’
- Just go for every occasion you see to slide under or jump over something
- Although the freeze ray lets you walk through things, you can actually still slide under or jump over objects that are frozen, therefore it is good to pick up.
- Jumping over certain gaps when you are on top of 'high' objects also counts as jumping over an obstacle, while jumping over anything while you are launched up in the air does not.
Don't pick up
- Mega Minion
- Gru's Rocket (it will sometimes make you skip a whole area which you could have used)

Edits 10-04-15:
‘Use the slides x amount of times’
Pick up
- Freeze ray and shield
- Gru's Rocket Only when you just got of a slide! It has happened multiple times that I flew past slides, but you are generally safe to use the rocket when you just had a slide. It brings you a lot closer to the next one.

‘Beat {villain} x amount of times / throw x amount of cookie bots/chickens etc.’
- Get as many rockets as you can, you can not skip a villain fight as the rocket just 'takes a break' when you encounter one.
- Get shields and freeze rays to stay alive in between villain fights.

‘Near miss an obstacle x amount of times’
The easiest kind of mission in my eyes (it can be done in a short amount of time, although the chances to die because of your mission are a lot higher)
- Do not get a single upgrade, you can not near miss obstacles while using freeze rays and shields and you can obviously also not near miss anything when you aren't even walking in the normal field (rocket, mega minion, moon, unicorn). Only banana vacuum and banana splitter will not negatively influence this one.

This is my first solution ever and not a native English speaker. If I’ve missed something or if some things aren’t clear, text me and I will add something.

You will only unlock the 25th area after finishing level 332 and have enough fruits to unlock (at least 34/42 for the 24th area). Typically one needs to finish a level with 3 fruits early on as the requirement may get difficult or take long time for later levels in an area (like thousands of banana with Fluffy Unicorn...)

UPDATE: number of levels required per area. I don't remember exactly how much fruits required for all levels. Below is my number of fruits for some levels, just enough or slightly above to unlock an area.
Area 1 : 10 levels
Area 2 : 13 levels
Area 3 : 13 levels (37/39)
Area 4 : 13 levels (20/39)
Area 5 : 14 levels (22/42)
Area 6 : 14 levels
Area 7 : 14 levels
Area 8 : 14 levels (31/42)
Area 9 : 14 levels (28/42)
Area 10 : 14 levels (32/42)
Area 11 : 14 levels (35/42)
Area 12 : 15 levels (36/45)
Area 13 : 15 levels (36/45)
Area 14 : 15 levels (34/45)
Area 15 : 14 levels (39/42)
Area 16 : 14 levels (35/42)
Area 17 : 14 levels (34/42)
Area 18 : 14 levels (36/42)
Area 19 : 14 levels (36/42)
Area 20 : 14 levels (34/42)
Area 21 : 14 levels (36/42)
Area 22 : 14 levels (36/42)
Area 23 : 14 levels (38/42)
Area 24 : 14 levels (34/42)