Red Candle - User contributions [en]

Legend of Zelda/Technical Information

2025-12-24T23:34:13Z

Neil:

''(Note that details and naming are subject to change as more is learned; analysis of the game is ongoing)''

== Objects ==

=== Object system ===

The game allocates memory for up to 19 objects of varying types. These types and their indices are:

* #$00 - Link
* #$01-0B - dynamic objects
* #$0D - the sword
* #$0E - the sword or rod beam
* #$0F - the boomerang or the bait
* #$10-11 - flames and bombs
* #$12 - the rod or an arrow
* #$13 - and the room treasure

Dynamic objects consist of enemies, their projectiles, NPCs, and Link's ladder, and are allocated dynamically rather than having a static index. Link's weapons have their own slots so they can be used even when the enemy cap has been reached, though some share slots to limit their memory footprint, which means they can't be used at the same time. For bombs and flames, they are dynamically assigned the first free slot of the two available, so a mixture of two of these can be on the screen at once. Note that nothing is ever assigned to slot #$0C, though its timer and memory are sometimes used for other purposes.

Object data is stored in a number of arrays that are indexed with the object index. Many of these arrays are available to all objects, while some are limited to only dynamic objects and sometimes Link. The following are many of the most relevant ones:

'''$28 - object_timer''': A timer that automatically decrements each frame, usually dedicated to the object.

'''$3C - object_stun_timer''': A long timer that decrements when the long_timer_tick ($26) goes below 0, usually used to indicate an enemy is stunned by the boomerang. Because this timer can be set at any time, the first tick will usually be too short.

'''$70 - object_pos_x''': The X position of the object on the screen.

'''$84 - object_pos_y''': The Y position of the object on the screen. Note that this is considered block-aligned when ending in #$D rather than #$0. This is to give some illusion of depth by drawing objects 2 pixels higher than the block they're on (only 2 because the PPU draws sprites 1 scanline lower than their specified Y coordinate). Unfortunately, this gives rise to various bugs, such as gels popping out of zols a full block too low.

'''$98 - object_face_direction''': The direction the object is facing. Objects with grid-based movement will restrict this to the grid to avoid off-grid movement. For room treasures, this is the item ID. Like with most direction-based tracking in this game, the direction order is up, down, left, right (UDLR, most to least significant) in the low nybble.

'''$AC - object_status''': Used for many different state-related tracking for different objects. Many objects use this to track what state the AI is in. Link uses it for his attack sequences as well as entirely disabling his handling (movement and collision). Link's weapon object slots are empty when this is clear.

'''$C0 - object_knockback_direction''': Indicates which direction the object should travel when the knockback timer is set. UDLR in the low nybble. When the object has been hit, bit 7 is set to indicate that the direction needs to be sanity-checked to prevent knockback from knocking an object off-grid, and if the object doesn't reverse direction when it collides with Link, bit 6 is also set, but this appears to go unused.

'''$D3 - object_knockback_timer''': The number of movement ticks for which the object should undergo knockback. Like with standard movement, 4 ticks are consumed each frame, but the knockback speed is always 1 full pixel per tick. When this hits 0, the corresponding object_knockback_direction variable is cleared.

'''$034F - dynamic_id''': The object ID for dynamic objects. If this is 0, the slot is unoccupied, except in rare circumstances when slots are being controlled by another object (eg gleeok controlling its attached heads). ''(No index 0)''

'''$0394 - object_subgrid_offset''': The object's position along its current gridline. When sitting on a grid intersection, this will be 0, and positive (right and down) and negative (left and up) movement will increase or decrease this in lock-step with the object's pixel position. This is clamped in either direction by subgrid_offset_limit_positive ($010E) and subgrid_offset_limit_negative ($010F), which are +/-8 for Link and +/-16 for enemies, and further movement is not allowed that frame if clamped. If this is 0 or either limit after movement is complete, it is set to 0 and collision is handled.

'''$03A8 - object_subpos''': The object's subpixel position. Because grid-based objects can't move more than one direction at a time, this acts as the subpixel position for the current direction, whether horizontal or vertical. This doesn't get cleared when clamped to a grid intersection, and isn't cleared when changing directions. This results in quirks like faster movement when going diagonally by alternating positive/negative directions, or the boomerang having unpredictable speed when moving diagonally (because both directions interpret the subpos as being in their own direction). For dropped items, this variable acts as the timer (2 frames per tick).

'''$03BC - object_speed''': An object's subpixel speed per movement tick. 4 ticks are done per frame, limiting an object's speed to just under 4 pixels. Because object movement is clamped when reaching new grid intersections, an object might only move 1-3 ticks on a given frame.

'''$03D0 - object_animation_timer''': The number of frames before advancing to the next frame of the object's animation.

'''$03E4 - object_frame''': The current frame of the object's animation.

'''$03F8 - dynamic_move_direction''': The direction the object is moving in, for Link or dynamic objects. UDLR in the low nybble.

'''$0405 - dynamic_spawn_state''': The object's state when spawning or dying. ''(No index 0)''

'''$0485 - dynamic_health''': The object's current health. For some reason, object health is handled in multiples of #$10, so it can't exceed an effective value of 15. If health is 0 and an object gets hit by any weapon it's vulnerable to, it will die, even if that weapon does 0 damage. ''(No index 0)''

'''$049E - object_collision_tile''': The ID of the last tile the object collided with.

'''$04B2 - dynamic_immunities''': Flags indicating the weapons the object is immune to. These are:

* Bit 0 - sword
* Bit 1 - boomerang
* Bit 2 - arrow
* Bit 3 - bomb
* Bit 4 - rod
* Bit 5 - flame

Bits 6 and 7 appear to be unused, but are set normally set for enemies that have any immunities. ''(No index 0)''

'''$04BF - dynamic_properties''': Flags indicating properties of the object. These are:

* Bit 0 - The object's AI is responsible for drawing the object and calling weapon and Link collision functions, rather than these being done automatically after the AI has run.
* Bit 1 - The object is drawn using 1 tile, not 2.
* Bit 2 - The object's AI is responsible for drawing the object.
* Bit 3 - The object's AI is responsible for setting its own frame attributes (in $04 and $05) before calling the object drawing functions.
* Bit 4 - The object always reverses direction when colliding with an obstacle (block, wall, or screen boundary), overriding the more complicated turning behavior normally exhibited. This appears to be unused.
* Bit 5 - Disables weapon collision for the object.
* Bit 6 - Moves the object's collision center 4 pixels to the left, under the (often incorrect) assumption that thin objects are centered by being positioned 4 pixels to the right. This is why many vertical projectiles can be dodged more easily on the right.
* Bit 7 - Makes the object not reverse direction when colliding with Link.

''(No index 0)''

'''$04F0 - object_iframes''': The number of frames before the object will handle object collision again. The low two bits determine which palette the object's sprite will use.

=== Object movement ===

Most non-flying objects are restricted to moving along a movement grid, consisting of edges and vertices. The length of an edge in this grid depends on the object index, with the standard length being 16 pixels and Link's being 8. When an object isn't on a vertex, its direction is restricted such that it can only be parallel to the current edge. An object is on a vertex when its position along the current edge (object_subgrid_offset) is 0, regardless of its current subpixel position (object_subpos).

Every frame that an object chooses to move, it undergoes 4 movement ticks that each move the object by less than one pixel. Within each tick, its speed (object_speed) is added to or subtracted from its subpixel position, depending on whether the movement is in a positive (down or right) or negative (up or left) direction. If the subgrid offset hasn't reached either limit for this kind of object ($010E subgrid_offset_limit_positive and $010F subgrid_offset_limit_negative), the carry from the subpixel arithmetic is added to or subtracted from both the subgrid offset and whole pixel position.

If either limit has been reached, then subsequent ticks within the same frame continue to modify the subpixel position as normal, but the offset and whole pixel values lock into place. This causes objects to stick to vertices, which is where important operations such as background collision detection and screen edge detection take place. When movement is complete, if the subgrid offset is equal to one of the limits, it is set back to 0.

Note that there is only one subpixel position, despite there being two axes. This is because standard objects can only move along one axis at a time, with the other axis coordinate aligned to the grid, so it's only ever relevant to the current one. However, this value isn't cleared when turning perpendicular, so the object may be closer to or further from the next pixel than expected when turning.

=== Screen scroll glitch ===

Normally, Link and other objects walk from a subgrid offset of 0 toward either the positive or negative limit, which will prevent further whole-pixel movement that frame. However, this same clamping behavior doesn't occur for 0. Normally, this isn't a problem, because if an object starts on 0, moves in a direction, and then turns around before reaching the next vertex and walks back, it will necessarily land on 0 again because it moves the same speed both ways, precisely retracing the steps it took. Non-Link objects also usually do not change their direction except on vertices. However, knockback can cause a problem for Link. When an object is hit and knocked back, it moves one entire pixel per tick for 4 ticks per frame through a separate mechanism from standard movement. This can cause Link to be at an unusual position along an edge, which could cause him to skip past 0 because he moves 1.5 pixels per frame (#$60 subpixels per tick).

Skipping past 0 results in the collision event at 0 being skipped. This bypasses Link's screen boundary check for scrolling, and causes the object to continue using the background tile it sampled at the last vertex as its current one. Realistically, that tile will be nonsolid, so the object may be able to skip past one solid tile.

A worse side effect, though, is how this interacts with perpendicular movement. When Link receives perpendicular input, he attempts to walk to the nearest vertex before then turning in that direction. If that nearest vertex is at 0 and Link isn't lined up to be able to land on 0, he'll miss the vertex and land on the other side. On the next frame, he'll try again to reach the vertex, missing again and ending up back where he started. This causes him to be stuck, alternating from side to side, unable to reach the vertex without first moving elsewhere.

To fix this issue, the game includes a hack to ensure that the vertex Link walks toward when attempting to turn perpendicular is at a limit rather than at 0, so proper clamping can occur. For example, if Link is walking toward the positive limit and turns around with perpendicular input, his subgrid offset will be adjusted so that the vertex he came from will now be at the negative limit instead of 0. This fixes the stuck issue, but allows Link to easily configure the next vertex to be at 0 rather than a limit by just tapping perpendicular. By just walking toward that vertex, he can skip over it, assuming he's properly aligned.

Let's do some examples. Without the perpendicular movement hack, if Link were facing right on a horizontal edge at subgrid offset 2 and subpixel position #$80, holding up would cause him to walk left to offset 1 subpixel #$00, and then offset -1 subpixel #$80 (with the subpixel for negative numbers representing how close the object is to the next larger number, not smaller). The offset never became 0, so Link didn't handle collision there and wasn't able to start moving up. On the next frame, he would walk right again back to offset 1 subpixel #$00, and would continue to alternate back and forth.

With the hack, holding up would first convert the offset to -6 (preserving the distance of 2.5 pixels from the vertex), and Link would then move to offset -7 subpixel #$00, and try to move to offset -9 subpixel #$80, but the clamping on the -8 limit would cause him to end up at offset -8 subpixel #$80, which would set his offset back to 0 and allow him to handle collision and move up.

For standard screen scrolling, if Link is facing right on a horizontal edge at offset 3 subpixel #$00, perpendicular input will convert the offset to -5 and move Link to offset -7 subpixel #$80. Walking right will then move him to offset -5 subpixel #$00, offset -4 subpixel #$80, offset -2 subpixel #$00, offset -1 subpixel #$80, and then offset 1 subpixel #$00, skipping 0.

== Forced drops ==

Some item drops can be forced and take priority over the standard drop system. Forced drops are handled by two consecutive kill counters and a bomb flag. The first counter, the ten count ($50), controls whether a forced 5 rupee is dropped. The bomb flag ($51) controls whether the ten count drop should be a bomb, instead. The second counter, the fairy count ($0627), controls whether fairies are dropped. All of these variables are cleared when Link collides with an enemy (including bubbles and even the recorder whirlwind).

When Link kills an enemy (that is, the enemy makes a dying sound), both counters are incremented. This occurs at kill time, before the dying animation. Item drops occur later, after the dying animation completes. When the drop is calculated, the game checks the counters to decide what to drop. If the fairy count is 16, then a fairy is dropped and the ten count and bomb flag are cleared. Otherwise, if the ten count is 10, either a 5 rupee is dropped if the bomb flag is clear or a bomb is dropped if the flag is set, and the ten count and bomb flag are then cleared. So, in the case of any forced drop, the ten count and bomb flag are cleared, but the fairy count is not.

Some enemies cannot drop items. Because they don't run the drop code, they also can't drop forced items, and thus won't consume the counters. These enemies are those in the no-drop group, as well as stalfos, gibdos, and like likes in slot 1 (because these enemies may be carrying the room treasure, and it would be undesirable if they dropped both the treasure and an item). We'll call these no-drop enemies.

If the ten count transitions from 9 to 10 due to a bomb kill, the bomb flag is set. The ten count cannot exceed 10 and will hold at that value even if additional kills occur before the forced item can be dropped, such as by killing a group of enemies at once or killing no-drop enemies. Once any forced drop occurs, the counter is reset to 0.

The fairy counter, however, has no hard limit. It will continue to increase with each kill. Because of this, the fairy drop can be skipped. Any drop occurring when the fairy counter is 16 will be a fairy, so killing a group of enemies to bring the count above 16 at drop time will skip the fairy. Alternatively, because no-drop enemies can't drop forced items, they can die with the counter at 16 without performing the drop. Skipping the fairy will avoid resetting the ten count and bomb flag.

Because the fairy counter isn't cleared when the drop occurs, multiple fairies can be dropped from the same count. For example, if the counter is 12 and 4 enemies are quickly killed before any of them can calculate a drop, the counter will be 16 when the drops are handled, so all 4 drops will be fairies.

Note that while the fairy counter has no hard limit, it is an 8-bit value and will overflow to 0 at 256 kills, allowing it to force more fairies at the next 16.

There are some notable special cases and edge cases with counters. These include:

'''Dodongos''': Killing a dodongo does not increment either counter, whether killed with bombs or the sword. If the dodongo is killed with a sword, however, the ten count is set to 10 and the bomb flag is set, forcing a bomb at drop time. This method of forcing the bomb can result in unexpected behavior. If Link takes a hit after killing the dodongo, but before the drop, the forced bomb will be lost. Furthermore, if the fairy count is 16 when the drop occurs, the fairy will be dropped instead of the bomb and the ten count and bomb flag will be cleared. Finally, if Link kills a second dodongo with a sword before the first one has dropped its bomb, the second will not drop a bomb because the forced drop system has no way of queuing up multiple forced bombs.

'''Vulnerable unkillable enemies''': Enemies such as the manhandla core and flying gleeok heads are invincible, but actually handle weapon collision and will clear their iframes and unkill themselves each frame. This means they count as a kill every frame that a weapon is touching them. Bombing these enemies is a good way to force a bomb because it will quickly max out the ten count and set the bomb flag, but it will also be adding to the fairy counter, which could override the bomb drop when killing the boss. The old man in the dungeon also behaves this way, but because he doesn't clear his iframes, he'll only count as one kill per attack.

'''Multi-part enemies''': Manhandla's hands, gleeok's attached heads, and moldorm's and lanmola's segments each increment the consecutive counters when killed, but the death of the whole enemy does not grant an additional consecutive kill; that is, killing the last part will only add 1 to the counters, not 2. A perfect bomb on manhandla will increase the counters by 5 instead of 4, though, because the core is also hit and counts as a kill.

'''Leader enemies''': When a ringleader (such as the level 2 goriya leader) is killed, the other enemies in the room die by being directly transitioned to the dying state (by setting dynamic_spawn_state to #$10) and will not impact the consecutive counters. The ringleader itself counts as normal, however. Ghini leaders also share this same behavior (through a similar mechanism).

'''Zols''': While splitting enemies (zols and vires) don't normally count as kills when split, zols are vulnerable to an additional weapon hit on the frame they split, allowing them to be killed and counted as a consecutive kill. This is due to a bug where zols delete themselves before splitting (in case there aren't enough slots for the gels they're creating), but instead of exiting immediately afterward, their AI continues to do meaningful work on the deleted object, including collision checks. The deletion (through ClearObject at Bank7_FEB1) clears the object_iframes variable, which guarantees the zol can take a hit during this one last check. Because deletion clears the object's dynamic_id variable, the zol doesn't run again and thus can't drop an item nor increment the global counter. Its health is not cleared by ClearObject, so the weapons it collides with must do enough damage to kill it. Note that if a gel was spawned into the zol's slot, the gel will be hit, instead.

Vires are more robustly written and don't suffer from this bug.

'''Overkill''': When an enemy is killed by a weapon, it still finishes checking the remaining weapons that frame, as normal. This means it can be hit by those additional weapons, which may also kill it. The consecutive kill counters are incremented at kill time, so these additional kills will each increment the counters like with any normal kill. As a result, killing a single enemy by hitting it with multiple weapons on one frame can add more than one to the counts. This can be done most practically by timing multiple attacks to hit when an enemy's iframes expire.

Note that the health the enemy has after a killing blow can vary. If the weapon damage was equal to the enemy's current health, the resulting health is 0, so any following hits will count as kills. However, if the damage was more than the current health, the health is unchanged. Furthermore, the order in which weapons are checked can impact how many kills the enemy gives because each weapon hit may reduce the health for the following weapons. Weapon check order is boomerang, beam (sword/rod), flame/bomb slot A, flame/bomb slot B, sword, arrow/rod.

'''Sub-frame behavior''': Because everything in the game must be handled sequentially, events handled earlier can directly impact those handled later, so the order of execution can result in surprising behavior. For example, if an enemy is killed on the same frame that multiple other enemies are dropping items, and that kill sets the fairy counter to 16, then any drops handled before the kill was registered would be normal random drops, and drops after the kill would be forced fairies, despite all of the drops happening on the same frame.

== Glitches ==

=== Dungeon graphics corruption ===

[[File:Glitch_dungeon_graphics_corruption.png]]

When entering a dungeon on the same frame that a background block is changed, such as an armos statue or bombable wall, there's a 50% chance that the dungeon graphics won't load properly, resulting in the overworld graphics being used but with some minor corruption. While some of the corruption will persist until reset, the issue is mostly corrected upon leaving the dungeon.

When you change areas, the game has to copy over all of the area's graphics from ROM to VRAM. This can't be done directly; instead, the game has to tell the PPU where in VRAM it wants to put the graphics, and then hands the bytes to the PPU one-by-one to put at the specified location. After each byte is written, the target address is automatically incremented by the PPU, and there's a PPU setting that controls whether the increment is by 1 or 32. This is to make it easy to change adjacent 8x8 tiles on the screen; if incrementing by 1, it'll target the next tile in the row, and if by 32, the next tile in the column (because rows are 32 tiles wide).

The graphics copying function assumes that the PPU is set to increment by 1 per write, but doesn't actually guarantee this by setting it this way. Background block updates in Zelda go vertically (increment by 32), so if that was the last thing to configure the PPU before you enter a new area, the setting will be wrong and the graphics copy will erroneously splatter the graphics data throughout VRAM (modifying only 1 out of every 32 bytes) instead of copying the contiguous chunks as it should. This normally doesn't happen because updates to the HUD leave the PPU in the correct increment-by-1 configuration. HUD updates occur every other frame, so there is only a 1-frame window during which you can enter with the incorrect PPU settings. Because of the difficulty of timing these events to fall between HUD updates, you effectively have a 50% chance of triggering the glitch by entering a dungeon on the same frame as a background update.

Because area graphics are loaded on every area transition, most of the issue is corrected by leaving the dungeon. However, some graphics are only copied to VRAM on power on or reset and will remain partially corrupted until then.

== Additional references ==

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200817053838/http://userpages.monmouth.com/~colonel/videogames/zelda/moonmap.html A Moonmap for Legend of Zelda] - A technical overview of Zelda, primarily covering graphics layout, level format, and sound.

[https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Instruction_reference 6502 Instruction Reference] - The full 6502 instruction set, including cycle counts.

[http://wiki.nesdev.org/w/index.php/Nesdev_Wiki Nesdev Wiki] - Comprehensive documentation on everything related to NES hardware behavior.
__FORCETOC__

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2025-12-11T03:36:08Z

Neil:

A team of people, led by RedBirdGrad, is creating a series of videos explaining room-by-room how to execute Any% No Up+A at a high level. Here it is.

<iframe key="redcandle" path="wp-content/tutorial-maps/" />

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2025-12-11T03:35:25Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2025-12-11T03:35:13Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2025-12-11T03:35:02Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation

2024-12-04T00:11:46Z

Neil:

== Initial Bomb Drop ==

The Zelda RNG changes with every frame. In the NES version, the counter starts at the title screen. In the FDS version, the counter starts when side B runs, at the character select screen. Generally that doesn't matter, since things will never happen at the same time, but the one key exception is a first bomb drop.

Here is a chart of the Zelda drop RNG at the start of the game, with a 10 frame moving average. Each bar represents the numbered frame, and the 9 frames preceding.

Quoth fiskbit: "It's minor, but there are ~80 frames of lag from power on to entry into the red darknut room, which will delay the luck spike.... It's probably about a second of lag (24 of those frames are during power-on)." Later, he said "When you kill a darknut, you're probably 54, 62, or 70 frames earlier than you think you are."

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/zelda-drops-rolling-average-5400-frames.png

For the bomb drop, it may not be likely to hit any window suggested by this chart. But the possibility exists. Some runners have found that certain delays at the title/character select screen produce better results, if it avoids a fixed 'lull' in the drops.

== Full-Level Manipulation ==

<div name="Full-Level_Manipulation"></div>JSR has worked on a scheme for manipulating the randomness out of Level 3:

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c01x8nX9EpM}}

Years later...

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NX5JpVRS6TzdRWPO3kPg4a6cRwAmsuHWCg0oDd2hY-g User Aurel has a spreadsheet]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2315928674 User YmustUhateME has a tutorial]

The Legend of Zelda

2023-07-10T20:20:57Z

Neil:

= Getting Started =

Here are some resources commonly requested by new players:

Picking an emulator: [[The Legend of Zelda/Emulators]]

Route options: [https://sites.google.com/view/orderoftheate/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] has a list of popular routes that are easier to finish, with a sliding scale of time/difficulty tradeoffs.

Tutorial videos: [[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

Basic maps: [http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html NESMaps]

Discord: [https://discord.gg/t7sgWzq Invitation to Lack's LoZ Discord server]

= Version differences =

Here is an entire page devoted to [[The Legend of Zelda/Version Differences|version differences]].

=Categories=

The categories, and their rules, are all documented at [https://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda speedrun.com's board].

If those categories aren't enough, there's also a [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce Category Extensions board] with its own rules in [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce/forum the forum sticky posts].

=Game Mechanics and Glitches=

==Screen Scroll==

The 'screen scroll' trick is useful for getting over overworld obstacles, as well as for clipping through blocks in dungeons. That means you get to some stairs without killing all the enemies first! Here's a graphic with some pointers:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenscroll.png

Since the above chart was made, an alternate way of clipping through a block has been discovered by [https://twitter.com/hal_yotsuba はる＠よつば]. First, you get onto the pixel as in the above picture, with the top of Link's head lined up with the flat part of the block. Then, instead of doing a single-frame tap, slash the sword and press right or left. The sword slash, done correctly, will prevent you from moving. You will get the same effect as the single frame tap, so if you're positioned right, you will turn around. After the sword slash, walk through the block. This trick only works with block clips, not overworld scrolls or ladder clips.

Here's an additional quick demonstration of the pixels for the "reverse" clip:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/reverseclip.png

==Drops==

=== Random drops ===

The enemy drops are not random. Whether they do drop an item is random, but when they do drop, here's what they'll be. The counter starts at 0, and goes up by 1 every time you kill (most) enemies. Zols' gels and vires' keese do not advance the counter. Chart via [http://tasvideos.org/2091S.html Baxter at TASVideos]<nowiki>:</nowiki>

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zeldaitemdropsnr2.png

===Drop Rates ===

The chance of getting a drop from group A is 80/256 = 31%.

Group B: 104/256 = 41%

Group C: 152/256 = 59%

Group D: 104/256 = 41%

==== Forced drops ====

However there are also the ''consecutive'' kill counters. Kill 10 enemies without getting hit (by an enemy, even a non-damaging bubble, or by the whirlwind from the recorder) and you'll get a forced, guaranteed 5 rupee drop from the next enemy that drops items (not in the X group). Kill the 10th enemy with a bomb instead, and instead of a 5 rupee you'll get a forced, guaranteed bomb drop!

Kill 16 enemies in a row and you get a fairy drop forced, but only if the 16th enemy is capable of dropping an item (not in the X group).

Note that if the 10th enemy does not drop items (in the X group), then killing that enemy with a bomb means the next drop that does happen will be a bomb. Killing that 10th enemy with the sword or any thing else will mean the next drop will be a rupee, even if you kill the next-dropping enemy with a bomb. It's the actual 10th enemy kill that counts, not the succeeding enemy that drops items.

However if the 16th enemy does not drop items, the fairy drop will be skipped entirely, and another one will not happen unless you get hit and the counters reset.

In some rooms that drop an item (such as the 5-Stalfos room in Level 1 that gives a key at the end), one enemy will act like it was holding the drop like a stalfos with a visible key, or a gibdo with a visible bomb. As a result, that enemy will never drop anything, and it will be able to store a forced drop and/or bypass a fairy drop, just like enemies that never drop items.

Note that splitting a Zol into two Gels, or splitting a Vire into two Keese, will not count as a kill or a consecutive kill. Killing one of those split Gels or Keese will not count as a kill for drops, but will count as a consecutive kill. Yes, there are some circumstances that are an exception to this. If the Zol is trapped against a barrier, it can sometimes trigger an extra 'kill' that way. A kill sound in place of a split sound indicates that this has happened. This does not occur with Vires.

Further note: Multiple simultaneous kills will not take you past 10 on the consecutive kill counter, per Darkwing Duck. If they would take you past 10 they leave you at 10 instead.

Advanced strategies: If a forced bomb/rupee or forced fairy drops, the consecutive counter for bombs/rupees is reset, but not the counter for fairies. So no matter how many hits you get on Manhandla with one well-placed bomb, the 10 count is reset after defeating him. The same is true of Dodongo. Likewise with a "Hippo Fairy" (going into a Patra with 7 on the consecutive counters, so that the Patra's center will be kill #16 and get a fairy), the bomb/rupee count resets to 0. Credit to Khananaphone for this discovery.

This means that if you get a forced fairy drop, the next consecutive bomb/rupee kill will not be at 20. It will be at 26. So bomb/rupee drops work in one of two methods:

# 10, (Fairy at 16), 26, 36, 46...
# 10, (Skip fairy at 16 by killing non-dropping enemy), 20, 30, 40...

Credit to Darkwing Duck for this discovery.

==Luck Manipulation==

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation]]

==The Recorder==

The recorder loops you through all the dungeons for which you have the Triforce, sequentially, according to the direction Link is facing. It has an internal counter that starts at 1. The counter changes every time you blow the recorder in a place where the whirlwind can appear (that is, any overworld screen where the recorder doesn't spawn a staircase). If Link is facing up or right, then the counter goes up to the next completed dungeon. If Link is facing down or left, then the counter goes down to the previous completed dungeon. The counter wraps around as needed. This counter is only initialized on power-on or reset, and so it does not reset during the run or even if you switch save files.

Let's look at some examples:
* You've completed levels 1, 3, 4, and 5 and haven't yet blown the recorder. If you blow the recorder once facing down, you will be taken to level 5, because the counter started at 1 and then looped around to 5.
* You then blow the recorder 3 more times while facing down. The counter will go 4, 3, 1, skipping 2 because level 2 is not completed. The whirlwind would then take you to level 1.
* You then blow the recorder once facing up and then once facing down. The counter goes from 1 to 3 and then 3 to 1, so the whirlwind would take Link to level 1 again. This technique is used in some routes.

Note that if you turn on the same frame that you use the recorder, the counter will change as though you were facing the old direction, not the new direction. This is a common source of recorder mistakes. Also, level ordering in the second quest is different, and this affects the order for the recorder. Levels 2 & 3, 4 & 5, and 7 & 8 are swapped, so the counter goes 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 6, 8, 7.

==Bombing Darknuts==

Whether a Darknut blocks a bomb's explosion with its shield is determined by two things. First, the direction Link is facing when he lays the bomb. Second, the direction the Darknut is facing when the explosion hits him. If Link's position when laying the bomb is facing the direction the Darknut is looking when the bomb goes off, the bomb won't work.

Here is a graphic by Lackattack24.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/darknuts-lackattack.png

==Bombing Walls==

Note that bombs do not check to see if a hole should be opened whenever a shutter is opening or closing. Beware of that.

Image by Eunos on positioning:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/eunos-bomb-positions.png

==Free Locked Door==

If you enter a dungeon and the first room has a locked door on top then you can leave and immediately reenter to unlock that door for free!

==Walking through enemies==

If an enemy has just been hit, then Link can temporarily walk through that enemy without damage or knockback. However the enemy itself must not be knocked back or split in order for that to work. So this doesn't work against Zols or Vires. Striking a Darknut's shield also prevents this from working.

Enemies won't be knocked back if hit perpendicular to their movement direction while they're between tiles. When they're directly on a tile, they can be knocked back in any direction.

Link normally stops walking temporarily when using the sword. Exceptions to this are while stepping onto the ladder (useful in 7 after the hungry Goriya, and in 1 to steal the key from the Stalfos after the Gels), and when stepping into a door (useful in 9 when skipping the first Patra). Catching a boomerang while stabbing will also allow Link to start moving immediately.

== Skipping Patras ==

Walking through Patras is a special case. It turns out that the orbiting eyes of the Patra don't actually exist hitbox-wise right away. This gives you time to walk through them. This is important for being able to actually skip the first Patra in level 9, when going toward the Old Man who talks about the Next Room. It's also great for trying to skip the second Patra, on the way back from the Silver Arrows, going toward Gannon.

Note that when walking through that first Patra, there's a trick to it. You can't just walk through the door. You have to hesitate after unlocking the door, before going through, and stabbing your way through the eye that will otherwise hit you.

Skipping the second Patra going toward the Silver Arrows is a matter of getting a good pattern of movement, and getting your block clip quickly and accurately.

Sadly the Patra before Gannon cannot be skipped with present knowledge.

Additionally, in Level 9 there's a special "reverse" block clip that's very useful to get done quickly, to get out of the wizzrobe room immediately south of the Silver Arrows. It's in theory a standard block clip, but it's coming from the opposite direction most runners do a block clip from, and it's under immense time pressure.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20p65-Vn6yY Here's a video of the Patra skips and the reverse clip in level 9], from LackAttack24's 29:56 then-WR run.

== Heart Duplication ==

Only possible in the 1.0 FDS version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGwBE4aAzU

== Recorder Wrong Warping ==

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/roocorder4ds.png

Fiskbit: Regarding the technical stuff: The raft and whirlwind both set Link's direction when picking him up. Because Link gets picked up by the raft second, his direction is set to up, which determines the scroll direction. Because he's in the whirlwind, the recorder destination (which is one screen left of the target level) is used as the screen he's scrolling from, and the direction from the raft makes him scroll up.

Fun fact: Both the whirlwind and the raft are controlling Link's position. The whirlwind modifies only his X position, while the raft only modifies his Y position, so he winds up moving diagonally while being carried by both.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/overworld_roocorder.png

Eunos: Required execution for Roocorder to save time vs. properly executed current WR route strats. https://youtu.be/MJ7HDzrUUrk

= Other Technical Information =

There are a lot of small interactions and weird corner cases in this game. Here's a section of the site dedicated to them.

[[Legend of Zelda/Technical Information]]

=Fighting Bosses=

[[Legend of Zelda/Bosses]]

=Tutorial Videos=

[[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

[[The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series]]

=Routes=

Routing of this game changes all the time. But here are some resources.

Again, [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] is a very good site for referencing routes.

If you're better than that, you need to start looking at routes used by top runners, and do research.

Here's some of that research:

* Saver's [http://imgur.com/a/56TXh route tracking] maps.
* Eunos has been putting together some documents: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MiAI6uH4zMJ7fvYWnELaTu-r8PcDd_p4eT_LqX7edVI/edit Updating Saver's maps] and [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g5aMlSu5TtMe0liFzc1Ow3fsCReHC_uVJ4HaTsIb010/edit?usp=sharing 100% route document].
* The [https://discord.gg/6GAYGBa routing channel on Lack's LoZ discord] is invaluable for routing.

Some notable historical routes:

Here's [https://archive.org/details/Zelda1_3404 Tom Votava's 34:04 run] from 2003, which was a good route if you didn't know anything at all about block clips, screen wraps, or item drop manipulation.

[https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/49914035 Darkwing Duck's 31:25] is notable as an upgrade from that, beginning to incorporate modern knowledge of the game.

Saver had an sub-30 run early, that skipped the Magic Sword. It's a tough route, but valid, though the video has been lost to the public.

=Maps=

The instructions above assume you know the overworld map, as well as where to get everything inside the dungeons themselves. For maps see [http://www.nesmaps.com NESMaps.com], including [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html dungeon maps] and a [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/ZeldaOverworldQ1.html fully annotated overworld map].

=Records=

See [http://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda Speedrun.com]

=Randomizer!=

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Randomizer]] for mechanics and techniques specific to [https://sites.google.com/site/zeldarandomizer/ Fred Coughlin's Legend of Zelda Randomizer]

= Tools =

How to patch a ROM? Get an IPS patcher, such as:
* [https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/ Lunar IPS]
* [https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746 MultiPatch]
* [https://github.com/fbeaudet/ips.py ips.py]

== ROM Patches ==

These work in a real NES

[https://github.com/helgefmi/tloz-prachack Practice Hack] in development. Shows drop counters. Later may give other useful information.

[http://redcandle.us/w/images/b/b8/Buffet_Zelda_1.2.zip Buffet 1.2 practice hack] by Fiskbit. Displays a timer, drop/spawn/recorder counters, and screen scroll / block clip help. Has a select menu for editing inventory, screen/level warping, and features like making Ganon visible. Archive also contains no-music hacks and FCEUX LUA scripts for things like hitbox and enemy targeting visualization.

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/show-target-by-fiskbit.ips AI target viewer] by Fiskbit (in the form of an IPS patch from the PRG0 ROM)

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Legend%20of%20Zelda%2C%20The%20%28U%29%20%28PRG1%29%20%5Baccessible%5D.ips Patch to remove screen flashing] by [https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/946576170392440832 @ireneista]

== Lua scripts ==

These work in select emulators

[https://pastebin.com/UrcyJi7L Hitbox visualizer script v1.2] by Fiskbit

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Zelda_Object_Targeting.lua Zelda Object Targeting v1.0]

[http://games.technoplaza.net/lozsrame/ Legend of Zelda save editor].

== Reading the code ==

[https://github.com/camthesaxman/zeldasource Disassembly project]

[http://zelda.zewt.org/asm.html Another disassembly]

[https://github.com/aldonunez/zelda1-disassembly Complete disassembly] by Aldo Nunez

== Miscellaneous ==

[http://avidemux.sourceforge.net Avidemux] is the best tool out there for timing runs.

= History =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/loz.html History of the record]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDluReuJDOk World Record Progression: The Legend of Zelda]

{{#ev:youtube| kDluReuJDOk}}

The Legend of Zelda/Emulators

2020-11-05T21:32:21Z

Neil:

= What is valid? =

The answer is, almost anything. NES emulation is very well understood, and very well implemented. Most popular emulators are accurate and acceptable.

Make absolutely sure to turn off any settings such as overclocking, reducing flicker, or reducing lag.

= Popular options =
* [http://nestopia.sourceforge.net Nestopia]
* [http://www.fceux.com/ Fceux]
* [https://mesen.ca Mesen]
* [https://byuu.org/emulation/higan/ Higan]
* [https://openemu.org OpenEmu] (make sure to use one of the above cores)
* [http://www.retroarch.com Retroarch] is a great option on Android, Raspberry Pi, and iOS.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2020-08-05T13:52:19Z

Neil: /* Resources */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBVuEr_sfk Riiyak's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

[https://gitlab.com/Lemmyz/z2PracticeCart Practice Hack by Lemmy]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

[https://app.box.com/s/pgbdufm5qdx4eppokk9sucmrujwk5rlh Everdrive any% deathless savestates]

Here are some new All Keys save states created by riiyak:

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7GmungaowIjqTtIymqf4ZgA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.21 and prior]

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7Gmungao1hD2_a-BagIIpjA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.22 and later]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBVuEr_sfk Riiyak's Eco Key tutorial]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2020-07-13T14:48:12Z

Neil: /* The Palace 5 "Eco Key" */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBVuEr_sfk Riiyak's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

[https://app.box.com/s/pgbdufm5qdx4eppokk9sucmrujwk5rlh Everdrive any% deathless savestates]

Here are some new All Keys save states created by riiyak:

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7GmungaowIjqTtIymqf4ZgA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.21 and prior]

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7Gmungao1hD2_a-BagIIpjA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.22 and later]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBVuEr_sfk Riiyak's Eco Key tutorial]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2020-07-13T14:15:25Z

Neil: /* Videos */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.twitch.tv/simpoldood/v/99366768 Simpoldood's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

[https://app.box.com/s/pgbdufm5qdx4eppokk9sucmrujwk5rlh Everdrive any% deathless savestates]

Here are some new All Keys save states created by riiyak:

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7GmungaowIjqTtIymqf4ZgA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.21 and prior]

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7Gmungao1hD2_a-BagIIpjA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.22 and later]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBVuEr_sfk Riiyak's Eco Key tutorial]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2020-07-13T14:13:15Z

Neil: /* Save States */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.twitch.tv/simpoldood/v/99366768 Simpoldood's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

[https://app.box.com/s/pgbdufm5qdx4eppokk9sucmrujwk5rlh Everdrive any% deathless savestates]

Here are some new All Keys save states created by riiyak:

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7GmungaowIjqTtIymqf4ZgA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.21 and prior]

[https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiZFhZp7Gmungao1hD2_a-BagIIpjA Riiyak All Keys savestates for Everdrive 1.22 and later]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2020-05-18T12:47:10Z

Neil:

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=JSR's 3 first Blue Candle tutorial=

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USJXnB6mIEo}}

=New player videos =

Prawnzo's Blue Ring, 2-first tutorial

{{#ev:twitchvod|450241035}}

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

MediaWiki:Tweeki-sidebar-right

2020-05-11T13:12:52Z

Neil:

MediaWiki:Tweeki-sidebar-right

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Neil:

MediaWiki:Tweeki-sidebar-right

2020-05-11T13:11:19Z

Neil:

LOGIN,EDIT-EXT,TOC,Special:RecentChanges|Recent Changes,Special:RandomPage,Special:SpecialPages,Special:Upload,HelpPage,Search

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2020-05-11T13:08:32Z

Neil: Created page with "✏️"

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Neil:

The Legend of Zelda

2020-05-11T12:56:13Z

Neil:

= Getting Started =

Here are some resources commonly requested by new players:

Picking an emulator: [[The Legend of Zelda/Emulators]]

Route options: [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] has a list of popular routes that are easier to finish, with a sliding scale of time/difficulty tradeoffs.

Tutorial videos: [[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

Basic maps: [http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html NESMaps]

Discord: [https://discord.gg/t7sgWzq Invitation to Lack's LoZ Discord server]

= Version differences =

Here is an entire page devoted to [[The Legend of Zelda/Version Differences|version differences]].

=Categories=

The categories, and their rules, are all documented at [https://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda speedrun.com's board].

If those categories aren't enough, there's also a [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce Category Extensions board] with its own rules in [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce/forum the forum sticky posts].

=Game Mechanics and Glitches=

==Screen Scroll==

The 'screen scroll' trick is useful for getting over overworld obstacles, as well as for clipping through blocks in dungeons. That means you get to some stairs without killing all the enemies first! Here's a graphic with some pointers:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenscroll.png

Since the above chart was made, an alternate way of clipping through a block has been discovered by [https://twitter.com/hal_yotsuba はる＠よつば]. First, you get onto the pixel as in the above picture, with the top of Link's head lined up with the flat part of the block. Then, instead of doing a single-frame tap, slash the sword and press right or left. The sword slash, done correctly, will prevent you from moving. You will get the same effect as the single frame tap, so if you're positioned right, you will turn around. After the sword slash, walk through the block. This trick only works with block clips, not overworld scrolls or ladder clips.

Here's an additional quick demonstration of the pixels for the "reverse" clip:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/reverseclip.png

==Drops==

=== Random drops ===

The enemy drops are not random. Whether they do drop an item is random, but when they do drop, here's what they'll be. The counter starts at 0, and goes up by 1 every time you kill (most) enemies. Zols' gels and vires' keese do not advance the counter. Chart via [http://tasvideos.org/2091S.html Baxter at TASVideos]<nowiki>:</nowiki>

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zeldaitemdropsnr2.png

===Drop Rates ===

The chance of getting a drop from group A is 80/256 = 31%.

Group B: 104/256 = 41%

Group C: 152/256 = 59%

Group D: 104/256 = 41%

==== Forced drops ====

However there are also the ''consecutive'' kill counters. Kill 10 enemies without getting hit (by an enemy, even a non-damaging bubble, or by the whirlwind from the recorder) and you'll get a forced, guaranteed 5 rupee drop from the next enemy that drops items (not in the X group). Kill the 10th enemy with a bomb instead, and instead of a 5 rupee you'll get a forced, guaranteed bomb drop!

Kill 16 enemies in a row and you get a fairy drop forced, but only if the 16th enemy is capable of dropping an item (not in the X group).

Note that if the 10th enemy does not drop items (in the X group), then killing that enemy with a bomb means the next drop that does happen will be a bomb. Killing that 10th enemy with the sword or any thing else will mean the next drop will be a rupee, even if you kill the next-dropping enemy with a bomb. It's the actual 10th enemy kill that counts, not the succeeding enemy that drops items.

However if the 16th enemy does not drop items, the fairy drop will be skipped entirely, and another one will not happen unless you get hit and the counters reset.

In some rooms that drop an item (such as the 5-Stalfos room in Level 1 that gives a key at the end), one enemy will act like it was holding the drop like a stalfos with a visible key, or a gibdo with a visible bomb. As a result, that enemy will never drop anything, and it will be able to store a forced drop and/or bypass a fairy drop, just like enemies that never drop items.

Note that splitting a Zol into two Gels, or splitting a Vire into two Keese, will not count as a kill or a consecutive kill. Killing one of those split Gels or Keese will not count as a kill for drops, but will count as a consecutive kill. Yes, there are some circumstances that are an exception to this. If the Zol is trapped against a barrier, it can sometimes trigger an extra 'kill' that way. A kill sound in place of a split sound indicates that this has happened. This does not occur with Vires.

Further note: Multiple simultaneous kills will not take you past 10 on the consecutive kill counter, per Darkwing Duck. If they would take you past 10 they leave you at 10 instead.

Advanced strategies: If a forced bomb/rupee or forced fairy drops, the consecutive counter for bombs/rupees is reset, but not the counter for fairies. So no matter how many hits you get on Manhandla with one well-placed bomb, the 10 count is reset after defeating him. The same is true of Dodongo. Likewise with a "Hippo Fairy" (going into a Patra with 7 on the consecutive counters, so that the Patra's center will be kill #16 and get a fairy), the bomb/rupee count resets to 0. Credit to Khananaphone for this discovery.

This means that if you get a forced fairy drop, the next consecutive bomb/rupee kill will not be at 20. It will be at 26. So bomb/rupee drops work in one of two methods:

# 10, (Fairy at 16), 26, 36, 46...
# 10, (Skip fairy at 16 by killing non-dropping enemy), 20, 30, 40...

Credit to Darkwing Duck for this discovery.

==Luck Manipulation==

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation]]

==The Recorder==

The recorder loops you through all the dungeons you've gotten the Triforce in, sequentially, according to the direction link is facing. It has an internal counter that starts at 1. Every time you blow the recorder in a place where the whirlwind would appear (that is, in most overworld screens, but not all), the counter changes according to the direction Link is facing. If Link is facing right or up, then the counter goes up one. If Link is facing down or left, then the counter goes down one.

Note that this counter does not reset during the run.

For example, hold your right foot turnwise to the out. If Link is facing where your toes point cross-wise, then the count will be cremented.

OK, never mind that. Let's say Link has completed dungeons 1, 3, 4, and 5. If Link blows the whistle once facing down. Link will then be taken to level 5, because the count started at one, and then looped around to 5.

Let's say link then blows the whistle 3 more times while facing down. The count will go 4, 3, 1, skipping 2 since the player has not completed 2 yet, and Link will be taken to 1.

So let's go back to the first example. Link just completed Level 5, and blows the whistle twice. Once facing down, once facing right. The counter will go from 1 to 5, and then back from 5 to 1, taking Link to Level 1. This is a technique used in record runs.

NOTE: the order of the dungeons is different in the second quest. (2/3, 4/5, 7/8 swapped?)

==Bombing Darknuts==

Whether a Darknut blocks a bomb's explosion with its shield is determined by two things. First, the direction Link is facing when he lays the bomb. Second, the direction the Darknut is facing when the explosion hits him. If Link's position when laying the bomb is facing the direction the Darknut is looking when the bomb goes off, the bomb won't work.

Here is a graphic by Lackattack24.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/darknuts-lackattack.png

==Bombing Walls==

Note that bombs do not check to see if a hole should be opened whenever a shutter is opening or closing. Beware of that.

Image by Eunos on positioning:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/eunos-bomb-positions.png

==Free Locked Door==

If you enter a dungeon and the first room has a locked door on top then you can leave and immediately reenter to unlock that door for free!

==Walking through enemies==

If an enemy has just been hit, then Link can temporarily walk through that enemy without damage or knockback. However the enemy itself must not be knocked back or split in order for that to work. So this doesn't work against Zols or Vires. Striking a Darknut's shield also prevents this from working.

Enemies won't be knocked back if hit perpendicular to their movement direction while they're between tiles. When they're directly on a tile, they can be knocked back in any direction.

Link normally stops walking temporarily when using the sword. Exceptions to this are while stepping onto the ladder (useful in 7 after the hungry Goriya, and in 1 to steal the key from the Stalfos after the Gels), and when stepping into a door (useful in 9 when skipping the first Patra). Catching a boomerang while stabbing will also allow Link to start moving immediately.

== Skipping Patras ==

Walking through Patras is a special case. It turns out that the orbiting eyes of the Patra don't actually exist hitbox-wise right away. This gives you time to walk through them. This is important for being able to actually skip the first Patra in level 9, when going toward the Old Man who talks about the Next Room. It's also great for trying to skip the second Patra, on the way back from the Silver Arrows, going toward Gannon.

Note that when walking through that first Patra, there's a trick to it. You can't just walk through the door. You have to hesitate after unlocking the door, before going through, and stabbing your way through the eye that will otherwise hit you.

Skipping the second Patra going toward the Silver Arrows is a matter of getting a good pattern of movement, and getting your block clip quickly and accurately.

Sadly the Patra before Gannon cannot be skipped with present knowledge.

Additionally, in Level 9 there's a special "reverse" block clip that's very useful to get done quickly, to get out of the wizzrobe room immediately south of the Silver Arrows. It's in theory a standard block clip, but it's coming from the opposite direction most runners do a block clip from, and it's under immense time pressure.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20p65-Vn6yY Here's a video of the Patra skips and the reverse clip in level 9], from LackAttack24's 29:56 then-WR run.

== Heart Duplication ==

Only possible in the 1.0 FDS version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGwBE4aAzU

== Recorder Wrong Warping ==

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/roocorder4ds.png

Fiskbit: Regarding the technical stuff: The raft and whirlwind both set Link's direction when picking him up. Because Link gets picked up by the raft second, his direction is set to up, which determines the scroll direction. Because he's in the whirlwind, the recorder destination (which is one screen left of the target level) is used as the screen he's scrolling from, and the direction from the raft makes him scroll up.

Fun fact: Both the whirlwind and the raft are controlling Link's position. The whirlwind modifies only his X position, while the raft only modifies his Y position, so he winds up moving diagonally while being carried by both.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/overworld_roocorder.png

Eunos: Required execution for Roocorder to save time vs. properly executed current WR route strats. https://youtu.be/MJ7HDzrUUrk

= Other Technical Information =

There are a lot of small interactions and weird corner cases in this game. Here's a section of the site dedicated to them.

[[Legend of Zelda/Technical Information]]

=Fighting Bosses=

[[Legend of Zelda/Bosses]]

=Tutorial Videos=

[[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

[[The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series]]

=Routes=

Routing of this game changes all the time. But here are some resources.

Again, [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] is a very good site for referencing routes.

If you're better than that, you need to start looking at routes used by top runners, and do research.

Here's some of that research:

* Saver's [http://imgur.com/a/56TXh route tracking] maps.
* Eunos has been putting together some documents: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MiAI6uH4zMJ7fvYWnELaTu-r8PcDd_p4eT_LqX7edVI/edit Updating Saver's maps] and [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g5aMlSu5TtMe0liFzc1Ow3fsCReHC_uVJ4HaTsIb010/edit?usp=sharing 100% route document].
* The [https://discord.gg/6GAYGBa routing channel on Lack's LoZ discord] is invaluable for routing.

Some notable historical routes:

Here's [https://archive.org/details/Zelda1_3404 Tom Votava's 34:04 run] from 2003, which was a good route if you didn't know anything at all about block clips, screen wraps, or item drop manipulation.

[https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/49914035 Darkwing Duck's 31:25] is notable as an upgrade from that, beginning to incorporate modern knowledge of the game.

Saver had an sub-30 run early, that skipped the Magic Sword. It's a tough route, but valid, though the video has been lost to the public.

=Maps=

The instructions above assume you know the overworld map, as well as where to get everything inside the dungeons themselves. For maps see [http://www.nesmaps.com NESMaps.com], including [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html dungeon maps] and a [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/ZeldaOverworldQ1.html fully annotated overworld map].

=Records=

See [http://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda Speedrun.com]

=Randomizer!=

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Randomizer]] for mechanics and techniques specific to [https://sites.google.com/site/zeldarandomizer/ Fred Coughlin's Legend of Zelda Randomizer]

= Tools =

How to patch a ROM? Get an IPS patcher, such as:
* [https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/ Lunar IPS]
* [https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746 MultiPatch]
* [https://github.com/fbeaudet/ips.py ips.py]

== ROM Patches ==

These work in a real NES

[https://github.com/helgefmi/tloz-prachack Practice Hack] in development. Shows drop counters. Later may give other useful information.

[http://redcandle.us/w/images/b/b8/Buffet_Zelda_1.2.zip Buffet 1.2 practice hack] by Fiskbit. Displays a timer, drop/spawn/recorder counters, and screen scroll / block clip help. Has a select menu for editing inventory, screen/level warping, and features like making Ganon visible. Archive also contains no-music hacks and FCEUX LUA scripts for things like hitbox and enemy targeting visualization.

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/show-target-by-fiskbit.ips AI target viewer] by Fiskbit (in the form of an IPS patch from the PRG0 ROM)

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Legend%20of%20Zelda%2C%20The%20%28U%29%20%28PRG1%29%20%5Baccessible%5D.ips Patch to remove screen flashing] by [https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/946576170392440832 @ireneista]

== Lua scripts ==

These work in select emulators

[https://pastebin.com/UrcyJi7L Hitbox visualizer script v1.2] by Fiskbit

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Zelda_Object_Targeting.lua Zelda Object Targeting v1.0]

[http://games.technoplaza.net/lozsrame/ Legend of Zelda save editor].

== Reading the code ==

[https://github.com/camthesaxman/zeldasource Disassembly project]

[http://zelda.zewt.org/asm.html Another disassembly]

== Miscellaneous ==

[http://avidemux.sourceforge.net Avidemux] is the best tool out there for timing runs.

= History =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/loz.html History of the record]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDluReuJDOk World Record Progression: The Legend of Zelda]

{{#ev:youtube| kDluReuJDOk}}

The Legend of Zelda

2020-05-11T12:55:51Z

Neil:

= Getting Started =

Here are some resources commonly requested by new players:

Picking an emulator: [[The Legend of Zelda/Emulators]]

Route options: [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] has a list of popular routes that are easier to finish, with a sliding scale of time/difficulty tradeoffs.

Tutorial videos: [[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

Basic maps: [http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html NESMaps]

Discord: [https://discord.gg/t7sgWzq Invitation to Lack's LoZ Discord server]

= Version differences =

Here is an entire page devoted to [[The Legend of Zelda/Version Differences|version differences]].

=Categories=

The categories, and their rules, are all documented at [https://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda speedrun.com's board].

If those categories aren't enough, there's also a [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce Category Extensions board] with its own rules in [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce/forum the forum sticky posts].

=Game Mechanics and Glitches=

==Screen Scroll==

The 'screen scroll' trick is useful for getting over overworld obstacles, as well as for clipping through blocks in dungeons. That means you get to some stairs without killing all the enemies first! Here's a graphic with some pointers:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenscroll.png

Since the above chart was made, an alternate way of clipping through a block has been discovered by [https://twitter.com/hal_yotsuba はる＠よつば]. First, you get onto the pixel as in the above picture, with the top of Link's head lined up with the flat part of the block. Then, instead of doing a single-frame tap, slash the sword and press right or left. The sword slash, done correctly, will prevent you from moving. You will get the same effect as the single frame tap, so if you're positioned right, you will turn around. After the sword slash, walk through the block. This trick only works with block clips, not overworld scrolls or ladder clips.

Here's an additional quick demonstration of the pixels for the "reverse" clip:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/reverseclip.png

==Drops==

=== Random drops ===

The enemy drops are not random. Whether they do drop an item is random, but when they do drop, here's what they'll be. The counter starts at 0, and goes up by 1 every time you kill (most) enemies. Zols' gels and vires' keese do not advance the counter. Chart via [http://tasvideos.org/2091S.html Baxter at TASVideos]<nowiki>:</nowiki>

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zeldaitemdropsnr2.png

===Drop Rates ===

The chance of getting a drop from group A is 80/256 = 31%.

Group B: 104/256 = 41%

Group C: 152/256 = 59%

Group D: 104/256 = 41%

==== Forced drops ====

However there are also the ''consecutive'' kill counters. Kill 10 enemies without getting hit (by an enemy, even a non-damaging bubble, or by the whirlwind from the recorder) and you'll get a forced, guaranteed 5 rupee drop from the next enemy that drops items (not in the X group). Kill the 10th enemy with a bomb instead, and instead of a 5 rupee you'll get a forced, guaranteed bomb drop!

Kill 16 enemies in a row and you get a fairy drop forced, but only if the 16th enemy is capable of dropping an item (not in the X group).

Note that if the 10th enemy does not drop items (in the X group), then killing that enemy with a bomb means the next drop that does happen will be a bomb. Killing that 10th enemy with the sword or any thing else will mean the next drop will be a rupee, even if you kill the next-dropping enemy with a bomb. It's the actual 10th enemy kill that counts, not the succeeding enemy that drops items.

However if the 16th enemy does not drop items, the fairy drop will be skipped entirely, and another one will not happen unless you get hit and the counters reset.

In some rooms that drop an item (such as the 5-Stalfos room in Level 1 that gives a key at the end), one enemy will act like it was holding the drop like a stalfos with a visible key, or a gibdo with a visible bomb. As a result, that enemy will never drop anything, and it will be able to store a forced drop and/or bypass a fairy drop, just like enemies that never drop items.

Note that splitting a Zol into two Gels, or splitting a Vire into two Keese, will not count as a kill or a consecutive kill. Killing one of those split Gels or Keese will not count as a kill for drops, but will count as a consecutive kill. Yes, there are some circumstances that are an exception to this. If the Zol is trapped against a barrier, it can sometimes trigger an extra 'kill' that way. A kill sound in place of a split sound indicates that this has happened. This does not occur with Vires.

Further note: Multiple simultaneous kills will not take you past 10 on the consecutive kill counter, per Darkwing Duck. If they would take you past 10 they leave you at 10 instead.

Advanced strategies: If a forced bomb/rupee or forced fairy drops, the consecutive counter for bombs/rupees is reset, but not the counter for fairies. So no matter how many hits you get on Manhandla with one well-placed bomb, the 10 count is reset after defeating him. The same is true of Dodongo. Likewise with a "Hippo Fairy" (going into a Patra with 7 on the consecutive counters, so that the Patra's center will be kill #16 and get a fairy), the bomb/rupee count resets to 0. Credit to Khananaphone for this discovery.

This means that if you get a forced fairy drop, the next consecutive bomb/rupee kill will not be at 20. It will be at 26. So bomb/rupee drops work in one of two methods:

# 10, (Fairy at 16), 26, 36, 46...
# 10, (Skip fairy at 16 by killing non-dropping enemy), 20, 30, 40...

Credit to Darkwing Duck for this discovery.

==Luck Manipulation==

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation]]

==The Recorder==

The recorder loops you through all the dungeons you've gotten the Triforce in, sequentially, according to the direction link is facing. It has an internal counter that starts at 1. Every time you blow the recorder in a place where the whirlwind would appear (that is, in most overworld screens, but not all), the counter changes according to the direction Link is facing. If Link is facing right or up, then the counter goes up one. If Link is facing down or left, then the counter goes down one.

Note that this counter does not reset during the run.

For example, hold your right foot turnwise to the out. If Link is facing where your toes point cross-wise, then the count will be cremented.

OK, never mind that. Let's say Link has completed dungeons 1, 3, 4, and 5. If Link blows the whistle once facing down. Link will then be taken to level 5, because the count started at one, and then looped around to 5.

Let's say link then blows the whistle 3 more times while facing down. The count will go 4, 3, 1, skipping 2 since the player has not completed 2 yet, and Link will be taken to 1.

So let's go back to the first example. Link just completed Level 5, and blows the whistle twice. Once facing down, once facing right. The counter will go from 1 to 5, and then back from 5 to 1, taking Link to Level 1. This is a technique used in record runs.

NOTE: the order of the dungeons is different in the second quest. (2/3, 4/5, 7/8 swapped?)

==Bombing Darknuts==

Whether a Darknut blocks a bomb's explosion with its shield is determined by two things. First, the direction Link is facing when he lays the bomb. Second, the direction the Darknut is facing when the explosion hits him. If Link's position when laying the bomb is facing the direction the Darknut is looking when the bomb goes off, the bomb won't work.

Here is a graphic by Lackattack24.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/darknuts-lackattack.png

==Bombing Walls==

Note that bombs do not check to see if a hole should be opened whenever a shutter is opening or closing. Beware of that.

Image by Eunos on positioning:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/eunos-bomb-positions.png

==Free Locked Door==

If you enter a dungeon and the first room has a locked door on top then you can leave and immediately reenter to unlock that door for free!

==Walking through enemies==

If an enemy has just been hit, then Link can temporarily walk through that enemy without damage or knockback. However the enemy itself must not be knocked back or split in order for that to work. So this doesn't work against Zols or Vires. Striking a Darknut's shield also prevents this from working.

Enemies won't be knocked back if hit perpendicular to their movement direction while they're between tiles. When they're directly on a tile, they can be knocked back in any direction.

Link normally stops walking temporarily when using the sword. Exceptions to this are while stepping onto the ladder (useful in 7 after the hungry Goriya, and in 1 to steal the key from the Stalfos after the Gels), and when stepping into a door (useful in 9 when skipping the first Patra). Catching a boomerang while stabbing will also allow Link to start moving immediately.

== Skipping Patras ==

Walking through Patras is a special case. It turns out that the orbiting eyes of the Patra don't actually exist hitbox-wise right away. This gives you time to walk through them. This is important for being able to actually skip the first Patra in level 9, when going toward the Old Man who talks about the Next Room. It's also great for trying to skip the second Patra, on the way back from the Silver Arrows, going toward Gannon.

Note that when walking through that first Patra, there's a trick to it. You can't just walk through the door. You have to hesitate after unlocking the door, before going through, and stabbing your way through the eye that will otherwise hit you.

Skipping the second Patra going toward the Silver Arrows is a matter of getting a good pattern of movement, and getting your block clip quickly and accurately.

Sadly the Patra before Gannon cannot be skipped with present knowledge.

Additionally, in Level 9 there's a special "reverse" block clip that's very useful to get done quickly, to get out of the wizzrobe room immediately south of the Silver Arrows. It's in theory a standard block clip, but it's coming from the opposite direction most runners do a block clip from, and it's under immense time pressure.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20p65-Vn6yY Here's a video of the Patra skips and the reverse clip in level 9], from LackAttack24's 29:56 then-WR run.

== Heart Duplication ==

Only possible in the 1.0 FDS version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGwBE4aAzU

== Recorder Wrong Warping ==

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/roocorder4ds.png

Fiskbit: Regarding the technical stuff: The raft and whirlwind both set Link's direction when picking him up. Because Link gets picked up by the raft second, his direction is set to up, which determines the scroll direction. Because he's in the whirlwind, the recorder destination (which is one screen left of the target level) is used as the screen he's scrolling from, and the direction from the raft makes him scroll up.

Fun fact: Both the whirlwind and the raft are controlling Link's position. The whirlwind modifies only his X position, while the raft only modifies his Y position, so he winds up moving diagonally while being carried by both.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/overworld_roocorder.png

Eunos: Required execution for Roocorder to save time vs. properly executed current WR route strats. https://youtu.be/MJ7HDzrUUrk

= Other Technical Information =

There are a lot of small interactions and weird corner cases in this game. Here's a section of the site dedicated to them.

[[Legend of Zelda/Technical Information]]

=Fighting Bosses=

[[Legend of Zelda/Bosses]]

=Tutorial Videos=

[[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

[[The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series]]

=Routes=

Routing of this game changes all the time. But here are some resources.

Again, [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] is a very good site for referencing routes.

If you're better than that, you need to start looking at routes used by top runners, and do research.

Here's some of that research:

* Saver's [http://imgur.com/a/56TXh route tracking] maps.
* Eunos has been putting together some documents: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MiAI6uH4zMJ7fvYWnELaTu-r8PcDd_p4eT_LqX7edVI/edit Updating Saver's maps] and [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g5aMlSu5TtMe0liFzc1Ow3fsCReHC_uVJ4HaTsIb010/edit?usp=sharing 100% route document].
* The [https://discord.gg/6GAYGBa routing channel on Lack's LoZ discord] is invaluable for routing.

Some notable historical routes:

Here's [https://archive.org/details/Zelda1_3404 Tom Votava's 34:04 run] from 2003, which was a good route if you didn't know anything at all about block clips, screen wraps, or item drop manipulation.

[https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/49914035 Darkwing Duck's 31:25] is notable as an upgrade from that, beginning to incorporate modern knowledge of the game.

Saver had an sub-30 run early, that skipped the Magic Sword. It's a tough route, but valid, though the video has been lost to the public.

=Maps=

The instructions above assume you know the overworld map, as well as where to get everything inside the dungeons themselves. For maps see [http://www.nesmaps.com NESMaps.com], including [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html dungeon maps] and a [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/ZeldaOverworldQ1.html fully annotated overworld map].

=Records=

See [http://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda Speedrun.com]

=Randomizer!=

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Randomizer]] for mechanics and techniques specific to [https://sites.google.com/site/zeldarandomizer/ Fred Coughlin's Legend of Zelda Randomizer]

= Tools =

How to patch a ROM? Get an IPS patcher, such as:
* [https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/ Lunar IPS]
* [https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746 MultiPatch]
* [https://github.com/fbeaudet/ips.py ips.py]

== ROM Patches ==

These work in a real NES

[https://github.com/helgefmi/tloz-prachack Practice Hack] in development. Shows drop counters. Later may give other useful information.

[http://redcandle.us/w/images/b/b8/Buffet_Zelda_1.2.zip Buffet 1.2 practice hack] by Fiskbit. Displays a timer, drop/spawn/recorder counters, and screen scroll / block clip help. Has a select menu for editing inventory, screen/level warping, and features like making Ganon visible. Archive also contains no-music hacks and FCEUX LUA scripts for things like hitbox and enemy targeting visualization.

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/show-target-by-fiskbit.ips AI target viewer] by Fiskbit (in the form of an IPS patch from the PRG0 ROM)

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Legend%20of%20Zelda%2C%20The%20%28U%29%20%28PRG1%29%20%5Baccessible%5D.ips Patch to remove screen flashing] by [https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/946576170392440832 @ireneista]

== Lua scripts ==

These work in select emulators

[https://pastebin.com/UrcyJi7L Hitbox visualizer script v1.2] by Fiskbit

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Zelda_Object_Targeting.lua Zelda Object Targeting v1.0]

[http://games.technoplaza.net/lozsrame/ Legend of Zelda save editor].

== Reading the code ==

[https://github.com/camthesaxman/zeldasource Disassembly project]

[http://zelda.zewt.org/asm.html Another disassembly]

== Misc =

[http://avidemux.sourceforge.net Avidemux] is the best tool out there for timing runs.

= History =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/loz.html History of the record]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDluReuJDOk World Record Progression: The Legend of Zelda]

{{#ev:youtube| kDluReuJDOk}}

MediaWiki:Tweeki.css

2020-05-11T12:53:40Z

Neil:

/* CSS placed here will affect users of the Tweeki skin */
.sidebar-wrapper { position: relative; top: inherit; }
.sidebar-container { width: 100%; }
.mainBody { margin: 5px 10px 0px 10px; }

MediaWiki:Tweeki.css

2020-05-11T12:53:20Z

Neil:

/* CSS placed here will affect users of the Tweeki skin */
.sidebar-wrapper { position: relative; top: inherit; }
.sidebar-container { width: 100%; }
.mainBody { margin: 0 10px; }

MediaWiki:Tweeki.css

2020-05-11T12:51:34Z

Neil:

/* CSS placed here will affect users of the Tweeki skin */
.sidebar-wrapper { position: relative; top: inherit; }
.sidebar-container { width: 100%; }

MediaWiki:Tweeki.css

2020-05-11T12:49:48Z

Neil: Created page with "/* CSS placed here will affect users of the Tweeki skin */ .sidebar-wrapper { position: relative; top: inherit; }"

/* CSS placed here will affect users of the Tweeki skin */
.sidebar-wrapper { position: relative; top: inherit; }

MediaWiki:Common.css

2020-05-11T12:42:58Z

Neil:

/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */
#toc ul > li > ul { display: block; }
#sidebar { background: rgb(249, 249, 249); background: rgba(249, 249, 249, .9); }
.plainlinks img { max-width: 100%; }
table td { padding: 5px; border-bottom: solid 1px black; border-right: solid 1px black; }
table { border-top: solid 1px black; border-left: solid 1px black; }
img { max-width: 100%; height: auto; }
iframe[data-src="http://redcandle.us//wp-content/tutorial-maps/"] { width: 100%; max-width: 100%; height: 2000px; }

The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation

2020-01-13T20:52:22Z

Neil: /* Full-Level Manipulation */

The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation

2020-01-13T20:43:41Z

Neil:

== Initial Bomb Drop ==

The Zelda RNG changes with every frame. In the NES version, the counter starts at the title screen. In the FDS version, the counter starts when side B runs, at the character select screen. Generally that doesn't matter, since things will never happen at the same time, but the one key exception is a first bomb drop.

Here is a chart of the Zelda drop RNG at the start of the game, with a 10 frame moving average. Each bar represents the numbered frame, and the 9 frames preceding.

Quoth fiskbit: "It's minor, but there are ~80 frames of lag from power on to entry into the red darknut room, which will delay the luck spike.... It's probably about a second of lag (24 of those frames are during power-on)." Later, he said "When you kill a darknut, you're probably 54, 62, or 70 frames earlier than you think you are."

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/zelda-drops-rolling-average-5400-frames.png

For the bomb drop, it may not be likely to hit any window suggested by this chart. But the possibility exists. Some runners have found that certain delays at the title/character select screen produce better results, if it avoids a fixed 'lull' in the drops.

== Full-Level Manipulation ==

JSR has worked on a scheme for manipulating the randomness out of Level 3:

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c01x8nX9EpM}}

The Legend of Zelda/Emulators

2019-08-25T19:04:19Z

Neil: /* What is valid? */

MediaWiki:Common.css

2019-08-11T03:30:39Z

Neil:

/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */
#toc ul > li > ul { display: block; }
#sidebar { background: rgb(249, 249, 249); background: rgba(249, 249, 249, .9); }
.plainlilnks img { max-width: 100%; }
table td { padding: 5px; border-bottom: solid 1px black; border-right: solid 1px black; }
table { border-top: solid 1px black; border-left: solid 1px black; }
img { max-width: 100%; height: auto; }
iframe[data-src="http://redcandle.us//wp-content/tutorial-maps/"] { width: 100%; max-width: 100%; height: 2000px; }

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2019-08-11T03:27:19Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2019-08-11T03:27:00Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2019-08-11T01:05:49Z

Neil:

The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series

2019-08-11T01:04:43Z

Neil: Created page with "A team of people, led by RedBirdGrad, is creating a series of videos explaining room-by-room how to execute Any% No Up+A at a high level. Here it is. <iframe key="mykey" path..."

A team of people, led by RedBirdGrad, is creating a series of videos explaining room-by-room how to execute Any% No Up+A at a high level. Here it is.

<iframe key="mykey" path="/wp-content/tutorial-maps/" />

The Legend of Zelda

2019-08-11T01:03:37Z

Neil: /* Tutorial Videos */

= Getting Started =

Here are some resources commonly requested by new players:

Picking an emulator: [[The Legend of Zelda/Emulators]]

Route options: [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] has a list of popular routes that are easier to finish, with a sliding scale of time/difficulty tradeoffs.

Tutorial videos: [[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

Basic maps: [http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html NESMaps]

Discord: [https://discord.gg/t7sgWzq Invitation to Lack's LoZ Discord server]

== Version differences ==

Here is an entire page devoted to [[The Legend of Zelda/Version Differences|version differences]].

==Categories==

The categories, and their rules, are all documented at [https://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda speedrun.com's board].

If those categories aren't enough, there's also a [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce Category Extensions board] with its own rules in [https://www.speedrun.com/zelda1ce/forum the forum sticky posts].

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Screen Scroll===

The 'screen scroll' trick is useful for getting over overworld obstacles, as well as for clipping through blocks in dungeons. That means you get to some stairs without killing all the enemies first! Here's a graphic with some pointers:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenscroll.png

Since the above chart was made, an alternate way of clipping through a block has been discovered by [https://twitter.com/hal_yotsuba はる＠よつば]. First, you get onto the pixel as in the above picture, with the top of Link's head lined up with the flat part of the block. Then, instead of doing a single-frame tap, slash the sword and press right or left. The sword slash, done correctly, will prevent you from moving. You will get the same effect as the single frame tap, so if you're positioned right, you will turn around. After the sword slash, walk through the block. This trick only works with block clips, not overworld scrolls or ladder clips.

Here's an additional quick demonstration of the pixels for the "reverse" clip:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/reverseclip.png

===Drops===

==== Random drops ====

The enemy drops are not random. Whether they do drop an item is random, but when they do drop, here's what they'll be. The counter starts at 0, and goes up by 1 every time you kill (most) enemies. Zols' gels and vires' keese do not advance the counter. Chart via [http://tasvideos.org/2091S.html Baxter at TASVideos]<nowiki>:</nowiki>

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zeldaitemdropsnr2.png

====Drop Rates ====

The chance of getting a drop from group A is 80/256 = 31%.

Group B: 104/256 = 41%

Group C: 152/256 = 59%

Group D: 104/256 = 41%

==== Forced drops ====

However there are also the ''consecutive'' kill counters. Kill 10 enemies without getting hit (by an enemy, even a non-damaging bubble, or by the whirlwind from the recorder) and you'll get a forced, guaranteed 5 rupee drop from the next enemy that drops items (not in the X group). Kill the 10th enemy with a bomb instead, and instead of a 5 rupee you'll get a forced, guaranteed bomb drop!

Kill 16 enemies in a row and you get a fairy drop forced, but only if the 16th enemy is capable of dropping an item (not in the X group).

Note that if the 10th enemy does not drop items (in the X group), then killing that enemy with a bomb means the next drop that does happen will be a bomb. Killing that 10th enemy with the sword or any thing else will mean the next drop will be a rupee, even if you kill the next-dropping enemy with a bomb. It's the actual 10th enemy kill that counts, not the succeeding enemy that drops items.

However if the 16th enemy does not drop items, the fairy drop will be skipped entirely, and another one will not happen unless you get hit and the counters reset.

In some rooms that drop an item (such as the 5-Stalfos room in Level 1 that gives a key at the end), one enemy will act like it was holding the drop like a stalfos with a visible key, or a gibdo with a visible bomb. As a result, that enemy will never drop anything, and it will be able to store a forced drop and/or bypass a fairy drop, just like enemies that never drop items.

Note that splitting a Zol into two Gels, or splitting a Vire into two Keese, will not count as a kill or a consecutive kill. Killing one of those split Gels or Keese will not count as a kill for drops, but will count as a consecutive kill. Yes, there are some circumstances that are an exception to this. If the Zol is trapped against a barrier, it can sometimes trigger an extra 'kill' that way. A kill sound in place of a split sound indicates that this has happened. This does not occur with Vires.

Further note: Multiple simultaneous kills will not take you past 10 on the consecutive kill counter, per Darkwing Duck. If they would take you past 10 they leave you at 10 instead.

Advanced strategies: If a forced bomb/rupee or forced fairy drops, the consecutive counter for bombs/rupees is reset, but not the counter for fairies. So no matter how many hits you get on Manhandla with one well-placed bomb, the 10 count is reset after defeating him. The same is true of Dodongo. Likewise with a "Hippo Fairy" (going into a Patra with 7 on the consecutive counters, so that the Patra's center will be kill #16 and get a fairy), the bomb/rupee count resets to 0. Credit to Khananaphone for this discovery.

This means that if you get a forced fairy drop, the next consecutive bomb/rupee kill will not be at 20. It will be at 26. So bomb/rupee drops work in one of two methods:

# 10, (Fairy at 16), 26, 36, 46...
# 10, (Skip fairy at 16 by killing non-dropping enemy), 20, 30, 40...

Credit to Darkwing Duck for this discovery.

===Luck Manipulation===

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Luck Manipulation]]

===The Recorder===

The recorder loops you through all the dungeons you've gotten the Triforce in, sequentially, according to the direction link is facing. It has an internal counter that starts at 1. Every time you blow the recorder in a place where the whirlwind would appear (that is, in most overworld screens, but not all), the counter changes according to the direction Link is facing. If Link is facing right or up, then the counter goes up one. If Link is facing down or left, then the counter goes down one.

Note that this counter does not reset during the run.

For example, hold your right foot turnwise to the out. If Link is facing where your toes point cross-wise, then the count will be cremented.

OK, never mind that. Let's say Link has completed dungeons 1, 3, 4, and 5. If Link blows the whistle once facing down. Link will then be taken to level 5, because the count started at one, and then looped around to 5.

Let's say link then blows the whistle 3 more times while facing down. The count will go 4, 3, 1, skipping 2 since the player has not completed 2 yet, and Link will be taken to 1.

So let's go back to the first example. Link just completed Level 5, and blows the whistle twice. Once facing down, once facing right. The counter will go from 1 to 5, and then back from 5 to 1, taking Link to Level 1. This is a technique used in record runs.

NOTE: the order of the dungeons is different in the second quest. (2/3, 4/5, 7/8 swapped?)

===Bombing Darknuts===

Whether a Darknut blocks a bomb's explosion with its shield is determined by two things. First, the direction Link is facing when he lays the bomb. Second, the direction the Darknut is facing when the explosion hits him. If Link's position when laying the bomb is facing the direction the Darknut is looking when the bomb goes off, the bomb won't work.

Here is a graphic by Lackattack24.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/darknuts-lackattack.png

===Bombing Walls===

Note that bombs do not check to see if a hole should be opened whenever a shutter is opening or closing. Beware of that.

Image by Eunos on positioning:

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/eunos-bomb-positions.png

===Free Locked Door===

If you enter a dungeon and the first room has a locked door on top then you can leave and immediately reenter to unlock that door for free!

===Walking through enemies===

If an enemy has just been hit, then Link can temporarily walk through that enemy without damage or knockback. However the enemy itself must not be knocked back or split in order for that to work. So this doesn't work against Zols or Vires. Striking a Darknut's shield also prevents this from working.

Enemies won't be knocked back if hit perpendicular to their movement direction while they're between tiles. When they're directly on a tile, they can be knocked back in any direction.

Link normally stops walking temporarily when using the sword. Exceptions to this are while stepping onto the ladder (useful in 7 after the hungry Goriya, and in 1 to steal the key from the Stalfos after the Gels), and when stepping into a door (useful in 9 when skipping the first Patra). Catching a boomerang while stabbing will also allow Link to start moving immediately.

=== Skipping Patras ===

Walking through Patras is a special case. It turns out that the orbiting eyes of the Patra don't actually exist hitbox-wise right away. This gives you time to walk through them. This is important for being able to actually skip the first Patra in level 9, when going toward the Old Man who talks about the Next Room. It's also great for trying to skip the second Patra, on the way back from the Silver Arrows, going toward Gannon.

Note that when walking through that first Patra, there's a trick to it. You can't just walk through the door. You have to hesitate after unlocking the door, before going through, and stabbing your way through the eye that will otherwise hit you.

Skipping the second Patra going toward the Silver Arrows is a matter of getting a good pattern of movement, and getting your block clip quickly and accurately.

Sadly the Patra before Gannon cannot be skipped with present knowledge.

Additionally, in Level 9 there's a special "reverse" block clip that's very useful to get done quickly, to get out of the wizzrobe room immediately south of the Silver Arrows. It's in theory a standard block clip, but it's coming from the opposite direction most runners do a block clip from, and it's under immense time pressure.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20p65-Vn6yY Here's a video of the Patra skips and the reverse clip in level 9], from LackAttack24's 29:56 then-WR run.

=== Heart Duplication ===

Only possible in the 1.0 FDS version? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iGwBE4aAzU

=== Recorder Wrong Warping ===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/roocorder4ds.png

Fiskbit: Regarding the technical stuff: The raft and whirlwind both set Link's direction when picking him up. Because Link gets picked up by the raft second, his direction is set to up, which determines the scroll direction. Because he's in the whirlwind, the recorder destination (which is one screen left of the target level) is used as the screen he's scrolling from, and the direction from the raft makes him scroll up.

Fun fact: Both the whirlwind and the raft are controlling Link's position. The whirlwind modifies only his X position, while the raft only modifies his Y position, so he winds up moving diagonally while being carried by both.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/overworld_roocorder.png

Eunos: Required execution for Roocorder to save time vs. properly executed current WR route strats. https://youtu.be/MJ7HDzrUUrk

== Other Technical Information ==

There are a lot of small interactions and weird corner cases in this game. Here's a section of the site dedicated to them.

[[Legend of Zelda/Technical Information]]

==Fighting Bosses==

[[Legend of Zelda/Bosses]]

==Tutorial Videos==

[[The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos]]

[[The Legend of Zelda/Room Tutorial Series]]

==Routes==

Routing of this game changes all the time. But here are some resources.

Again, [https://www.orderoftheate.com/the-legend-of-zelda Order of the Ate] is a very good site for referencing routes.

If you're better than that, you need to start looking at routes used by top runners, and do research.

Here's some of that research:

* Saver's [http://imgur.com/a/56TXh route tracking] maps.
* Eunos has been putting together some documents: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MiAI6uH4zMJ7fvYWnELaTu-r8PcDd_p4eT_LqX7edVI/edit Updating Saver's maps] and [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g5aMlSu5TtMe0liFzc1Ow3fsCReHC_uVJ4HaTsIb010/edit?usp=sharing 100% route document].
* The [https://discord.gg/6GAYGBa routing channel on Lack's LoZ discord] is invaluable for routing.

Some notable historical routes:

Here's [https://archive.org/details/Zelda1_3404 Tom Votava's 34:04 run] from 2003, which was a good route if you didn't know anything at all about block clips, screen wraps, or item drop manipulation.

[https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/49914035 Darkwing Duck's 31:25] is notable as an upgrade from that, beginning to incorporate modern knowledge of the game.

Saver had an sub-30 run early, that skipped the Magic Sword. It's a tough route, but valid, though the video has been lost to the public.

==Maps==

The instructions above assume you know the overworld map, as well as where to get everything inside the dungeons themselves. For maps see [http://www.nesmaps.com NESMaps.com], including [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/Zelda.html dungeon maps] and a [http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda/ZeldaOverworldQ1.html fully annotated overworld map].

==Records==

See [http://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Zelda Speedrun.com]

==Randomizer!==

See [[The Legend of Zelda/Randomizer]] for mechanics and techniques specific to [https://sites.google.com/site/zeldarandomizer/ Fred Coughlin's Legend of Zelda Randomizer]

== Tools ==

How to patch a ROM? Get an IPS patcher, such as:
* [https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lips/ Lunar IPS]
* [https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746 MultiPatch]
* [https://github.com/fbeaudet/ips.py ips.py]

=== ROM Patches ===

These work in a real NES

[https://github.com/helgefmi/tloz-prachack Practice Hack] in development. Shows drop counters. Later may give other useful information.

[http://redcandle.us/w/images/b/b8/Buffet_Zelda_1.2.zip Buffet 1.2 practice hack] by Fiskbit. Displays a timer, drop/spawn/recorder counters, and screen scroll / block clip help. Has a select menu for editing inventory, screen/level warping, and features like making Ganon visible. Archive also contains no-music hacks and FCEUX LUA scripts for things like hitbox and enemy targeting visualization.

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/show-target-by-fiskbit.ips AI target viewer] by Fiskbit (in the form of an IPS patch from the PRG0 ROM)

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Legend%20of%20Zelda%2C%20The%20%28U%29%20%28PRG1%29%20%5Baccessible%5D.ips Patch to remove screen flashing] by [https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/946576170392440832 @ireneista]

=== Lua scripts ===

These work in select emulators

[https://pastebin.com/UrcyJi7L Hitbox visualizer script v1.2] by Fiskbit

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Zelda_Object_Targeting.lua Zelda Object Targeting v1.0]

[http://games.technoplaza.net/lozsrame/ Legend of Zelda save editor].

=== Reading the code ===

[https://github.com/camthesaxman/zeldasource Disassembly project]

[http://zelda.zewt.org/asm.html Another disassembly]

=== Misc ===

[http://avidemux.sourceforge.net Avidemux] is the best tool out there for timing runs.

== History ==

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/loz.html History of the record]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDluReuJDOk World Record Progression: The Legend of Zelda]

{{#ev:youtube| kDluReuJDOk}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-07-09T16:43:25Z

Neil:

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Prawnzo's Blue Ring, 2-first tutorial

{{#ev:twitchvod|450241035}}

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-07-09T13:48:21Z

Neil: /* New player videos */

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Prawnzo's Red Ring, 2-first tutorial

{{#ev:twitchvod|450241035}}

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-07-09T13:44:25Z

Neil: /* New player videos */

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Prawnzo's Red Ring, 2-first tutorial

{{#ev:twitchvod|https://www.twitch.tv/videos/450241035}}

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-07-09T13:44:11Z

Neil:

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Prawnzo's Red Ring, 2-first tutorial

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.twitch.tv/videos/450241035}}

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2019-06-24T11:39:32Z

Neil: /* Save States */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.twitch.tv/simpoldood/v/99366768 Simpoldood's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

[https://app.box.com/s/pgbdufm5qdx4eppokk9sucmrujwk5rlh Everdrive any% deathless savestates]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2019-06-24T11:39:12Z

Neil: /* Videos */

In time this page will hold information about records, races, and strategies. We've also got [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#Records|records]] and [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link#IRC_and_Races|races]]. See also the menu above for pages on specific topics.

==Categories==

Whatever mood you're in, Zelda 2 has a category for. Want a 10 minute game? Bam! Want a 75 minute game? Bam!

Zelda 2 has many, many categories due to historical accident. Traditionally there are three kinds of categories for a game like this: Any%, 100%, and New Game +. Zelda 2 only starts there.

We also have the "No OOB" variants of categories because people want to be able to run the game the old way, before the new routing which was made possible in late 2012 due to new glitches found.

We also have a couple of 'deathless' variants which were popularized by [http://speeddemosarchive.com/ SDA], which are interesting not because they're the fastest, but because they're the hardest to run successfully.

Throw in the possibility of Japanese and European versions of the games, and Zelda 2 probably has more categories than any other game.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Categories|See this Categories page]] for a detailed explanation of better-known categories.

==Differences between versions==

General differences between versions [http://tcrf.net/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link are available at The Cutting Room Floor]. Here are some speedrun-specific notes:

The version most run, with the highest level of competition, is the US NES version. It's the absolute fastest version for any category. The US Virtual Console version is speedrun-wise the same, except that you lose a second every 10 minutes due to the slightly-lower VC NES Framerate (~60.002 vs ~60.099).

The possible advantage of the Japanese FDS version - faster attack leveling - is mitigated by slower elevators, the addition of load times, the inability to pick up items as a fairy, the harder Dark Link AI, the inability to get 'scroll lock' in Glitch Town (you turned into a fairy instead), and the lower gem XP payoffs. The Japanese Virtual Console despite the lower framerate is faster than the original FDS hardware, due to the much shorter load times, though we're subtracting load times on leaderboards.

Approximiate FDS load times by version (These obviously vary quite a bit by specific route, but this just gives an idea of the load time differences by version):

* FDS: Variable, 6.4s on my FDS (204.8 seconds for a 100% All Keys run, 179.2s for an Any% run)
* Everdrive: 3.3s (105.6s AK, 92.4s Any%)
* Virtual Console: 1.4s (44.8s AK, 39.2s Any%)
* Powerpak: 1.3s (41.6s AK, 36.4s Any%)
An of FDS load times for the All Keys category is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nxt6WrdaKSXpVsXhx9kZHn5nkqDPN905xl6rECBQsnM/edit?usp=sharing here].

Here is [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19Kmw2_TzSfCxOb9APjGrrinPlRbxuMYrxDYnXCVhDRo/edit?usp=sharing a spreadsheet to ease the calculation of the load times for an FDS run]. Just plug in the four load times your FDS drive reader/emulator/VC/flash cart exhibits for Town Entry, Overworld Entry, Palace Entry, and your P7 disk flip. Then make sure the list of loads matches your run, adding any town/palace entries and exits as appropriate. Easy.

The PAL-B version is mostly like the US version, only with slower movement on the overworld, and the inability to fairy through doors. The PAL-A version does allow the fairy through door glitch.

==Game Mechanics and Glitches==

===Experience and Leveling===

If you do not level properly in this game, it gets harder, and harder, and the game quickly gets out of hand. Make sure to have Attack level 4 by the time you leave Palace 1. This requires some luck, and some practice. Know your 6 counts. Know your P bags. It's critical to learn how to manipulate your experience, to ensure the biggest possible payoffs at the end of each palace. Level Attack early, and make sure your "Next" level is Attack every time you put a gem into a statue at the end of a palace.

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/zelda_ii_exp.png

Know the experience chart, and know what monsters are left to kill in each palace (See the Maps for more).

Unwary has compiled a lot of interesting Zelda 2 data, showing experience, leveling, and attack and magic power, as well as some leveling plans. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtZT-JjnCQxvdGJDNHB5ZHFDYlN5bm5GREZIRko0YXc#gid=0 Here is his Google Docs spreadsheet of the data] and [http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/unwarys-zelda-2-charts.pdf Here is a PDF I made of the main charts].

Note that the FDS leveling is of course different. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Leveling|Here's the FDS leveling chart.]]

===Drops and 6 Counts===

http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Zelda2DropChart-v7.png

There are three kinds of enemies in this game: Enemies with no drops, enemies in the "small" group, and enemies in the "large" group. This is important to know, because when the enemies drop items is not random. Every sixth enemy you kill in a group will drop an item. Kills in one group to not affect kills in the other group. So, if you kill 5 Bots, then an Iron Knuckle, killing another bot after will cause a small drop. Likewise, killing 4 Iron Knuckles, then killing some Bots, then killing two Stalfos will cause a large drop on the second Stalfos. The kind of drop you get, however, is random. Small drops will usually be a blue jar, but have a 1/8 chance of being a 50-point P Bag. Large drops are equally likely to be a red jar or a 200-point P Bag. This means if you kill the same enemies, in the same order, every time you play the game, you will get drops at the same times. This is an important fact in routing the game, as well as in recovering from bad luck or mistakes.

===Leaving the screen and respawning===

A enemy will respawn in a cave (such as when backtracking in Hammer cave or in a palace) after being killed, if you leave the room before the experience starts to count off. Merely seeing the "100" or whatever floating in the air is not sufficient. It must start counting up in your experience total for it to count.

That kill will still count for your drop counts, even if you leave too soon. However leaving too soon prevents you from getting the experience, and makes sure the enemy will respawn.

As long as the experience starts to count up though, you'll continue to get the rest on the next screen. You will also get the rest if you up-a, save, and then load another save file. The rest of the XP total will count off (that also happens with experience rewards at palace gems...)

===Fairying through Doors===

In the JP FDS and US NES versions, if you have no keys, and are in fairy form, you can go through a door without using a key.

If you have a key, a key will be used, even if you're in fairy form.

However note that in the JP FDS version, you can't pick up an item in fairy form, so in that version this isn't useful for doors guarding items, such as the glove, the raft, the boots, and the flute.

===The Healer Glitch and Glitch Town===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Healer Glitch|The Healer Glitch]]

===Fairy Feet / Encounter Skip Glitch===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Fairy Feet Encounter Skip|Fairy Feet Encounter Skip]]

===The Darunia Superjump===

The traditional strategy for getting up to get the Upward Stab was to use a frame perfect jump:

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/The Darunia Superjump|The Darunia Superjump]]

But now the easier path is just to hold down while casting fairy. That allows Link to go down the chimney as fairy.

===Luck Manipulation===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Luck Manipulation|Luck Manipulation]]

===Daira Jumping===

As mentioned in the combat section, monster AI tends to read your D-Pad.

This can be used to your advantage to skip certain enemies. Goriyas, Dairas, and Molblins can be jumped over by getting a good running start, and letting off of right or left on the dpad while in the air. This will change their movement and let you get right over them.

Getting over Iron Knuckles is harder, because their AI is different. A straight daira jump isn't as effective, because instead of freezing in place when you let off of the D-Pad in the air, they begin to meander around randomly.

So with an iron knuckle you really want to do a daira jump, then downstab on their heads. Even then it won't always work, because sometimes you'll get really bad movement patterns when they move randomly.

===The Palace 5 "Eco Key"===

The first key in Palace 5 teases the player. You are meant to fairy past it, then backtrack to get it.

Pro_JN discovered that [https://youtu.be/1Q1qpesBHhg it's possible to damage boost to it] without casting fairy. Here is [https://www.twitch.tv/simpoldood/v/99366768 Simpoldood's tutorial].

===Combat Techniques===

The most important thing to know is to keep your momentum. If you're moving forward, you can keep hitting enemies, instead of letting them hit you while staying alive. This means that generally, the worst possible attack to make is the standing sword attack. It's slow because of the backswing, and you stop to make the attack. Better is the crouching sword attack. It's faster than the standing attack, but it also kills your momentum. However certain enemies are bad to crouch stab, such as the ever-annoying Tin Suits, who have top-heavy hit boxes. Jumping is the key to combat in Zelda 2. Often a jumping crouch thrust is best. Sometimes you will want to jump, crouch, and then thrust on your way down from your jump. Against other enemies, or for a final attack, you may want to attack while you're coming up in your jump. Enemies like Iron Knuckles need special techniques. Jump at them, do not crouch, and then thrust on the way down to hit them in the visor. However in a two square-high corridor, there isn’t room to jump. Instead, when facing an orange or red Iron Knuckle in this situation, press A then B right after, very quickly, to get attacks in. A blue Iron Knuckle can defeat this. Instead do jumping crouch stabs (most notable at the last key in palace 5).

====The Jackhammer====

The downstab is a powerful attack. While the game limits the frequency of sword stabs that are possible by pressing B, it does not limit the number of stabs possible by pressing down to do a downstab. This means that getting on top of an enemy and mashing down will get in many hits quickly. The Jackhammer is possibly most notable against Iron Knuckles in three tile high corridors (often seen it front of items). By jumping into the iron knuckle and doing a downstab, it's possible to get *inside* the enemy doing a downstab. By mashing down, one can hit the enemy over and over, killing the Iron Knuckle (or getting through it with a lot of damage done at least) without doing any damage at all to Link. Other useful jackhammer opportunities: Dragon heads, Bubbles (in a casual run or a no-reset run where 50xp is needed), Barba, (in theory) Boss Gooma, Horsehead, Helmethead (after the helmets are removed).

====The Whirlwind and the Panicked Dolphin====

Related to the jackhammer is the whirlwind. Primarily used in TASes, the whirlwind does aerial crouch stabs, while alternating pressing left and right. Similarly to how mashing down will create multiple hits, so too will constantly changing directions. It's rare that this is doable and practical in a live run, but there is one enemy whom it is useful to attack in this way, or at least try: Thunderbird. Sometimes, you'll just get lucky by mashing around like a panicked dolphin. (Error deleted the original 'panicked dolphin' video. Here's the [http://www.twitch.tv/scorpion__max/v/27029689 next best thing].

===Bosses===

An important note about bosses: Don't kill a boss when he's too far off screen (mostly applies to Rebonack on the left), or [http://www.twitch.tv/kinghippo423/v/28702387 the game will softlock] because the key won't drop.

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Rebonack|Rebonack]]

[https://youtu.be/luXwnZB3djw Boss Gooma]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Barba|Barba]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Thunderbird|Thunderbird]]

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Dark Link|Dark Link]]

===Encounters===

====Spawns====

There are two types of overworld encounter spawns that can happen. One spawn is based on steps, one on time.

The overworld random encounter timer always counts down, even in a side scrolling area. When it reaches 0, enemies spawn. If you are on a path, it stays at 0 until you step on terrain that can spawn enemies.

The timer resets to 8 ticks upon exiting a side scrolling area. If you are standing on the overworld when it reaches 0, it resets to a new number of ticks. The number of ticks is based on what terrain you are standing on when the time encounter is spawned.

*Grass, Swamp 32 Ticks
*Desert, Forest 24 Ticks
*Graveyard 9 Ticks
*Lava 3 Ticks

When a tick counts down is based on a global timer, usually every tick takes 21 frames. However, the first tick will be variable. It could be 1 through 21. Only where you are standing when the counter is set from 0 affects the time. Moving to a new terrain has no effect once the timer is already counting.

Link moves at about 1 tile every 16 frames, so this works out to be between 10 and 11 steps (~2.8 seconds) before you can expect an encounter when coming out of a side scrolling area. This will always be the first type of spawn you see.

Overworld step counter for random encounters counts up from 1 to 255, increasing by 16 each step. When it rolls over 255 it resets to 1 and monsters spawn. This means every 16 steps there will be an encounter spawn. Terrain does not affect steps-- the path also counts as a step, so if the 16th step is on a path, no encounter will spawn for that cycle. Resets to 1 upon exiting a side scrolling area.

In northwest Hyrule, the area around north palace and palace 1, the step counter isn't active and as such you can never get a step encounter there.

[http://pastebin.com/f4JFe73d Here is an alternate writeup of this information]

====Movement====

One fourth of the time, overworld monsters will perform a random walk in any direction. The rest of the time, overworld encounters will try to home in on you Their movements follow this pattern, depending on the monster's position relative to link:

http://redcandle.us/w/images/5/5d/Zelda2-overworld-movement.png

Consequences of this include:

* If a monster is far away from you, up in one of the random walk quadrants, there's a good chance it'll never get near you.

* If a monster is moving horizontally just above or just below you, it will only break out of that pattern by a random walk.

Credit to myask for this work.

====How to Dodge Encounters====

Be lucky. Okay, that's only partially true. You can always get a random walk in your way that absolutely ruins your day, but there are ways to try to avoid encounters.

First, know when the spawns are going to happen. That means having a good feel for both the timer and step spawns. Second, use the pause button liberally, to give yourself time to read and react. Third, get just close enough to the enemy that it commits to walking toward you, then dodge and go past. This strategy is commonly employed in 100% runs when coming up toward Palace 1 from the Parapa heart, as well as when going to and from Palace 3. However it can be used to "slink thru" (as Pro_JN called it) anywhere with enough [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=1h2m2s practice] and [http://www.twitch.tv/pro_jn/v/4781589?t=58m50s skill].

Sometimes there are certain patterns, where we can specifically line up the timer and step spawns to show up at convenient times, so that we can make practiced, fixed dodges that work virtually every time. See for example the 'Dazzle' technique from Maze Island to Darunia, where the runner starts from the 1up square, and gets all the way to the first fixed encounter outside Darunia. Also the 'JN' technique of taking an encounter (or doing a 5 step backtrack fallback strat) at the square beside the boulder guarding Mido, on the way to the Medicine cave. Finally, another common example of this is the Badbrakes 'Riverdance' which set up an encounter-free run from the Ocean heart to the river demon guarding the path to Palace 6.

=== Casting during Magic Fill-ups ===

There is an art to getting life refills while taking magic fill-ups in the run. Ideally we'll just never get hit, but most of us are human, so we use the Life spell.

'''When taking a red jar''', it will give you an amount of magic that would fill your magic bar up completely, ''even if it's already partially filled''. So if you cast a spell after taking the jar, but before the jar fill-up completes, you can get more magic out of the jar than you otherwise would.

For example: If you have 5 total bars (80 points) of magic, and have cast a Magic 1 Jump spell (48 points), you'll have 2 bars (32 points) remaining. If you take a red jar, then cast Jump again while the red jar fill-up happens, you'll end with 4 bars (64 points). 32 + 80 - 48 = 64.

Further, it is possible to cast a spell in the small window between beginning the sword slash to pick up the jar, and when the jar is picked up. This means one can [http://youtu.be/m4xpCHv0aIw?t=25m56s fairy, then pick up a red jar, and end at full magic]. Credit to Simpoldood for developing this trick in runs.

'''When speaking to a magic lady in town''', she will give a fixed amount of magic to you: 255 points (just under 16 bars). This means typically one can cast several spells before losing a full fill-up potential, but the amount is finite. Credit to Scorpion__Max for finding this number.

===Valley of Death Red Jar===

The jar at the beginning of the Valley of Death is known for despawning. SDA user [https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244.html#zelda_ii_the_adventure_of_link_244 fiskbit examined the situation]. It turns out there's a glitch, where a memory location ($071F) that remembers whether the red jar has been taken, is overwritten by other things in the game.

Long story short, if you attempt the encounter skip at the start of the Valley of Death but fail, you have to scroll the screen to the right, before leaving the screen back to the left to try again. If you don't, you risk despawning the jar.

It's also possible to re-spawn the jar using the same glitch, but it's probably not useful in a speed run.

===The XP Softlock===

There is a glitch in the game that is actually very harmful for the player. It turns out that if you happen to leave a side-scroll screen (town, road, encounter, palace, anything) just as your experience total hits the amount needed for the next level, the game will lock up. It's known as 'the softlock,' because it's purely a software glitch, which places the game into a completely frozen state. It's impossible to recover from.

Try not to leave a screen too close to when your experience total will hit your next level. That's the only way to avoid the soft lock.

It's believed that the Virtual Console may be more resistant to the softlock, but it's not immune. Beware!

[https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/50836171 Don't be this guy].

==Beginning Advice==

Run the 100% All Keys category. It's the best introduction to the game.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Here's Simpoldood's tutorial series] and [https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error's impromptu tutorial]

Here's [https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 an Any% No OoB tutorial]

===All Keys Route===

A true beginner to the game may not even know where to go or, worse, will emulate the routes used by the very best players playing the hardest game categories. This is a mistake. My advice is to follow this route:

# Magic Container south of North Palace
# Town of Rauru – Shield Spell
# Heart Container south of Palace 1
# Palace 1: Parapa – Candle
# Trophy
# Town of Ruto – Jump Spell
# 1-up south of Medicine
# Bagu
# Town of Saria – Life Spell
# Death Mountain – Hammer
# Magic Container west of Hammer
# 1-up southwest of Mido
# Heart Container east of Palace 2
# Medicine
# Town of Mido – Fairy Spell, Downward Thrust
# Palace 2: Midoro – Handy Glove
# Palace 3: Island – Raft
# Town of Nabooru – Fire Spell
# 1-up west of Maze Island
# Magic Container on Maze Island
# Palace 4: Maze – Boots
# Lost Child
# Town of Darunia – Reflect Spell, Upward Thrust
# Palace 4: Complete
# Heart Container north of Palace 5
# Palace 5: Ocean – Flute
# 1-up north of the Valley of Death
# Town of New Kasuto – Magic Container, Spell Spell, Magic Key
# Heart Container east of Palace 6
# Palace 6: Hidden – Cross
# Town of Kasuto – Thunder Spell
# Palace 7: Great

This is a basic route that, if executed well enough, would produce respectable times in the 100% All Keys category, assuming the runner does not fairy through doors.

===Maps===

If you don't know where these places are, or how to get through the dungeons, there are maps to help. [http://mikesrpgcenter.com/ Mike's RPG Center] has great maps, though a beginner may find the palace maps of [http://nesmaps.com/ NESMaps.com] easier to read. An intermediate form based on Mike's with extra details added is [[Media:MyaskZ2palacemaps.png|here]], with Great Palace map [[Media:Z2GPalacemap.png|here]]. A diagram showing some of the ways that do not result in encounters from the beginning is [[Media:Z2SafeFromNP.png|here]]. Here's a little animation that could serve as a reminder of the route. I link it because it's cute: http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/z2-100ak-route-animation.gif Only after mastering this route should the runner attempt more advanced routes, such as those run by the top any% runners, which include skipping the candle entirely, getting the Fairy spell before Palace 1, and skipping spells like Life or Spell.

===100% All Keys Leveling Plans===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/All Keys Leveling Plans|Here's the leveling plans page]] because it was getting too large to keep inline here.
=== Palace 1 Leveling Options===
The usual way to start the All Keys run is to get a 50 point bag and a 200 point bag from random drops, and reset if you don't get it. But unless you're going for a World Record, that may not be the best option. Consider all the choices before deciding what to do for your speed runs.

{|
| '''Strategy'''
| '''Description'''
| '''Advantages'''
| '''Disadvantages'''
|-
| '''Proceeding with Attack 3'''
| Normally with 4-1-1 out of Palace 1, you proceed to take Magic 2 and Life 3 during death mountain, and be 5-2-3 at the Palace 2 Gem. Instead, you can just go with 3-1-2 out of Palace 1, and be 5-1-2 at the Palace 2 Gem.
| Not resetting lets you practice more of the run. The combat practice helps some people.
| It's harder for new players, because you don't get the free fill ups from Magic 2, Life 2, and Life 3. It can lead to a game over. Lastly, it requires some drop luck, or you will be unable to catch up in levels at all.
|-
| '''Kill Bubbles'''
| To make up for missed 50 or 200 point bags, you can kill 50xp Bubbles over and over.
| It saves a lot of walking over other fall backs, and isn't hard.
| Bubbles get tedious.
|-
| '''Loop Palace 1'''
| If you're short for attack 4, you can jump over the spot that triggers the Palace 1 Gem, re-enter the palace, and kill a few enemies on the way in.
| It guarantees attack 4 in a beginner-friendly way with a small time loss.
| It's slower than the other options, unless you're unable to finish an Attack 3 run.
|-
| '''Reset'''
| You can always just reset.
| Having a consistent set of conditions lets you squeeze the most out of your runs.
| It's not race viable to reset 8 minutes in, and you don't get to practice the rest of the game, where most of your time savings probably are.
|}

==Miscellaneous Tips==

=== 100% Deathless Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/100 Percent Deathless Routing|100% Deathless Routing]]

=== FDS Any% Routing ===

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/FDS Any Percent Routing|FDS Any% Routing]]

==Records==

The old Red Candle / Nintendo Records boards have [http://www.speedrun.com/Zelda_II_The_Adventure_of_Link moved to speedrun.com], but we've also recently found [http://niconamarta.sakura.ne.jp/wiki.php?game=リンクの冒険 these Japanese runners on the Nico RTA wiki].

Note that apart from loading times, you have to subtract 56 seconds to convert a time from the Nico board, to SDA timing.

==Challenges==

Some people have also run some challenges, for speed or otherwise. [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Challenges|Here's a list of challenge runs]].

== Glitched Routing ==

John 'Pro_JN' Nurminen discovered in December 2014 that if you do the 'scroll lock' glitch using an alternate routing (alt glitch, or 1 door-4 door glitch) of going through one door as usual, then going through the shield spell door 4 times, you can get access to different things.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHRxcbkbzNyeUkiRhmmR7Z7V Simpoldood has done extensive route research] based on this technique, useful for 100% category, as well as novelties like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb8okz9LcVM Reverse Boss Order] (now made practical with this glitch method).

Here's a tutorial of the then-18:53 WR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixHlKRKNeA Any% Route].

==Theory TAS==

Here's an [https://www.twitch.tv/boats60/v/49834857 All-Keys Theory TAS] by Boats60. 1:11:58 by SDA timing!

=Randomizer=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Randomizer|Randomizer]]

=IRC and Races=

Traditionally most Zelda 2 plotting happened over Skype, in a private Zelda 2 Skype group. There were IRC channels in theory, but they were never really used. Not that there was ever much Zelda 2 racing.

The best way to get in touch with folks about Zelda 2 races is to follow the [http://www.twitch.tv/team/zelda Zelda 2 Crew on Twitch] and [http://www.hitbox.tv/team/thezelda2crew on hitbox]. Connect with Zelda 2 runners there and get involved. A number of Zelda 2 runners like races, even if they never really happen.

Zelda 2 Randomizer races, however, those are happening a lot more often. Contact Zelda 2 Crew folks about the Zelda 2 Discord created by Opus, to get in on that.

=Humor=

[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/Humor|Here's a page of silliness]].

=History=

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/Zelda-Historical-Graphs/z2.html History of the Record]

= Resources =

[http://redcandle.us/wp-content/uploads/Z2Hitboxes.lua Hitbox viewer script in Lua] by [https://www.twitch.tv/pasky Pasky]

[http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=22885.0 ROM hacking tool]

[https://github.com/cfrantz/z2doc/wiki/Z2Edit And another one]

= Save States =

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sxKVVz-wn00pYXpgqYuWvwOq_4GyrVj/view Everdrive All Keys save states courtesy of BluntBunny]

= Videos =

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdXtCAPlPfHT_D2hzUb-hsRJQTHvt8R5E Simpoldood's All Keys tutorial series]

[https://www.twitch.tv/error72/v/41238408 Error72's All Keys tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTrasA_h0A PresJPolk's Any% tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/qSYIP9E8fg4 PresJPolk's Any% No OoB tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8pmCPZy_8 Squibbons's Any% tutorial]

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF3tRyHu02HdfA-mYyXf-rHuvrZGrGhZf Useful Zelda 2 Video playlist]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF3a0UGAEBE xJohnWaynex's 100% No OoB beginner route tutorial]

[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/285067821 antii85's 100% Deathless tutorial]

[https://youtu.be/vHbbeA88tjg Simpol's any% Deathless tutorial]

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-06-14T23:41:42Z

Neil: /* Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial */

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|i1t6s535N4o}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-06-14T23:41:18Z

Neil: /* Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial */

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube|1t6s535N4o}}

The Legend of Zelda/Tutorial Videos

2019-06-14T23:40:53Z

Neil: /* Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial */

=Darkwing Duck's Impromptu Guide=

Old, but this is [https://www.twitch.tv/darkwing_duck_sda/v/50222274 an incredibly informative video].

{{#ev:twitchvod|50222274}}

=JSR's 100% tutorial=

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM JSR has done much work on the category].

{{#ev:youtube|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrcYJbCXZmM}}

=New player videos =

Old videos by [https://www.twitch.tv/presjpolk/v/50217130 Presjpolk] and [https://www.twitch.tv/videos/50065443 Jkoper] aimed at newer players.

{{#ev:twitchvod|50217130}}

{{#ev:twitchvod|50065443}}

=RedBirdGrad's Second Quest tutorial=

RedBirdGrad made this [https://youtu.be/mhUybnTPQaM Second Quest tutorial] for a category many believe to be under-appreciated.

{{#ev:youtube|mhUybnTPQaM}}

=Eunos's Money Making Game tutorial=

Roses are red, violets are blue, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o Eunos made this tutorial] for you. Big bucks, no whammies, stop. {{#ev:youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1t6s535N4o}}