- Emulator: Bizhawk 1.11.6
- Core type: Pure interpreter
- Rsp Plugin: Hle
- Active video plugin: Jabo 1.6.1
Game Objectives:
- Low% completion
- Heavy luck manipulation
- Heavy glitch abuse
- Uses death to save time
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses a game restart sequence
- Genre: Adventure
This run of Majora's Mask aims to beat the game with as few items as possible. Currently, the lowest number of items you can get and still finish the game is 16. These items and an explanation of why each is needed are listed below:
- Magic - required to shoot Skull Kid to get the Ocarina and Song of Time in cycle 1. This can be skipped, but requires using a second file with several extra items, so it increases the total item count. (see how to do that here)
- Ocarina - required to get Song of Time, Deku Mask, and Song of Healing, and required for the cutscene that takes you to the moon at the end of the game to work properly.
- Deku Stick - required to get bottle on B and for action swap to melt the ice around Goht. This can be skipped, but would require getting the bottle and Fire Arrows, which would increase the total item count.
- Light Arrows - required to flip Stone Tower, and a shooting item of some kind is necessary to melt the ice around Goht.
- Deku Mask - required to get Song of Healing, have to get it to turn back into human after cycle 1.
- Zora Mask - required to learn New Wave Bossa Nova and to open Great Bay Temple.
- Blast Mask - required for hovering and other explosive tricks. Blast Mask is chosen over Bombs because Bombs are actually 2 items, Bombs and Bomb Bag, while Blast Mask is just 1. Can be skipped, but explosives allow several items to be skipped.
- Song of Time - has to be acquired at the same time as Ocarina, required to leave the Clock Tower after getting Ocarina, and needed for 0th day, which skips the Bow and Quiver.
- Song of Healing - has to be acquired at the same time as Deku Mask, required to get Zora Mask.
- Sonata of Awakening - required to open Woodfall Temple. This can be skipped, but requires Epona, Pictograph Box, and Hookshot, so it increases the total item count. (see how to do that here)
- New Wave Bossa Nova - required to open Great Bay Temple.
- Oath to Order - required to reach the moon.
- Odolwa's Remains - required to reach the moon.
- Goht's Remains - required to reach the moon.
- Gyorg's Remains - required to reach the moon.
- Twinmold's Remains - required to reach the moon.
This specific combination of items is the only one that allows the game to be completed with only 16 items.
This run is done on the US version of the game because one of the glitches used in this run, 0th day, requires owl saves to be activated. Owl saves were a feature added in for the US and PAL releases of the game; the original Japanese version of the game didn’t have them. Since 0th day is required to skip two items (the bow and quiver) 16 item low% is only possible on the US and PAL versions.
This inspiration for this run was that back in late 2016, the RTA world record for this category was 4:43:54 by Jimmie1717. The run had several major mistakes, including one in Snowhead Temple that cost over and hour. Not only was this run the world record for about a year, it was also the only publicly available video of a 16 item low% RTA run. All other runners who had tried to beat the record (and there were a few) were too embarrassed of their runs to post videos of them. Since low% is such an interesting run, we decided it deserved a good run.
This run was originally thought to be impossible on N64 and Bizhawk because a very important trick in completing the run, using light arrows as Deku Link, crashed the game. However, while working on different TAS, I (omgatree6) ran into a similar crash using the hookshot as Goron. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the crash only occurred if the game was paused after equipping a transformation mask. Once that was discovered, a way of circumventing that pause was discovered, and the run became possible on N64 and Bizhawk.
After 10 months of work, we have this. Since the TAS began, the RTA low% world record has come down by about 2 hours, down to 2:41:03 by Jimmie1717. Despite this, our TAS manages to beat the RTA world record by about 47 minutes (the TAS is a 1:54:42 by RTA timing). We accomplished this by using several tricks and strategies that aren’t RTA viable due to being too luck dependent, too difficult, or too risky.
Important glitches and techniques
Other tricks used:
Z-Slide
Performed by pressing Z every other frame and maintains whatever speed you started the Z-slide with. Turning during a Z-slide loses 2 units of speed for every frame spent turning.
A-Slide
This is performed by alternating between holding a direction on the joystick and neutral every visual frame. This isn't as useful for movement as ESS/HESS and Z-slides, but it has some clipping properties which are useful under some circumstances.
Superswimming
This lets you maintain speed when entering water. This can be done temporarily by mashing Z and permanently (as Zora only) by pressing A and B in rhythm.
0th day
When you save at an owl, a flag in the game is set that tells the game to load your save file a few seconds after saving. The flag is normally cleared whenever you load the owl save, but if you save at an owl and don't spawn at the owl afterwards (such as by voiding out after saving) the flag is never reset. We call this "owl storage". By using SoT storage with this flag set, we can get a glitch called 0th day. This has a few useful effects:
- It sets the ingame time to 5:59 AM on day 0. If activated at night, the game will transition to day 1 immediately, but if activated during the day it will stay day 0. Playing SoDT on day 0 causes the game to softlock.
- Whatever items were in your inventory or on your C/B buttons will be restored after the file loads.
- It reverts the variable in the game's memory that tracks your transformation (Deku, Goron, etc.) back to whatever it was when you saved, but doesn't physically change Link back into that form. This causes 2 strange things to happen:
- You can use the B button of one form as another form (for example, if the game thinks you are human when you are actually Deku, you can use the Kokiri Sword as Deku).
- When the glitch is activated, whatever C-buttons were usable when it activated will stay usable, and whichever ones weren't will stay unusable, even if you pause and equip different items. This allows you to use more or less any item anywhere as any form.
- It causes you to spawn at the Mayor's Office when you load your save file from the file select screen.
- If you have any ammo (Deku Sticks, Rupees, Arrows, etc.) in your inventory, saving with Song of Time will delete your save file.
Equip swap
This is performed in the pause menu by moving the cursor over an item, page turning to a different screen with Z or R, the page turning back and immediately equipping an item. This causes the game to equip the item you had the cursor over initially, but tie it to the inventory slot you moved to after page turning back. This can be used to dupe Zora Eggs.
Cutscene skips
Many cutscenes in the game can be skipped by loading an area at the same time a cutscene tries to activate. This is usually accomplished using either SoDT or by pause buffering 1 frame at a time to delay the cutscene and walking into a loading zone.
Return A
This is accomplished by either going into C-up as Deku on a sinking lily pad or by pressing C-up at the same time you target and shield damage. This allows you to maintain some properties of being in first person view while still moving around. The important property for this run is that it prevents us from interacting with certain kinds of objects.
Ground clip
By hitting the point where a sloped piece of ground meets a wall with a good angle and enough speed, you can clip through the wall.
Weird B
If you have a blank B button as Deku, Goron, or Zora, when you press the B button, instead of performing the action that is on the B button ("punch", "shoot", etc.) the game looks at the ID number of the action on your B button and uses whatever item has the same ID number. (for example, you have "punch" on B, punch has an ID number of 39, so with weird B instead of punching you would use item number 39, which is the Hylian Loach, an unused item)
Action swap
If you hold an item in hand, then pull out another item and interrupt the pullout animation (usually by bringing up text), the game will update the “Item In Hand” variable to the item you tried to pull out, but won’t actually change the item in your hand. This causes some strange things to happen. The effects of this glitch vary depending on what items you use for action swap.
Get Item Manipulation (GIM)
If you pickup an item and delay the item pickup animation, walking in front of certain objects (chests, pots, rocks, etc.) will change what item you get when the pickup is triggered.
The Route
Intro
- In the room just before clock tower, a very precise backwalk into a spin jump allows us to cross the gap to the clock tower loading zone. The spin both allows us to skip the Tatl text trigger by the flower and gives us a little extra speed, which is necessary to make the jump.
- When heading to the clock tower door, we pause buffer and advance 1 frame at a time. This prevents the Happy Mask Salesman cutscene from activating, allowing us to skip it.
Cycle 1
- As soon as the cycle starts, we reset the game. The game autosaves beforehand, and the reset lets us skip a cutscene.
- We use Anju's Grandma and the scarecrow in the general store to make it night 3 ASAP so we can get onto the clock tower at midnight on night 3.
- We backwalk at an angle to clip past the guard in East Clock Town to get into Termina Field so that we can enter North Clock Town from the Termina Field entrance. This avoids the cutscene that plays the first time you enter North Clock Town.
- We skip collecting the Moon's Tear by backflipping into some wonky collision to pop up on top of the platform in front of the tower.
- Once we get Ocarina and Song of Time (SoT), we play SoT and reset to skip a cutscene.
Cycle 2
- In Termina Field, Song of Double Time (SoDT) is used to skip the Skull Kid cutscene in front of Southern Swamp.
- From here on, we have to wait until 12:20 AM for the Blast Mask quest to start.
- Inside Southern Swamp, Return A is performed as Deku. This allows us to pass by the Big Octo on the way to the palace without getting eaten.
- We use the dragonflies in the swamp to hover into the side entrance of Deku Palace. This skips the cutscene that plays the first time you enter from the front entrance.
Deku Palace
- A backflip into the guards from the fence at the entrance allows us to skip talking to them, saving a little time.
- Inside the palace gardens, a backwalk into a spin is used to clip an acute angle, allowing us to get on top of the doorframe at the entrance. A backflip off of here wakes up the Deku Scrub on the top level and he starts spitting nuts at us. We then backflip from another doorframe and damage boost off of one of the nuts to reach the top level. This lets us skip turning back into human Link to reach the top level, saving about 2 seconds.
- After acquiring Sonata, we go back to Clock Town the same way we came.
Clock Town/Great Bay
- As the Blast Mask event is ending, we go through the loading zone to Termina Field. This ends the event slightly earlier and saves about half a second.
- After acquiring the Blast Mask, we hover to the hidden owl and save while falling into the void to set up 0th day.
- On the way to Great Bay, we use a Leever to get ISG and hover over the Great Bay fence. This saves about 30 seconds over hovering in using only the Blast Mask.
- After getting the Zora Mask, we play Song of Time.
Cycle 3
- We start by pushing the door open and sidehopping into the edge of the door to clip OoB. We use this to store SoT.
- By rolling off of a ledge, we cancel our roll animation but keep our roll invincibility. This allows us to use the Blast Mask with roll invincibility to get a HESS or Z-Slide. We use 2 of these to reach Milk Road.
- Inside Milk Road, we equip Zora Mask, start to equip Deku Mask, save before Deku Mask is on our C-button, then unpause and put on Deku Mask. When 0th day activates, it becomes day 0, which gets rid of the boulder in Milk Road, allowing us into Romani Ranch. Since we had Zora Mask on C when we saved, 0th day also puts that back on C, and we equip it. We wanted to equip Deku Mask before Zora Mask because doing so allows us to skip the cutscene that plays the first time you put on Zora Mask. Doing this equip trick with 0th day allows us to skip 1 pause, saving a little time.
- SoDT is used to skip the "Isn't that your horse?" cutscene and make it night.
- A recoil flip from the top of the barn is used to get past the short inside wall of the area and reach an OoB area to store SoT. We use a ground clip to clip the wall instead of recoiling over it because it allows us to do the recoil flip from a lower point on the barn roof, which saves a little time.
- After storing SoT, a recoil flip and a jumpslash are used to get inside Epona’s pen.
- Once inside Epona's pen, we bring up SoT text, save as Zora, take off the Zora Mask and get on Epona. Getting on Epona without the bow gives you a blank B button. When 0th day activates, the game thinks we are Zora again, so getting on Epona gives us blank B as Zora, which gives us Weird B.
- The aliens in Romani Ranch are scripted to show up at 2:30 AM and to be defeated at 5:15 AM. When 0th day actives, the time is set to 5:59 AM. Since 5:59 AM is after both those times, the aliens show up and are immediately defeated. We need this to happen because this triggers an area reload. One quirk of the C-button locking effect of 0th day is that getting onto Epona disables all of your C-buttons until the next area load. Without the area load caused by the aliens, we would be stuck in Epona's pen with no way out.
- Using SoT resets the flag that tracks whether or not you've watched the "Isn't that your horse?" cutscene, so we have to watch it afterward.
- After watching the cutscene, we play SoT and reset to get back to Clock Town.
- Since we didn’t load our owl save after saving at the owl, the owl save is still there when we open the file select screen. We need to get rid of it to load our SoT save, so we load it and reset the game to do that.
Back to Great Bay
- Inside Great Bay, we enter a grotto to get a stick. We then put on Blast Mask, pull out the stick, and immediately transform into Zora Link. The stick pull keeps "explode" on our B button for 1 frame after regaining control as Zora and allows us to use weird B with "explode" on B. The ID number for explode is 24, so it causes us to use item 24, which is milk. By drinking milk on B, we get a bottle on B. This allows us to skip getting the bottle.
- Flying Zora is used to grab a high ledge near the entrance to the Fairy Fountain. This trick is exclusive to the US and PAL versions.
- We enter the Fairy Fountain and perform a Fairy Fountain Alternate Exit to get to Ikana Canyon. A forward sidehop into a jumpslash is used near the end of the hover to make it into the Ikana Fairy Fountain in 1 less hover.
Stone Tower
- Throughout the Stone Tower climb, the fire Keese in the area are manipulated extensively for hovers. Each hover we perform off of a Keese cuts out roughly 1 blast mask hover, so we need to manipulate as many as we can. Keese are scripted to fly to specific points in space at times, so they can't always be manipulated into attacking us. The climb up Stone Tower took us 3 months to finish due to all of the Keese manipulation involved. It also saves about 11 minutes over the average RTA Stone Tower climb.
- Transforming into Zora during a hover can allow us to grab a high ledge, which cuts out 1 hover over grabbing the ledge with a twisted backflip.
- At the switches, bottle timestop is used to delay the blocks moving after stepping on the switches, allowing us to trigger all 3 blocks to move at the same time. This normally isn’t possible, and without this we wouldn’t be able to move the block we need (the one we need gets stuck if you don’t move the other 2). We do this to bring a block down so we can ride it up the tower, saving several hovers.
- Doing a Keese megaflip at the top saves either 1 or 2 hovers (can't remember) over using just normal blast and Keese hovers.
Stone Tower Temple
- In the water room, a precise damage boost as Zora is used to clip through the block and skip a good chunk of the temple.
- Wall bonks are used to start superswims, allowing us to travel through the water faster.
- At the start of the mirror room, we get ISG off of a pot. We position Link in such a way while doing this that our sword breaks the pot during the sword put away animation. This lets us skip picking up the pot, which saves a little time. We do this every time we get ISG on a pot.
- The Black Boes in the mirror room are manipulated for several hovers, and some weird collision on the mirror is used to gain height. This cuts out several Blast Mask hovers that we would otherwise have to do.
- In the updraft room, a Blast Mask recoil flip into an updraft is used to reach the other side of the room. From there, we use a precise jumpslash in another updraft to reach some scaffolding, then use a recoil flip off of a Real Bombchu to reach the Garo Master’s room, which skips a Blast Mask use. This saves some time over flying through the room as Deku.
- The broken Deku stick trick is used to fight Garo Master because Deku stick does twice as much damage as Kokiri Sword.
- A deathwarp is used after opening the light arrow chest to return to the entrance of the temple.
- I apologize for the memes.
- After storing SoT, we pause, equip Light Arrows, start equipping Deku Mask, save before Deku Mask is on C, unpause, and put on Deku. When 0th day activates, the state of our C buttons gets locked. Since Light Arrows were equipped when we saved, they get put back on our C button. However, since Deku Mask was equipped on that C button when 0th day activated, and Deku Mask is usable as Deku, the C button remains usable, allowing us to use Light Arrows as Deku. We can't just pause and equip light arrows after putting on Deku Mask like RTA speedruns do because the game will crash on N64/Bizhawk as soon as we pull out Light Arrows if we do, so doing this trick to keep the C button usable is crucial.
- Deku Link can shoot Light Arrows without having any arrows. This is because when using a shooting item as Deku, the game only checks to make sure you have enough magic to shoot a Deku bubble, thereby skipping the check to see if you have arrows. Being able to shoot arrows without having arrows allows us to skip getting the bow and the quiver. The arrows also come out of his mouth instead of out of the bow, which is cool.
- To shoot the light arrow switch and flip the temple, we fire a light arrow through the top of the block. This works because Deku Link is so short that when he aims roughly straight down and fires an arrow, his face is so close to the ground that the arrow spawns in under the ground. We found this trick while in the planning stages of this TAS and it saves about 5 minutes over our original plan (the original plan was to hover on top of the temple, fall off the back of the temple out of bounds, and shoot the switch from behind while falling).
Inverted Stone Tower Temple
- In the second room, we use 0th day to be able to use Zora's B button (fish) as human to ESS bottle dupe over our stick. This is important for later.
- Later in the temple, we perform a very precise ground clip to land in the unloaded room after the Eyegore bridge. We then use another ground clip to reach the room with the loading zone that takes us to Twinmold.
- A lot goes on in the Twinmold fight.
- At the start of the fight, we use save as human and become Deku, using the pause trick to use light arrows. Since the game thinks we are human, we are also able to use the Kokiri Sword as Deku Link. For some reason, using the sword as Deku causes it to do the same amount of damage as the Great Fairy’s Sword (4x the amount of Kokiri Sword as human). This makes it very useful for fights.
- During the first phase of the fight, RNG is manipulated to make the two Twinmolds do 3 specific things: spawn in far away, spawn close together, and fly in a certain pattern. They’re manipulated to spawn far away because when shooting at something sufficiently far away with light arrows, the splash particle effect doesn’t happen. When this effect doesn’t happen, the cooldown between light arrow shots is reduced from several seconds to just a few frames. This allows us to fire off light arrow shots much more quickly than usual. The Twinmolds are manipulated to spawn close together so that we can shoot the second Twinmold during the post-damage invincibility frames of the first Twinmold without wasting time aiming. Lastly, the Twinmolds are manipulated to take a specific flight path so that their bodies won’t block any of our light arrows shots. The Twinmold’s flight patterns change depending on what you do during the phase, so this part required quite a bit of trial and error to get a good pattern.
- During phase 2, we manipulate Red Twinmold’s spawn point to be close enough that we can get in another hit with the sword. We then shoot 2 arrows at his tail. These are both normal arrows since we don’t have enough magic to shoot any more light arrows. If we entered this fight with a full magic bar we could fire 2 light arrow shots during this phase, but that wouldn’t save any time. After the arrow shots, Twinmold’s flight pattern is manipulated to get him to bring his tail back around so we can finish him off with the sword.
- Just before finishing phase 2, we pull out the Ocarina to cancel the SoT text. We need to do this to allow a little in-game time to pass before we start the Giant’s cutscene. If we didn’t do this, we would get a day transition cutscene as soon as we load into Ikana Canyon, which is slow.
To Snowhead Temple
- In Termina Field, we do a recoil flip through the ice blocking the path to Mountain Village, using the ice itself as the damage source for the recoil.
- In the path to Mountain Village, an A-slide is performed to clip through the snowballs on the path.
- In the path to Snowhead, SoT is stored in the void for a trick a little later on.
- A Z-slide off of the Ice Keese is used to cross the first gap. A HESS won’t carry us across that slope for some reason.
- We get a Blast Mask HESS afterwards using the same method as usual, but we use a slippery slope to cancel the roll animation this time instead of a ledge.
- In the grotto, we get a stick and catch a fish in our stick bottle. This gives us a stick count of 1 and a bottle on the stick slot in our inventory. We then save with SoT storage, pull out Ocarina to clear the SoT text so we can pause, pause and equip stick. 0th day activates, which puts bottle back on our stick slot, but since the stick was already moving to our C button, it still gets equipped. The end result is that we have a stick count of 1, a stick on C, and a bottle on our stick slot. The bottle on the stick slot makes it so our stick count won’t be set back to 0 when we use SoT.
- In Snowhead, SoT is stored using a weird slope to Ocarina dive. We save with SoT, turn into Zora, and dump the fish on Zora's B button. 0th day activates during the dumping animation, so the game thinks we're human again. This causes the game to put an empty bottle on human Link's B button when the fish is dumped instead of Zora Link's B button. This also puts a bottle on our Ocarina slot, which is the reason we did this. Duping over Ocarina makes the game behave in some ways as if it is in first cycle. The main use of this is that Tatl will try to talk to us after a certain amount of time. This is used for 2 tricks later on.
- SoT is stored one more time. We need this to get sword back on human Link’s B button, which is necessary to finish the temple. The sword itself isn’t necessary for anything (stick can be used instead), but the Blast Mask can’t be detonated if you have bottle on B.
- We get ISG and manipulate an Ice Keese for a HESS to enter the temple without Lullaby. We can’t move too far forward on the path because there is a Tatl text trigger there we need to avoid. HESS Lullaby skip can be tough to TAS because the wind cycles are set as soon as you enter the area, meaning you can’t manipulate them during the HESS itself. However, we got extremely lucky and got both a good wind pattern and a good Keese pattern almost right away.
Snowhead Temple
- An A-slide clip is used to enter the door in the first room without melting the ice.
- After the A-slide clip, we get a Z-slide off of the ice to move to the next room more quickly.
- After getting our first key, a twisted backflip is used to grab a high ledge to reach the compass room. This lets us reach the compass room without opening the key door you’re supposed to open to reach this room.
- In the compass room, a ledge clip is used to bypass the bombable wall. This saves a little time because we would have to wait on a blast mask cooldown if we blew it up.
- In the room after the second key, a very precise recoil jump is done off the ice blocking the path to reach the opposite side of the room.
- Back in the center room, a recoil flip through the ice is used to climb the stairs without melting the ice, using the ice itself as the damage source for the recoil. A sidehop recoil is used instead of a backflip because it allows us to land sooner, saving a few frames. This method of reaching the stairs does not work on the Japanese version of the game, because for some reason the stairs were moved slightly farther forward in the US and PAL versions of the game.
- After climbing the stairs, a precise jump out of a backwalk and some precise movement on the slippery slope is used to reach the platform with the door without jumpslashing, saving a little bit of time.
- Another A-slide clip is used in the room with the Eenos to reach the stairs.
- On top of the snowball tunnel, we use the first cycle Tatl text caused by duping over the Ocarina to get an action swap. We swap from light arrows to sword, which gives us a mid-air jump. This jump lets us grab the edge of the snowball tunnel through some weird collision, skipping blowing up the snowballs.
- After climbing the stairs, we ground clip the frame around the Wizzrobe's room to get OoB and store SoT. We also have to make it night for another trick to work later, so we play SoDT.
- We hover to the boss door, then recoil flip to clip OoB and enter the boss loading zone without the boss key.
- Inside Goht's room, we do the pause trick to use light arrows again, but this time we do it with both Deku stick and Light Arrows. On Bizhawk, this trick has 0 frames of leniency; if a single input was done sub-optimally, or if Bizhawk had 1 or 2 extra frams of unpause lag in this room, 0th day would activate during the lag frames of the mask transformation cutscene, which crashes the game. This trick is slightly more lenient on N64, due to there being about 7 or 8 less frames of unpause lag in this room.
- After using 0th day, we have to wait about 30 seconds for Tatl to talk to us again. The reason we made it night beforehand was so that it would transition to day 1 right away (Tatl won't talk to you on day 0). We then use the Tatl text to action swap from Light Arrows to stick, which lets us shoot burning arrows (the kind you get when you get when you shoot an arrow through a torch). This melts Goht, allowing us to skip getting Fire Arrows.
- Goht is killed using arrows, like in every other speedrun ever. Even though Goht has terrible aim and only shoots 2 lightning bolts at us, we initially got hit by one of them, so we had to manipulate RNG to make it miss.
To Great Bay Temple
- Since we duped over Ocarina, Termina Field is in its first cycle state. The Leevers don't spawn in this state, so we have to do a slower hover over the Great Bay fence.
- Since we have bottle on Zora B, we can't use a jumpslash recoil for a superswim in Pinnacle Rock, so we use a dolphin dive bonk instead.
- After catching our 1 Zora Egg, we use some weird collision to clip OoB and void, returning us to the entrance a bit quicker. We also take 1 heart of damage from voiding, which saves some time later on.
- Equip swap is used to dupe Zora Eggs. Whenever the Zora Egg is dumped, the game puts the empty bottle on our Ocarina slot instead of our stick slot, allowing us to repeatedly dump the same egg.
- Since we don't have an Ocarina, bottle timestop is used to trigger the New Wave Bossa Nova cutscene.
- After triggering the cutscene, we delay it using pause buffering so we can die using a Blast Mask explosion, which skips the cutscene.
- A Blast Mask recoil flip is used to get OoB, and Ocarina Items is used to store SoT.
- In southern Great Bay Coast, we save as human, then turn into Zora. This lets us use sword as Zora, which lets us use fins. We use this to boomerang a nut drop. We then Z-slide over to some shallow water near a wall, dive as human, transform into Zora, then swim and bonk on the wall. This puts us in a weird state that causes the nut pickup animation to be delayed, which lets us set up GIM. We then dive into the water (swimming in normally would trigger the pickup and ruin everything), swim in front of the 50 rupee chest to manipulate our Get Item value, then surface from the water to trigger the pickup. This gives us our Ocarina back instead of giving us nuts.
- Getting Ocarina back is extremely important to completing the run. Near the end of the run you go to the moon to fight the final boss by activating a cutscene on top of the clock tower which takes you to the moon. Part of this cutscene takes place in Termina Field. When you don’t have an Ocarina, instead of loading the cutscene version of Termina Field like it’s supposed to, the game instead loads the first cycle version of Termina Field. This prevents the cutscene from finishing and taking you to the moon, making it impossible to reach the moon without the Ocarina.
- After GIM, we swim out into deep water to reload the area. This makes it day 1 again, which we need to do to prevent SoDT from softlocking later.
- On the way to the turtle, we press B to dive as we’re about to start a dolphin dive. This gives us the height we would get from a dolphin dive, but puts us in a falling state instead of the swimming state. This lets us use our shield, which we use to recoil off of a bonefish for a superswim.
- The turtle cutscene is skipped using SoDT.
- Blast Mask is used to hover onto the turtle. The wait before putting on Zora Mask at the end is necessary to allow the turtle to float down lower so we can grab the ledge.
Great Bay Temple
- In the second room, a recoil flip is performed from the water wheel to skip pushing the yellow turnkey.
- In the waterwheel room, a ledge clip is used to get OoB, and a precise swimming path allows us to avoid the void and reach the boss loading zone.
- In the first phase of the Gyorg fight, since we don’t have fins we have to wait for him to start his attack phase in order to attack him without getting eaten.
- In the second phase, we manipulate Gyorg swim right at us, allowing us to attack him right away.
To Woodfall Temple
- We have Ocarina, so Termina Field isn't in the first cycle state anymore.
- In Southern Swamp, we get the shield method of Return A by using a mini baba to skip past the big octo. We also get a HESS. Unfortunately, the damage from the poison water cancels the HESS, and the black loading zone and Big Octo cancel the Z-slides, so we have to backwalk most of the way to the Song of Soaring platform.
- We use a long jump as Zora to reach the ledge of the owl’s platform, and grab a specific spot on the ledge to get a quick popup. We then use Ocarina pulls and Deku spins to delay talking to the owl until we reach the Deku flower, allowing us to skip talking to him. Originally, we wanted to do a different version of this trick, where we delayed the owl text by landing on the platform with a very precise position and angle after flying over as Deku (which you can see here), then using an Ocarina pull and a spin to reach the flower. We attempted this version of the skip for about 3 weeks, and between 3 people nobody managed to get the initial text delay a single time. Eventually we found the long jump method of text skip that we ended up using, which we timed to be about 2 seconds faster than what the strat we were originally going for would have been.
- SoDT is used to skip the cutscene of Woodfall Temple rising. This saves about 2.5 seconds.
- Isn't this the D
Woodfall Temple
- A ledge clip is used to store SoT in the first room.
- Before entering the second room, the pause trick is used to use light arrows as Deku. We also equip fish, which is important for later.
- We get a stick for a trick later on.
- Deku bubbles don't reach the high points of the ceiling of the Gecko's room, and we can’t shoot him before he climbs up the ceiling because he’s too fast, so we have to wait for him to come down the wall to shoot him.
- Back in the center room, we clip OoB with the Blast Mask and use Ocarina Items with the fish to store SoT. We have to use Ocarina Items for this because the collision on that ledge is weird and you can't do a normal Ocarina dive off of it.
- Before storing SoT, we equip swap the stick over our Ocarina. This is because the stick gets duped over during this method of SoT storage, so we need to equip it now in order to be able to use it later. Equipping it normally would unequip fish since the fish is on our stick slot, so we equip swap it to prevent that.
- The stick is used to light the torch that opens the door to the pre boss room. We actually didn’t know this was possible until shortly before this section of the run, which is pretty silly.
- In the room before Odolwa, a precise roll and jumpslash is used to reach one of the Deku flower platforms. From there we fly to over to Big Skulltula and use it to recoil flip to a narrow pillar, then use a Blast Mask recoil flip to reach the boss door. This is quite tricky because we need to cancel our momentum just enough so that we still land on the pillar, but don’t go flying off the back. We also need to avoid grabbing the red rupee on the pillar, because if we have any rupees on us when we use SoT later, our save file will be deleted.
- For the Odolwa fight, we use the Blast Mask to both deal some damage to Odolwa and to manipulate him to jump over to a bomb flower. Odolwa is weak to bomb flowers, so we can kill him with a double hit from the bomb flower’s explosion.
- SoT storage is used to skip the Giant's cutscene.
Moon
- A weird clip is used to get up onto the ledge in front of clock tower. This allows us to keep our ISG from the sign, which lets us skip getting the dog for ISG.
- We enter the Odolwa trial just for SoT storage, which we use to fight Majora.
- SoT storage is activated at the beginning of the fight to use light arrows and Kokiri Sword as Deku.
- During the first phase, Majora has weak points on the front of his mask, which we use to stun him. Since Deku sword is so powerful, it only takes 2 hits to defeat the mask phase.
- During the Incarnation phase, we manipulate Incarnation to run into us right as the phase starts so we can quickly stun him with a Deku spin. After he’s down, we hit him with 2 jumpslashes. Incarnation becomes invincible after the second jumpslash, so we can’t get any more hits on him. Instead, we have to stun him with a Deku spin again. 2 more jumpslashes finishes him off.
- We can get a quick stun on Wrath by baiting him into doing a spin when we walk towards him instead of a kick. We do this by walking slightly to the left of straight forward. From there, we just need 5 jumpslashes to finish him off. We target the remains flying nearby to keep a good facing angle and position while jumpslashing him, so that there aren’t any unnecessary stalls during the jumpslashes.
- After a few minutes of text, the run is over.
Known improvements:
- The equip swap glitch was not discovered until we were near the end of Snowhead Temple in this run. There are a few route changes that could have been incorporated to save time earlier in the run, but adding them all in would’ve required redoing almost everything after the start of cycle 2. Since this was about 6 months worth of work, we decided not to redo it. We estimate that these route changes would save about 2 minutes total. The route changes in question would not have significantly changed the route; they would’ve just made a few tricks faster.
- A different method of skipping the Skull Kid cutscene in Termina Field was found later in the run. The method itself is slower, but it would allow us to SoDT as soon as cycle 2 starts instead of using it for the cutscene skip, which makes it faster overall. This would save about 5 seconds.
- The Happy Mask Salesman cutscene skip can be performed with 1 less pause than we use. This would save about 2 seconds.
Special thanks to:
- Glitchesandstuff – for helping with trick and route ideas for the TAS, and for being a driving force in MM low%’s development
- TheWayfaringFox – for finding several of the tricks used in this run and for giving us advice on some of the trickier parts of the run
- Jimmie1717 – for being the only low% runner with a PB video for a very long time, for finding a big time saver in Woodfall Temple, and for inadvertently introducing us to a concept that led to a 5 minute time saver
- ProbablyButter – for suggesting the final route change that made the TAS route possible on N64
- Seedborn – for finding bonk Zora GIM partway through the run and completely destroying the route
- Exodus – for finding equip swap partway through the run and completely destroying the route
- DF – for regularly bullying Eumeus into working on the TAS
And to all the other glitchers and runners that contributed tricks over the years to make this run possible.
Fog: Replaced input file with a spiked input file.
Noxxa: The pacing of this run is hindered a bit by the occasional very slow Blast Mask hovering strats, but overall the movie still has plenty enough interesting material to offer to compensate. The low% category lends itself well to showing off various unique tricks, while still being clearly definable and not being too exotic of a category type.
Accepting to Moons as a new category.
thecoreyburton: Processing, under the assumption I can get this run to sync on a more accurate video plugin (preferably GlideN64).