Submission #7512: chatterbox's NES The Legend of Zelda "2nd quest" in 24:48.75

A background visualizer lua script was used at every darkened rooms in this temp encoding.

This is a 666 frames (11.08 seconds) improvement over the previous run. Most of the time savings came from route changes by recorder warping. And the previous authors chose to get the secret 100 rupees after completing level 2 to buy arrows, which leaves a surplus of 20 rupees. I started making this movie, thinking I could improve this with rupees dropping from enemies.

The same strategy was used as in the previous movie. Get the bombs before entering the level, collect 10+α rupees from Wall Master, then defeat Aquamentus to get the heart container. The only difference is that I saved 16 frames with some optimizations in the boss room. But these frames were also lost again due to bad gambling luck. Link only wins 100 rupees by gambling and the other 30 rupees are collected from enemies, so we can avoid getting secret 100 rupees when heading to level 2.

Lost 84 frames due to extra 5 rupees and an item swapping that intentionally dropped a bombs and replaced it for the recorder and then refilled the bombs again. Obtain the heart container for the white sword and complete the level. Its acquisition condition is 5 lives (2 heart containers).

Gohma can only be beaten by arrows. But Link don't have a bow yet, so just gets a ladder and leaves. We can visit after obtaining the bow in advance, but it will be slow. The bow can be found at level 5, but requires a raft. The raft can be got at level 4, but requires a magical bracelet. All three of these places are located very far away. So I chose this route because the distance between level 6 and the magical bracelet is relatively close, and the previous authors probably did because the same reason. There is also a shop selling arrows nearby, which is even more beneficial. After buying the arrow, take a few more steps to get to level 8.

With careful Kill Counter manipulation, we successfully got two bombs and a fairy from the last Dodongos. I collected the White Sword after completing the level. The most recent 1st quest movie collects only 1 heart container and didn't take the White Sword. There will be several reasons for this, but the main issue is even if the sword's damage is doubled, the potential time saving of the White Sword is not certain given the time it takes to acquire it. Most enemies in 1st quest are beaten by bomb abuse. The only enemies that the sword's damage is meaningful to are actually Gleeok, Patra, and Ganon. In the 2nd quest, however, there are many complicated rooms where it is difficult to defeat enemies with only bombs, and in particular, the better sword is important because there is Pols Voices that is completely immune to the bombs' damage.

Defeated first Digdogger with the recorder that we had previously swapped by dropping bombs on purpose. The white sword is very useful at level 4. As stated earlier, Pols Voices don't take damage from bombs, so in this run we should only hurt them with sword. Arrows will defeat them at a blow but that's rather wasteful considering the time it takes to switch item menu.

After paying the life to the old man, damage boosting was not done intentionally because the purpose was to retain 10 Kill Counter and get blue rupees from Digdoggers. When an enemy left "good item" with 10 Kill Counter, it is "what weapon you killed the 10th enemy with" that determines what item is dropped. The enemy drops a bombs if killed by a bomb, or 5 rupees if killed by any other weapon. This is why I slashed them twice with sword instead of using bombs.

Those three Dodongos were able to kill them all with a single sword, but I figured out that the next enemies' behavior RNG also changed depending on when the previous enemy died. So, in order to get a better placement of enemies in the next room, I killed Dodongo in two batches. Finally collect an additional 16 rupees and complete level 4. Oh, and also a raft.

But 2 rupees left until 60 rupees. Where should we get the rest? Fortunately, killed a lot of baddies so far, and the 10 Kill Counter was maintained as I had to complete level 4 with full-life. I considered this, and I reset the game and kill a few more enemies near the shop where we buy the blue candle to get the final 5 rupees. Collecting additional 16 rupees costs a total of 202 frames compared to the previous work which was no need to collect extra rupees.

Nothing special. Swapped to the recorder and refilled a bombs from Manhandla. After completing the level, get to level 6 in a snap from the dock. The recorder will take Link to the dungeon entrance he has cleared. The dungeon order is determined depending on the direction Link was facing. Up or right is ascending order, down or left is descending order. If you've completed levels 1, 3, 5, and 7 and haven’t yet used the recorder, if you blow the recorder once facing up, whirlwind takes Link to level 1. If you repeat one more, it will take him to level 3. However, since the destination of the recorder always follows the position of the 1st quest, the order of the levels delivered by the recorder of the 2nd quest is slightly different. For example, level 3 of the 2nd quest is located in the same place as level 2 of the 1st quest. Taking these into consideration, the game designers changed the recorder order of the 2nd quest to 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 6, 8, 7; not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Now let's look at the recorder warping. We cram Link into the left block of the dock and use the recorder. Then wait in the clipped spot until whirlwind takes him. If it successes, the recorder and raft work together and transport Link to the wrong place. To be precise, Link moves diagonally up and to the left of the dungeon he supposed to move.

Here's a brief description of how the recorder works.

(i) When Link faces in any direction and blows the recorder, the game decides which of the dungeons he has cleared will transport him.

(ii) Once the dungeon has been determined, the game executes the procedure of moving Link to the left screen of the dungeon in advance when whirlwind picks up Link.

(iii) If whirlwind transfers Link normally without being disturbed, it takes Link to dungeon determined in (i).

Then how this glitch works: Before whirlwind picks up Link, the game goes through the process of placing him on the left screen of the dungeon in advance. And if you go on a raft from the dock, the screen scrolls up. These two cases happen at the same time, whirlwind is disturbed as it takes Link and then boards the raft, and the game only processes the raft's screen scrolling. As whirlwind picks up Link already, Link's current position is on the dungeon's left screen, and as the raft scrolls the screen up, it carries Link up and diagonally to the left of the dungeon, where it should have moved as a result.

I didn't do damage boosting as it's better to use a beam sword against Greeok.

Finally, we returned with all our bows and arrows. Ran out of bombs to use at level 3, so I took them from Wizzrobe.

Nothing special. Just lost 4 frames due to bad RNG.

Level 7 was very painful for me. The reason for this is fighting with Darknuts in a complex room, and annoying fire balls that cause lag frames. Reset the game to revisit to the level 5 dock and get to level 9 in the same method we moved to level 6 before.

The fire balls in the room where Patra first appears causes a lot of lag frames. It's more efficient to save on damage boosting elsewhere and deliberately bump into the fire balls from here. Patra’s tiny eyes rotate rapidly around it, so it's a good idea to use a beam sword to hit them as much as possible with one slashing. Saved 21 frames on the second Patra fighting.

In every Zelda run, Ganon dies at the bottom left of the room. The reason is that as Link grabs the last piece of Triforce and heads towards Zelda's room, zigzag towards the upper right is the fastest way. So when first stabbing Ganon it's good to get hit by his fireballs to move left speedy, but I haven't been able to get a good RNG to get Ganon to do that. Unfortunately I lost 3 frames in the last level overall.

A huge thanks to all the Zelda run contributors to TASVideos, and Bismuth, Redcandle.us for a lot of useful information.

Truncated: Claiming for judging.

Truncated: Accepted as an improvement to [1205] NES The Legend of Zelda "2nd quest" by Baxter & Morrison in 24:59.83. Nice work!

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