Hyrule Castle
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| Next dungeon | Eastern Palace |
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Hyrule Castle is the first section of the run of most categories. Not technically a dungeon (no big chest nor boss). It is commonly referred to as Escape.
Contents
Any% NMG
There's very few rooms with variable strats, so the segment is mostly about having good movement and reacting well to RNG.
Theory-TAS
Strats
First Keyguard
These strats both hits the guard twice, catching the guard between Link and the statue, finally boosting him towards the door, so that the key drops near the exit.
The main cues will be how much you walk rightwards before starting the diagonal down-right, and when to release the charge. You can use Link/sword vs. the tiles/guard for visual cues.
Left spin (optimal)
Instead of spinning the guard twice, you'll poke him first, move down, and then spin. The spin needs to be delayed a few frames, so hold v for about 6-8f before letting go of B.
The main reason this saves is that Link catches the key faster.
File
Top spin (optimal)~10f slower
Charge your sword upwards (can hold ^> during transition to be boosted a pixel to the right), then release the spin when you're on his upper right side. File
To make these strats easier, you can cut down on how much diagonal movement you do. Both strats are even possible without a single diagonal input. Most people land in some compromise between the optimal and the easy versions.
Ball 'n Chains / Black Knight
Pot Strat
The easier way to do this room is to go into the first cell and grab a pot to help with the kill. Pots are oddly powerful in this game (even useful later in the game when you have a much more powerful sword). 1 pot will do 4 slashes worth of damage here. If you wanted to be super safe, you could grab a second pot and kill him with it.
You'll need to boomerang the green guard at the start of the room every time with this strat, no matter his RNG. Even if he isn't in the way or doesn't notice you when you enter, he will notice you while you're grabbing the pot in the cell. Since Link walks slower while carrying something, you want to minimize the distance you walk with the pot, so pay attention to the movement in the GIF. You also want to throw it as soon as you can. Not only does that get your movement speed back, it also delays the guard swinging his ball & chain. After the pot is thrown, move down a little under the knight so your slashes recoil him into the top right corner. Not too hard :>
8 Slashes
The harder but faster way to do this is to skip getting a pot and kill the knight with 8 slashes. This doesn't save much time (only 40ish frames here) and is kinda tricky, so maybe not the best thing for new players.
Unlike the pot strat, you can skip booming the guard at the start if he's walking down. You'll still have to boom him if he walks right or aggros as you enter of course. Notice when I start and stop holding diagonal (v>). If you do either with bad timing, then the knight will probably start swinging before you can get the first slash in, which is almost always a bad thing. This GIF gets perfect position on the knight and doesn't have to adjust any. For real-time play, this certainly won't always be the case, and you'll have to be able to make small adjustments to keep the fight under control. The knight can be damaged every half second exactly, and getting the timing down on your slashes is very important. You can knock the guard more west with your 8th slash so the key is dropped closer to the cell door. Be sure to boomerang the key to get it quicker.
Keychest Room
Keep Right
This strat is pretty safe and consistent, and many top players prefer it over the other one. Just pump the right wall and boom the snake that's there every time.
Snake Gamble
Sometimes the left snake isn't there in this hallway, so you can gamble on it not being there and just go around the right one. This is very slightly faster than the above strat (10f or so).
However, sometimes the left snake is there, and you have to react quickly with your boomerang to stun the right one to get through. This is slower than just keeping right, since you won't be getting the wallpumps earlier in the room.
Keyrat Room
This is a dumb room.
When you enter there will be two rats on your screen right away. The rat with the key is the one offscreen to your left, and he and the two other rats have several different things they can do. As a general rule, you will want to pump some along the bottom wall and then airpump up some so that you can react to possible Northwest keyrat and so that your boomerang won't hit the torch and miss the key if you get a better RNG.
The best thing that can happen is the keyrat coming towards you as you're walking left. You can just kill it (which requires some quick reactions but not too bad) and safely boomerang most of the time (once again be sure you're up off the bottom wall a little).
For an advanced way to optimize the good keyrat RNG, the instaboom trick can be used to save about 10f. If you hold B on your slash, there's 2 frames where you're in the poke animation and can use the boomerang without the boomerang animation.
Another common RNG is for it to be near the torch or along the lower west wall. Just kill it normally and boom the key. You don't want to instaboom in this situation, but rather delay throwing the boomerang a little. If you're too quick, the boom will likely glance off the wall and come back to you without the key. Also in this situation, it can be common for the other rats to get in the way, which can be really annoying. Especially troublesome is if you kill one of the other rats and the keyrat together, and the other rat drops a rupee. The boomerang will often catch the rupee instead, so be careful in those situations.
The last type of RNG you can get is the dreaded NW keyrat. This can be particularly dumb if one or two of the other rats join him in the corner. Be very careful of throwing the boomerang too quickly in the corner. It's very easy to not catch the key here.
One new strat found by Jadin can be done sometimes to save half a second here if no other rats are in the way. Diagonally boom the keyrat to prevent it going all the way up in the corner. In my experience, when you boom to catch the key here, you should throw it diagonally (<^) instead of just (<).
Collected items
You pick up Lantern and Boomerang in this segment.
There's no bombs or arrows available in this segment.
100% NMG
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First Chest Key (no boom)
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