Stair Drag

Stair drag refers to the short period of slower stuttery movement link has when exiting manual stairs/ladders or when moving in certain directions after finishing spiral staircase transitions. This page goes over what stair drag is, how to cancel it, visual cues for cancelling stair drag on manual stairs, a brief look at dashing off stairs and a brief look at what happens internally to cause stair drag.

The "stair drag" state activates when link walks on to the last 7-8 px of manual stairs or when link tries to move any direction that is not left or right after a spiral staircase transition. This state will automatically end after 15 frames after which link will regain normal speed. (Note: If link moves back onto manual stairs during this 15 frame period, this state will end immediately and link will switch to manual stair speed. Stair drag will reactivate again when exiting stairs.)

Stair drag movement speeds

Stair drag causes link to move a max of 8px-9px in the 15 frames it is active (i.e. 0.533-0.6px/frame). This is slightly slower than manual stair speed (0.6875px/frame on average) and much slower than normal walking speed of 1.5px/frame.

Cancelling stair drag

Stair drag can be cancelled early by holding straight left (<) for 1 frame, holding dash (holding A while you have boots) for 1 frame or holding straight right (>) for 2 frames. After cancelling stair drag, link will regain normal movement speeds.

While link is going through spiral staircase transitions, you can hold straight left or right to cancel stair drag immediately before transitioning to the direction you need to move in. Alternatively, you can hold your desired non-left/non-right direction and tap A (with boots) when you see link start to move after the transition completes to cancel stair drag.

On manual stairs, you can cancel stair drag as soon as it starts. Cancelling stair drag on the earliest possible pixel can save 10 frames if moving up off of the stairs or 9 frames if moving down off of the stairs. The section below goes over visual cues for manual stair drag cancels.

Manual stair drag cancel visual cues

Moving up off manual stairs

(Note: The visual cues described below use link's ear when link is at a standstill. These cues change when link is moving because of his up-down bobbing animation. Always err on the side of being higher than the cues listed below to guarantee not going too early.)

When moving up off manual stairs, the coordinates you can cancel stair drag on will be of the form xxx1 or xxx9. The images below show the visual cues to look for the different types of manual stairs:

North closed stairs

(Closed stairs here refer to 1-tile wide manual stairs)

The line where Link's ears changes color lines up perfectly with the top of the stair wall

The line where Link's right ear changes color lines up perfectly with the line where the left edge of the right wall changes color

North open stairs

The line where Link's ear changes color is 1px below the top stair line

North ladder

The line where Link's ear changes color lines up perfectly with the top of the stair texture

Moving down off manual stairs

(The visual cues below use Link's shadow and are not affected by link's movement animation)

When moving up off manual stairs, the coordinates you can cancel stair drag on will be of the form xxxF or xxx7. For all types of stairs, the earliest pixel when stair drag can be cancelled is when Link's shadow touches the bottom of the stair texture (bottom row of link's shadow is 1 px above the bottom of the stair texture). The images below show a couple examples of this: