I hope one day the flippers will be skippable all together
On that note, I've made some progress
. There seem to be 3 remaining areas in the game that we actually require the Flippers: the lowest basement in Thieve's Hideout, 3 rooms in the Swamp Palace, and accessing Turtle Rock. Let's go in order:
Thieve's HideoutRefer to RW's video from a while ago for the Big Key/Boss Door skip:
http://www.twitch.tv/rheaultwnage/c/4133090Pretty much I use his method to get on top of the walls on the top floor, then drop down to that room on the third floor. The room where you first clip is on the West side of the dungeon, so you have to move Link East one room to be able to drop down into it. Here's where I drop down from the first floor (SLOWLY moving to the right):
Here's an alternative place to drop down from when I tried and accidently fell to the second floor first (because I'm bad):
I'm pretty sure (no, I KNOW) there's a better setup for this, and/or one that doesn't require you to go up and then back down with the clipping, but at the time I'm posting this I haven't found it.
You'll land in the hallway that reveals itself when you go to get the Master Ore:
Master Ore is obtainable:
You can walk all the way South and clip right back into bounds, but interestingly (and perhaps uselessly...) you can Tornado Rod on the stairs to get on top of the ceiling:
But the real meat here is that you can reach this switch to drain the water, without actually going in the water:
From there, you can backtrack through the dungeon to return to the big center room where the Thief Girl is being held, and complete the dungeon as normal. Yes, Thieve's Hideout is now doable without Flippers
Edit: Apparently most of this OoB stuff was already found by RW (
http://www.twitch.tv/rheaultwnage/c/3931062). Even so, I'm just glad that's one less thing preventing Flippers from being skippable.
Swamp PalaceThere are 3 problem rooms in the Swamp Palace on the current speedrun route that we need to overcome to do it flipperless.
First room is the very first room in the dungeon. I'm saying it now, mark my words, this will be THE hardest body of water to cross in the entire game flipperless, if it even is possible. There is NOTHING in this room to work with. I tried timing the level pull (which fills the water) with getting hit by bombs to see if getting knocked into the water mid-cutscene might activate Fake Flippers somehow. No dice, bombs get frozen mid-cutscene.
Second room is the center basement room. Crossing the South East gap doesn't seem possible.
Third and final problem room is the room where we raise the water level to max and then go back into the room with the Big Key and Boss Door. First issue here is that that switch in the upper left needs to be hit to open the door, but if you hit that switch you're stranded and can't do anything. You'd have to Scoot Fruit/deathwarp your way out of the dungeon and then retrace your steps to that part.
Relevant segue: I also found a way to make
FAKE FLIPPERS (!!!) work in the treasure dungeon where the Swamp Palace is in the light world. If you're standing in a safe (as in, you can respawn to) area when the water level rises, the game automatically puts you into swimming mode, Flippers be damned.
Non-Miiverse pic to prove it since you need to see both top and bottom screens:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/kh7mk589h3tjtnm/AAC2iJzzM2-5R8qI_alsepz5aI could swear... and perhaps it's just my mind playing tricks on me... but I feel like I saw someone do that a while ago on stream. I can't remember for the life of me, but if it's just my mind playing tricks on me then I'm happy to have discovered it
.
Going back to that 3rd problem Swamp Palace room: You can merge along the left side and go all the way around the room to reach the platform where you can raise the water the first time (where I am in the pic). Theoretically, doing so will give you fake flippers (conditions are the same, no?) so you can keep going in the room, but without being able to get past those first two problem rooms I can't test that. But even if that does work, after you raise the water all the way you're stranded again.
We could potentially get through rooms 2 and 3 if a method is found to reach the switch in the Big Key room without raising the water level (and thereby skip... almost the entire dungeon), but that entry foyer is the big problem I don't know how we're gonna bypass.
Anyway, every other room on the current route is doable without Flippers, usually just requiring some slightly out of the way merging, nothing fancy. Oh wait I lied, one fancy thing: After performing early Big Key dash slide, you need to dash slide a second time to get back onto dry land. Here's the setup from the wiki:
Turtle RockI was trying to get crafty to make Fake Flippers work in the water around Turtle Rock. If you exit the merge and drop right into the water the first time you enter the area, the Hilda text prevents Link from drowning (he even does the idle swimming animation) until she's done talking. At which point you promptly drown and return to where you began the merge in Hyrule. Perhaps if a glitch is ever found to let us control Link while she's talking, we can use it here to temporally put Fake Flippers on Link until he gets into Turtle Rock?
I was also able to get on this ledge once with the bombing while jumping off trick. You can walk to the right and jump off to reach the portal not normally accessible Flipperless in the river, which... isn't that useful. I was only able to do it once (no pics, sorry
), and I did it actually by throwing the (nice) bomb off the side of the cliff and jumping into it so that it hit me in midair. Idk if that's truly any different to just getting hit by it while it's on the ground, but there you have it, maybe that'll lead to something. I was hoping that perhaps getting onto the highest level of the structure would perhaps lead to being able to dash slide or damage boost or something to at least one of the two alternative entrances/exits to Turtle Rock.
So, in all, here's what I've been able to do Flipperless. Since skipping Flippers will likely only ever be done on Low% (barring early Lorule Castle being found), some of this info is useless, but still:
- Thieve's Hideout Flippers skip means you can get the last Master Ore for making the Lv3 Master Sword, and you can rescue Osfala to get the Sand Rod.
- Blue Mail is unobtainable for what should be obvious reasons.
- Hylian Shield is unobtainable for the same obvious reasons
- 4 of 5 Bottles are obtainable. Bottle with the note in it is obtainable by the method KingOfHeart posted. No way under the bridge without Flippers yet. Perhaps getting on the ledge nearby and dash sliding diagonally will let you enter the loading zone, and come out already swimming? Seems like a stretch.
- 14 Maiamai are submerged in water and thus unreachable (drowning on top of them doesn't pick them up). 1 Maiamai next the waterfall by the Witch's Hut isn't submerged, but I can't figure out how to get there without Flippers. A total of 85 Maiamai are therefore obtainable Flipperless at the moment.
(didn't get Bee Medal because bee damage boosting is useful)
Aaaaaaand that's all I have for now. I don't know WHY I feel so compelled to beat this game without Flippers
