So, a lot of people have actually been running a Weaponless Story category lately, especially with the addition of the Megaton Hammer, so it'd be nice to have this added to one of the boards. The only restriction is that you never pick up any capital-W Weapon (i.e. the shortsword outside Link's house and anything in a golden chest of a Story run), but otherwise trying to beat the game as quickly as possible with that restriction.

It's pretty much required to play only as Link since Impa will chide Zelda if you try to leave without her dagger.

Also, I'd like to offer a few other suggestions of things I'm planning to run, though we should discuss as a community a bit more about their details:

* All Instruments: Collect all 6 instruments and then defeat Ganon in a single seed (essentially, non-permadeath Necro-Mastery for the default, and then all the usual modifiers like in every other category).

Relatively self-explanatory, and is already encouraged via the Necro-Mastery achievement. Also, we could end up seeing some interesting plays where we use Link with Spin Attack in some of ToBS simply because Spin Attack is better for many if not most flawless, quick kill, and especially boulder puzzles.

• All Dungeons: Similar to All Instruments, except you also still have to defeat Octavo and do Future Hyrule Castle.

Arguably, this could be a 1.4 change for All Floors, but that could be argued to also require full-clearing ToBS, which while doing some amount of ToBS is fun, having to 100% ToBS would just be tedious.

However, if we change the name to "All Dungeons, No Skips", then it still counts as requiring all floors of the Present Hyrule dungeons, but then also forces the restriction on ToBS to at least not use Hovers (since everything that has that as one solution also always has something else as an intended solution), and perhaps to also not use Bombs/Chus in order to Bomb Boost to bypass wind/water junctions (Hookshot, P.Anklet, and Ice Rod/Arrows being valid ways to bypass them) or collect other A/X/B/Y items; essentially, Bombs/Chus would only be allowed when in combat-based and ice-block rooms.

The only point of potential confusion with "All Dungeons" (regardless of whether we include the "No Skips" stipulation to make it dissimilar enough from All Instruments) would be that we'd have to clarify whether the Mask mini-dungeons are also required or not. On the one hand, they have keys locking up their mini-boss from spawning and are one-floor dungeons similar to Kakariko. On the other, unlike Kakariko, they aren't actually required to beat the game OR unlock the Future Hyrule barrier (Future Hyrule barrier is unlocked via having two Hyrulians and the two Future Hyrule instruments; in Single-character Mode, I think it's just the instruments).

And now I'm remembering that "no skips" could also change how you enter Present Gerudo Ruins to require the gears for the bridge, let alone crossing Present Death Mountain...

My main goal was just to have a category where it's still required to defeat Octavo and go through the Future Hyrule Castle dungeon while also routing in the Future Hyrule instruments, but I'm having trouble coming up with a good name that fits those requirements together in such a way that is also dissimilar from All Instruments... All Barriers & Castles (AB&C%)? I guess Present & Future Castle extend the game length enough that it could be somewhat interesting.

There's also potentially some valid arguments that there need to be changes or clarifications to some of the other categories for 1.4, or maybe some of them need to just be dropped since they aren't run (even though the game has seen a huge dropoff due to 1.4's Future Hyrule music desync from the beatmaps), but some of those are arguably better left to other threads.

What say you all?

As someone who's been running/racing weaponless a decent amount, I'd be interested in seeing that category appear on the leaderboards. Some rules would still need to be decided - if you pick up a permanent weapon, the run is of course invalidated. However, if you pick up a glass weapon (which is all too often dropped by minibosses), never use it, and immediately have it broken, is the run still invalid? If Zelda or Cadence use their daggers by accident in the Octavo or Ganon fights, does that invalidate the run? Personally, I'm of the mindset of allowing dagger usage in the Ganon fight, though it's generally avoidable in the Octavo fight.

In regards to the other categories, the name "All Barriers & Castles" seems like a good description. All Instruments could also be a great category to add. I'm just not sure whether or not there should be a distinction for categories based on DLC (i.e. All Dungeons No DLC).

These would be some pretty welcomed additions in my opinion. I think having categories to run outside of the main game is good to have.

Oh, I just remembered that Puzzle Mode also needs a board.

However, if you pick up a glass weapon (which is all too often dropped by minibosses), never use it, and immediately have it broken, is the run still invalid? If Zelda or Cadence use their daggers by accident in the Octavo or Ganon fights, does that invalidate the run?

These are good points regarding Weaponless that I didn't account for in the rules so far.

I would probably say that glass weapons would invalidate the run. It's generally faster to just avoid pickups rather than wait to get damaged without using the glass weapon.

As for Zelda & Cadence in the Ganon fight, I think with the precedent set by Impa's achievement, them attacking will be accepted as long as it's not overly abused (i.e. pulling them out to specifically attack things in phases 1 & 2, rather than incidentally attacking things to stay on their triforce piece).

Thoughts?