So I'm considering doing a glitchless speedrun of Wind Waker in segments, and after watching the current run, I was curious to ask something. I know it's possible to run into Cyclos in the quadrant that North Triangle Island occupies during the endless storm and get warped instantly to Outset. Has anyone ever tested to see if warping to Outset early would save time in the glitchless route? However, I do know you have a slim chance of the game choosing Outset for you to get shipwrecked next to and that would also mean you'd have to acquire the two Triforce charts and the Ghost Ship chart later in the game.

Another thing I'm curious about is, the game expects you to visit Grandma on Outset before talking to Jabun but the run goes to Beedle to speed up that segment. Could you in theory save time by acquiring Elixir soup and maintaining double attack power? I'd think the Moblin/Darknut battle in Hyrule Castle and the Savage Labyrinth would go much faster with this in effect, and in tandem with other enemy battles more than compensate for the time lost in Grandma's house compared to in and out of Beedle's shop.

There's more variables that affect a WW run than I can keep track of so I'd greatly appreciate any insight from the community!

Cyclos has always been in theory faster. However modern routing minimizes the amount of time cyclos saves by doing a couple things on the way to sailing to Outset that we have to do at some point anyways. Notably Islet of Steele and ghost ship chart using the glitchless Diamond Steepe early trick.

I dont know how much a first try cyclos would save compared to today's routing because the routing would be vastly different.

Alternatively you could keep the current route but use cyclos to go to Greatfish and I'd suspect that would save 30+ seconds. I doubt many people would go for this though as it's a 1/8 chance and if you fail you'd have to reload your save and also reconnect the tingle tuner.

I should also mention that this routing requires the tingle tuner for DSE. A tunerless run would benefit even more from cyclos.

Soup has historically been a heavily debated thing in a few categories. The problem with glitchless is that you can't utilize soup glitch for unlimited drinks so you'd have only 2 sips for the entirety of the run. If soup saves time it would be a small amount and would be very risky because getting hit early could be devastating timeloss.

There's also the problem that there are a few places where a damage boost is a necessary timesave which would remove your double damage. Notably glitchless helmaroc skip and getting the basement small key in WT just from the top of my head. There are definitely a few others.

Glitchless is definitely a category that could be pushed a lot though and I wouldn't be surprised if a dedicated runner who really optimized all the combat would opt to get soup.

Soup takes a very long time to get (somewhere around 1m20-1m30) and there are too many savewarps in the run that would get rid of the buff for it to be worth it in glitchless.

Cyclos is theoretically faster as trog pointed out but the odds of saving time with it are low. If someone were to push that category to its limit then probably they would do a cyclos route, but as it stands the record is still beatable without it. The ghost ship chart is very important to get early in the game as it actually saves over 5 minutes of better triforce routing later, so the cyclos reroute is not that easy either.

Reasons like the Cyclos being entirely luck based, the double attack power only lasting until you take damage, and the sheer length of the run are why I'd do the run in segments. I'm really curious to see if these strategies would save time in a run but completely understand why nobody would go for them in a full game RTA.

Also, I should mention that I'd be using the English version of the game, which omits the lengthy chain of treasure charts to acquire triforce chart 5, but has slower text. Are there any other version differences I should be aware of? So the double attack power goes away if you save and quit, even if you don't take damage? That's disappointing.

Me and azer tried to come up with a cyclos route for glitchless any% and just couldn't come up with much. The main issue is that doing the Shark Isle salvage on the way from Outset to Southern Triangle after getting Nayru's Pearl is very convenient, but you need to do the golden gunboat before you can do that salvage. We currently get the gunboat during endless night, but if you're doing cyclos to Outset there really isn't any way that can be routed in. So you'd need an extra trip to go to Shark isle which eats into a lot of the potential timesave. The way I see it, the section of IoS -> Golden gunboat -> DSI is probably gonna be the same in any route (or in the opposite order), so using cyclos would at most skip the sailing from NTI to IoS, and from DSI to Outset, but adding in at least the extra trip to Shark, and definitely an extra warp and sailing too (probably either warping Greatfish and sailing to IoS or warping to Outset and sailing to DSI), it just doesn't seem fast to me

edit: immediately after posting this I realised a route that probably is faster but needs to be timed lol (it's one azer came up with already and I proably just forgot about)

On the english version you cannot do the faster wind temple route which skips the makar kidnapping, I think that loses another minute?

I'm not sure we have an english route written somewhere. Not having the triforce chain is a large timesave, and also english has many more rupees it can grab in places such as Overlook and Stonwatcher, so ghost ship early is probably not as important. The text timeloss is around 18 minutes for english though. If you play on PAL you can play on italian which is a bit better but still far behind japanese.

So I took a look at the current glitchless route and I thought of something for the english version. What if you Cyclos from NTI to Outset in endless night, then right after finishing FF2 and acquiring fire and ice arrows, warp to Greatfish and collect the two triforce charts and do DSI early instead of getting the power bracelets, doing savage labyrinth, and getting EGL and WGA? In theory that would eliminate the sailing from NTI to IoS and from DSI to Outset in the current route.

My understanding is that you'd still be able to route in the SFI, Ice Ring Isle, Oasis and BPR sequence and be able to catch the ghost ship in Bomb Island like the current glitchless route does. Or would that cost too much of the day/night cycle? I'm not well versed with how long the day cycles last, what locations time stops, and what time of day/night those places freeze time at.

You're pointing out why I cannot answer your question. When ghost ship is involved there's no other way than to test the route. In this case it sounds to me like you would be too late to ghost ship because you're doing alot of things that normally were done when time is frozen (endless night) at a time where it's not anymore. This is also an extra warp and an extra wind change I think (not super clear).

The "easy" reroute would be to do DSE, Needle and IoS after nayru's pearl then I think ghost ship will work fine but that doesn't sound like the best cyclos route. I don't think I've seen anybody interested in running english glitchless yet so my knowledge of the route is pretty bad.

Cyclos is a 1/8 chance to save time and another 1/8 to go neutral in glitchless two hours into the run so people really don't usually go for it in a RTA setting.

EDIT: Actually you might make the ghost ship with your route idea since the triforce quest is shorter. The only way to answer that question is to test the route.

Alright, I've done some research and I'll look into this. Here's what I'm thinking now: Collect the charts that Japanese collects in endless night right after finishing Tower of the Gods and learning Ballad of Gales, since time freezes at night at Fortress anyway and according to Zelda Dungeon surfacing from Hyrule sets the time to 12:00. Also as far as I know commanding an eastward wind would enable catching Cyclos, getting the charts, warping to NFI and sailing to fortress.

Before I take this on though, I do have a couple of questions regarding the rules to glitchless, mainly with the follwing dungeon tricks:

In wind temple, why is sidling behind the tablet allowed? The rules don't indicate that it is, and it looks a lot like clipping through walls which the rules ban.

In Tower of the Gods, the water drainage attempts to prevent you from entering the main part of the dungeon until the statues are placed, yet the run has Link deku leaf right through the water as if it's thin air. Does it just not have collision above the main water level?

Does Helmaroc skip just take advantage of scene geometry and a bomb boost? Because there's this weird movement when Link is on top of the spikes, like Helmaroc's wind pushes him even though that phase has not begun yet.

Glitchless rules are always up to debate as some things are always borderline and the question is where do we draw the line. Of course all three things you mention definitely are not intended but the community decided to allow them. I can try to give some of the reasons for them.

• In Wind Temple, the second song stone is simply misplaced. There is no clipping really going on as there is just enough space to sidle behind it.

• In Tower of the Gods, the waterfall has a push collision type. For some reason this push collision is disabled (or maybe reversed? I don't remember) during some parts of the water cycle. As such it's not really clipping either.

• The Helmaroc Skip is just a bomb boost to get extra height and land on the spikes. The collision on top of the spikes is weird and tries to push you to the far side when you stand on it, so it's not caused by a wind or anything like that.

Actually, I thought of another potential Cyclos route on US version just now. Here it goes:

After completing forest haven, sail to bird's peak rock and get triforce chart, place farore's pearl, sail to north triangle island's quadrant and get Cyclosed to Greatfish. This is still actually less sailing than current glitchless.

Sail to windfall, get bombs, place din's pearl, get Cyclosed to Outset. Complete tower of the gods, learn ballad of gales, get rupee upgrade on the way to fortress after warping to windfall.

After taking Tetra to Hyrule, get fire and ice arrows, then power bracelets, rupee upgrade and triforce chart on Outset. Learn earth god's lyric, get cabana deed and learn wind god's aria.

Warp to Greatfish, do islet of steel, golden gunboat, and diamond steppe early. And then, warp to forest haven, farm rupees on ghost ship in bomb island's quadrant, private oasis, then get iron boots on ice ring isle. Also, isn't there a silver rupee salvage on ice ring isle from a US version exclusive treasure chart from a not-far-out-of-the-way chest in Dragon Roost Cavern, too?

But I do know the cons of this potential route: Approaching ghost ship from forest haven would require another wind change, the earlier bird's peak rock would require an extra trip to Beedle, and attempting two one-try Cyclos warps is only a 1/64 chance in a single segment run (which is a reason why I'd segment this run if I end up doing this after all)

Let me know your thoughts, and I'll test this sometime.