A while back I did a speedrun of FSA avoiding the use of glitches present in standard any%, such as pitwalking, floating link, superjump, wall clips, etc. I really enjoyed making it and see potential for this to become a full game category. Has there ever been any community interest or discussion regarding such a ruleset?

I'd be curious about a few techniques I didn't use in my run but have seen in speedruns of FSA and whether these would be considered glitches vs. exploits:

1. Interrupting the links going back to formation to get one of them access to a normally unreachable place, such as the ice platform in 7-2

2. Hugging walls then falling into pits to get thrown across rooms instead of where you fell from, like in the room in 5-3 with the pegs and turtles where you have to pull the four levers, it's possible to skip having to wait for the platform

3. In Glyphdx's YouTube video of 2-2, in the room where you acquire the book to summon the house, he specifically positioned the four links, separated green link, walked toward the fortune teller, then regrouped the links, causing purple link to fly over the pit you normally need Roc's feather to get across, skipping most of the level.

I'm considering making an improvement video sometime in the future but I want to get confirmation on these tricks first. I would greatly appreciate any insight from the community!

Hey Steelcrocodile! Sorry I missed the post, not used to people posting on here lol.

Your questions are good ones, and these kinds of examples are why "glitchless" is a very difficult thing to nail down.

I've done my rough take on a glitchless run a bit ago linked below. The main idea is to ban obvious "large" skips (such as in 4-1 using the horses to kill the gohmas instead of the bow or the 2-2 skip you mentioned) along with the obvious glitches in the game. As for what you mentioned in #3, this exploit is mostly fine (can use it in 7-2 to get to the fairy easier) I just didn't use it when it skipped a lot like in your example of 2-2.

The only glitch that I decided to allow is recoil FLG (floating link glitch). This is pretty much impossible to avoid (almost any clank you get with a sword hit will activate this) so I decided to allow it. It doesn't really affect too much in the run (the biggest is probably the 6-3 boss). I can't see any objectively correct way to go about it, I just revolved the rules around not skipping large portions and logical to some extent.

Hey I just finished watching that run. I was truly impressed as usual with your techniques and speed!

Your run appears to look at glitchless from a point of view taking the developers' intended sequences of events into account, meanwhile I've been working on my own take on a "glitchless" FSA run in which I look at it from more of a technical standpoint. I'm allowing any skips that don't make exploit of flaws in the game's programming, wherein I've been doing the 2-2 skip, using the horses in 4-1 on the gohmas, the two skips in 7-2, and the cloud skip in 8-2. At the time of writing, my best time so far is 2:56:45.

Some tricks in your run such as pushing large blocks the wrong direction, the peg skip in 3-2, and the FLG clearly appear to be glitches, so I won't make use of them in my run. However, I do appreciate your perspective on it, too! I hope you see my video when it comes out!

Cheers

Hey! Just finished my new run. Here it is and I hope you enjoy!

Good job! Looks clean.

Glitchless is an interesting category (mainly for no reset runs and not being forced to grind out the early game major skips).

A long time ago I did a single player GBA controller run when I was prepping for co-op (makes it practically impossible to do the C stick formation tricks) and might revisit it more seriously now while learning the newer strategies.

Hi 26pt2,

Thank you for the follow and your feedback! In the future I'm considering having another go at glitchless. Goal will obviously be sub 2:50. Idk if you saw this but I recently put up a new run of Palace of Winds, whose route saves 45-60 seconds compared to the route I used in my previous full game run.

Nice!

I’m definitely down to try glitchless (or something similar like No Major Glitches/Skips) for fun. For now, sounds like the core of the run/routing is single player only throughout (I unfortunately lost my GCN-GBA cables and GBA when moving so at the moment I can’t do the 2P skips using the boomerang for 8-3). 2-2, 4-1 and 8-1 and a few other levels would be the older route. I have both the US and JP versions but would definitely need to read in the Lost Woods level (hopefully Deku shrubs don’t ask for a sign).

Also, congrats Navi on grinding out the tricks and re-routing to bring WR down to sub-2 hours!

Hey,

Just thought I'd share this.

Hi FSA community,

A new glitchless run is well on the way. Goal is sub 2:45, which would guarantee 19th on the leaderboards. As of this posting my best time is 2:46:44! Also I finally got around to having a split table in the run, and customized it to have the recycled Wind Waker font used in this game which is a neat novelty :)