Eastern Palace

Required Item: Bow, Hookshot, Boomerang, or Bombs

Recommended Items: Tornado Rod, Bombs

Route Inside The Dungeon

• Shoot the switch with the Bow, progress through the newly accessible door.
• Avoid the Popo, progress through the north door.
• Go down the stairs, take damage from a small ball and make use of your temporary invincibility to get past the other balls. Take a left at the end, go up the southwest stairs. Using your sword, grab the 8 rupees in the first corridor, then go press the ground switch in the second one. Exit the room through the door that you just opened.
• In any% only, go into the room with the fairies south of the elevator and collect the 44 rupees on the floor.
• Back at the elevator, shoot an arrow at the left switch. Shoot another arrow at the right one when the elevator is high enough. Jump down, get the small key in the chest and exit the room through the northwest door.
• Unlock the north door and take the stairs up to 2F.
• Walk to the ground switch and slash/hold your sword just before stepping on it. Unleash the spin attack as the Armos Statues get closer. Finish them off with a second spin attack or 1 extra slash each. Exit the room through the east door.
• Take the east stairs. Walk to and press the ground switch at the southwest end of the bridge. Take the newly opened door to the next room.
• Take the stairs near the south wall of the room. Perform the diagonal shot to hit the switch near the Boss Door, activating the west elevator. (See Boss Door Room Switches Strategy) Lure an Armos Statue near the west door and perform the Big Key Skip. (See Big Key Skip)
• BOSS: Yuga. (See Strategy)
• Merge right of the crack and keep walking left in the wall until you reach the blue rupee on the ground. Unmerge, jump down diagonally over the railing and open the 100 rupees chest. Merge the wall to your left and walk right until your reach the other area with ground to walk on. Unmerge and proceed southwest to the next "room".
• Walk south on the moving bridge and merge/unmerge when necessary so you won't fall down into the void. Proceed southeast.
• Merge the rotating walls and unmerge on the other side. Merge the east wall, go through the crack and unmerge in the first room of the dungeon. Pass through that other crack on the east wall of that room, get the 100 rupees chest, then come back and leave the dungeon through the south exit.

Boss Strategy: Yuga

Yuga will start at the opposite end of the boss arena and will merge into the wall if approached. To damage him, you need to either use a ranged weapon, or alternatively stun it and get closer for sword attacks. Yuga can be damaged by Arrows (which you'll typically have in a speedrun), Bombs, or Ice Rod, and can be stunned with both Hookshot and Boomerang.

After damaging Yuga, he'll go to the wall and move away from Link. He emerges if he's around a quarter of the arena away, so he can be manipulated to spawn in predictable positions where you can prepare for the next hits.

For the standard strat using Bow, shoot 2 arrows right after the text before the fight finishes and start moving towards the top. Hit Yuga with 2 more arrows to end phase 1, and stay on the north wall so you can manip Yuga at the start of phase 2. The first cycle of phase 2 is the same process, but after that you'll be short on stamina, so for the last 2 cycles use 1 arrows and then walk to Yuga and slash him twice.

In Low% you'll be using the Hookshot to stun Yuga. The position manipulation is the exact same, but after a stun you can fit in 4 sword slashes in every cycle.

Big Key Skip

Discovered By Zetumz

If you have done the Item Rental Early skip, you'll be able to use the Tornado Rod in Eastern Palace. It is possible to get on top of the walls by luring an Armos Statue on the highest platform near the west (which can be accessed by activating the elevator switch) door and then using it to Tornado Rod Lift.

The easiest way to pull off the skip is to have the statue approach you from the north, rather than from the side or diagonally. Also, using your sword to push the statue on the elevator works well.

Although the timing is strict, if you don't get pushed out of bounds but still get stuck between the Armos and the wall, you can slowly turn to face north and Tornado Rod again for a guaranteed push.

Once you're on top of the wall, simply walk along it and directly into the boss room loading zone. (No need to walk slowly or anything special.)

You can also use this out of bounds to enter the Boos Key room to the left without spending a key.

Pass the First Big Boulder in 1F

By allowing yourself to get hurt by one of the small boulders, you can use your temporary invincibility to walk through the first big boulder that appears. This allows the room to be completed a bit quicker than if you just waited for it to pass you.

Boss Door Room Switches

There are a few ways to quickly activate switches in the Boss Door room with diagonal shots and other items.

On the right side of the room, you can hit the left switch (activating the rising platform) while standing roughly in the top right corner of the platform as seen in the picture below, allowing you to stand on it before it rises in the cutscene. The right switch can be hit with another diagonal shot while standing near the eastern door.

To quickly activate the left rising platform, you can use the Bow from the position shown below. For any other ranged item you need to get closer since they won't travel as far. This shot in particular is essential to the setup for Boss Key Skip.

If returning from the Boss Key room and the SW switch, you can hit the switch that rotates the pathwway from this spot:

You can also activate this switch without lowering it's barrier using a Bomb:

The SW switch can also be hit using the Ice Rod to reveal the final switch without having to enter the Boss Key room.

Fast Silver Rupee after Yuga

After beating Yuga, if you merge on the right hand side of the wall, you will reach an elevated platform with a blue rupee, from where you can drop down diagonally and reach the first 100 rupees chest. From there, you can then merge the wall and follow the green rupees trail to get to the southwest exit to the next area.

Left Balcony Skip

The fastest way to leave the dungeon after getting Ravio's Bracelet involves merging to the left on the balcony. With a very precise fall, you can circle around and barely fall into the level below, skipping having to merge from the east side instead.

In typical speedruns, the benefit of going East for the Silver Rupee outweighs using this trick, but it is still faster in a dungeon Individual Level run.

With Bombs

Without Bombs

Pendant of Courage Skip

It's possible to skip the Pendant of Courage by using Cutscene Dying into the dungeon exit. However, you won't be able to complete the game as normal after skipping it.

For more information, check the Pendant of Courage Skip page.