AuruBA (Auru Duping)

Description

Discovered by Jacquaid

By breaking Auru's cutscene in Lake Hylia, it is possible to get him to give you whatever item you last received in the current play session, instead of Auru's memo.

In the broken version of his cutscene, Auru will give you an item matching the ID in the byte 1064CF9F. When the game first boots up, that byte is set at 00, in which case Auru would give you the item with that ID, which is a black rupee with the "Currently playing on Wii U GamePad" text that you would normally get on the screen when playing with the game on the GamePad. But whenever you get an item, the value of that byte changes to match the item ID for whatever the last item you received was. This happens whenever Link holds an item up to the screen (which happens whenever he gets a dungeon item or scoops something into his bottle, among other times) or shows an item (like Auru's memo) to an NPC.

The value Auru pulls from does not reset when going to the title screen. It only resets or changes when turning off the game or receiving a different item. Because of this, it is possible to use a different file that has progressed further in the game to give Link that item in the main file. So, for example, Link could get the Double Clawshots from Auru by using a City in the Sky save file.

Unfortunately, Link can only get one item from Auru this way, as the cutscene will not be repeated after Link gets an item from it. (There is, however, a way to get both Auru's memo and another item, as discussed below.)

Sadly, as useful as all of this may sound, there are no known uses for this trick in speedruns.

How To

Basics

To perform this trick, first get whatever item you want Auru to give you (whether on the current or another save file). That will put that item's ID into 1064CF9F. Then, load into the file where Auru is and climb up the tower. Do not walk forward once you have reached the top. Instead, carefully walk sideways while ZL targeting until you can target Auru (this only works on HD because of the longer target range). Next, talk to Auru repeatedly until he asks if you'll help him. Say no to this. Lastly, walk into the cutscene, say yes to his question, and continue through the dialogue until he gives you the item you set up beforehand.

Saving the Memo

Of course, having a new item is not very helpful if you can never get to the desert. There are two ways of dealing with this.

First, you could use AuruBA to get an Ooccoo Sr. Once you do that, as long as you don't die, savewarp, or enter a loading zone, you will have an "overworld Ooccoo." Overworld Ooccoos will pull from NPC text (varying by region) instead of their normal text. It just so happens that in Lake Hylia, pulling out an Ooccoo Sr. will give you Fyer's text from showing him the memo, and this will unlock the desert. Just make sure not to say yes with the Ooccoo Sr.'s text or you will softlock. However, this is useless (if kind of cool) because you won't get any further use out of this Ooccoo. You've essentially just swapped the memo for a functional equivalent.

Second, and more usefully, you can do the following before performing AuruBA. First, go up to the top of Auru's tower. This time, walk into the cutscene, but say no at the end. Then talk to Auru while standing near the edge of the tower. Say yes to his question and get the memo, then buffer a sidehop or backflip out of the memo text (by holding the inputs for either of those movements while clearing the memo text) and pull up the collection screen in midair. Then savewarp to prevent Auru's text from playing (alternatively you can just die by hitting the ground, if your health is low enough). This will cause the cutscene trigger to reappear even though you already have the memo, but note that the trigger will go away on loading Lake Hylia anytime after you have shown the memo to Fyer. Once you have done all this, just perform AuruBA like normal.

Example

The following video shows the steps involved in saving the memo and still getting another item.

Shown Items

Getting an item is not the only way to change the value of 1064CF9F (the byte Auru pulls from in his broken cutscene). You can also change this value by pulling out an item as if it were a quest item. For quest items, this can be done by simply pulling out the item.

For all other items, you will need to find an NPC that would react to being shown a quest item in your possession. Once you are in front of the NPC, drag the item you want over the slot containing the quest item (but do not let go yet). Hit the home button, lift your finger, hold down the button for the item slot, and hit the home button again. By doing this, the quest item will be replaced by whatever item you wanted, and you'll show the NPC that new item.

The following video provides an example of this, using Auru's memo and a bottle filled with golden chu jelly.

Memory Viewer Demonstration

The following video does a number of things with AuruBA with the memory viewer visible so that you can see what's going on.