Lightspeed

"Lightspeed" mode, or "Light World Mode" is a set of customizer settings designed to create a consistently short yet competitive game mode. The mode requires you to beat all Light World dungeons, and the game is over once you defeat Agahnim 1 and grab the Triforce on the Pyramid Ledge.

What to Expect

By default this is a "Standard State" start with a random Uncle Weapon. All three Light World dungeons are pendants and you are required to pull a Progressive Sword from the Pedestal, with no possible ways to sequence break this requirement using minor glitches. The only locations logically-available are locations which are accessible without the Moon Pearl. There is one Progressive Sword on the Pedestal, and one other Progressive Sword randomly placed somewhere else logically-available. The game is over when you defeat Agahnim 1 and grab the Triforce on the Pyramid Ledge.

Some consequences of the settings are:

• Pegasus Boots will more-often be available in the Light World than what you would expect in a normal Open State seed partially due to the key placement of Desert Palace, however boots will not be available every seed.

• If you decide to go up Agahnim's Tower without the Lamp, you will always at least have the Fire Rod because a fire source is forced for Desert Palace.

• You will always be forced to go through Hyrule Castle Escape and the three Light World pendant dungeons with either no sword or a Fighter Sword at maximum, and you will always ascend Agahnim's Tower with a Master Sword.

• You may be required to navigate through the Dark World to reach locations which are considered logically-accessible without the Moon Pearl, such as Checkerboard Cave, Desert Palace, Tower of Hera, and East Light World Death Mountain.

• Sequence breaking with bunny glitches (Bunny#Minor_Glitches) is possible, for example to get into the Mire Shed, Superbunny Cave, or Dungeon Bunny Revival inside Ice Palace, however you will never find an item required by the playthrough, and you will absolutely never find an item which allows you to skip pulling the Master Sword Pedestal and defeating Agahnim 1. It is possible that you may find helpful items with bunny glitches, such as a Progressive Bow or a Hammer, but because of the shortness of the mode and the fewer opportunities for high-variance decisions, this kind of sequence breaking is highly unlikely to pay off.

• The bias of the fill algorithm is exacerbated in this game mode due to having much fewer locations (71) which are ever logically-fillable with required items. If you find an item which unlocks relatively few locations it is more likely than normal to lead to something logically required (particularly if you find that item in an early "sphere"). Kekw

• Don't forget to pull the pedestal before going to Agahnim's Tower (lul)

• In play testing so far, seeds will take an experienced runner about 30-45 minutes to finish.

• If you generate the seed via the customizer, prizepacks are totally shuffled (a current limitation of the customizer). Generating the seed via SahasrahBot allows prize packs to be shuffled within pools, as is the current default setting in the randomizer.

How to Play (SahasrahBot Presets)

The easiest way to generate a seed is to use the SahasrahBot preset in Discord. You can generate a seed using the command:

/alttpr preset preset:lightspeed

If you would like to generate a seed with starting pseudoboots, you can use the command:

/alttpr preset preset:qirn/lightspeedpseudoboots

You may run these commands in the ALttP Randomizer Discord, #sahasrahbot channel.

How to Play (Customizer)

To generate a seed:

1. Download the current version of the customizer settings file
2. Go to the customizer on the alttpr.com website
3. Go to the "Save/Restore" tab
4. Click "Load" and select the downloaded customizer settings file
5. Go to the "Generate" tab
6. (Optional) Select your settings
   • Change "World State" to "Open State" if you would like to play Open State instead of Standard State start
   • Change the "Dungeon Item Shuffle" if you want (all Dark World dungeon items have been manually placed in their dungeons, so this will only shuffle Light World dungeon items, as you would probably hope/expect it would)
   • Most settings can be changed, although "Accessibility" must remain on "Beatable" for the seed to generate properly
7. Click "Generate Race ROM"

This will create a permalink for you to download the patch from and distribute as normal.

Design Goals of the Mode

This "mode" is still currently being tweaked. The design goals of the mode are:

• A consistently fast game mode option

• Accessible to new runners while still being meaningfully challenging to experienced runners

• Not too much variance

• Competitive

• Presents meaningful routing choices (despite reduced variance)

• Intuitive and easy to understand the settings of the mode, and how those settings will effect a run

• Consistent with the theme: "Light World" (e.g. Standard State start, Master Sword on Pedestal for Agahnim's Tower access, all Light World dungeons, no Ganon boss at the end, etc)

Our options for fast game modes are currently limited, with many of them having a very high spread of expected finish times; unusually high variance attached to routing choices; and/or a focus on Overworld routing over Dungeon completion and execution. The goal was to design a consistently fast mode that was fun to play for experienced and new runners and which still provides a competitive experience.

The game forces you to defeat all Pendant dungeons with at most the Fighters' Sword, only giving you the Master Sword for your Agahnim's Tower climb. This keeps the difficulty curve consistent compared to having more swords in the pool and creates a meaningful challenge for experienced runners while remaining accessible to new runners. Although it is possible to complete the mode without the Lamp, you must have a fire source to have completed Desert Palace and enter Agahnim's Tower, so Dark Aga with no Fire Rod is never a possibility, also keeping the mode accessible. This sword placement and count is also necessary to force the completion of all Light World dungeons.

A goal is to reduce the number of tweaks made in the customizer so that it is easy to explain and understand the mode. A runner or viewer should be able to intuitively understand what the game mode is and how the run is effected by these tweaks. The number of revisions made to the item pools has been kept to a minimum so that it's easier to explain the mode, intuitive to pick up and start playing, and analogous enough to other modes.

The theming complements the other design goals and helps to keep the mode intuitive, but is not the highest design priority on its own.

Settings Details

Most items are still placed randomly using the normal fill algorithm, making the experience mostly analogous to playing the game in other game modes.

• All Light World dungeon bosses have a (shuffled) pendant prize

• The Moon Pearl has been removed from the item pool and replaced with a Twenty Rupee

• The Cape has been removed from the item pool and replaced with a Twenty Rupee (this is so you will never get Cape access to Agahnim's Tower, even with Bunny sequence breaks)

• The Pedestal has a Progressive Sword

• There is only one other Progressive Sword randomly placed from the item pool. This along with the Cape being removed means that both available swords will be required to beat the seed and forces the completion of the pendant dungeons.

• The Triforce is on the Pyramid Ledge (a future version may include ROM changes in a branch of the randomizer which automatically sends you to the Triforce Room after defeating Aga1)

• Dark World dungeon items have been manually placed in their dungeons. This does not effect the mode at all - it is currently required to generate seeds with the customizer due to the jankiness of what we're doing here, otherwise the customizer will freak out.

• Standard State start (though play it in Open State mode if you want - you can do this as normal by just changing the "World State" to "Open State" on seed generation)

• The goal currently says "Defeat Ganon 7/7", however you cannot finish the game this way without the use of major glitches

• There is currently a Triforce Piece counter on the HUD when you play the game (probably because of the Triforce placed on the Pyramid, but it would be nice to remove this from the HUD in a future version)

• Prizepacks are totally shuffled if you generate the seed using the customizer (a current limitation of the customizer)