Stair Clip

Missing Collision

DISCOVERED BY Solidified Gaming

At the top of staircases which let link adjust their layer from the lower to upper layers, there are normally invisible wall collision in place to prevent the player from being able to walk past the stairs while remaining on the upper layer. However due to a developer oversight, there are two staircases in the game that lack the invisible wall collision:

The first staircase on the 3rd Floor of Palace of Winds.
The first staircase in Dark Hyrule Castle, near the entrance to the sanctuary.

The black boxes in the bellow images show the position that invisible wall collision is missing.

The Stair Clip

DISCOVERED BY Solidified Gaming

Both these staircases have the same alignment and hence the same visual setups work in both cases, follow these steps to perform the clip:

Align link with the visual setup
Start charging the boots, hold right once the boots start charging to drift right
If you dash through then the clip was successful, if you bonked on the edge of the stairs then repeat from step 1.

Detailed explanation:

We can dash at the corner of the lanterns and the non-present collision to clip past the corner of the staircase and remain on the upper layer, allowing us to walk over the top of obstacles and skip sections of the dungeons.

However the positioning required to pull this off is very precise, it is not just pixel perfect but the window to perform the clip is roughly half the size of a pixel, and for distances smaller than a pixel we have to discuss subpixels. Subpixels are a data value even smaller than a pixel, a single pixel in the game is split up into a grid of 256 x 256 subpixels, movement in any direction will change the subpixels in that direction. There is no visual way of knowing what value your subpixel is, so each attempt at the setup will essentially have a 50% of success (unless you do a subpixel setup).

There are many different setups positions for the clip however we will show the most convenient ones here on the left, the first one is used in Palace of Winds and makes use of the bow/shield to align link. Notice the single yellow pixel between the tip of the arrow, the black border of the lantern, and the cream colour of the top step of the staircase. Using the shield you have to spot a single pixel of link's shadow on the top step.

With link in this position you can then charge a boot dash. Once link starts charging the dash hold right so that link starts drifting to the right as soon as the dash starts. If the subpixel values were correct then link will dash straight past the stairs and will be on layer 2 and can walk over the top of everything on layer 1 (note: touching the tiles of the steps will lower you back down to layer 1).

If the dash ends up bonking on the edge of the stairs then the sub-pixel values were not right to do the clip, however bonking will sufficiently shuffle your subpixel values so that you can repeat the setup and re-attempt the clip with another 50% chance of success, repeat the process as many times as necessary to clip through.

DHC Setup

In Dark Hyrule Castle it is more convenient to use the sword to setup the clip (as we just saved the stone guards with it and also there is a moblin nearby that can get in the way). We instead use this visual setup (This is still the same position in relation to the clip location). Start by standing below the top lantern, Hold out the sword and walking up against the lantern, tap right to line link up with the picture shown. Either look at links ear above his sword side and align it as shown in the image with the staircase, alternately look at the sword overlap 2 pixels of the lanterns black border.

Routes

Palace of Winds:

This clip lets us skip 2 more sets of moving platforms and instead head directly to the next small key, in fact this trick allows for another method of Power Bracelets skip in addition to Wirblehop. Once the Clip is performed do one screen transition down into a room with 2 Wallmasters (Blue Hands) and a pull lever, stay at the top of this screen and dash right 3 screen transitions untill you see the Sky background. Roll down twice to the tile above the doorway and then do a screen transition left, this will land you back inside right by the switch that activates a small key where you can continue the dungeon. Overall this route saves 45s over riding the platforms.

A faster version of the route continues the dash that was used to clip all the way to the bottom of the 2 Wallmaster room, then we do the transitions to the right along the bottom of each room. This puts us in the Sky room in a position where we can just hold diagonal down left to land perfectly back in bounds. While holding down left from this entry position, we can throw the boomerang and it will hit the switch very quickly (with a tiny RNG chance of the keese flying into the way of the boomerang). This can save up to 1s over the typical method.

Dark Hyrule Castle

This clip lets us skip the first key door of the dungeon similarly to doing an Ocarina Glitch. Once you have done the clip, head right 2 transitions, then one transition up. This last transition will place you inside a long block which you will either get stuck in or pop out the other side of, if you get stuck just equip the cape and do a hop to free yourself. Once past the long block head to the right, transition down twice and then head up the first stairwell you seeto the next floor. This puts you in the main entrance room of the dungeon where you can continue the rest of the dungeon route.

Subpixel Setups

Subpixels can be set to a consistent value to make the clip 100% consistent

Palace Subpixel Setups

There are 2 different setups for this stairclip

Easy Setup:

Hold the bow/shield with link facing down and fall off to the right on this highlighted tile.
After Link respawns, pull out the bow/shield again and walk to the left (If you use the shield you can hold it during the entire void out).
Once you reach the top of the stairs, line up with the standard stairclip visual alignment and do the clip.

Fast Setup:

From the start of the room, move down right to the lowest clone pad and fall off facing down
Hold shield and then walk down against the wall, keep shield held until step 9
Tap right until your shadow touches the visual cue in the image to the right
Don't press anything, let the platform grab you and ride
Once you get to the end of the platform ride walk down off the platform
Walk left (making sure never to do any diagonal movement or brushing any corners while you move)
Stop below the block and push up against it, then walk left
Walk left up the stairs and then stop when link is at the exact pixel position shown in the image on the right
Equip Boots and Boomerang and do the clip.

Dark Hyrule Castle Subpixel Setups

There are 2 different setups for this stairclip

Fast Setup:

Enter DHC from the stone guards, hold down during the transition to walk into the ezlo trigger.
After the ezlo trigger, mash sword and then press left to make link change facing direction without moving from the same spot.
Charge a boot dash and then hold diagonal down left before link starts moving, keep this held until you begin the transition animation where you let go of directions.
Stop dashing at the top of the stairs in between the two lanterns, walk down into the bottom lantern and then slash and hold your sword out.
Press up against the top lantern, then tap right to align link with the standard stairclip visual alignment and do the clip.

Safe Setup:
1. Enter DHC from the stone guards, hold down during the transition to walk into the ezlo trigger.
2. After the ezlo trigger, mash sword and then press left to make link change facing direction without moving from the same spot.
3. Charge a boot dash and then hold diagonal down left before link starts moving, keep this held until you begin the transition animation where you let go of all inputs.
4. After the Transition, perform a slash turn to face down, Hold the last slash and Hold left. IMPORTANT: Wait for the slash to end before holding left.
5. Keep holding until link rounds the corner and is half way up the stairs, then stop. (Watch the moblin and if it is close to the stairs then stop moving and wait for it to pass).
6. Move up until link stops moving, stop, then tap left to align link with the standard stairclip visual alignment and do the clip.

Fast Setup Adjustment:

If you stop your dash perfectly aligned with the left edge of the lamp as shown in the image, doing the typical setup to clip will fail. An Adjustment must be made from this position to fix the setup:

Face down
Start charging boots and HOLD RIGHT until you bonk
Hold the sword and tap right to move to the clip setup position

Detailed Explanation of Subpixel setups:

Since subpixels determine wether or not the clip succeeds or fails, if we can move consistently from a position with known sub-pixel values to the clip location then we can guarantee the clip will work every time. Luckily for us there are a few places where subpixels will get set to a known value, two of which can be used to make consistent subpixel setups for stair clipping:

When a room is loaded (from a white/black fade screen transition), the subpixel values will be set to (0,0)
When link falls into a bottomless pit or drowns in water, the respawn will set the subpixels to (0,0)

Since the Palace Stairclip is next to a bottomless pit and the DHC Stairclip is near the Sanctuary entrance, we have locations nearby to set known subpixel values, now we need consistent methods of moving link to the stairclip location.

First let us look into Palace of Winds.

Palace of Winds:

We have to ensure both the vertical and horizontal subpixels are changed in a predictable way for the clip to be consistent, luckily we have a position we can fall off the edge to reset our subpixels and then only have to walk horizontally to reach the stairclip position.

In order to do the clip we have to be facing down, if we set our subpixels in a different direction then we will have to change our vertical subpixels in order to change our facing direction to down. The edges we can fall off are located either above or to the right, however if we hold an item to lock link into facing down and then walking off the edge, link will respawn facing down with the subpixels reset.

With link facing down we can pull out the bow again to keep link facing down and then walk left untill we reach the top of the stairs. How do we know that the subpixels will be at a consistent value each time we do this movement? When walking sideways with the bow, link moves exactly 49,152 subpixels per frame, this turns out to be exactly 0.75 (3/4) pixels per frame, so what does this look like? The first 3 frames of movement link will move 1 pixel at a time, then on the 4th frame link will appear to not move at all before the cycle repeats. When stopping and walking the other direction, the subpixels continue to adjust by this amount so if we overshoot our alignment we can adjust back and the subpixels will remain consistent.

It is not a coincidence that the visual setup we showed earlier for this stair clip works 100% consistently when we do this subpixel setup, that position was specifically chosen because it works with this setup. Now let us look at Dark Hyrule Castle which turns out to be slightly more complicated

Dark Hyrule Castle (Fast Setup):

The closest location to the clip that we can have known subpixel values is the load when entering DHC for the first time. Directly infront of the entrance is an ezlo trigger which luckily is consistent with subpixels, not only that but walking directly down from the main entrance will stop us on the ezlo trigger with the same subpixel values every time. Diagonal movement has to be performed frame perfectly to consistently preserve subpixels, which isn't realistic for a consistent setup so we need to avoid all diagonal movement that can't be started and stopped consistently. However if we restrict our movement to only cardinal directions (only one of up, down, left or right at a time), then we can ensure that the subpixels remain consistent.

So from here we want to be facing to the left without changing our coordinates at all, we can do this by mashing the sword to lock us in place and then when we press direction buttons we will just change link's facing direction and not his coordinates. So now we can mash sword and tap left to face left while mashing. Now we are facing left we can do a boot dash to reach the next room by charging the boots and hold diagonal down left during the whole dash (Reminder: we can transition while doing a boot drift at least once if we are holding diagonal on the inputs, just holding the side input will make us bonk instead). This dash will consistently transition us into the next room at the same vertical coordinates.

Once in the next room we just hold the boots button with no direction inputs and then time when we let go of the boots to be when we are at the top of the stairs in between the two lanterns. Depending on when we release the boots, we may have a good starting location to have good subpixels for the clip. Now from here we can walk down against the bottom lantern and slash to hold out our sword, finally we adjust link up and then to the right to match the standard visual setup made. Again we chose the visual setup for DHC since when we do this setup we get a 100% consistent stairclip when done correctly.

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