Flippers

The flippers, sometimes Zora's flippers, are a piece of equipment that allows Link to swim in deep, dark-blue colored water.

Location

The flippers can be purchased from King Zora in the Zora's Domain screen. They cost 500 rupees to buy.

Zora's domain is accessed by transitioning north on the waterfall of wishing screen. The waterfall of wishing can be reached any time by using fake flippers to access the Lake Hylia whirlpool, which will transport Link to the waterfall of wishing. The traditional, glitchless way of reaching it is through taking the Zora path, which requires a lift upgrade for moving a boulder. The player can also take the Catfish path (which also requires a lift upgrade) and mirror to the Light World.

The flippers are one of the few items that can't be accessed in the rain state. This is because the usual Light World sprites are present in the Dark World instead, but Zora's Domain doesn't have a Dark World counterpart. So King Zora can't be visited.

Description

The flippers allow Link to swim in deep water. If the player tries to jump into deep water without them, they will be splashed back out to where they jumped from.

On the overworld, it can be simple to get Link swimming without the flippers through fake flippers. It's also possible to get Link walking over deep water via water walk. Both of these are considered minor glitches and are allowed in NMG speedruns. However, swimming in Swamp Palace without the flippers is a different story, and there are no known NMG methods for getting it to work out. In practice, this means flippers are normally a requirement in NMG runs, or at least any NMG run that has to complete Swamp.

With major glitches, the flippers can still be a requirement. This is because the Phelps way (the room 2 rooms before Arrghus) is a notorious roadblock, and there's no known flipper-less way past it that conforms to RMG-tier rules. With full major glitches, Arrghus can be defeated without flippers in a few different ways, making flippers fully optional.

Swimming

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