Half Magic

Half magic is an upgrade to Link's magic meter.

Details and mechanics

Half magic doesn't do anything to Link's maximum MP values. Instead, it makes magic items cost half as much MP to use as they do with the normal meter. For example, the fire rod costs 16 MP per shot with the normal meter, but with half magic, a fire rod shot only costs 8 MP.

Due to refill frames and how each magic use has a lowered MP cost, it generally saves time to have half magic. But it costs too much time to grab to be particularly worthwhile in most non-100% or Max% speedrun routes. In some runs, it can be used as a safety item to make some of the boss fights easier or more forgiving.

Location

Half magic is gotten from sprinkling magic powder at the altar of the magic bat. This typically requires a couple of things:

• Magic powder or mushroom and a way to activate fake powder
• The hammer to access the ledge hop down to the bat on the Smithy house screen OR the mitts to access the peg field screen and then the mirror to warp to the Light World on the other side of the hammer peg on the Smithy house screen.

Using mitts and mirror doesn't help you skip hammer for accessing half magic because in the vanilla game, the hammer is required for getting the mitts. But the mitts and mirror route is still potentially faster.

With the use of major glitches, the bat cave can be reached without hammer or mitts and mirror in a number ways, but having the ability to powder (with real powder or not) is still necessary.