Mirror

The mirror is a Y-item in the game. If it's used on the Dark World overworld, Link will be warped to the Light World. If it's used in a dungeon, Link will warp to the place he entered the dungeon from.

Location

The mirror is the player's reward for rescuing the lost Old Man on Death Mountain. He can be found in the eponymous Old Man cave, which is normally accessed by lifting the boulder blocking access to Death Mountain. This requires the power glove from Desert Palace. After meeting him, you can bring him to his home at the bottom of the Death Mountain screen, and he'll give Link the mirror.

With the use of major glitches, the Old Man cave can be accessed without a lift upgrade or any other items. There is one key restriction though: trying to rescue the Old Man in the rain state will hardlock the game if steps aren't taken to prevent it. This is because the rainy Light World overworld doesn't spawn any of the typical Light World sprites or overlords, which are invisible entities that exercise some control over a sprite or group of sprites. On Death Mountain, there's typically an overlord present that takes control of the Old Man and guides him into his home after Link brings him near the door. But in the rain, this overlord will be absent, and the game won't guide him into his door properly. If you need or want to get the mirror in the rain, you'll need to route in a visit to another overlord that sets up the correct memory values for the Old Man rescue to be resolved properly. The things that work for this:

• The Armos Knight boss fights, both in Eastern Palace and Ganon's Tower
• The King Helmasaur boss fight
• The snitches in Village of Outcasts—because you're in the rain, they will be in VoO rather than Kakariko Village like normal
• The southwest portion of Dark Death Mountain, which is where the Old Man overlord exists in the rain

With all of these, you just have to visit the screen to load the overlord, and things will be properly setup.

Description

The mirror behaves differently if used in the overworld vs. the underworld.

On the overworld

On the Dark World overworld, the mirror will warp Link to the Light World. If there's some difference in the tilemap between worlds and the warp would place Link inside of solid collision on the Light World, the warp will be rejected. This is known as a mirror bonk.

After a successful warp to the Light World, a portal will be spawned where the mirror was used that can take Link back to the Dark World if Link touches it. If the player warps and wants to immediately return to the Dark World, it's faster to exit the mirror portal's footprint and return to it than it is to just wait inside of the portal.

On the Light World overworld, using the mirror has no effect.

Overworld glitches and techniques

When warping between worlds on certain horizontal positions, the warp animation can be made around half a second faster than normal. This is known as quickwarping.

Towards the end of a warp animation, the player has a 16 frame window where certain inputs can be buffered in, and the input will be triggered on the first frame of player control. The Start button always works for this, so one of the most useful applications of this technique is if the player wants to immediately equip a different item after using the mirror. A common example is if the player wants to mirror + flute. Another input that can be buffered is A when talking to NPCs, which can be seen with the frogdor trick.

Using the mirror on the same frame that Link uses an entrance to the underworld is one way to activate the super bunny glitch.

There are some places the mirror can be used to clip Link out of bounds. Sometimes this just exploits tilemap differences between the Light and Dark worlds, such as with original DMD or mid TR jump. Another way to clip on the overworld is with mirror jumps, which is where the player uses the mirror on the same frame a ledge hop occurs. When this happens, Link's position will move slightly in the direction of the ledge hop. This is used in the classic method for early Tempered Sword.

Using the mirror on the same frame as an overworld screen transition will activate a mirror wrap, which can be a powerful major glitch technique.

By combining the mirror with screen wrap glitches, Link can "displace" the mirror portal that spawns in the Light World after a mirror warp.

On the underworld

While Link is in a dungeon, the mirror will warp him to the place he entered the underworld at. This is a frequently valuable routing option in speedruns, and it sees significant use in some of the game's dungeons.

If Link is indoors but not in a dungeon (such as a house or cave), the mirror will do nothing, or so it seems ...

Underworld glitches and techniques

If Link is in a house or cave, the player can use mirror block erase to "delete" push blocks. This is a JP 1.0 only glitch. This glitch is also possible if Link is in cave state more broadly. For example, if the player entered the underworld from a cave and then glitched to a room belonging to a dungeon, they'd be able to mirror block erase, and the mirror would not warp them back to the to their last used overworld entrance.

The prison save and quit sets the Sanctuary entrance ID. In categories that use major glitches and can do Hyrule Castle after collecting the mirror, this can be used to:

1. Meet Zelda in her cell, which activates the prison save and quit spawn
2. Save and quit
3. Use the mirror after spawning—this will warp the player to the Sanctuary, which is where they're wanting to take Zelda.

If Link uses the mirror on the same frame as a subtile door transition, a mirror door will occur.

Indoor mirror jumps can be used to arm EG.