Slope Clipping

Slope clipping is a major glitch technique used to move Link into a slope or diagonal wall. This is often referred to simply as clipping when there's no need to disambiguate with other techniques that move Link through solid tiles, such as door state extension, swim clipping, or different forms of stair clipping.

Effects

There are several common effects that are enabled by clipping into slopes:

• Teleport: By clipping to certain positions in "down" slopes (walls shaped like ◣ or ◢), players can press the d-pad diagonally towards the slope to trigger a teleport. This will jump Link a large distance (~45 pixels downwards or ~90 pixels upwards) in a single frame.
• Out-of-bounds ledge hops: Clipping through a slope or teleporting can give Link access to a ledge hops he normally wouldn't be able to touch. These can give Link access to unintended areas or cause screen wraps or FAWTs.
• Screen wraps: By using out-of-bounds ledge hops or teleports, players can move Link beyond screen transitions on the overworld. This will trigger a "screen wrap" where Link's position wraps to the other side of the screen.
• Funny auto-walk thing (or FAWT): By accessing an out-of-bounds ledge hop, Link can land partially inside of an overworld screen transition. Taking the transition in this state will have Link "auto-walk" part of the way into the next screen. While in this auto-walk, Link will not interact with the screen's tiles (solid collision, deep water, etc.), which can be used to skip by obstacles on the target screen.
• Out-of-bounds transitions: By teleporting in the underworld, the player can hit supertile transitions they wouldn't normally have access to.
• Exploration glitch: While indoors and on the lower layer, the player can use slope clipping to access EG.

Teleports

When Link is against a slope, the game runs through some calculations to push him away from it. When clipped into specific positions on down slopes (walls shaped like ◣ or ◢) and pressing the d-pad diagonally into the slope, a bug in the game's movement calculations leads to Link having a very high speed for a single frame. This manifests as Link appearing to teleport from one position to another in an instant.

Link can teleport either upwards or downwards. Generally speaking, there are recurring groups of teleport pixels for every 8 pixel segment of Y-positions:

• On ◣ shaped walls:
  • Down teleports can be done by clipping 9 pixels into the slope starting from Y positions ending in 3 or 4 (or B or C—in other words 3 or 4 more than a multiple of 8).
  • Up teleports can be done by clipping 8 pixels into the slope starting from Y positions ending in 2/A, 3/B, or 4/C.
• On ◢ shaped walls:
  • Down teleports can be done by clipping 9 pixels into the slope starting from Y positions ending in 2/A, 3/B, 4/C, or 5/D.
  • Up teleports can be done by clipping 8 pixels into the slope starting from Y positions ending in 2/A, 3/B, 4/C, or 5/D.

Techniques

There are several types of slope clip that can be done. The main thing they all have in common is leveraging bugs in the game's algorithm around moving Link when he's against a slope/diagonal wall. Each of these techniques is doable on overworld slopes and underworld diagonal walls unless otherwise stated.

• 1-frame clipping
  • Citrus clipping
• Bomb clipping
• Boots clipping (overworld only)
• Superspeed clipping

1-frame clipping

With a 1-frame clip, the player must manually and precisely execute a sequence of d-pad inputs that clips Link through a wall. Often these require sequences of inputs where directions can only be held for a single frame, although it's rarely a requirement for every input to be 1 frame only.

The specific approaches depend on the exact type of wall that Link is clipping. For executing the input sequences, it's useful to be familiar with buffering techniques.

1-frame clipping ◣ walls

For this wall shape, players generally go for a citrus clip. Citrus clips are faster and easier compared to the old method of clipping this shape. It's especially easier when the slope doesn't form a corner with a horizontal wall.

If the player has the boots and the slope forms a corner with a horizontal wall, a dash citrus technique can be used. This has the benefit of sometimes working in places where a normal citrus clip wouldn't due to tilemap layout factors (i.e. Hera to Swamp clip).

If the player doesn't have the boots and is in a spot where a citrus clip wouldn't, they'll have to use the classic technique.

Citrus clip

The vast majority of the time, a citrus clip is used to access a teleport. To execute a citrus clip teleport:

1. Approach the slope on a Y-position that ends in 2 or A (i.e. 2 more than a multiple of 8).
2. Move 3 pixels west. It's impossible to move 4 pixels, so two sword buffers can be used to make this distance.
3. Move 5 pixels diagonally northwest.
4. Move 5 or 6 pixels west, depending on the type of teleport you want to arm (5 for upwards, 6 for downwards).
5. Move 1 or 2 pixels northwest.
6. Do a clean to teleport.

There are a handful of examples where it's not used to teleport (i.e. Hyrule Castle moat clip). These inputs will be expanded on for those unique applications.

Dash citrus

Classic technique

1-frame clipping ◢ walls

With these walls, citrus clip inputs don't work.

1-frame clipping ◥ walls

Because these walls are upper slopes, they don't grant any teleport positions. This makes clipping them much less powerful, but there are a couple of areas in the game where doing a clip on these walls is useful for speedrunning.

Bomb clipping

A bomb clip is done by placing a bomb near a slope and dashing into its explosion such that the damage recoil pushes Link into the slope. There's not much general technique to know beyond this, and every bomb clip will have its own specific setup(s).

Boots clipping

Boots clipping is an overworld-only clipping technique that requires the Pegasus boots. The technique is done by:

1. Holding sword while Link is facing north or south.
2. Position Link against the slope.
3. On the same frame, press A and the d-pad cardinally towards the slope ( for ◣ slopes or for ◢ slope).

• On every same frame hit of d-pad and A , Link will clip one pixel into the slope if he's moving right and two pixels if he's moving left. If this is confusing, read the movement page.

1. Continue clipping until you reach the desired position

Sometimes, like with Hera clip as an example, you just want to clip Link all the way through the wall. Usually though, boots clipping is done to reach a teleport position. In that case, you'd use the following process:

1. Hold sword facing north or south.
2. Position Link against the slope on a Y-position that can lead to a teleport.
3. Use same frame d-pad and A taps until you reach an X-position that will teleport for the Y-position you started at.
   • Again, attention must be paid to Link's movement patterns. If you're attempting a downward teleport on a ◣ shaped slope, you want to clip Link 9 pixels into the slope. But 1 frame movements to Link's left will move him 2 pixels. In practice, this often means clipping 10 pixels in (through using and A 5 times) followed by clipping 1 pixel out (through a single and A ).
4. Buffer a clean diagonal into the slope to teleport. Because you've been holding sword, a simple way to do this is to release a spin attack and hold the diagonal into the slope during the spin animation.

Superspeed clipping

By arming superspeed, whether having it active or not, the player can walk Link partially through slopes. If the slope is thin enough, the player can just walk Link all the way through. This is commonly done on the slopes at the bottom of Death Mountain. On thicker slopes, the player may use it as a way to maneuver Link partially into a slope or as a way to trigger specific types of teleport.