100% NMG No Save & Quit

100% NMG No Save & Quit is a category that gets 100% item and equipment collection while using the NMG No S&Q ruleset.

100% Definition

100% in A Link to the Past is defined as collecting all Y-items (to their maximum upgrade when applicable), all Equipment (to their maximum upgrade when applicable), all 24 heart pieces, all 11 heart containers, and the 1/2 magic upgrade.

If an item or piece of equipment has available upgrades (such as the boomerang, mushroom, armor, sword, etc.), then players must collect the maximum upgrade but can skip intermediate upgrades. An example of this is the Blue Mail, which is an intermediate armor upgrade between Link's default Green Tunic and Red Mail. Blue Mail doesn't need to be collected, but the Red Mail, which is the maximum armor upgrade, does need to be collected.

Players do not need to upgrade their arrow and bomb capacities at the Pond of Happiness. Players also do not need to collect dungeon items (maps, compasses, or big keys).

Route

Hyrule Castle

• Skip boomerang
  • Skipping the boomerang enables getting the red boomerang from the Village of Outcasts later in the run.
• Rescue Zelda
• Sanctuary Heart

Eastern Palace

• Enter Eastern Palace
• Bow
• Armos Knights

Desert Palace

• Pegasus Boots
• Sahashrala's closet chests
• Book of Mudora
• Enter Desert Palace
• Power Gloves
• Desert Ledge Heart Piece [1st HP]
• Lanmolas
  • Menu to bombs after boss death

Tower of Hera

• Aginah Heart Piece [2nd HP]
• Fake Flippers
• Bonk Rocks Heart Piece [3rd HP]
• Rescue the lost Old Man
• Magic Mirror
• Spectacle Cave Heart Piece, bomb jump to use cave's upper exit to the overworld. [4th HP]
  • Optimally, you'd also enter the cave's upper overworld entrance and hover the gap. This saves 5+ seconds depending on how speedy the hover is.
  • If you don't want to do the bomb jump, you can instead opt to get this heart piece after Tower of Hera.
• Spectacle Rock Heart Piece [5th HP]
• Enter Tower of Hera
• Moon Pearl
• Moldorm

Castle Tower

• Lost Woods
  • If you're used to tree rupees from Any% NMG, remember to skip them in this run.
• Master Sword
• Magic Mushroom
• Lost Woods Heart Piece [6th HP]
• Enter Castle Tower
• Agahnim

Palace of Darkness

• Pyramid Heart Piece [7th HP]
• Enter Palace of Darkness
• Hammer
• King Helmasaur

Digging Game

• Speak to NPC in Hype Cave for 300 rupees
• Get the flute
  • Unlike Any% NMG, you want to immediately return to the Dark World after digging up the flute.
• Cave 45 Heart Piece [8th HP]
• Digging Game Heart Piece [9th HP]

Chest Game

• Race Game Heart Piece [10th HP]
• Tavern bottle
• Bug-catching Net
• Play flute at weathervane to unlock the duck
• Flute to Witch's Hut (#2)
  • Itemdash with the flute to eliminate delay on calling the duck after unlocking.
• Magic Powder
• Flute to Kakariko (#3)
• Buy the Merchant Bottle
• Blind's Hideout Heart Piece [11th HP]
• Kakariko Well Heart Piece [12th HP]
• North Kakariko Dark World warp tile
• Chest Game Heart Piece [13th HP]

Thieves' Town

• Red boomerang
  • Will be in the brewery chest assuming you don't have a boomerang in your inventory yet.
• Enter Thieves' Town
• Titan's Mitts
• Blind

Skull Woods

• Collect 300 rupees from C-shaped house
• Speak to the frog
• Hammer Pegs Heart Piece [14th HP]
• Leave sword with Smiths
• Grab purple chest
  • Worth watching a run to see how this section is done as sometimes it's either optimal or necessary to temporarily leave the purple chest while doing the next few chores.
• 1/2 Magic upgrade
• Tempered Sword
• Flute to Swamp (#7)
• Purple chest bottle
• Flute to Kakariko (#3)
• Enter Skull Woods
• Fire Rod
• Mothula

Ice Palace

• Mirror and flute to Link's House (#4)
• Use castle gate warp
• Quake Medallion
• Buy Flippers
• Zora's Domain Heart Piece [15th HP]
• Enter Ice Palace
• Kholdstare

Misery Mire

• Mirror and flute to Death Mountain (#1)
• Cane of Byrna
  • You can't take any extra damage on Death Mountain or in spike cave unless you have a fairy.
• Ether Medallion
• Flute to Desert (#6)
  • You can use the exact same setup for spooky as Any% NMG.
• Mire Shed Heart Piece [16th HP]
  • It's essential that this is the 16th heart piece so that it forms a new heart and refills your health going into Mire.
• Enter Misery Mire
• Cane of Somaria
• Vitreous

Swamp Palace

• Checkerboard Heart Piece [17th HP]
• Flute to Link's House (#4)
• Use NW swamp warp tile
• Bombos Medallion
• Open Watergate
• Watergate Heart Piece [18th HP]
• Enter Swamp Palace
• Hookshot
• Arrghus
  • Don't do fire rod quick kill

Turtle Rock

• Lake Hylia Heart Piece [19th HP]
• Hobo bottle
• Buy the Super Bomb
• Golden Sword and Silver Arrows
• Magic Cape
• Graveyard Ledge Heart Piece [20th HP]
• Bumper Cave Heart Piece [21st HP]
• Lumberjack Heart Piece [22nd HP]
• Flute to Lake Hylia (#8)
• Ice Rod
• Flute to Death Mountain (#1)
• Enter Turtle Rock
• Mimic Cave Heart Piece [23rd HP]
• Mirror Shield
• Trinexx

Ganon's Tower

• Floating Island Heart Piece [24th HP]
• Enter Ganon's Tower
• Red Mail
• Agahnim 2
  • Make sure you leave this dungeon with 4+ arrows so you can leverage silver arrows at Ganon.

Ganon

• Defeat with the gold sword/silver arrows and win

Rupee Route

The basic rupee route involves collecting:

• Two 50 rupee chests in Sahasrahla's closet
• At least 10 rupees from enemy drops or backup pots in Light World
• 300 rupees from the NPC in Hype Cave
• 300 rupees from the chest in C-shaped House

This adds up to 710 rupees, which actually isn't enough to cover every purchase in the route:

• 110 rupees to pay Kiki to open Palace of Darkness
• 80 rupees to play the Digging Game
• 100 rupees to buy the Merchant Bottle
• 30 rupees to play the Chest Game
• 10 rupees to buy the Tempered Sword
• 500 rupees to buy the Flippers
• 100 rupees to buy the Super Bomb

The total costs add up to 930 rupees. So where is the deficit made up? The route assumes you make some money back on the Digging and Chest games. This is generally a safe assumption, but those games are very random. So you can easily end up in situations where you don't have enough rupees to buy everything. This can be especially common with good luck on pulling the heart piece from both games, as this will naturally mean less time is spent farming rupees.

Backups

Given the above info, it's important to know some backups for getting more rupees if the RNG games don't pay out.

Kakariko Well safety

The first important checkpoint is after getting the Heart Piece in Kakariko Well. There are three 20 rupee chests here that are very quick to grab. If you're below 300 rupees at this point, you probably want to take the time to collect these. This can allow you to have poor rupee luck on the Chest Game and still be able to afford everything later. They're also much faster than most other consistent sources of 20+ rupees.

Affording Flippers

The next important checkpoint is after Chest Game. You want your rupee total to be greater than or equal to 210. If it's less than that, you will not be able to buy the Tempered Sword and the Flippers even after getting the rupees in the C-shaped House.

A couple of important backups if your count is low:

• Kakariko Village tree: the tree immediately west of Blind's Hut has a red rupee in it if you bonk into it. Collect this when you flute back to Kakariko after getting the purple chest bottle.
• Pyramid statue pull: The leftmost statue at the bottom of the pyramid can be pulled for four blue rupees. Collect this after using the castle gate warp when going to Catfish for the Quake Medallion.

And that's kind of it for significant guaranteed rupees between Chest Game and Flippers. If 40 rupees won't make up the difference, then you'll just have to start relying on drops from Ropas. If you adhere the Kakariko Well safety rule though, you should rarely find yourself in a situation where you're having to farm enemies.

Affording the Super Bomb

The other thing you want to check on after Chest Game is if your rupee total is between 210 and 309. In this case, you will have enough to buy Tempered Sword and the Flippers, but you won't have enough to buy the Super Bomb. Fortunately this isn't a precarious state to be in as there are plenty of quick backups along the way.

The magic number you want to reach after buying the Flippers is 100. Get whatever combination of the following backups needed to reach that total:

• 10 rupees after falling in the pit in the Sociable Firebar room in Swamp Palace. There are two pots with blue rupees in them. The one to your right is the fastest 5 in the whole route (only costs 10 frames). The one to your left costs an additional 30 frames.
• 5 rupees in the Swamp statue room. The pot you hookdash to on the lower left side of the room has 5 rupees under it. This costs ~20 frames to grab.
• 25 rupees in the Swamp big key chest room. Hammerdash through the row of pots next to the chest, open the chest for the big key, and then dash through the row of rupees to exit the room. This only costs ~1 second for 25 rupees, so it's an important backup to know.
• 20 rupees in Mire Shed. The chest to the right of the Heart Piece chest has a red rupee in it and costs ~2 seconds to collect.
• 20 rupees in Swamp Waterfall room. Push the third block from the left in this room to reveal a chest that has a red rupee in it. This costs ~2.5 seconds to collect.
• 80 rupees have been listed so far. If you're still short, the final 20 depends on the exact situation:
  • If you had enough to cover Flippers leaving Chest Game, the next best 20 rupees is Kakariko Village tree after collecting the Purple Chest Bottle. Bonk the tree on your way to Skull Woods. This rupee costs ~3 seconds.
  • If you didn't have enough to cover Flippers earlier in the run, and you already got the Kakariko Village tree rupee to help with that, you'll have to use the Swamp statue pull. After Swamp Palace, pull the statue one screen east while you're on the way to the Lake Hylia Heart Piece. These rupees cost ~5 seconds.

C-shaped House skip

If you have more than 610 rupees after leaving Chest Game, you can optionally skip the rupees in the C-shaped House. When doing this, you want to go straight to Thieves' Town after the Chest Game. After Thieves' Town, get the Red Boomerang from the Brewery and continue to the Smithy sequence.

Although this can save a little time in this isolated situation, many players choose to not go for it for a couple of reasons:

1. Doing this skip will interfere with your Thieves' Town and Skull Woods split times.
2. Having that many rupees after Chest Game means you probably didn't get the Heart Piece quickly, and the run is probably bad anyway.

RNG Games

This category is notorious for having two RNG games you must play to win Heart Pieces.

Digging Game

In the digging game, the player pays 80 rupees to dig up a field while a 30 second timer runs. The game will be over when the timer has counted down to 0.

For every dig, the game will randomly select a prize:

But there's a catch to this: the heart piece will only start spawning after Link has done at least 25 digs. Before that point, the heart piece's 1/32 chance to spawn will just be a "Nothing", meaning that before 25 digs, there's a 16/32 to spawn nothing, which can be simplified to 1/2 (or 50%).

A player's exact odds for digging up the heart piece in any given attempt of the full game depends greatly on how many digs they're able to execute in the allotted time. 38 is the maximum dig count performed RTA, and 25 is the first dig count where the heart piece can appear.

Chest Game

In the Village of Outcasts, players must win a Heart Piece from the Chest Game located just west of Thieves' Town.

In this game, players pay 30 rupees for the opportunity to open any two chests in the room. On the Japanese 1.0 version of the game, the first chest will never have a heart piece, and the second chest Link opens has a 1/8 chance of being the heart. The exact chests you open don't matter, so it's to your benefit to just use the fastest ones.

Alternate Super Bomb Route

There's an alternate route for doing the collection spree after leaving Swamp Palace up through visiting the Pyramid Fairy:

• Buy the Super Bomb
• Lake Hylia Heart Piece
• Hobo bottle
• Pyramid fairy for Gold Sword and Silver Arrows

Buying the Super Bomb at the beginning of this section is a few seconds faster, but it's considered risky because of the randomness of the bomber enemies on the Ice Lake screen and needing to dupe the Super Bomb twice.

You can see the route in action in this Xelna Twitch Highlight