OoT Randomizer Wiki - User contributions [en]

Bingo hints

2021-08-22T13:03:40Z

DobbyDigital: /* Known issues */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the next section). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* All dungeons are assumed to be vanilla (i.e. non Master Quest).
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon (regardless of the skullsanity settings). For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link, even if the reward for defeating that skulltula is not a token.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build 6.0.12+ should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

===Known issues===
Below are some known problems with bingo hints, which can cause seed generation to fail under certain circumstances. If the issue has been fixed in a non-Stable build, the version number for the Dev build that includes the fix is given after.
* If generating board-specific hints, if the board contains the goal "All 8 Death Mountain Area Skulltulas" then hint generation will fail. This is due to an error in the name of the item requirements for that goal. (fixed in version 6.0.12)
* Starting items, starting equipment, starting songs, and Skip Child Zelda can cause either board-specific or generic bingo hints to fail to generate. This is due to the hints trying to provide a hint for an item that isn't in the world. (fixed in version 6.0.80)
* Some combinations of settings can result in too many Always hints being included, which can cause generation to fail with board-specific or generic bingo hints. This is due to the total number of hints exceeded the 40 gossip stones in the game. (fixed in version 6.0.80)
* In versions 6.0.80 to 6.0.82 specifically, the hint distribution was incorrectly set as "custom" regardless of actual hint distribution chosen. This resulted in board-specific and generic bingo hints not having any item hints, and only giving junk hints. (fixed in version 6.0.83)

Hints

2021-06-01T03:11:59Z

DobbyDigital: /* Hint Overlap */

Hints are given by the Gossip Stones all over Hyrule. There are 40 Gossip Stones in total that give hints once the requirement to get them have been met. This requirement can be set to nothing, having the Stone of Agony in your inventory, and wearing the Mask of Truth. A Gossip Stone was added on the largest island in Lake Hylia which doesn't give a hint, but is instead used to lower and raise the water level in the lake once Morpha has been defeated.

== Hint Categories ==
Hints are split up in multiple categories, to allow customization of the amount of hints of each category in the different hint distributions and with [[Plandomizer]]. Some hint categories only show up in certain hint distributions, and some only show up if certain settings are enabled.

=== Trial ===
Trial Hints tell you which of Ganon's Trials are enabled, if this isn't implicitly known from the settings. There are different possibilities for this to happen, so the amount of them varies by setting:
* If trials are set to random and all 6 trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Ganon's Tower is protected by a powerful barrier."
* If trials are set to random and no trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Sheik dispelled the barrier around Ganon's Tower."
* If 1-3 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-3 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial protects Ganon's Tower."
* If 4-5 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-2 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial was dispelled by Sheik."

=== Location ===
Location hints are hints that tell you which item is at a specific location. Excluded Locations will never get a hint. These hints are split into four different categories:
* Song Hints
* Minigame Hints
* Overworld Hints
* Dungeon Hints

Locations are also classified as either "Always" or "Sometimes" hints.
==== Always ====
Always Hints are hints for item locations that are considered to be so bad that they will get a hint in every seed. Some of these are dynamic based on other settings in your seed.

==== Sometimes ====
Sometimes Hints are hints manually picked for race settings (Weeklies and Tournaments) and therefore only show up in the Tournament Distribution.

For more information on which hints falls into which category see [[List of all location hints]]

=== Entrance ===
Entrance Hints are exclusive to Entrance Randomizer, and are similar to Location Hints, but instead give you info about which Entrance leads where.

=== Item and Random ===
Item Hints and Random Hints are hints that state that an area has a certain items in it. For example: "The Hookshot can be found at Zora's River" or "Spirit Temple hoards a Red Rupee". Item Hints only hint towards Major Items, whereas Random Hints can hint towards any item in the game.

=== Junk ===
Junk Hints are hints that tell you nothing about the seed. They can be funny in nature or give general gameplay tips.

=== Way of the Hero ===
Way of the Hero (WotH) Hints are hints that tell you that an area holds an item that is logically required to beat the seed. For Example: "Kakariko Village is on the way of the hero." It will only tell you that an area is way of the hero if that specific instance of the item is required. For example, even though a Bow is always required to beat Ganondorf, it might not be on the way of the hero if you have a choice on which one to get first, since there are multiple of them in a seed.
WotH Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being on the Way of the Hero tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of two WotH hints can point at dungeons (including two hints pointing at the same dungeon) unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Path of Gold ===
Path of Gold hints are exclusive to Triforce Hunt and replace Way of the Hero hints in that mode. They point to items that logically lock any of the Triforce Pieces in that seed. They cannot point at the Triforce Pieces themselves. The hinted item isn't necessarily required to beat the seed, since the amount of Triforce Pieces in the world can be higher than the goal. Otherwise, they work similarly to Way of the Hero hints, including the maximum of two dungeons.

=== Foolish Choice ===
Foolish Choice Hints (also commonly called Barren Hints) point towards areas that contain no [[Major Items]]. This means that you can ignore this area when looking for progression in the seed. To increase the amount of Foolish Areas per seed, there are three exceptions where a Major Item can show up in a Foolish Areas:

# The Major Item isn't shuffled (For example Ocarina, or Ganon's Boss Key if it is set to be on [https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Glossary#LACS LACS]), or not considered in logic (Bombchus).
# The item in question doesn't unlock any Location. This list is mostly predetermined and consists of Double Defense, Ice Arrows and Biggoron Sword. Nayrus Love is also in this list damage is not set to Quadruple Damage or OHKO, Scrub Shuffle is disabled, and [[Entrance_Randomizer | ER]] is disabled or set to Dungeons Only. Stone of Agony is also in this list if it isn't used for hints and the trick to open hidden grottos without it is enabled. Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light are also in this list unless Full Indoors or Overworld ER is enabled.
# An exact duplicate of the item is on the WotH AND getting that duplicate would make the item in the Foolish Area obsolete. For Weekly/Tourney standards this can only be Bows, Bombs, "Normal" Bottles, Slingshots and Magic. Depending on other settings this can also include Bombchus, Ocarina, or any non-progressive item if the Item Pool is set to Plentiful.

Special Progressive Major Items are items where getting copies of the item changes the functionality of the item in logic. These items can only be in Foolish Areas if there are more copies in the item pool than there are useful upgrades, and only if the amount of them that are WotH is the same as the amount of useful upgrades. For example: If there are 3 Hookshots in the pool, the third one can be in a Foolish Area, since you only need 2 upgrades to get the Longshot, but only if both other Hookshots are WotH. Special Progressive Major Items and their amount of useful upgrades are: Hookshots (2), Wallets (3), Strength Upgrades (3), and Scales (2). Small Keys (Infinite), but only with Keysanity. Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only with Token Bridge and Tokensanity.

One tiny caveat with this is that Skulltula Tokens are not considered Major Items when not playing with Token Bridge, even in tokensanity. This means there's a chance that you'll be required to get Skulltula Tokens from a Foolish area to get to a certain Token Reward.

Foolish Choice Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being a foolish choice tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of one dungeon can be hinted as Foolish, unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Named-item ===
This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item from a provided list can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village." which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. It is important to note that logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.

Named-item hints can be set as 'vague', which will result in the hint only indicating the area which the item may be found, not the specific item that is there. For example, the hint given above, "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.", would be given as "They say that Kakariko Village may be on the hero's path." if Named-item hins were set as vague.

The list of items from which this hint type can draw is defined by the hint distribution.

== Hint Overlap ==
Item locations can never be hinted towards by more than one hint. For example: This means that if you get a hint for the Song on Ocarina of Time and a hint that Hyrule Field is on the way of the hero, that WotH hint isn't pointing at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
* WotH hints
* Location Hints (Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon, Always, and Sometimes)
* Item and Named-item Hints
* Random Hints

In the development versions of the randomizer and from v5.2 forward this will be extended in a way to also include Foolish Choice Hints. However, it will only follow this rule if the Foolish Choice Hint is chosen before the other hint. This means that it is only consistent in the Tournament Distribution. For more info on why this is, see the next section.

== Hint Distributions ==
How hints get distributed amongst the 40 available gossip stones is quite flexible, but falls into two main camps: Weighted Distributions and Exact Distributions. These two main categories have commonalities otherwise, such as allowing duplicates of certain chosen hint types. These are done by type, some having a single copy while others having multiple copies. It's also imporotant to keep in mind that some of the hint types such as Trials hints and Entrance hints are only placed if the settings allow for it.

=== Weighted Distributions ===
Most hint distributions don't have a set amount of hints for each category. Instead, they use weights to pick hint types randomly. The higher the weight, the higher the chance of that hint type getting picked. Trial Hints and Always Hints are exempt from this, and their amount is dependent on the settings.

The amounts and weights for each of the built-in weighted hint distributions are as follows:

==== Useless ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Junk || 9.0 || 1
|-
| All other types || 0.0 || 0
|}
Note that this distribution doesn't have any Trial or Always Hints, since the amount of copies is set to 0.

==== Balanced ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 1
|-
| WOTH || 3.5 || 1
|-
| Foolish || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 5.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 6.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 3.0 || 1
|}

==== Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

==== Very Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0.0 || 0
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

=== Exact Distributions ===
Rather than use weights to randomly choose how many hints of a given type should be chosen, these distributions instead specify exactly how many should exist. For example, you can specify that there should be exactly 4 Way of the Hero (or Path of Gold if Triforce Hunt is enabled) type hints, rather than simply giving them a weight. This allows for structuring the hints so that they are the same every time, particularly useful when a lot of players will be using the same settings for a long time, such as the case with weeklies or tournaments, which is where these types of hints originated.

An important note: if not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Additionally, Entrance, Trials, and Always type hints are still dependent on settings, and as such you will often see their amounts as 0. This can be misleading as these hint types will still be generated, but their amounts will vary based on settings.

==== Scrubs ====
The Scrubs Distribution is a continuation of the original Tournament Distribution as was in use from Season 1 to Season 3. This distribution was renamed and is still in use by the Scrub Community and others.

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for Scrubs Races. Duplicates of each hint, Skull Mask is an always hint, 5 WotH, 3 Foolish, 8 sometimes. Can also be used to simulate S3 Tournament hints."
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 5 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|-
| Random || 0 || 2
|}
The Sometimes and Random Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones. If it runs out of those, it'll start placing Random Hints instead.

==== Tournament ====
This distribution covers the current Ocarina of Time Randomizer Tournament's choice of hint distribution as it changes season to season. For Season 4, a new feature was added which allows the removal of certain groups of hint stones, forcing them to be Junk type hints. This allows for better routing of hints, disabling certain locations of hints, or in the case of Season 4 emulating earlier versions of the randomizer where the hints inside the generic grottos were all the same.

Therefore this distribution has the unique sub-category of disabled locations, listed thus: HC (Storms Grotto), HF (Cow Grotto), HF (Near Market Grotto), HF (Southeast Grotto), HF (Open Grotto), Kak (Open Grotto), ZR (Open Grotto), KF (Storms Grotto), LW (Near Shortcuts Grotto), DMT (Storms Grotto), DMC (Upper Grotto).

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for OoTR Season 4. Gossip stones in grottos are disabled. 4 WotH, 2 Barren, remainder filled with Sometimes. Always, WotH, and Barren hints duplicated."

And lastly the distribution itself is:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 4 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 2 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 1
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0 || 1
|}
This distribution is pretty unique because rather than working with all 40 stones, 11 are removed from consideration, giving a final pool of 29. Also this uses another new feature which allows for certain items to be removed from consideration from a specified hint type. On this distribution, Zelda's Lullaby cannot be hinted as Way of the Hero.

==== DDR ====
This distribution covers the hint distribution used for Season 1 of the DDR ruleset [[Dungeon_Door_Requirement|DDR ruleset]] Tournament. The distribution itself is:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 2 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Named-item || 3 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|}

The list of items used for the Named-item hints is: Hover Boots, Hookshot, Din's Fire, Bomb Bag, Boomerang, Bow, Megaton Hammer, Iron Boots, Magic Meter, Mirror Shield, Fire Arrows, or Strength Upgrade. This selection takes place after the WotH hints are chosen, and so the later takes precedent for overlap purposes. The Named-item hints are also set as 'vague', and so they do not indicate the specific item in the hinted area.

In addition, Zelda's Lullaby, Ruto's Letter, Zora Tunic, and Goron Tunic are prevented from appearing as Way of the Hero hints; they can still be logically required to complete the seed, but the Way of the Hero hints will not directly indicate these items.

The Sometimes Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones.

=== Copies of WotH hints ===
Because the amount of copies of every hint type is known, you can determine how many WotH items an area has at minimum by the amount of hints you find for it. For example, if you find 2 WotH hints for Shadow Temple in the Tournament Distribution, that only means there's at least one WotH item in there (original hint plus the copy). Once you find a third hint you know for certain that there has to be a second WotH item in Shadow Temple (original hint plus copy plus another hint). Ditto for 5, 7 etc. In distributions where there's only one of each hint you can treat every WotH hint as it's own separate WotH item.

== Hint Logic ==
When a hint points towards a Major Item (WotH hints, location hints, random/item hints), at least one of the hints has to be available before you have to use said item. For example: If Ruto's Letter is on 50 Skultulla Tokens in a non-ER seed with Tournament Distribution, both hints towards it can't be at Zora's Fountain at the same time. At least one of them has to be available without the use of Ruto's Letter. You can (very rarely) use this info to your advantage. For example, if instead Ruto's Letter is at Man on Roof in Kakariko village and you find two WotH Kakariko hints in Zora's Fountain, you now know that at least one of those doesn't point towards Ruto's Letter, so there has to be a different WotH item in Kakariko.

In Beatable Only, some of these hints can still end up on completely unreachable Gossip Stones. You probably won't notice this during gameplay since the stone is completely unreachable in logic. You would have to sequence break to get to the hint in the first place.

== Miscellaneous Hint Types==

[[Bingo_hints|Bingo Hints]]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/league.json League Hints]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/mw2.json Multiworld Hints]

Hints

2021-06-01T03:11:25Z

DobbyDigital: /* Named-item */

Hints are given by the Gossip Stones all over Hyrule. There are 40 Gossip Stones in total that give hints once the requirement to get them have been met. This requirement can be set to nothing, having the Stone of Agony in your inventory, and wearing the Mask of Truth. A Gossip Stone was added on the largest island in Lake Hylia which doesn't give a hint, but is instead used to lower and raise the water level in the lake once Morpha has been defeated.

== Hint Categories ==
Hints are split up in multiple categories, to allow customization of the amount of hints of each category in the different hint distributions and with [[Plandomizer]]. Some hint categories only show up in certain hint distributions, and some only show up if certain settings are enabled.

=== Trial ===
Trial Hints tell you which of Ganon's Trials are enabled, if this isn't implicitly known from the settings. There are different possibilities for this to happen, so the amount of them varies by setting:
* If trials are set to random and all 6 trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Ganon's Tower is protected by a powerful barrier."
* If trials are set to random and no trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Sheik dispelled the barrier around Ganon's Tower."
* If 1-3 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-3 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial protects Ganon's Tower."
* If 4-5 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-2 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial was dispelled by Sheik."

=== Location ===
Location hints are hints that tell you which item is at a specific location. Excluded Locations will never get a hint. These hints are split into four different categories:
* Song Hints
* Minigame Hints
* Overworld Hints
* Dungeon Hints

Locations are also classified as either "Always" or "Sometimes" hints.
==== Always ====
Always Hints are hints for item locations that are considered to be so bad that they will get a hint in every seed. Some of these are dynamic based on other settings in your seed.

==== Sometimes ====
Sometimes Hints are hints manually picked for race settings (Weeklies and Tournaments) and therefore only show up in the Tournament Distribution.

For more information on which hints falls into which category see [[List of all location hints]]

=== Entrance ===
Entrance Hints are exclusive to Entrance Randomizer, and are similar to Location Hints, but instead give you info about which Entrance leads where.

=== Item and Random ===
Item Hints and Random Hints are hints that state that an area has a certain items in it. For example: "The Hookshot can be found at Zora's River" or "Spirit Temple hoards a Red Rupee". Item Hints only hint towards Major Items, whereas Random Hints can hint towards any item in the game.

=== Junk ===
Junk Hints are hints that tell you nothing about the seed. They can be funny in nature or give general gameplay tips.

=== Way of the Hero ===
Way of the Hero (WotH) Hints are hints that tell you that an area holds an item that is logically required to beat the seed. For Example: "Kakariko Village is on the way of the hero." It will only tell you that an area is way of the hero if that specific instance of the item is required. For example, even though a Bow is always required to beat Ganondorf, it might not be on the way of the hero if you have a choice on which one to get first, since there are multiple of them in a seed.
WotH Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being on the Way of the Hero tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of two WotH hints can point at dungeons (including two hints pointing at the same dungeon) unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Path of Gold ===
Path of Gold hints are exclusive to Triforce Hunt and replace Way of the Hero hints in that mode. They point to items that logically lock any of the Triforce Pieces in that seed. They cannot point at the Triforce Pieces themselves. The hinted item isn't necessarily required to beat the seed, since the amount of Triforce Pieces in the world can be higher than the goal. Otherwise, they work similarly to Way of the Hero hints, including the maximum of two dungeons.

=== Foolish Choice ===
Foolish Choice Hints (also commonly called Barren Hints) point towards areas that contain no [[Major Items]]. This means that you can ignore this area when looking for progression in the seed. To increase the amount of Foolish Areas per seed, there are three exceptions where a Major Item can show up in a Foolish Areas:

# The Major Item isn't shuffled (For example Ocarina, or Ganon's Boss Key if it is set to be on [https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Glossary#LACS LACS]), or not considered in logic (Bombchus).
# The item in question doesn't unlock any Location. This list is mostly predetermined and consists of Double Defense, Ice Arrows and Biggoron Sword. Nayrus Love is also in this list damage is not set to Quadruple Damage or OHKO, Scrub Shuffle is disabled, and [[Entrance_Randomizer | ER]] is disabled or set to Dungeons Only. Stone of Agony is also in this list if it isn't used for hints and the trick to open hidden grottos without it is enabled. Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light are also in this list unless Full Indoors or Overworld ER is enabled.
# An exact duplicate of the item is on the WotH AND getting that duplicate would make the item in the Foolish Area obsolete. For Weekly/Tourney standards this can only be Bows, Bombs, "Normal" Bottles, Slingshots and Magic. Depending on other settings this can also include Bombchus, Ocarina, or any non-progressive item if the Item Pool is set to Plentiful.

Special Progressive Major Items are items where getting copies of the item changes the functionality of the item in logic. These items can only be in Foolish Areas if there are more copies in the item pool than there are useful upgrades, and only if the amount of them that are WotH is the same as the amount of useful upgrades. For example: If there are 3 Hookshots in the pool, the third one can be in a Foolish Area, since you only need 2 upgrades to get the Longshot, but only if both other Hookshots are WotH. Special Progressive Major Items and their amount of useful upgrades are: Hookshots (2), Wallets (3), Strength Upgrades (3), and Scales (2). Small Keys (Infinite), but only with Keysanity. Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only with Token Bridge and Tokensanity.

One tiny caveat with this is that Skulltula Tokens are not considered Major Items when not playing with Token Bridge, even in tokensanity. This means there's a chance that you'll be required to get Skulltula Tokens from a Foolish area to get to a certain Token Reward.

Foolish Choice Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being a foolish choice tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of one dungeon can be hinted as Foolish, unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Named-item ===
This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item from a provided list can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village." which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. It is important to note that logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.

Named-item hints can be set as 'vague', which will result in the hint only indicating the area which the item may be found, not the specific item that is there. For example, the hint given above, "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.", would be given as "They say that Kakariko Village may be on the hero's path." if Named-item hins were set as vague.

The list of items from which this hint type can draw is defined by the hint distribution.

== Hint Overlap ==
Item locations can never be hinted towards by more than one hint. For example: This means that if you get a hint for the Song on Ocarina of Time and a hint that Hyrule Field is on the way of the hero, that WotH hint isn't pointing at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
* WotH hints
* Location Hints (Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon, Always, and Sometimes)
* Item Hints
* Random Hints

In the development versions of the randomizer and from v5.2 forward this will be extended in a way to also include Foolish Choice Hints. However, it will only follow this rule if the Foolish Choice Hint is chosen before the other hint. This means that it is only consistent in the Tournament Distribution. For more info on why this is, see the next section.

== Hint Distributions ==
How hints get distributed amongst the 40 available gossip stones is quite flexible, but falls into two main camps: Weighted Distributions and Exact Distributions. These two main categories have commonalities otherwise, such as allowing duplicates of certain chosen hint types. These are done by type, some having a single copy while others having multiple copies. It's also imporotant to keep in mind that some of the hint types such as Trials hints and Entrance hints are only placed if the settings allow for it.

=== Weighted Distributions ===
Most hint distributions don't have a set amount of hints for each category. Instead, they use weights to pick hint types randomly. The higher the weight, the higher the chance of that hint type getting picked. Trial Hints and Always Hints are exempt from this, and their amount is dependent on the settings.

The amounts and weights for each of the built-in weighted hint distributions are as follows:

==== Useless ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Junk || 9.0 || 1
|-
| All other types || 0.0 || 0
|}
Note that this distribution doesn't have any Trial or Always Hints, since the amount of copies is set to 0.

==== Balanced ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 1
|-
| WOTH || 3.5 || 1
|-
| Foolish || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 5.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 6.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 3.0 || 1
|}

==== Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

==== Very Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0.0 || 0
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

=== Exact Distributions ===
Rather than use weights to randomly choose how many hints of a given type should be chosen, these distributions instead specify exactly how many should exist. For example, you can specify that there should be exactly 4 Way of the Hero (or Path of Gold if Triforce Hunt is enabled) type hints, rather than simply giving them a weight. This allows for structuring the hints so that they are the same every time, particularly useful when a lot of players will be using the same settings for a long time, such as the case with weeklies or tournaments, which is where these types of hints originated.

An important note: if not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Additionally, Entrance, Trials, and Always type hints are still dependent on settings, and as such you will often see their amounts as 0. This can be misleading as these hint types will still be generated, but their amounts will vary based on settings.

==== Scrubs ====
The Scrubs Distribution is a continuation of the original Tournament Distribution as was in use from Season 1 to Season 3. This distribution was renamed and is still in use by the Scrub Community and others.

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for Scrubs Races. Duplicates of each hint, Skull Mask is an always hint, 5 WotH, 3 Foolish, 8 sometimes. Can also be used to simulate S3 Tournament hints."
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 5 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|-
| Random || 0 || 2
|}
The Sometimes and Random Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones. If it runs out of those, it'll start placing Random Hints instead.

==== Tournament ====
This distribution covers the current Ocarina of Time Randomizer Tournament's choice of hint distribution as it changes season to season. For Season 4, a new feature was added which allows the removal of certain groups of hint stones, forcing them to be Junk type hints. This allows for better routing of hints, disabling certain locations of hints, or in the case of Season 4 emulating earlier versions of the randomizer where the hints inside the generic grottos were all the same.

Therefore this distribution has the unique sub-category of disabled locations, listed thus: HC (Storms Grotto), HF (Cow Grotto), HF (Near Market Grotto), HF (Southeast Grotto), HF (Open Grotto), Kak (Open Grotto), ZR (Open Grotto), KF (Storms Grotto), LW (Near Shortcuts Grotto), DMT (Storms Grotto), DMC (Upper Grotto).

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for OoTR Season 4. Gossip stones in grottos are disabled. 4 WotH, 2 Barren, remainder filled with Sometimes. Always, WotH, and Barren hints duplicated."

And lastly the distribution itself is:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 4 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 2 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 1
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0 || 1
|}
This distribution is pretty unique because rather than working with all 40 stones, 11 are removed from consideration, giving a final pool of 29. Also this uses another new feature which allows for certain items to be removed from consideration from a specified hint type. On this distribution, Zelda's Lullaby cannot be hinted as Way of the Hero.

==== DDR ====
This distribution covers the hint distribution used for Season 1 of the DDR ruleset [[Dungeon_Door_Requirement|DDR ruleset]] Tournament. The distribution itself is:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 2 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Named-item || 3 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|}

The list of items used for the Named-item hints is: Hover Boots, Hookshot, Din's Fire, Bomb Bag, Boomerang, Bow, Megaton Hammer, Iron Boots, Magic Meter, Mirror Shield, Fire Arrows, or Strength Upgrade. This selection takes place after the WotH hints are chosen, and so the later takes precedent for overlap purposes. The Named-item hints are also set as 'vague', and so they do not indicate the specific item in the hinted area.

In addition, Zelda's Lullaby, Ruto's Letter, Zora Tunic, and Goron Tunic are prevented from appearing as Way of the Hero hints; they can still be logically required to complete the seed, but the Way of the Hero hints will not directly indicate these items.

The Sometimes Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones.

=== Copies of WotH hints ===
Because the amount of copies of every hint type is known, you can determine how many WotH items an area has at minimum by the amount of hints you find for it. For example, if you find 2 WotH hints for Shadow Temple in the Tournament Distribution, that only means there's at least one WotH item in there (original hint plus the copy). Once you find a third hint you know for certain that there has to be a second WotH item in Shadow Temple (original hint plus copy plus another hint). Ditto for 5, 7 etc. In distributions where there's only one of each hint you can treat every WotH hint as it's own separate WotH item.

== Hint Logic ==
When a hint points towards a Major Item (WotH hints, location hints, random/item hints), at least one of the hints has to be available before you have to use said item. For example: If Ruto's Letter is on 50 Skultulla Tokens in a non-ER seed with Tournament Distribution, both hints towards it can't be at Zora's Fountain at the same time. At least one of them has to be available without the use of Ruto's Letter. You can (very rarely) use this info to your advantage. For example, if instead Ruto's Letter is at Man on Roof in Kakariko village and you find two WotH Kakariko hints in Zora's Fountain, you now know that at least one of those doesn't point towards Ruto's Letter, so there has to be a different WotH item in Kakariko.

In Beatable Only, some of these hints can still end up on completely unreachable Gossip Stones. You probably won't notice this during gameplay since the stone is completely unreachable in logic. You would have to sequence break to get to the hint in the first place.

== Miscellaneous Hint Types==

[[Bingo_hints|Bingo Hints]]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/league.json League Hints]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/mw2.json Multiworld Hints]

Hints

2021-06-01T03:08:14Z

DobbyDigital: /* Exact Distributions */

Hints are given by the Gossip Stones all over Hyrule. There are 40 Gossip Stones in total that give hints once the requirement to get them have been met. This requirement can be set to nothing, having the Stone of Agony in your inventory, and wearing the Mask of Truth. A Gossip Stone was added on the largest island in Lake Hylia which doesn't give a hint, but is instead used to lower and raise the water level in the lake once Morpha has been defeated.

== Hint Categories ==
Hints are split up in multiple categories, to allow customization of the amount of hints of each category in the different hint distributions and with [[Plandomizer]]. Some hint categories only show up in certain hint distributions, and some only show up if certain settings are enabled.

=== Trial ===
Trial Hints tell you which of Ganon's Trials are enabled, if this isn't implicitly known from the settings. There are different possibilities for this to happen, so the amount of them varies by setting:
* If trials are set to random and all 6 trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Ganon's Tower is protected by a powerful barrier."
* If trials are set to random and no trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Sheik dispelled the barrier around Ganon's Tower."
* If 1-3 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-3 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial protects Ganon's Tower."
* If 4-5 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-2 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial was dispelled by Sheik."

=== Location ===
Location hints are hints that tell you which item is at a specific location. Excluded Locations will never get a hint. These hints are split into four different categories:
* Song Hints
* Minigame Hints
* Overworld Hints
* Dungeon Hints

Locations are also classified as either "Always" or "Sometimes" hints.
==== Always ====
Always Hints are hints for item locations that are considered to be so bad that they will get a hint in every seed. Some of these are dynamic based on other settings in your seed.

==== Sometimes ====
Sometimes Hints are hints manually picked for race settings (Weeklies and Tournaments) and therefore only show up in the Tournament Distribution.

For more information on which hints falls into which category see [[List of all location hints]]

=== Entrance ===
Entrance Hints are exclusive to Entrance Randomizer, and are similar to Location Hints, but instead give you info about which Entrance leads where.

=== Item and Random ===
Item Hints and Random Hints are hints that state that an area has a certain items in it. For example: "The Hookshot can be found at Zora's River" or "Spirit Temple hoards a Red Rupee". Item Hints only hint towards Major Items, whereas Random Hints can hint towards any item in the game.

=== Junk ===
Junk Hints are hints that tell you nothing about the seed. They can be funny in nature or give general gameplay tips.

=== Way of the Hero ===
Way of the Hero (WotH) Hints are hints that tell you that an area holds an item that is logically required to beat the seed. For Example: "Kakariko Village is on the way of the hero." It will only tell you that an area is way of the hero if that specific instance of the item is required. For example, even though a Bow is always required to beat Ganondorf, it might not be on the way of the hero if you have a choice on which one to get first, since there are multiple of them in a seed.
WotH Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being on the Way of the Hero tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of two WotH hints can point at dungeons (including two hints pointing at the same dungeon) unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Path of Gold ===
Path of Gold hints are exclusive to Triforce Hunt and replace Way of the Hero hints in that mode. They point to items that logically lock any of the Triforce Pieces in that seed. They cannot point at the Triforce Pieces themselves. The hinted item isn't necessarily required to beat the seed, since the amount of Triforce Pieces in the world can be higher than the goal. Otherwise, they work similarly to Way of the Hero hints, including the maximum of two dungeons.

=== Foolish Choice ===
Foolish Choice Hints (also commonly called Barren Hints) point towards areas that contain no [[Major Items]]. This means that you can ignore this area when looking for progression in the seed. To increase the amount of Foolish Areas per seed, there are three exceptions where a Major Item can show up in a Foolish Areas:

# The Major Item isn't shuffled (For example Ocarina, or Ganon's Boss Key if it is set to be on [https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Glossary#LACS LACS]), or not considered in logic (Bombchus).
# The item in question doesn't unlock any Location. This list is mostly predetermined and consists of Double Defense, Ice Arrows and Biggoron Sword. Nayrus Love is also in this list damage is not set to Quadruple Damage or OHKO, Scrub Shuffle is disabled, and [[Entrance_Randomizer | ER]] is disabled or set to Dungeons Only. Stone of Agony is also in this list if it isn't used for hints and the trick to open hidden grottos without it is enabled. Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light are also in this list unless Full Indoors or Overworld ER is enabled.
# An exact duplicate of the item is on the WotH AND getting that duplicate would make the item in the Foolish Area obsolete. For Weekly/Tourney standards this can only be Bows, Bombs, "Normal" Bottles, Slingshots and Magic. Depending on other settings this can also include Bombchus, Ocarina, or any non-progressive item if the Item Pool is set to Plentiful.

Special Progressive Major Items are items where getting copies of the item changes the functionality of the item in logic. These items can only be in Foolish Areas if there are more copies in the item pool than there are useful upgrades, and only if the amount of them that are WotH is the same as the amount of useful upgrades. For example: If there are 3 Hookshots in the pool, the third one can be in a Foolish Area, since you only need 2 upgrades to get the Longshot, but only if both other Hookshots are WotH. Special Progressive Major Items and their amount of useful upgrades are: Hookshots (2), Wallets (3), Strength Upgrades (3), and Scales (2). Small Keys (Infinite), but only with Keysanity. Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only with Token Bridge and Tokensanity.

One tiny caveat with this is that Skulltula Tokens are not considered Major Items when not playing with Token Bridge, even in tokensanity. This means there's a chance that you'll be required to get Skulltula Tokens from a Foolish area to get to a certain Token Reward.

Foolish Choice Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being a foolish choice tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of one dungeon can be hinted as Foolish, unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Named-item ===
This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item from a provided list can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village" which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. It is important to note that logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.

The list of items from which this hint type can draw is defined by the hint distribution.

== Hint Overlap ==
Item locations can never be hinted towards by more than one hint. For example: This means that if you get a hint for the Song on Ocarina of Time and a hint that Hyrule Field is on the way of the hero, that WotH hint isn't pointing at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
* WotH hints
* Location Hints (Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon, Always, and Sometimes)
* Item Hints
* Random Hints

In the development versions of the randomizer and from v5.2 forward this will be extended in a way to also include Foolish Choice Hints. However, it will only follow this rule if the Foolish Choice Hint is chosen before the other hint. This means that it is only consistent in the Tournament Distribution. For more info on why this is, see the next section.

== Hint Distributions ==
How hints get distributed amongst the 40 available gossip stones is quite flexible, but falls into two main camps: Weighted Distributions and Exact Distributions. These two main categories have commonalities otherwise, such as allowing duplicates of certain chosen hint types. These are done by type, some having a single copy while others having multiple copies. It's also imporotant to keep in mind that some of the hint types such as Trials hints and Entrance hints are only placed if the settings allow for it.

=== Weighted Distributions ===
Most hint distributions don't have a set amount of hints for each category. Instead, they use weights to pick hint types randomly. The higher the weight, the higher the chance of that hint type getting picked. Trial Hints and Always Hints are exempt from this, and their amount is dependent on the settings.

The amounts and weights for each of the built-in weighted hint distributions are as follows:

==== Useless ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Junk || 9.0 || 1
|-
| All other types || 0.0 || 0
|}
Note that this distribution doesn't have any Trial or Always Hints, since the amount of copies is set to 0.

==== Balanced ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 1
|-
| WOTH || 3.5 || 1
|-
| Foolish || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 5.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 6.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 3.0 || 1
|}

==== Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

==== Very Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0.0 || 0
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

=== Exact Distributions ===
Rather than use weights to randomly choose how many hints of a given type should be chosen, these distributions instead specify exactly how many should exist. For example, you can specify that there should be exactly 4 Way of the Hero (or Path of Gold if Triforce Hunt is enabled) type hints, rather than simply giving them a weight. This allows for structuring the hints so that they are the same every time, particularly useful when a lot of players will be using the same settings for a long time, such as the case with weeklies or tournaments, which is where these types of hints originated.

An important note: if not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Additionally, Entrance, Trials, and Always type hints are still dependent on settings, and as such you will often see their amounts as 0. This can be misleading as these hint types will still be generated, but their amounts will vary based on settings.

==== Scrubs ====
The Scrubs Distribution is a continuation of the original Tournament Distribution as was in use from Season 1 to Season 3. This distribution was renamed and is still in use by the Scrub Community and others.

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for Scrubs Races. Duplicates of each hint, Skull Mask is an always hint, 5 WotH, 3 Foolish, 8 sometimes. Can also be used to simulate S3 Tournament hints."
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 5 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|-
| Random || 0 || 2
|}
The Sometimes and Random Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones. If it runs out of those, it'll start placing Random Hints instead.

==== Tournament ====
This distribution covers the current Ocarina of Time Randomizer Tournament's choice of hint distribution as it changes season to season. For Season 4, a new feature was added which allows the removal of certain groups of hint stones, forcing them to be Junk type hints. This allows for better routing of hints, disabling certain locations of hints, or in the case of Season 4 emulating earlier versions of the randomizer where the hints inside the generic grottos were all the same.

Therefore this distribution has the unique sub-category of disabled locations, listed thus: HC (Storms Grotto), HF (Cow Grotto), HF (Near Market Grotto), HF (Southeast Grotto), HF (Open Grotto), Kak (Open Grotto), ZR (Open Grotto), KF (Storms Grotto), LW (Near Shortcuts Grotto), DMT (Storms Grotto), DMC (Upper Grotto).

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for OoTR Season 4. Gossip stones in grottos are disabled. 4 WotH, 2 Barren, remainder filled with Sometimes. Always, WotH, and Barren hints duplicated."

And lastly the distribution itself is:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 4 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 2 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 1
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0 || 1
|}
This distribution is pretty unique because rather than working with all 40 stones, 11 are removed from consideration, giving a final pool of 29. Also this uses another new feature which allows for certain items to be removed from consideration from a specified hint type. On this distribution, Zelda's Lullaby cannot be hinted as Way of the Hero.

==== DDR ====
This distribution covers the hint distribution used for Season 1 of the DDR ruleset [[Dungeon_Door_Requirement|DDR ruleset]] Tournament. The distribution itself is:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 2 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Named-item || 3 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|}

The list of items used for the Named-item hints is: Hover Boots, Hookshot, Din's Fire, Bomb Bag, Boomerang, Bow, Megaton Hammer, Iron Boots, Magic Meter, Mirror Shield, Fire Arrows, or Strength Upgrade. This selection takes place after the WotH hints are chosen, and so the later takes precedent for overlap purposes. The Named-item hints are also set as 'vague', and so they do not indicate the specific item in the hinted area.

In addition, Zelda's Lullaby, Ruto's Letter, Zora Tunic, and Goron Tunic are prevented from appearing as Way of the Hero hints; they can still be logically required to complete the seed, but the Way of the Hero hints will not directly indicate these items.

The Sometimes Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones.

=== Copies of WotH hints ===
Because the amount of copies of every hint type is known, you can determine how many WotH items an area has at minimum by the amount of hints you find for it. For example, if you find 2 WotH hints for Shadow Temple in the Tournament Distribution, that only means there's at least one WotH item in there (original hint plus the copy). Once you find a third hint you know for certain that there has to be a second WotH item in Shadow Temple (original hint plus copy plus another hint). Ditto for 5, 7 etc. In distributions where there's only one of each hint you can treat every WotH hint as it's own separate WotH item.

== Hint Logic ==
When a hint points towards a Major Item (WotH hints, location hints, random/item hints), at least one of the hints has to be available before you have to use said item. For example: If Ruto's Letter is on 50 Skultulla Tokens in a non-ER seed with Tournament Distribution, both hints towards it can't be at Zora's Fountain at the same time. At least one of them has to be available without the use of Ruto's Letter. You can (very rarely) use this info to your advantage. For example, if instead Ruto's Letter is at Man on Roof in Kakariko village and you find two WotH Kakariko hints in Zora's Fountain, you now know that at least one of those doesn't point towards Ruto's Letter, so there has to be a different WotH item in Kakariko.

In Beatable Only, some of these hints can still end up on completely unreachable Gossip Stones. You probably won't notice this during gameplay since the stone is completely unreachable in logic. You would have to sequence break to get to the hint in the first place.

== Miscellaneous Hint Types==

[[Bingo_hints|Bingo Hints]]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/league.json League Hints]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/mw2.json Multiworld Hints]

Hints

2021-06-01T02:51:48Z

DobbyDigital: /* Hint Categories */

Hints are given by the Gossip Stones all over Hyrule. There are 40 Gossip Stones in total that give hints once the requirement to get them have been met. This requirement can be set to nothing, having the Stone of Agony in your inventory, and wearing the Mask of Truth. A Gossip Stone was added on the largest island in Lake Hylia which doesn't give a hint, but is instead used to lower and raise the water level in the lake once Morpha has been defeated.

== Hint Categories ==
Hints are split up in multiple categories, to allow customization of the amount of hints of each category in the different hint distributions and with [[Plandomizer]]. Some hint categories only show up in certain hint distributions, and some only show up if certain settings are enabled.

=== Trial ===
Trial Hints tell you which of Ganon's Trials are enabled, if this isn't implicitly known from the settings. There are different possibilities for this to happen, so the amount of them varies by setting:
* If trials are set to random and all 6 trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Ganon's Tower is protected by a powerful barrier."
* If trials are set to random and no trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Sheik dispelled the barrier around Ganon's Tower."
* If 1-3 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-3 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial protects Ganon's Tower."
* If 4-5 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-2 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial was dispelled by Sheik."

=== Location ===
Location hints are hints that tell you which item is at a specific location. Excluded Locations will never get a hint. These hints are split into four different categories:
* Song Hints
* Minigame Hints
* Overworld Hints
* Dungeon Hints

Locations are also classified as either "Always" or "Sometimes" hints.
==== Always ====
Always Hints are hints for item locations that are considered to be so bad that they will get a hint in every seed. Some of these are dynamic based on other settings in your seed.

==== Sometimes ====
Sometimes Hints are hints manually picked for race settings (Weeklies and Tournaments) and therefore only show up in the Tournament Distribution.

For more information on which hints falls into which category see [[List of all location hints]]

=== Entrance ===
Entrance Hints are exclusive to Entrance Randomizer, and are similar to Location Hints, but instead give you info about which Entrance leads where.

=== Item and Random ===
Item Hints and Random Hints are hints that state that an area has a certain items in it. For example: "The Hookshot can be found at Zora's River" or "Spirit Temple hoards a Red Rupee". Item Hints only hint towards Major Items, whereas Random Hints can hint towards any item in the game.

=== Junk ===
Junk Hints are hints that tell you nothing about the seed. They can be funny in nature or give general gameplay tips.

=== Way of the Hero ===
Way of the Hero (WotH) Hints are hints that tell you that an area holds an item that is logically required to beat the seed. For Example: "Kakariko Village is on the way of the hero." It will only tell you that an area is way of the hero if that specific instance of the item is required. For example, even though a Bow is always required to beat Ganondorf, it might not be on the way of the hero if you have a choice on which one to get first, since there are multiple of them in a seed.
WotH Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being on the Way of the Hero tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of two WotH hints can point at dungeons (including two hints pointing at the same dungeon) unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Path of Gold ===
Path of Gold hints are exclusive to Triforce Hunt and replace Way of the Hero hints in that mode. They point to items that logically lock any of the Triforce Pieces in that seed. They cannot point at the Triforce Pieces themselves. The hinted item isn't necessarily required to beat the seed, since the amount of Triforce Pieces in the world can be higher than the goal. Otherwise, they work similarly to Way of the Hero hints, including the maximum of two dungeons.

=== Foolish Choice ===
Foolish Choice Hints (also commonly called Barren Hints) point towards areas that contain no [[Major Items]]. This means that you can ignore this area when looking for progression in the seed. To increase the amount of Foolish Areas per seed, there are three exceptions where a Major Item can show up in a Foolish Areas:

# The Major Item isn't shuffled (For example Ocarina, or Ganon's Boss Key if it is set to be on [https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Glossary#LACS LACS]), or not considered in logic (Bombchus).
# The item in question doesn't unlock any Location. This list is mostly predetermined and consists of Double Defense, Ice Arrows and Biggoron Sword. Nayrus Love is also in this list damage is not set to Quadruple Damage or OHKO, Scrub Shuffle is disabled, and [[Entrance_Randomizer | ER]] is disabled or set to Dungeons Only. Stone of Agony is also in this list if it isn't used for hints and the trick to open hidden grottos without it is enabled. Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light are also in this list unless Full Indoors or Overworld ER is enabled.
# An exact duplicate of the item is on the WotH AND getting that duplicate would make the item in the Foolish Area obsolete. For Weekly/Tourney standards this can only be Bows, Bombs, "Normal" Bottles, Slingshots and Magic. Depending on other settings this can also include Bombchus, Ocarina, or any non-progressive item if the Item Pool is set to Plentiful.

Special Progressive Major Items are items where getting copies of the item changes the functionality of the item in logic. These items can only be in Foolish Areas if there are more copies in the item pool than there are useful upgrades, and only if the amount of them that are WotH is the same as the amount of useful upgrades. For example: If there are 3 Hookshots in the pool, the third one can be in a Foolish Area, since you only need 2 upgrades to get the Longshot, but only if both other Hookshots are WotH. Special Progressive Major Items and their amount of useful upgrades are: Hookshots (2), Wallets (3), Strength Upgrades (3), and Scales (2). Small Keys (Infinite), but only with Keysanity. Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only with Token Bridge and Tokensanity.

One tiny caveat with this is that Skulltula Tokens are not considered Major Items when not playing with Token Bridge, even in tokensanity. This means there's a chance that you'll be required to get Skulltula Tokens from a Foolish area to get to a certain Token Reward.

Foolish Choice Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being a foolish choice tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of one dungeon can be hinted as Foolish, unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Named-item ===
This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item from a provided list can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states "They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village" which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. It is important to note that logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.

The list of items from which this hint type can draw is defined by the hint distribution.

== Hint Overlap ==
Item locations can never be hinted towards by more than one hint. For example: This means that if you get a hint for the Song on Ocarina of Time and a hint that Hyrule Field is on the way of the hero, that WotH hint isn't pointing at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
* WotH hints
* Location Hints (Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon, Always, and Sometimes)
* Item Hints
* Random Hints

In the development versions of the randomizer and from v5.2 forward this will be extended in a way to also include Foolish Choice Hints. However, it will only follow this rule if the Foolish Choice Hint is chosen before the other hint. This means that it is only consistent in the Tournament Distribution. For more info on why this is, see the next section.

== Hint Distributions ==
How hints get distributed amongst the 40 available gossip stones is quite flexible, but falls into two main camps: Weighted Distributions and Exact Distributions. These two main categories have commonalities otherwise, such as allowing duplicates of certain chosen hint types. These are done by type, some having a single copy while others having multiple copies. It's also imporotant to keep in mind that some of the hint types such as Trials hints and Entrance hints are only placed if the settings allow for it.

=== Weighted Distributions ===
Most hint distributions don't have a set amount of hints for each category. Instead, they use weights to pick hint types randomly. The higher the weight, the higher the chance of that hint type getting picked. Trial Hints and Always Hints are exempt from this, and their amount is dependent on the settings.

The amounts and weights for each of the built-in weighted hint distributions are as follows:

==== Useless ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Junk || 9.0 || 1
|-
| All other types || 0.0 || 0
|}
Note that this distribution doesn't have any Trial or Always Hints, since the amount of copies is set to 0.

==== Balanced ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 1
|-
| WOTH || 3.5 || 1
|-
| Foolish || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 5.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 6.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 3.0 || 1
|}

==== Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

==== Very Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0.0 || 0
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

=== Exact Distributions ===
Rather than use weights to randomly choose how many hints of a given type should be chosen, these distributions instead specify exactly how many should exist. For example, you can specify that there should be exactly 4 Way of the Hero (or Path of Gold if Triforce Hunt is enabled) type hints, rather than simply giving them a weight. This allows for structuring the hints so that they are the same every time, particularly useful when a lot of players will be using the same settings for a long time, such as the case with weeklies or tournaments, which is where these types of hints originated.

An important note: if not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Additionally, Entrance, Trials, and Always type hints are still dependent on settings, and as such you will often see their amounts as 0. This can be misleading as these hint types will still be generated, but their amounts will vary based on settings.

==== Scrubs ====
The Scrubs Distribution is a continuation of the original Tournament Distribution as was in use from Season 1 to Season 3. This distribution was renamed and is still in use by the Scrub Community and others.

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for Scrubs Races. Duplicates of each hint, Skull Mask is an always hint, 5 WotH, 3 Foolish, 8 sometimes. Can also be used to simulate S3 Tournament hints."
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 5 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|-
| Random || 0 || 2
|}
The Sometimes and Random Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones. If it runs out of those, it'll start placing Random Hints instead.

==== Tournament ====
This distribution covers the current Ocarina of Time Randomizer Tournament's choice of hint distribution as it changes season to season. For Season 4, a new feature was added which allows the removal of certain groups of hint stones, forcing them to be Junk type hints. This allows for better routing of hints, disabling certain locations of hints, or in the case of Season 4 emulating earlier versions of the randomizer where the hints inside the generic grottos were all the same.

Therefore this distribution has the unique sub-category of disabled locations, listed thus: HC (Storms Grotto), HF (Cow Grotto), HF (Near Market Grotto), HF (Southeast Grotto), HF (Open Grotto), Kak (Open Grotto), ZR (Open Grotto), KF (Storms Grotto), LW (Near Shortcuts Grotto), DMT (Storms Grotto), DMC (Upper Grotto).

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for OoTR Season 4. Gossip stones in grottos are disabled. 4 WotH, 2 Barren, remainder filled with Sometimes. Always, WotH, and Barren hints duplicated."

And lastly the distribution itself is:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 4 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 2 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 1
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0 || 1
|}
This distribution is pretty unique because rather than working with all 40 stones, 11 are removed from consideration, giving a final pool of 29. Also this uses another new feature which allows for certain items to be removed from consideration from a specified hint type. On this distribution, Zelda's Lullaby cannot be hinted as Way of the Hero.

=== Copies of WotH hints ===
Because the amount of copies of every hint type is known, you can determine how many WotH items an area has at minimum by the amount of hints you find for it. For example, if you find 2 WotH hints for Shadow Temple in the Tournament Distribution, that only means there's at least one WotH item in there (original hint plus the copy). Once you find a third hint you know for certain that there has to be a second WotH item in Shadow Temple (original hint plus copy plus another hint). Ditto for 5, 7 etc. In distributions where there's only one of each hint you can treat every WotH hint as it's own separate WotH item.

== Hint Logic ==
When a hint points towards a Major Item (WotH hints, location hints, random/item hints), at least one of the hints has to be available before you have to use said item. For example: If Ruto's Letter is on 50 Skultulla Tokens in a non-ER seed with Tournament Distribution, both hints towards it can't be at Zora's Fountain at the same time. At least one of them has to be available without the use of Ruto's Letter. You can (very rarely) use this info to your advantage. For example, if instead Ruto's Letter is at Man on Roof in Kakariko village and you find two WotH Kakariko hints in Zora's Fountain, you now know that at least one of those doesn't point towards Ruto's Letter, so there has to be a different WotH item in Kakariko.

In Beatable Only, some of these hints can still end up on completely unreachable Gossip Stones. You probably won't notice this during gameplay since the stone is completely unreachable in logic. You would have to sequence break to get to the hint in the first place.

== Miscellaneous Hint Types==

[[Bingo_hints|Bingo Hints]]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/league.json League Hints]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/mw2.json Multiworld Hints]

Hints

2021-06-01T02:41:46Z

DobbyDigital: /* Exact Distributions */

Hints are given by the Gossip Stones all over Hyrule. There are 40 Gossip Stones in total that give hints once the requirement to get them have been met. This requirement can be set to nothing, having the Stone of Agony in your inventory, and wearing the Mask of Truth. A Gossip Stone was added on the largest island in Lake Hylia which doesn't give a hint, but is instead used to lower and raise the water level in the lake once Morpha has been defeated.

== Hint Categories ==
Hints are split up in multiple categories, to allow customization of the amount of hints of each category in the different hint distributions and with [[Plandomizer]]. Some hint categories only show up in certain hint distributions, and some only show up if certain settings are enabled.

=== Trial ===
Trial Hints tell you which of Ganon's Trials are enabled, if this isn't implicitly known from the settings. There are different possibilities for this to happen, so the amount of them varies by setting:
* If trials are set to random and all 6 trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Ganon's Tower is protected by a powerful barrier."
* If trials are set to random and no trials end up being enabled you will get a single hint: "Sheik dispelled the barrier around Ganon's Tower."
* If 1-3 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-3 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial protects Ganon's Tower."
* If 4-5 trials end up being enabled you will get 1-2 of the following hint: "the [Medallion Type] Trial was dispelled by Sheik."

=== Location ===
Location hints are hints that tell you which item is at a specific location. Excluded Locations will never get a hint. These hints are split into four different categories:
* Song Hints
* Minigame Hints
* Overworld Hints
* Dungeon Hints

Locations are also classified as either "Always" or "Sometimes" hints.
==== Always ====
Always Hints are hints for item locations that are considered to be so bad that they will get a hint in every seed. Some of these are dynamic based on other settings in your seed.

==== Sometimes ====
Sometimes Hints are hints manually picked for race settings (Weeklies and Tournaments) and therefore only show up in the Tournament Distribution.

For more information on which hints falls into which category see [[List of all location hints]]

=== Entrance ===
Entrance Hints are exclusive to Entrance Randomizer, and are similar to Location Hints, but instead give you info about which Entrance leads where.

=== Item and Random ===
Item Hints and Random Hints are hints that state that an area has a certain items in it. For example: "The Hookshot can be found at Zora's River" or "Spirit Temple hoards a Red Rupee". Item Hints only hint towards Major Items, whereas Random Hints can hint towards any item in the game.

=== Junk ===
Junk Hints are hints that tell you nothing about the seed. They can be funny in nature or give general gameplay tips.

=== Way of the Hero ===
Way of the Hero (WotH) Hints are hints that tell you that an area holds an item that is logically required to beat the seed. For Example: "Kakariko Village is on the way of the hero." It will only tell you that an area is way of the hero if that specific instance of the item is required. For example, even though a Bow is always required to beat Ganondorf, it might not be on the way of the hero if you have a choice on which one to get first, since there are multiple of them in a seed.
WotH Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being on the Way of the Hero tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of two WotH hints can point at dungeons (including two hints pointing at the same dungeon) unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

=== Path of Gold ===
Path of Gold hints are exclusive to Triforce Hunt and replace Way of the Hero hints in that mode. They point to items that logically lock any of the Triforce Pieces in that seed. They cannot point at the Triforce Pieces themselves. The hinted item isn't necessarily required to beat the seed, since the amount of Triforce Pieces in the world can be higher than the goal. Otherwise, they work similarly to Way of the Hero hints, including the maximum of two dungeons.

=== Foolish Choice ===
Foolish Choice Hints (also commonly called Barren Hints) point towards areas that contain no [[Major Items]]. This means that you can ignore this area when looking for progression in the seed. To increase the amount of Foolish Areas per seed, there are three exceptions where a Major Item can show up in a Foolish Areas:

# The Major Item isn't shuffled (For example Ocarina, or Ganon's Boss Key if it is set to be on [https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Glossary#LACS LACS]), or not considered in logic (Bombchus).
# The item in question doesn't unlock any Location. This list is mostly predetermined and consists of Double Defense, Ice Arrows and Biggoron Sword. Nayrus Love is also in this list damage is not set to Quadruple Damage or OHKO, Scrub Shuffle is disabled, and [[Entrance_Randomizer | ER]] is disabled or set to Dungeons Only. Stone of Agony is also in this list if it isn't used for hints and the trick to open hidden grottos without it is enabled. Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light are also in this list unless Full Indoors or Overworld ER is enabled.
# An exact duplicate of the item is on the WotH AND getting that duplicate would make the item in the Foolish Area obsolete. For Weekly/Tourney standards this can only be Bows, Bombs, "Normal" Bottles, Slingshots and Magic. Depending on other settings this can also include Bombchus, Ocarina, or any non-progressive item if the Item Pool is set to Plentiful.

Special Progressive Major Items are items where getting copies of the item changes the functionality of the item in logic. These items can only be in Foolish Areas if there are more copies in the item pool than there are useful upgrades, and only if the amount of them that are WotH is the same as the amount of useful upgrades. For example: If there are 3 Hookshots in the pool, the third one can be in a Foolish Area, since you only need 2 upgrades to get the Longshot, but only if both other Hookshots are WotH. Special Progressive Major Items and their amount of useful upgrades are: Hookshots (2), Wallets (3), Strength Upgrades (3), and Scales (2). Small Keys (Infinite), but only with Keysanity. Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only with Token Bridge and Tokensanity.

One tiny caveat with this is that Skulltula Tokens are not considered Major Items when not playing with Token Bridge, even in tokensanity. This means there's a chance that you'll be required to get Skulltula Tokens from a Foolish area to get to a certain Token Reward.

Foolish Choice Hints give info only about that area, not any sub-areas. For example, Gerudo Fortress being a foolish choice tells you nothing about Gerudo Training Grounds.

In any seed, a maximum of one dungeon can be hinted as Foolish, unless the hint distribution is set to Very Strong.

== Hint Overlap ==
Item locations can never be hinted towards by more than one hint. For example: This means that if you get a hint for the Song on Ocarina of Time and a hint that Hyrule Field is on the way of the hero, that WotH hint isn't pointing at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
* WotH hints
* Location Hints (Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon, Always, and Sometimes)
* Item Hints
* Random Hints

In the development versions of the randomizer and from v5.2 forward this will be extended in a way to also include Foolish Choice Hints. However, it will only follow this rule if the Foolish Choice Hint is chosen before the other hint. This means that it is only consistent in the Tournament Distribution. For more info on why this is, see the next section.

== Hint Distributions ==
How hints get distributed amongst the 40 available gossip stones is quite flexible, but falls into two main camps: Weighted Distributions and Exact Distributions. These two main categories have commonalities otherwise, such as allowing duplicates of certain chosen hint types. These are done by type, some having a single copy while others having multiple copies. It's also imporotant to keep in mind that some of the hint types such as Trials hints and Entrance hints are only placed if the settings allow for it.

=== Weighted Distributions ===
Most hint distributions don't have a set amount of hints for each category. Instead, they use weights to pick hint types randomly. The higher the weight, the higher the chance of that hint type getting picked. Trial Hints and Always Hints are exempt from this, and their amount is dependent on the settings.

The amounts and weights for each of the built-in weighted hint distributions are as follows:

==== Useless ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Junk || 9.0 || 1
|-
| All other types || 0.0 || 0
|}
Note that this distribution doesn't have any Trial or Always Hints, since the amount of copies is set to 0.

==== Balanced ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 1
|-
| WOTH || 3.5 || 1
|-
| Foolish || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 5.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 6.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 3.0 || 1
|}

==== Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.33 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 0.66 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

==== Very Strong ====
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Weight !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0.0 || 1
|-
| Always || 0.0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 3.0 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3.0 || 1
|-
| Item || 1.0 || 1
|-
| Song || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Minigame || 0.5 || 1
|-
| Overworld || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Dungeon || 1.5 || 1
|-
| Entrance || 2.0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0.0 || 0
|-
| Junk || 0.0 || 0
|}

=== Exact Distributions ===
Rather than use weights to randomly choose how many hints of a given type should be chosen, these distributions instead specify exactly how many should exist. For example, you can specify that there should be exactly 4 Way of the Hero (or Path of Gold if Triforce Hunt is enabled) type hints, rather than simply giving them a weight. This allows for structuring the hints so that they are the same every time, particularly useful when a lot of players will be using the same settings for a long time, such as the case with weeklies or tournaments, which is where these types of hints originated.

An important note: if not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Additionally, Entrance, Trials, and Always type hints are still dependent on settings, and as such you will often see their amounts as 0. This can be misleading as these hint types will still be generated, but their amounts will vary based on settings.

==== Scrubs ====
The Scrubs Distribution is a continuation of the original Tournament Distribution as was in use from Season 1 to Season 3. This distribution was renamed and is still in use by the Scrub Community and others.

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for Scrubs Races. Duplicates of each hint, Skull Mask is an always hint, 5 WotH, 3 Foolish, 8 sometimes. Can also be used to simulate S3 Tournament hints."
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 5 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 3 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 2
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 2
|-
| Random || 0 || 2
|}
The Sometimes and Random Hints are used as filler hints. This means that once all other hint types above have been placed, it'll start placing Sometimes hints on the remaining Gossip Stones. If it runs out of those, it'll start placing Random Hints instead.

==== Tournament ====
This distribution covers the current Ocarina of Time Randomizer Tournament's choice of hint distribution as it changes season to season. For Season 4, a new feature was added which allows the removal of certain groups of hint stones, forcing them to be Junk type hints. This allows for better routing of hints, disabling certain locations of hints, or in the case of Season 4 emulating earlier versions of the randomizer where the hints inside the generic grottos were all the same.

Therefore this distribution has the unique sub-category of disabled locations, listed thus: HC (Storms Grotto), HF (Cow Grotto), HF (Near Market Grotto), HF (Southeast Grotto), HF (Open Grotto), Kak (Open Grotto), ZR (Open Grotto), KF (Storms Grotto), LW (Near Shortcuts Grotto), DMT (Storms Grotto), DMC (Upper Grotto).

The description from the Hint Distribution file reads: "Tournament hints used for OoTR Season 4. Gossip stones in grottos are disabled. 4 WotH, 2 Barren, remainder filled with Sometimes. Always, WotH, and Barren hints duplicated."

And lastly the distribution itself is:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type !! Amount !! Copies
|-
| Trial || 0 || 2
|-
| Always || 0 || 2
|-
| WOTH || 4 || 2
|-
| Foolish || 2 || 2
|-
| Entrance || 4 || 1
|-
| Sometimes || 0 || 1
|-
| Random || 0 || 1
|}
This distribution is pretty unique because rather than working with all 40 stones, 11 are removed from consideration, giving a final pool of 29. Also this uses another new feature which allows for certain items to be removed from consideration from a specified hint type. On this distribution, Zelda's Lullaby cannot be hinted as Way of the Hero.

=== Copies of WotH hints ===
Because the amount of copies of every hint type is known, you can determine how many WotH items an area has at minimum by the amount of hints you find for it. For example, if you find 2 WotH hints for Shadow Temple in the Tournament Distribution, that only means there's at least one WotH item in there (original hint plus the copy). Once you find a third hint you know for certain that there has to be a second WotH item in Shadow Temple (original hint plus copy plus another hint). Ditto for 5, 7 etc. In distributions where there's only one of each hint you can treat every WotH hint as it's own separate WotH item.

== Hint Logic ==
When a hint points towards a Major Item (WotH hints, location hints, random/item hints), at least one of the hints has to be available before you have to use said item. For example: If Ruto's Letter is on 50 Skultulla Tokens in a non-ER seed with Tournament Distribution, both hints towards it can't be at Zora's Fountain at the same time. At least one of them has to be available without the use of Ruto's Letter. You can (very rarely) use this info to your advantage. For example, if instead Ruto's Letter is at Man on Roof in Kakariko village and you find two WotH Kakariko hints in Zora's Fountain, you now know that at least one of those doesn't point towards Ruto's Letter, so there has to be a different WotH item in Kakariko.

In Beatable Only, some of these hints can still end up on completely unreachable Gossip Stones. You probably won't notice this during gameplay since the stone is completely unreachable in logic. You would have to sequence break to get to the hint in the first place.

== Miscellaneous Hint Types==

[[Bingo_hints|Bingo Hints]]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/league.json League Hints]

[https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Hints/mw2.json Multiworld Hints]

Bingo hints

2021-03-20T18:58:39Z

DobbyDigital: /* Named-item hints */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the next section). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* All dungeons are assumed to be vanilla (i.e. non Master Quest).
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon (regardless of the skullsanity settings). For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link, even if the reward for defeating that skulltula is not a token.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build 6.0.12+ should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

===Known issues===
Below are some known problems with bingo hints, which can cause seed generation to fail under certain circumstances. If the issue has been fixed in a non-Stable build, the version number for the Dev build that includes the fix is given after.
* If generating board-specific hints, if the board contains the goal "All 8 Death Mountain Area Skulltulas" then hint generation will fail. This is due to an error in the name of the item requirements for that goal. (fixed in version 6.0.12+)
* Starting items, starting equipment, starting songs, and Skip Child Zelda can cause either board-specific or generic bingo hints to fail to generate. This is due to the hints trying to provide a hint for an item that isn't in the world. (fixed, not included in an official build as yet)
* Some combinations of settings can result in too many Always hints being included, which can cause generation to fail with board-specific or generic bingo hints. This is due to the total number of hints exceeded the 40 gossip stones in the game. (fixed, not included in an official build as yet)

Bingo hints

2021-03-20T00:02:57Z

DobbyDigital: /* Named-item hints */

Bingo hints

2021-03-19T23:59:56Z

DobbyDigital: /* Board-specific hint distribution */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the next section). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* All dungeons are assumed to be vanilla (i.e. non Master Quest).
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon (regardless of the skullsanity settings). For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link, even if the reward for defeating that skulltula is not a token.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

Bingo hints

2021-02-12T13:45:03Z

DobbyDigital: /* Board-specific hint distribution */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the beginning). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* All dungeons are assumed to be vanilla (i.e. non Master Quest).
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon (regardless of the skullsanity settings). For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link, even if the reward for defeating that skulltula is not a token.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

Bingo hints

2021-02-11T14:24:52Z

DobbyDigital: /* Board-specific hint distribution */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the beginning). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon (regardless of the skullsanity settings). For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link, even if the reward for defeating that skulltula is not a token.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

Bingo hints

2021-02-11T03:58:19Z

DobbyDigital: /* Named-item hints */

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the beginning). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating all of the gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.

Bingo hints

2021-02-11T03:57:40Z

DobbyDigital: Created page with "==Bingo hints== The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to co..."

==Bingo hints==
The goal of the bingo hint distribution is to balance the searching for the specific item goal aspects which form the core of randomiser with being able to complete the tasks on the bingo board. This is achieved by dividing goals into two categories: find-style goals and do-style goals.
Find-style goals are ones which are completed by finding an instance of an item which can be found anywhere in the world (bound by glitchless logic, of course). This includes goals such as “Longshot”, “Quiver 40 OR Bullet Bag 40”, etc. These goals directly involve searching through the world, and therefore hints will not directly help with these goals.
Do-style goals are ones which require you to complete certain tasks, or find items constrained within a certain area (which we discuss more in detail in the board-specific section). This includes goals such as “Defeat All Lizalfos in Dodongo’s Cavern”, “3 Skulls in Water Temple”, “Map and Compass in Jabu”, etc. These goals involve more execution and techniques, and hints can help ensure that you have the items required to complete these tasks.
It is worth noting that the bingo hint distribution does not affect the logic of the seed at all; these hints merely indicate where the items have been placed, they do not change the placements. Both distributions make use of a type of hint known as named-item, which is described afterwards.

===Generic bingo hint distribution===
When not supplied with a Bingosync URL when generating the seed, the bingo hint distribution includes a default list of items that can be hinted, which covers most of the potential items needed for do-style goals. This list includes:
* One Hookshot
* One Bow
* One Bomb Bag
* Two Strength Upgrades
* One Bottle (can contain anything except Ruto’s Letter or Big Poe)
* One Magic Meter
* Boomerang
* Megaton Hammer
* Mirror Shield
* Iron Boots
* Hover Boots
* Zelda’s Lullaby

===Board-specific hint distribution===
When provided with a Bingosync URL during seed generation, the generator attempts to create hints for the items needed to complete the do-style goals found on that board. The generator looks through every goal found on the board and looks at the pre-defined list of required items for that goal as found in https://github.com/TestRunnerSRL/OoT-Randomizer/blob/Dev/data/Bingo/bingo_goals.json.
The final list of items to be hinted is the combination of all required items for every goal on the board, and each of these is guaranteed to be hinted (barring the hint overlap as mentioned in the beginning). Note that this list is only additive; the goals on the board can only add more items to be hinted, they cannot remove items from other goals (this includes find-style goals which are effectively pointed to by the hints). For example, it is entirely possible to have “Longshot” as a goal on the board and yet still have hints point to both progressive Hookshots if other goals require it.

In order to create this list of required items, some assumptions were needed (the bingo preset is compatible with these assumptions, but other settings can be possible):
* Every goal is obtained glitchlessly, in the way seemingly intended by the OoT Devs. For example, “Get to the End of the Light Trial” requires hints for all three Strength Upgrades.
* If multiple items can be used to clear an obstacle, then none of them are required to be hinted. For example, the crystal switch near the entrance to Adult Spirit Temple can be hit with Hookshot or Bow, and so neither is required. Note that this only includes infinite sources, and so items such as Bombchus are not considered as being able to clear the obstacle (regardless of whether or not chus are in logic).
* Item requirements only take into consideration what is needed once you enter the area, not the items needed to get to said area. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Shadow Temple” does not provide a hint for Nocturne, since that is not needed once you enter the dungeon.
* Maps and compasses are assumed to be randomised within their own dungeon, and so you need the items to access every check in the dungeon. For example, “Map and Compass in Spirit Temple” requires Mirror Shield, since it is possible for either to be in a mirror locked dungeon check.
* Similarly, it is assumed that goals including skulltula tokens in each dungeon require defeating all of the gold skulltulas in that specific dungeon. For example, “All 5 Skulls in Water Temple” requires Song of Time in order to access the skulltula in the area past Dark Link.

===Named-item hints===
Named-item hints are a type of hint available in the randomiser that is used as the basis for both board specific and generic bingo hint distributions. This type of hint indicates the area in which one instance of a specified item can be found, not taking logic into account. For example, you could get a hint which states:
“They say that Hover Boots can be found in Kakariko Village.”
which indicates that the only set of Hover Boots are somewhere in Kakariko Village. Some things to keep in mind about this type of hint:
* Logic is not taken into account when providing the location. In the case of unique items (such as the hover boots in the example above), this is less important. However, for items with multiple copies, like Slingshots, Bows and Bomb Bags, it is possible for the hints to point towards a self-locked copy of that item. For example, the hints could point to a logically Bow-locked Bow in GTG or Forest.
* Named-item hints cannot point to items already hinted, and so some item hints could be missing if another hint points to that item. Depending on the version of the bingo hints, this can include the always hints (online Stable build 6.0 does not include the always hints, but online Dev build should have them). The order of the hint types in the bingo hint distribution is: trial, always, named item, way of the hero, barren, entrance, sometimes, random, item, song, overworld, dungeon, and junk. However, trial, way of the hero, and barren hints are fully disabled, and all types other than named item and junk items can only be placed via conditionals in the generator.
Both versions of bingo hint distributions supply a list of items, each of which is hinted via a named-item hint, and each hint of which is duplicated to appear in the world twice.