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. The Gossip Stone on the largest island in Lake Hylia 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. 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 up in four different categories, plus two special categories:
- Song Hints
- Minigame Hints
- Overworld Hints
- Dungeon 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 therefor 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 tell you 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 you 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.
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. 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.
Foolish Choice
Foolish Choice Hints point towards areas that contain no Major Items. 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 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 if you don't play on Quadruple Damage or OHKO and Scrub Shuffle is disabled and 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 you're playing Full Indoors or Overworld ER.
- 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), Scales (2) (and Small Keys (Infinite), but only if you're playing Keysanity) (and Gold Skulltula Tokens (Infinite), but only if you're playing with Token Bridge and Tokensanity).
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.
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 won't point at the song. The hint types that follow this rule are:
- WOTH hints
- Location Hints (Always, Song, Minigame, Overworld, Dungeon and Sometimes)
- Item Hints
- Random Hints
In the development versions of the randomizer and from 5.2 onwards 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
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 excempt from this, and their amount is dependant on the settings. Each hint type also has a number of copies that are placed, again dependant on the Hint Distribution. Some hint distributions will have duplicates for some hint types, and only singles for others, or even no hints of certain types. Keep in mind that Entrance Hints only show up in Entrance Randomizer.
The amounts and weights for each hint distribution are as follows:
Useless
| 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
| 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
| 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
| 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 |
Tournament
The Tournament Distribution doesn't use weights to determine the frequency of each hint type, and instead uses (mostly) static amounts. If not enough hints of a certain type can be generated, it will just move on to the next type. Trial and Always Hint amounts are still determined by the settings. The types, in order, are as follows:
| Type | Amount | Copies |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | 0.0 | 2 |
| Always | 0.0 | 2 |
| WOTH | 5.0 | 2 |
| Foolish | 3.0 | 2 |
| Entrance | 4.0 | 2 |
| Sometimes | 0.0 | 2 |
| Random | 0.0 | 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.
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.