The Entrance Shuffle settings in the Randomizer allow players to randomize loading zones (also called "entrances") connecting the world. Almost all entrances, including dungeon entrances, grottos, graves, houses, fairies, overworld entrances, spawn locations, warp song locations, and owl drops can be randomized, depending on the options enabled.
Please note that all entrances are kept bidirectional, which means going through a loading zone from one side, then going back through the same loading zone will lead back to the original location. The exceptions to this is owl drops and warp songs as there is no going back. Owl drop and warp song locations are additional entrances to existing bidirectional entrances.
Another major aspect is that entrances are always shuffled with other entrances of the same type:
- Dungeons
- Grottos and graves
- Houses, shops, and Great Fairies
- Overworld entrances
- Owl drops, warp songs, and overworld spawns link up with a random overworld entrance
Glitchless Logic and No Logic are compatible with entrance randomizer (ER), but note that No Logic increases the chances of an unbeatable seed.
Available ER Modes
Different modes are available, which are incrementally more random and more difficult. Several entrance trackers are available to aid in the more difficult modes. As of 6.0, this options have changed significantly.
Shuffle Interior Entrances
Simple Interiors
Interiors shuffled in this pool include most Houses and all Great Fairies in the game. This option excludes a few special Interior entrances: Richard's House, Link's House, Temple of Time, the Windmill, the Kakariko Potion Shop (the shop with two entrances) and Gerudo Fortress interiors.
When shuffling interiors, adult trade quest timers are disabled and trade items never revert, even when you die or when you load your save, in order to keep the quest compatible with entrances being shuffled around.
All Interiors
Randomize all entrances from the "Simple Indoors" option, along with a few extra entrances leading to special places that were excluded from the "simple" option.
Those additional entrances are currently include: the Kakariko Potion Shop, Link's House, Temple of Time, the Windmill and Dampe's Grave. However, entrances leading to Richard's House and all the Gerudo Fortress Interiors are still not shuffled.
This option is incompatible with closed forest so it forces the "Closed Deku" option to be enabled instead.
Otherwise, the option is the same as "Simple Indoors", and it includes all its changes.
Shuffle Grotto Entrances
Grottos include all grottos in the game, with small Fairy Fountains, the Lost Woods Stage, and all graves.
Shuffle Dungeons Entrances
Randomize dungeon entrances, which includes all medallion and stone dungeons, along with Bottom of the Well, Ice Cavern and Gerudo Training Grounds, but not Ganon's Castle.
In order to improve dungeon entrance randomization, the Fire Temple entrance is open as child and the Deku Tree and Bottom of the Well entrances are both open as adult. However, the Bottom of the Well entrance can only be accessed as adult after draining the well by playing the Song of Storms in the Windmill as child. In addition, when playing with "Closed Deku", Mido still needs to see a Deku Shield and Kokiri Sword before access adult can access the Deku Tree. Also note that the Water Temple entrance can be reached with Longshot and Gold Scale and does not require Iron Boots.
Lake Hylia will be filled for adult after defeating Morpha, but the special Gossip Stone near the Lake Hylia warp pad gives Link the ability the control the lake water level.
Dungeon blue warps will return Link in front of the new dungeon entrance leading to that blue warp. For example, if Link enters the Fire Temple entrance to find Forest Temple and defeats Phantom Ganon, Link will be returned to Death Mountain Crater.
Shuffle Overworld Entrances
Overworld entrances include almost all loading zones between overworld areas, for example: Hyrule Field to Lake Hylia.
Some overworld loading zones are kept vanilla to avoid potential issues:
- The Castle Courtyard and Garden entrances (leading to Zelda) aren't shuffled, to avoid various issues.
- Gerudo Valley to Lake Hylia by the stream is not changed and is always vanilla, since it is a special one-way entrance.
- Market Back Alley entrances are not changed and kept as a part of Market, to ensure the Richard item can be obtained.
Some cutscenes are changed to bring the player to a more suitable place in this mode:
- Impa's escort brings Link to the entrance of Hyrule Castle Grounds from the market, instead of Hyrule Field.
- Getting caught by Gerudo Guards in the child Valley always throws you in the Valley stream, even if you have a Hookshot. Getting caught inside the Fortress brings you at the Fortress entrance from Valley if you are child or don't have a Hookshot. However adult Link with a hookshot will still be thrown in the jail.
- Leaping over the fences with Epona in Lon Lon Ranch will alway lead to wherever the main entrance leads, acting as if Link left Lon Lon Ranch from the main entrance.
Randomize Owl Drops
Owl Drop positions can be randomized as an extra way to get somewhere in the overworld, but the owl still only takes off from Lake Hylia and Death Mountain Summit when Link is a child.
Randomize Warp Song Destinations
If the user has disabled Randomize Owl Drops, enabled All Locations Reachable and has unshuffled Overworld Entrances, songs are guaranteed to go to the Bolero warp pad, Nocturne warp pad, and Desert Colossus. This is to ensure access to the volcano bean patch, Shadow Temple, and the child side of Spirit Temple, respectively. If the user has shuffled Overworld Entrances, only the Bolero and Nocturne warp pads are guaranteed.
Overworld Spawns
This option randomizes both the child and adult save warp points, which are inside Link's house and inside Temple of Time respectively otherwise. Logic and gameplay is affected in the following ways:
- Overworld spawns can only be any of the ones classified as "Interior", "SpecialInterior", "Overworld", "OwlDrop", "Spawn", "WarpSong" and "Extra". This is only true if "Mix Entrance Pools" (Roman's fork only currently) is disabled.
- Child cannot spawn in the area "Outside Ganon's Castle" or outside the tent in Gerudo Valley.
- Adult cannot spawn in the area "Hyrule Castle."
- Either Kokiri Forest or Kakariko Village must be reachable from the start of the seed with no items.
- The Big Poe Shop will always be accessible as adult without the need to use any bottles.
- Access to "Temple of Time" needs to be available for both ages. This can be achieved in different ways depending on other settings, but in general either an ocarina and an appropriate warp song is available, or child and/or adult spawn points will be limited. For Season 4 Tournament settings, specifically, this means that child spawn cannot be in Desert Colossus, the Colossus side of Wasteland, Zora's Fountain or the warp pad region of DMC.
- A gate-opening guard has been added to the Wasteland side of the Gerudo gate.
- Serenade of Water and Prelude of Light cannot be in areas that are hinted foolish/barren.
- The setting "Closed Forest" changes into "Closed Deku".
ER Logic Quirks
Desert Colossus
- Escaping Spirit Temple from the hands can allow you to reach Desert Colossus which may not be reachable otherwise.
- The Requiem of Spirit cutscene is triggered when exiting the dungeon accessible from the entrance in Desert Colossus. This also means it still belongs to Desert Colossus and is included in that area when mentioned in hints.
Inside the Deku Tree
- You can completely skip the basement as adult since you are tall enough to just grab the ledge.
- You may be required to setup the push block as adult then come back as child to reverse through the crawlspace to access the basement backrooms with neither a bow nor a slingshot.
- A Hylian shield is required as adult to stun scrubs in order to access both the slingshot room and Queen Gohma. The mirror shield does not work.
Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly
- Adult Link needs a scale to reach the deku scrub. It can also be done with a well positioned jump into the water but that's not considered in logic.
- Ruto is present as an adult and the boomerang chest can be fully accessed as adult.
Forest Temple
- The gold Skulltula in the first room on the wall can be killed with Din's Fire or any projectile, without the need of a Hookshot.
- The Kokiri Sword can be used to kill Stalfos as child, other ways are possible but aren't considered in logic.
- The Song of Time block leading to the north-west outside area is absent as a child. You may be expected to access this area as child with no items.
- The chest and gold Skulltula on the island in the north-west outdoors area are accessible from the falling ceiling room (going the long way around), and accessing them this way may be required without a Hookshot. The Skulltula can be killed from above and picked up by dropping down.
Fire Temple
- If Fewer Tunic Requirements is enabled and you have access to Fire Temple as child, you may be required to reach the chests near the boss door and near the first goron under the Song of Time block, which don't need any items. Nothing else is considered in logic as child in Fire Temple.
Water Temple
- After draining the water to the lowest level as adult, you may be able to come back as child and do a few extra things:
- Get the gold Skulltula in the central pillar room using Farore's Wind and a Boomerang (not in default logic, but available as a trick).
- Use sticks to light the torches to access the shell blades (compass in vanilla) room, then kill the shell blades with a Kokiri Sword magic spin attack.
Ice Cavern
- Child may be able to do reach some checks if you have access to blue fire from somewhere else, or if adult can get some in Ice Cavern beforehand.
- The Serenade cutscene triggers as child as well in ER, so that song location may be reachable even without adult Link having access to Ice Cavern.
Gerudo Training Ground
- A slingshot can be used to trigger eye targets in the lobby, which may be required to do as child.
- The Kokiri Sword can be used to kill Stalfos and Dinolfos as child. Other ways are possible but aren't considered in logic.
- The Song of Time blocks leading to the right side are present by default during child time. This means the right side maze is accessible as child without keys nor Song of Time.
Adult Trade Quest
- Trade Quest timers are disabled in ER when interior entrances are shuffled, which also allows the use of warp songs to deliver quest items. In these settings, Adult trade items also never revert or downgrade, even when loading a save or after dying, so you may be expected to deliver timed trade items even if you can't do the whole timed process. This also means you can save & quit to deliver any trade items.
Talon's House behind a Night Entrance
- When shuffling interiors, it's possible for Talon's House to end up behind a night only entrance, even though Talon's chickens game can only be played during the day. In this situation, Sun's Song can be played from inside Talon's House to change time to day and play the game as usual.
Dampe's Hut as Child
- Dampe's hut entrance can be accessed as child but only at night while Dampe is outside doing his tour.
Dampe's Race
- At the end of Dampe's Race, Link can play Song of Time to gain access to the top part of the Windmill, which can in turn grants access to wherever the Windmill entrance goes.
- If you have access to Dampe's grave as child, you can race him in that age for the first reward. While not logically expected unless the corresponding trick is enabled, completing the race again under a minute as child will also grant the second reward.
Death Mountain Trail
- The bean in front of Dodongo's Cavern can get adult Link to the upper part of the trail (fairy fountain/Biggoron/crater entrance) without explosives or hammer.
Death Mountain Crater
- While not an ER exclusive quirk, this comes up much more frequently in Overworld ER. You can reach the Bolero warp pad and the rest of lower DMC by jumping from the upper area onto the lava platforms below and shooting a wooden plank to pull Link across the pool of lava.
Lost Woods Bridge
- Saria's Gift cutscene is only triggered when entering the bridge from the Kokiri Forest entrance, but not when coming from the Hyrule Field side.
- Getting on the Lost Woods Bridge from the rest of Lost Woods can be done in 4 ways as adult, starting from the bean patch area:
- Use the longshot on the far side of the bridge .
- Use the hover boots by walking on the trunk between the bean patch area and the bridge.
- Ride the bean and dropping down on the bridge at the right moment.
- Jump onto the bridge with very precise movement, but you won't be logically expected to do this unless you enable the corresponding trick.
- It's also possible to go down from the Bridge to the rest of Lost Woods by using the longshot on the ladder near the bean patch.
Gerudo Valley as Adult
- The bridge can be repaired by rescuing carpenters in Gerudo Fortress, which may unlock new access to the fortress side of the valley, even without the longshot or Epona.
- There is a grotto hidden in the valley below a silver boulder which normally contains an Octorok and some rupees but may be important in ER. It can be found on the ledge across from the heart piece crate.
Gerudo Valley as Child
- When coming from the fortress/tent side of the valley, you can cross to reach the other side by avoiding guards carefully then jumping down on the bridge.
- If guards catch Link in the valley as child, he will be thrown in the stream which always leads to Lake Hylia.
- The storms grotto supposed to be behind the tent is not there in child time.
Gerudo Fortress as Child
- Rescuing carpenters can be achieved as child the same as adult, and Link will still receive the Gerudo Card (or the corresponding reward if you enabled "Shuffle Gerudo Card").
- The Wasteland gate can only be opened as adult but this will also open it for child, so child Link can return to access the other side of the gate, if necessary.
- The storms grotto that's supposed to be behind boxes is not there in child time.
Fairies
- When shuffling entrances, you might not have easy access to a source of fairies to catch so here are all the ways to reliably obtain them:
- If you have access to any small Fairy Fountain grotto, you can get all the fairies you need there. Similarly, if you have access to Ganon's Castle, you can find fairies in the room where Deku Scrubs are.
- Some pots contain fairies you can catch. You can find some inside Fire Temple, Dodongo's Cavern, Forest Temple, Water Temple, Jabu Jabu's Belly, as well as in Water Trial, and the Haunted Wasteland structure.
- Playing Zelda's Lullaby, Song of Time, Epona's Song, or Sun's Song near any gossip stone summons a fairy you can catch. Note that Sun's Song can only be used for that purpose in places where playing it doesn't reload the area. Playing Song of Storms will spawn a special fairy which also refills magic but cannot be caught in a bottle.
- Playing the Song of Storms on the platform near the dry pond in Desert Colossus will turn it into a nice oasis with many fairies flying around it.
- Planting a bean as child and playing the Song of Storms near it triggers a cutscene which results in summoning 3 fairies you can catch.
- Some areas have butterflies which you can turn into fairies by holding out a stick and slowly walking to lead them around until they transform.
- As usual, fairies may be necessary to survive damage in high damage settings like "OHKO," so you will be guaranteed at least one of the sources above in these settings.