Welcome to OoT OoT—which is to say, Over the Top Ocarina of Time, in case you thought I suddenly turned into Pingu—which involves another look at the severely cursed randomizer tools for that one N64 Zelda game lots of people like, rather than the one lots of people are weirded out by. I actually took on a rather tough configuration a few years back in this LP blog, where I opted for both Keysanity (randomizes all keys for all dungeons) and Tokensanity (adds the gold skulltula tokens to the item pool and makes it so skulltulas can drop vital items), and afterwards swore I'd never make one of my all-timers this painful to play ever again.
Well. Ocarina of Time makes fools of us all, as the saying goes.
Pottering around the OoTRandomizer website for all the new options that have been added since I last checked it out in 2020, I was surprised by just how much more malevolent the developers have become; presumably, the streamer/speedrunner types who can play through these randomized Zeldas in their sleep were asking for ever more devious variables with which to challenge themselves. I thought I'd give it another shot and highlight some more of the things you can randomize—the seed I've since generated is truly one of the most dire imaginable. There won't be a whole lot of new ground to cover since the last time I LPed one of these, and people are (or should be) familiar enough with the vanilla experience already, so I'm just going to cover the new toggles and do a play-by-play of maybe the first few hours or so. (I very much doubt I'll have the cajones to actually complete this run. Well, unless someone offers me money. Or double dog dares me, such is the fragility of my masculinity.)
Prepare to be amazed and/or horrified at how much more ridiculously punitive a randomized OoT can be.
(N.B.: I'll be breaking up the usual wall of screenshots with a "what have you transformed here observation" side-bar, or "WHY THO" for short. In these, I'll be explaining in detail some ominous new change I've made via the randomizer, rather than delineate them all beforehand. It'll be more fun this way? Question mark?)
Give a Hoot, Read This OoT OoT
WHY THO #1: Starting location. This is some dude's house, but it's where I'll always start as young Link if I ever reset the game. Naturally, this can mess with the pathing something fierce; it also means that, even if I begin the game with a certain other vanilla setting still enabled—that is, the one where Mido refuses to let you see the Great Deku Tree and continue the game without the starting sword and shield—those items could still be anywhere because I'm no longer confined to Kokiri Forest.
WHY THO #2: I also fucked with the color palettes, but only sparingly. I'm not wearing a Zora tunic; that navy blue is what the game registers as green now, at least as far as my sartorial choices are concerned. That also goes for the hearts, which have taken on an incidentally cool metallic sheen.
WHY THO #3: Yep, in addition to the starting location being randomized, so has every internal and external exit in the game. And I do mean all of them. However, there are certain limitations in play here: dungeon entrances can only ever go to other dungeons, for example, and likewise doors to houses and holes in the ground will always go to other internal locations. Not only can this get hideously confusing for your sense of direction after a while, but there are many places where you'll be stuck because the exit you just appeared at is one way (like, say, the gate leading to Death Mountain if you haven't given the guard Zelda's invitation). If that happens, you gotta reset with the save warp. This is a pretty well known randomizer function, but one I was reluctant to use before: fortunately, the internet has some decent OoT Entrance Trackers.
WHY THO #4: Now we start getting into truly psychotic territory. This toggle randomizes all the Silver Rupees you need to collect to finish certain puzzle rooms. You might recall one from the Shadow Temple where there's a big spinning reaper scythe in the middle of the area. All five of the Silver Rupees in each of these rooms have been replaced with other items, and said rupees are part of the universal item pool. I'll need to figure out where they all are before I can move beyond the room in question. Incidentally, there's fourteen of these rooms in the game, meaning there's 70 of these Silver Rupees out there in the item pool. I've found quite a few so far.
WHY THO #5: See those golden pots? I randomized every pot's contents too. There's an optional setting where, if you've broken one of these pots that might potentially have a vital item, it'll go back to its usual brown color the next time it spawns. Of course, you can eschew this visual QoL feature and just run wild and free like the founding fathers intended.
WHY THO #6: I randomized the crates too. Only some of them, mind: the ones that would normally drop items. They can have the same optional visual glow-up the unchecked pots do.
WHY THO #7: You better believe Keysanity is still active. No half-assing on this occasion.
WHY THO #8: The song locations are part of the universal item pool too, rather than just randomizing the locations where'd you normally get a different song (like learning Saria's Song from Impa instead). They each have these neat transparent clef items attached to them. Of course, I won't be able to play anything yet for a couple reasons I'll get into.
WHY THO #9: All shop contents are randomized, though I've set all the prices to 10 rupees. I know, I went bush league with some of these options. Still, though, what an amazing deal this is.
WHY THO #10: So, the game has these things called "freestanding items", which are usually just hearts and rupees sitting out in the open rather than being in chests or in pots or some such. I randomized all of them too. That includes freestanding items hidden in patches of tall grass, like above. How do I know if I've already checked them? That's what Google Spreadsheets are for, my friend. (Well, it's either that or for administrative office work and data management, but one's clearly more important than the others.)
WHY THO #11: I know you didn't think for a second that I turned Tokensanity off, but here we are to confirm things are still busted regardless. 100 of these little skeletal beauties gumming up the works.
WHY THO #12: Those annoying business scrubs? Better believe I randomized all their shop contents too. Best part is that they never tell you what they're selling. Caveat emptor, everyone.
WHY THO #13: You can't really see in the above screenshot, but those two beehives are wiggling slightly. That's because I randomized their contents as well, which probably means there's more than a few chests with a whole bunch of confused and angry bees inside. The hives stop wiggling if you've checked them already: another very necessary QoL toggle.
WHY THO #14: You know how many loose cows are in Hyrule? Lots. And you know what happens if you play Epona's Song around them? They get all happy and give you some free Lon Lon Milk, provided you have an empty bottle for it. Not anymore though. I randomized what they give you once they hear their favorite song. That also means I have to track where they all are for the sake of a future point in the run when I can play them the song in question, including the bovines stuck in a random hole in the ground like this one.
WHY THO #15: This is what I call the piéce-de-résistance. You can actually take the individual button presses for the ocarina songs and add them to the item pool too. This is the C-Up button, if it wasn't clear. It's all moot right now anyway, since I don't have an ocarina, but my musical options would be pretty limited without all five note buttons even if I did have one.
Anyway, that's just a taste of how badly you can screw up one of these Zelda randomizer runs. I didn't find the option for randomizing the tufts of grass you can mow down but I know that's out there too. If you really wanted to get nasty, you can randomize the notes in every song producing absolute cacophonies or randomize how much damage each enemy can do to you (and presumably you to them). You can even combine the two N64 Zeldas into one game and randomize all their items and entrances together to produce an enormous mess not even the four giants could sort out. If I remembered a damn thing about Majora's Mask I almost would've been tempted enough to try it.
Playing this nightmare was certainly fun for a few hours but I've made almost zero progress besides finding a handful of items like bombs and the hookshot. The only dungeon entrances I can access right now take me to the Water Temple and the Master Quest version of Jabu-Jabu's Belly, the latter of which needs the slingshot to get out of the first room. I haven't even found a sword yet. I'm going to leave this run abandoned like it was some 1,500 piece jigsaw puzzle strewn across a portable poker table that I vastly overestimated my patience for solving. Good thing we're still in early January, where it's entirely permissible to give up on any and all lofty goals you may have set yourself.
In conclusion: I'm sorry, Zelda. I'm sorry I messed up your game real bad. (Not that sorry though.)
...Just incidentally speaking, though, have we nailed down what @danryckert 's postponed Blight Club game punishment will be once his broken fingy is all healed? No particular reason for asking.
(P.S. I realize OtT is the abbreviation for over the top, not OoT, but I just wanted to keep saying OoT OoT. Artistic license.)
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