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Palaces Configuration Reference

initsu edited this page Oct 13, 2025 · 4 revisions

Palaces

Controls various properties about various palaces. Regardless of settings, link starts at the North Palace, and must beat Dark Link in the Great Palace to be victorious.

Normal Palace Style

Sets the palace generator for palaces 1 through 6. See Palace Styles for more details.

GP Palace Style

Sets the palace generator for the Great Palace. See Palace Styles for more details about palace styles.

Shorten

If selected, palaces will be fewer rooms. The exact way this is handled varies by palace style, but on average the palace is 25% to 50% fewer rooms than otherwise.

Minimum Path To Dark Link

If you think a short Great Palace at the end of the game is anticlimactic, this is the flag for you! The shortest path to Dark Link (and to finish the game) will be at least this many rooms from the entrance. (Doesn't affect Thunderbird.)

The Max option depends on the palace style and whether it's shortened. For example, Reconstructed palaces have connectors that lead anywhere in the palace. This often makes the shortest path shorter, so the max has to be lower.

This increases seed generation time if it's set high, as the palace will have to be regenerated a lot. Setting it very high also makes it likely the Great Palace is more linear.

Item Rooms Per Palace

Lets you select the number of item rooms per palace: 0-2 or Random.

  • Extra palace items (beyond the first) default to 200 P-Bags, but can be replaced or shuffled depending on other settings.
  • Vanilla palaces: Extra item rooms replace random dead ends.

0 Item Rooms Per Palace:

All palace items move to minor item locations.

  • If needed, the "Include P-Bag Caves in Item Shuffle" setting will be overriden to make room.
  • If there aren't enough minor items to replace (based on the number of starting items and heart containers), you will get a popup saying the flags are incompatible.
  • If the item count depends on indeterminate flags, those flags will be re-rolled until valid.

Random Item Rooms Per Palace

Random Item Rooms: Each palace gets 0–3 item rooms (varies by palace length/style).

Clouds in the entrance screen and Ironknuckle statues by the entrance elevator indicate how many items there are in the palace.

Random Item Count Per Palace P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6
Shortened 0-1 0-2 0-1 0-2 0-2 0-2
Full-size 0-2 0-2 0-2 0-2 0-3 0-3
Extra Palace Style Limitations P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6
Vanilla palace style 1 max 1 max 1 max 1 max 1 max 1 max
Vanilla Shuffled palace style 2 max 2 max 2 max 2 max 2 max 2 max

Include Vanilla Rooms

If selected, the normal zelda 2 rooms will be available for palace generation. Note that rooms from palaces 1-6 may be found in any of those palaces. Has no effect on vanilla or vanilla shuffle styles.

Include 4.0 Rooms

If selected, the first batch of community-designed custom rooms from version 4.0 will be available. Has no effect on vanilla or vanilla shuffle styles.

Include 5.0 Rooms

If selected, the second batch of community-designed custom rooms from version 5.0 will be available. Has no effect on vanilla or vanilla shuffle styles.

Thunderbird Required

If selected, the path to Dark Link in Great Palace must go through Thunderbird's room. The thunder spell will be required to beat the game. When unselected, Thunderbird still appears in GP, and may be required anyway if the palace style or randomized layout requires it.

Remove Thunderbird

If selected, Thunderbird will not appear in Great Palace. For vanilla styles, his room will be removed and bypassed. For generated styles, one additional normal room will appear instead.

Use Custom Rooms File

If selected, rooms will be based on the file CustomRooms.json instead of PalaceRooms.json . You may edit this file to control which rooms you want to use, or create your own rooms that can appear. For more details, contact Ellendar or ask on the Discord.

Number of Palaces to Complete

This is the number of gems you start the game with and therefor the number of palaces that must be completed before being able to enter the Great Palace. The number of required palaces is a random value between Min and Max (inclusive of both endpoints).

Restart at Palaces on Game Over

If selected, on Game Over (or Up+A) you will restart at the beginning of the palace. If unselected, this will happen only in GP (like in vanilla)

50/50 Statue Cycles Between Jar and Knight

If selected, 50/50 statues in palaces that include them will always alternate between dropping a red jar or spawning a red Ironknuckle. If unselected, the spawning is randomly determined each stab like in vanilla.

Reduce Dripper Variance

Tired of waiting for drippers to drop an enemy? After 7 red drips, this forces the 8th drip to be blue. (The count is shared between all drippers.)

Change Palace Palettes

Changes the color palette of each palace to a new random one.

Randomize Boss Item Drop

Changes the item received from defeating a boss from a key to any small item at random (red jar, blue jar, key, 1-up, or any of the 4 p-bags)

No Duplicate Rooms (By Layout)

Prevents palace generation from creating duplicate rooms. For this setting, a room is considered a duplicate if the layout of the room is the same as another, ignoring enemy sets. Has no effect on vanilla palaces. If the number of available palace rooms is too small (like when using only one room group), duplicate rooms may be included anyway as it would otherwise likely be impossible to produce a palace. Does not completely prevent duplicates for Random Walk generated palaces.

No Duplicate Rooms (By Layout/Enemies)

Prevents palace generation from creating duplicate rooms. For this setting, all different variants of a room (same layout with different enemy sets, Fairy/No Fairy, etc.) are not considered duplicates of each other. Has no effect on vanilla palaces. Does not completely prevent duplicates for Random Walk generated palaces.

Blocking Rooms in Any Palace

Allows rooms that require an item or spell to traverse to appear in any palace. Otherwise, palaces can only contain blocks according to the following table.

Blockers by Palace Locked Door Glove Downstab Upstab Jump Fairy
Palace 1 ✔️
Palace 2 ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Palace 3 ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Palace 4 ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Palace 5 ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Palace 6 ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Great Palace ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️

Boss rooms exit to

Selects whether the boss room exits into the overworld (like in vanilla), or more palace rooms. This can be selected for all palaces, Randomly per palace, or Random but the same selection for all palaces. When a palace continues outside, there will always be an Ironknuckle statue right before the exit like in vanilla. When the palace continues, that statue will be removed.

If the palace continues after the boss, palace item rooms may be behind the boss room.

Harder Carock

Tired of just ducking in the corner and blocking? This option enables carock shooting high/low/wave beams, but he won't teleport on top of you anymore.

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