ゼルダの伝説：神々のトライフォース
The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods

The Power Gloves open up several new sections of the map, primarily the path to the river's headwaters beyond the witch's hut and a cave in the northwest that leads up the mountain. It also allows for several shortcuts here and there, and access to several scattered small caves hidden under large rocks.

In a Randomizer run, even without the Gloves, you can get up the mountain if you have the Ocarina, or to the river's headwaters if you have the Flippers and use a whirlpool to warp there. Both of these also work in a regular playthrough once you get them, of course, and will be explained in further detail once they appear.

Now that Link has the Power Gloves, he can reach many new areas. One of them is a lake upstream where he meets the head Zora...

Flippers aren't required for progression until the Swamp Temple (or the Ice Temple if going there before Swamp) but you might as well get them now unless you're trying to minimize your total time.

Having the Flippers unlocks all the reachable deep water in Hyrule, much of it in Lake Hylia in the southeast, though there's still an island with something on it (a heart piece in a regular playthrough) that can't be reached. The whirlpools mentioned above function as warps, connected in pairs as indicated on this map. Three new locations of interest also open up, as detailed below.

As noted above, the Flippers and whirlpool give access to the river's headwaters even without the Power Glove, which can come in handy in a Randomizer run. The whirlpool in the swamp is also used reasonably often as a shortcut from Link's house to the witch's hit. The third warp is rarely used, but it couldn't hurt to keep it in mind.

Runners may also use the Fake Flippers glitch to circumvent logical requirements and swim without first getting the Flippers, usually starting from a screen transition on the south shore of the lake. Althernately, if they have the Pegasus Shoes, runners may set up a Water Walk from the Ice Rod cave for similar results.

Just outside the lake upstream, there's a cave hidden behind a waterfall...

If Link throws something, a large faery will appear and, if he admits to having thrown it in, will improve certain items. The Boomerang upgrades...

Link's previously blue Boomerang has turned red, sparkles when thrown, and also gets the listed improvements.

The faery will also upgrade Link's shield, with the same generic upgrade dialog as for the Boomerang.

Link's shield is now bigger, fancier, and red. It blocks everything it did before, plus ordinary (small) fireballs, but not the oversized variety.

The faery will also fill empty bottles with green potion (recovers magic), free of charge.

The ALttP Randomizer removes this dialog, instead placing two treasure chests with random items in the cave. Approaching the spring with an empty Bottle will automatically toss it in, and the faery will return it, usually with something inside. The exact contents are randomly chosen when the seed is generated.

Exploring elsewhere, Link finds an island cave in the middle of Lake Hylia...

It only gives a (mostly) meaningless luck forecast until Link throws a hundred rupees into the spring.

It seems that the luck forecast actually does have a slight effect: the worst one prevents the next ten enemies Link kills from dropping anything, while the best one instead guarantees that the next ten enemies he kills will drop something (this has no effect on enemies that can never drop anything or that always drop something anyway, and they do not count toward the ten total, either).

Every 100 total rupees, a faery appears and offers a choice...

Fill the amount in the blank. Link starts with a capacity of 10 and each wish increases it by 5, except that the final increase goes from 40 to 50.

Fill the amount in the blank. Link starts with a capacity of 30 and each wish increases it by 5, except that the final increase goes from 60 to 70.

The faery appears again with the same offer for every additional hundred rupees. If the selected carrying capacity can't increase any more:

The ALttP Randomizer replaces all that with something more like the game's usual shop interface, where you can buy either or both types of upgrades for 100 Rupees each just by taking them. Purchased upgrades return upon leaving the cave and re-entering, until you've reached the maximum levels. Racers don't usually bother coming here unless they need a quick refill, since buying a capacity upgrade also provides that.

Along the river north of Lake Hylia, a man is camping out and resting in the shade under a bridge...

He hands Link another Bottle. It couldn't hurt.

Unsurprisingly, his item is randomized in a Randomizer run. The community often refers to this man as "the hobo".

Link can now climb Mount Hebra thanks to the Power Gloves, letting him close in on the final crest in the tower at the summit. While passing through the caves, he encounters a lost old man...

As Link continues, the old man, who seems to be quite familiar with the caves, makes occasional comments.

悪いことは言わない (warui koto wa iwanai, literally "I won't say something bad/wrong") and its variants tend to appear when prefacing something that the listener really ought to pay attention to, for their own good, even though more often than not they aren't likely to want to hear it.

Going by context here and in other places I've seen the term, 魔法陣 (mahoujin) seems to refer to the intricate symbols inscribed for the performance of certain styles of magic. I can't think of a better term for them, even though there probably is one. The pentagram is one of the simplest examples.

The full purpose of the mirror is explained in more detail below.

The old man enters another cave, avoiding the falling boulders on the face of the mountain. Link follows him in to find a modest but livable dwelling.

The old man recovers Link's health, and Link proceeds onward.

After rescuing the old man, this cave is added to the list of starting locations when loading a saved game.

The ALttP Randomizer considers the Lantern logically required to rescue the old man and get his item, though the cave is fairly simple, so it's not uncommon for runners to go in and get him as soon as they have mountain access, Lantern or no. Since he also provides free healing, and the exit is much closer to where you start than in the church, runners will often start here for "old man kisses" after a save and quit once they have the Ocarina.

Just as the tower finally comes into sight, the mountain becomes too steep to climb any further. It's too soon to give up, though. One of the smaller caves has another telepathic tile:

Spectacle Rock has to be the glasses-shaped rock near the summit. From atop it, reaching the tower would be easy. The problem is how to get up there.

A little more exploration turns up something interesting: a shimmering blue tile in the center of a ring of stones. Link tries stepping on it... the screen blurs, fades to white, then fades back in, leaving Link standing in the same place... sort of. There's no sign of the shimmering tile, the ring of stones is now a ring of bushes, everything looks more barren, the tower to the north glows menacingly, and let's not forget that Link has mysteriously transformed into a humanoid pink bunny, which is particularly problematic since he can't use his sword like this... or shield, or... much of anything, really. He can't even lift light objects. Just about all he can still do is walk around.

Collecting items still works, as long as they're lying out in the open. So do talking to NPCs and pushing blocks, but not opening chests, lifting objects, or even reading signs. Armor still functions if you happen to have any. Other than that, the only items that you can still use are Bottles and the Mirror. You can reportedly also use Mudora's Writings and give away the Mushroom, but under normal circumstances, you can't be a bunny anywhere either one applies.

(There are also several ways to enter a glitched Super Bunny state that enables most non-item actions despite being a bunny, by doing various things that the game's programming didn't anticipate, such as entering a location by falling through a hole, or using the Mirror on the same frame as walking into a cave.)

Only a small portion of this strange, yet strangely familiar, world is currently accessible. Most of it is equivalent to the reachable portion of the other version of the mountain, but there are a few critical differences, including the lack of any exit.

On the plus side, there are no enemies whatsoever in this area, and with the bunny's inability to lift anything, there's not even the possibility of finding something dangerous under a bush. As if that weren't enough, the cave at bottom left even has a faery fountain for full healing.

There are two strange creatures nearby. One looks like a ball with legs and eyes:

ゴロン (goron) is the sound of something heavy rolling. コロコロ (korokoro), the "sound" of something changing frequently (like his mind), is also the sound of a small round thing (like a ball) rolling. Unlike in the US version, ball-guy makes no mention of why things are as they are... probably he has no way of knowing.

...and there's also a creature that looks like a human-sized oni (ogre is close enough if that's not a familiar concept), who is kicking ball-guy around:

Interestingly, Spectacle Rock doesn't exist in this world. There's just flat ground there. Link stands where Spectacle Rock should be and uses the Mirror... there's a transition just like the one caused by the warp tile, and Link is back to his original world, in his original form, and standing on top of Spectacle Rock! A small distortion remains, which Link can use to go back to the other world if he so chooses.

Combining the warp tile with the Mirror gives access to the top of the mountain, but only the western half. Large wooden pegs block access to the east from the bridge at the top, just as a broken bridge further down the mountain prevents crossing there. The Mirror will have further uses in the future, but with access to only a small portion of the other world, this is it for now.

In a Randomizer run, if you happen to get the Hookshot and Hammer before the Mirror, you can reach Hera Tower (assuming you have mountain access at all) by crossing to the eastern side at the broken bridge, climbing up through the cave system, and crossing back to the west on the upper bridge.

Also, if using Inverted world state with the Randomizer, the usual Mirror-based method of climbing the mountain does not apply due to certain functionalities being reversed between the two worlds. Instead, a stairway is added in the other world that leads directly to the creepy glowing tower. The usual entry restrictions for that tower are also removed, and its usual contents are swapped with the usual contents of the Hyrule Castle tower.

Not far west of the tower stands a tablet inscribed with a message in Hylian. Link uses Mudora's Writings to read it...

Not very useful now, considering Link doesn't have the Master Sword... Still, it's something to remember.

The ALttP Randomizer puts a random item on the tablet. As in the base game, you need Mudora's Writings and the Master Sword or better (or Hammer in Swordless mode) to retrieve the item. Regardless, the inscription indicates what's there ahead of time if you read it before you can get the item.

The tower has a more open layout than the previous areas. Large centipede-like creatures wander around randomly. On the higher floors are squid-like monsters that bounce Link away when he hits them. Most floors have holes in the floor that lead to the floor below, and some of these holes actually change position when Link steps on star-shaped tiles. Finally, this area introduces crystal switches, which alternately raise and lower orange and blue barriers when struck.

Just inside is another telepathic tile...

That's useful in case of getting stuck, and often comes in handy as a shortcut, especially in speedrunning. Without the Mirror, it's not uncommon to see runners do what's called taking a death warp, which is a fancy way to say dying on purpose to restart at the entrance. Using the Mirror is quicker and cleaner.

In the basement is the big key, beyond a room with attacking tiles that Link has to wait out and a four-torch puzzle.

The Randomizer community calls the room with the attacking tiles "Coffee Break Room", since retriggering the switch while Link is standing on the blue blocks gives him invulnerably by overlap until he moves off. The assault lasts long enough that the player could go do something else for a bit, if they felt like it.

The big key unlocks the door to go higher up the tower. Several floors above is another telepathic tile...

The chest with the Moon Pearl is in plain sight but out of reach. Link must shift the holes in the above floor and jump down to reach it.

Alternately, a Bomb Jump works, too, and is somewhat faster if executed correctly the first time. A Randomizer run may also give the option of Hookshotting to the chest, then using the Pegasus Shoes to bounce off of it to get back (crossing with the Hookshot will trigger the star tiles, which the Bomb Jump won't).

Jumping into a hole lined by railings on three sides in the top left corner of 5F drops Link into a large pot on 4F, through that into a large pot on 3F, through that into a large pot on 2F, and finally into an uncharted room with two faeries and a warp tile that goes back up to 5F. In a Randomizer run, using a glitch called Herapot (there are several setups, none of which I'm adequately familiar with to explain) allows a player with the Hookshot to clip directly into the pot on 2F without first climbing the tower. This also allows for skipping the big key entirely if it's in its inconvenient regular location, though that also means skipping the contents of the big chest, which can be a gamble if it's not the map or compass. Using Herapot is also somewhat faster than climbing the tower the usual way even if you have the big key, as long as you don't fail the attempt more than once or twice.

The boss, found of course on the top floor, is a giant armored centipede-like monster. Its only vulnerable point is the tip of the tail, and taking a hit or striking the head knocks Link away, which is a problem since there are holes all around. Only the sword (and Hammer if you have it) affects the boss, but at least it can't handle many hits. It moves faster when near death, and the fight resets if Link falls to the floor(s) below, but all this is generally more frustrating than truly dangerous. When slain, the boss drops a heart container as usual, and a red pendant falls into the middle of the room.

Again, the messages for collecting the last two are swapped (though translated differently in the English version) if you get them in reverse order:

For Randomizer purposes, Hera Tower contains a map, compass, small key, and big key (if these aren't shuffled beyond their usual dungeons), and two other items. Two locations never have any requirements beyond entering the dungeon, the chest in the basement past Coffee Break Room always requires the Lantern or Fire Rod to light torches, and everything else, including the boss and whatever it drops, logically require the big key. If that's in its vanilla location, a fire source is logically required to clear the dungeon and check all three item locations on the upper floors, otherwise they have no requirements beyond entering the dungeon.

If you're lucky, Coffee Break Room only leads to the map or compass, or, better yet, the small key needed to go down there in the first place, so you're not even tempted to try checking (on typical Randomizer settings, keys are allowed to lock themselves in as long as they don't lock you out of anything else).

On the way down, Link can stop by the old man's cave.