How the dragons move in this game is critical to several categories, including All Main Quests, 100%, and Master Sword. It is potentially even critical to All Shrines, which probably needs reliable dragon horns for speedfood.
Therefore, compiling what we know about the dragons in one place seems useful.
Firstly, their rails:
The Light Dragon has separate "High" and "Low" rails. On the high rail, she typically flies around 2200 units up. On the low rail, she typically flies around 700 units of height. In both cases, her route is essentially identical. She also has a "GSI" rail, which she flies around on until GSI is complete. Finally, she has two rails that control her movement after the two cutscenes for the final dragon tear.
Other than the Light Dragon's rails for the final dragon tear, position on the rail is calculated as soon as a new game starts. So, if you wait for 10 minutes in the prologue section, all dragons will be 10 minutes further into their routes. This includes the Light Dragon's GSI rail and the low and high rails that she switches to later.
However, we do not have concrete start locations on any rails at this time.
These cycle durations are due to Venick:
Farosh:
- Above Ground: 15:05
- Below Ground 19:40
- Total Cycle: 34:45
Dinraal:
- Above ground: 22:55
- Below Ground: 24:55
- Total Cycle: 47:50
Naydra:
- Above Ground 16:25
- Below Ground 12:00
- Total Cycle 28:25
And I recorded the Light Dragon's Low Rail cycle at 1:51:20.
Outside of strange observations below, dragons move unless
- The game is paused
- You are watching a cutscene or talking to an NPC
- You are inside a shrine
The earliest report of dragon teleportation I can find is this discord comment from ddurq. I am not aware of this report being replicated.
During route tests and runs of the Master Sword category, we have since observed several instances of the Light Dragon teleporting about 50 minutes forwards on her route. Based on repeated observation during direct tests and previous runs, the expected location after normal movement in a master sword run taking about two hours is that the Light Dragon will be between wind temple and the Mayam shrine. However, she has been repeatedly observed just south/southeast of GSI. This appears consistent on some routes.
I don't have any coherent theories about what makes this happen, but some combination of visiting Mayam and doing EHS (Early Horned Statue, which involves zuggle overloading) seems plausible. I'll be doing some further tests that never go to Mayam soon.
Following are links and notes to various VODs demonstrating typical or strange behavior. Each VOD is self-contained, so that analysis of what happens in the VOD should not require trusting the author that "this file started from new game and I played for 1 hour before this clip" or anything like that. Please reply here or ping @AbelianGrape in the discord server if you have self-contained VODs that could contribute to this research effort. I will review them and incorporate them here if appropriate.
First test notes:
- JKTKops, twitch
- Did EHS, then failed to find dragon for a while. Only then saved tree and confirmed teleportation.
Second test notes:
- JKTKops, twitch
- Saved tree and observed teleportation BEFORE doing EHS
- Did EHS while quest was active, dragon remained near GSI.
Third test notes:
- JKTKops, twitch
- Started from new game, but not a fresh boot!
- Went straight to save tree after GSI and grabbing some items to help. Not quickly.
- Observed normal dragon location.
- Reloaded to before saving tree, performed EHS, then saved tree again.
- Observed normal dragon location.
Fourth test notes:
- JKTKops, twitch
- Confirms that Light Dragon position is calculated at least starting from Room of Awakening.
Fifth test notes:
- JKTKops, twitch
- Went to Mayam much earlier than normal via ABCS.
- Did EHS twice due to failing to clip inbounds the first time.
- Searched for dragon manually, no saving the tree; found by GSI.
Run notes:
- AbelianGrape, YouTube
- Same route as test 1, except did EHS earlier in the route.
- Dragon found near GSI.
my run. did a similar route to AbeliamGrape and dragon was in the same spot, I was 15 minutes late but the dragon didn't seem to be affected too much by it
Dragon Behavior post-GSI (sorry for the new src weird formatting) 2 parts bc text limit
Here are some of my initial findings and observations on Light Dragon behavior before and after leaving GSI.
It is known that the Light Dragon has a specific track she follows during GSI, and a specific high and low track she follows immediately after the transition from GSI to the full open world.
During GSI the Light Dragon can be seen circling N of Temple of Time in a set pattern. In my testing it appears that the transition from GSI track to “high” track occurs right after the golden light cutscene finishes. After completing GSI, there are a few branching conditions I have observed the Light Dragon to be in during this transition.
- Traveling NW towards Rito Village.
-can load on W side of GSI track and slowly fly W towards the high track in the direction of Rito.
-can load on W side of GSI track and suddenly teleport directly to the closest position on the high track (which always ends up being where the rail flys over Carok Bridge).
-can load directly onto the high track from end of cutscene.
- Traveling E towards Zora’s Domain.
-can load on E side of GSI track and slowly fly E/NE towards the high track, roughly in the direction of Akkala Citadel.
-can load on E side of GSI track and suddenly teleport directly to the closest position on the high track (which always ends up being where the rail flys over Trilby Valley).
-can load directly onto the high track from end of cutscene.
- Doesn’t Appear at All
-can be seemingly invisible, but is still actually in one of the above positions, just not fully loaded in. Strangely enough, it seems the Master Sword in LD’s head will always load in, even if LD herself doesn’t, so with a good eye and Purah scope, her location can be determined by looking for the sparkle of the sword and/or the blue/yellow trail coming from it (however the trail may not be visible if LD is too far already).
^this is LD position still on GSI track, slowly heading W.
^this is LD position after having loaded in or teleported W directly to high track.
Weird Unloading Stuff
There are certain times during GSI where the LD seems to unload and then reload back in, usually tied to text/cutscenes. The first instance of this is when receiving the Purah Pad; LD will simply never appear in the background. The second instance of which I am aware is the sequence between opening the 4 heart door and touching the golden light. This instance more directly impacts LD’s state after GSI, as she seems to not always load back in correctly, as described above. However this weird load in does not seem to affect her position at all, only the visual. While in this visually unloaded state, coming close to LD will cause her full body to load in as normal. If LD is unloaded, reloading a save will cause her to load back in permanently.
^LD not loaded in, but Master Sword always is loaded
LD Teleport to High Rail
As described above, sometimes LD will load in after the cutscene still on the GSI rail. This actually seems way more common than I had originally thought; in analysis of fresh file RTA runs, she loaded in on GSI rail in close to, if not all runs. It is still unknown to me why she sometimes loads already on the high track, although anecdotally this seems to have only happened in testing where I reloaded a save right before opening the 4 heart door.
If constantly observed, LD will fly at normal pace towards the closest position on the high rail to her current position. However, it seems consistent that if player vision of LD is obscured for any longer than 3s or so, she will teleport immediately to that position on the high rail. In testing LD has teleported due obscured vision from looking away, blocked by a Zonai device, a cloud in the sky, or fast travel.
In terms of fast travel, this seems to be a unique case, as LD has been observed to both teleport after a fast travel, and remain in the same position. It is unknown to me if in instances where she stays in place after a fast travel, if she then teleports later or not. (See ZrFelps 1:43:52 run for an example of this)
LD can also teleport while in player view, although this seems to usually happen almost right after first coming into view.
Perhaps the most important question is how this teleport affects her position at the end of a Master Sword RTA run, and this definitely needs more testing/observation.
^stars represent GSI track, red pin is LD position when reaching high track.
How LD Position is Determined
It seems that LD position after GSI depends on her current position on GSI rail at the time the golden light cutscene is activated; namely that if she is moving E she will head E (Zora’s Domain), and if she is moving W she will head W (Rito Village). This would mean that the speed in which GSI is completed has an impact on her position for the rest of the route, namely that if GSI is completed within different time windows, LD will be in a completely different part of her route. As LD GSI track is timed to be around 6m40s per cycle, this should leave a window of about 3m20s for each direction she faces. Remember that this time doesn’t include time inside shrines, in cutscenes, loading zones, or text boxes where other objects freeze. This time does include, however, the time between 4heart door and golden light cutscene, even though she is currently unloaded.
In routes I looked at where runners’ camera position allowed for LD to be seen, and my own fresh boot RTA test runs, she would be moving E at anywhere from the 31m31s mark to the 36m33s mark (this mark being when runners grab the Large Zonai Charge after Nachoyah in the current route). In my tests I confirm LD position by ascending to top of ToT right before opening the 4 heart door.
The key point for MS RTA is that if LD is moving E at the end of GSI, she will head towards Zora’s Domain, putting her in position to be around Zonai Forge at the end of the current route (if completed in reasonable time, otherwise she will be further W, closer to GSI). If LD is moving W at the end of GSI, she will end up somewhere around Wind Temple at the end of the route.
So I still want to find out if there is a difference between looking at LD/LD teleporting/not looking at LD at all, after GSI, for MS RTA runs. I also want to know if there’s a way we can determine if LD teleports even when we are not looking, and if this affects the route. But at the moment, my guess is that in fresh file RTA runs, LD will teleport to the high rail no matter what, although i haven’t confirmed this yet.
There are also interesting inferences that could be drawn from knowing LD position at the end of gsi, mainly that if a future MS RTA runner completes GSI too fast, they could be seeing a completely different LD position at the end of the route.
^LD position in my test run when Large Charge chest is opened at 31m31s.
^LD position in my test run right before opening 4 heart door, somewhere close to 33m20s (for context, my final GSI time in this test was 33m 58s. test run followed current MS RTA route.)
Here is a link to a scuffed google sheets where i tracked completion times and LD location of several runs.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z0-oUIDSjX5y5nBIeSeM6ZrSrkKStCXoApQcmpDNIdw/edit?usp=sharing
Glitchless categories have now been added to the board! Many runners have already been running various glitchless categories for quite a while; so just as a general reminder for old and new runners alike, before you submit please take some time to review the new ruleset under Show Rules -> Category
