ALTTPR Entrance Shuffle: What Each Setting Moves

Turn on entrance shuffle in the A Link to the Past Randomizer and the door of the Kakariko shop can open into a fairy fountain. That is the alttpr.com options page's own example, and it is the gentle version. Walk off the edge of a screen and you still arrive where you expect, but the doors, cave mouths and holes are all in play, and how far the mixing goes depends on which of five settings you pick.

Our ALTTPR beginner guide mentions entrance shuffle once, in passing. This guide covers what each setting mixes, what never moves, what the site changes when you switch it on, and how the in-game hints change to help you find your way.

The sources are the alttpr.com options page and update notes, the generator's public source on GitHub, and the source of a second program that actually builds entrance seeds, which the next sections explain. The live site does not run the public source byte for byte (the presets section has an example), so read the code-level details as the public build's behaviour.

What entrance shuffle moves

The options page sums the setting up in one line: it randomizes where entrances lead. Entrances are sorted into types, and each setting decides which types get mixed together. A few rules hold on all five settings:

• Overworld transitions are never randomized. Walk off the edge of a screen and you reach the screen next to it, same as always.
• Link's House stays put, and so does the south-facing door into the back of the Kakariko Tavern. The entrance program's README calls Link's House "never shuffled as a design decision", and its code pins the tavern's back door with a note that it "cannot be shuffled yet". Inverted is the one exception for Link's House, covered further down.
• Outside Inverted, the Chris Houlihan room still lets you out at Link's House. The code ties that room's exit to Link's House on purpose.

Two more rules hold everywhere except where a setting says otherwise. A cave or dungeon with several entrances stays coupled: leave by the door you came in and you are back where you started. And all of its doors stay in one world, so it never links the Light World to the Dark World. Crossed drops the second rule and Insanity drops both.

A different program builds the seed

Every other ALTTPR setting we have covered is placed by one generator, the PHP code in sporchia's alttp_vt_randomizer repository. Pick any entrance shuffle other than None and the site's controller hands the whole seed to a different program: the ALttP Entrance Randomizer, written in Python. The generator's composer.json pins it to a fork, cassidoxa/ALttPEntranceRandomizer, at a commit from November 2023. The v31 update notes on alttpr.com describe the result as a "unified interface" for the item randomizer, the entrance randomizer and Enemizer.

That handoff has three practical consequences:

• The logic is that program's own. Our Inverted, Retro and Swordless guides read the generator's No Glitches rule files. On an entrance seed the Python program places the items against its own copy of the rules, and the generator skips its own beatable check. The source comment says "E.R. is responsible for verifying winnability of itself."
• It picks the bosses too. With boss shuffle on, the generator passes Simple, Full or Random to the Python program under its own names (basic, normal and chaos), then reads the boss list back from that program's spoiler. The slot rules in our boss shuffle guide come from the generator's code; we have not checked the Python program's boss code against them.
• Some settings have nothing to map onto. The handoff sends a keysanity flag for Full Shuffle dungeon items and nothing else about dungeon items, and it sends no item placement value at all. That lines up with the settings the site changes for you, which is next.

The site changes four settings for you

The randomizer page enforces these rules as soon as you pick Simple, Restricted, Full, Crossed or Insanity. The live site's script and the public source agree on all four:

It works the other way round too. Choose Basic placement, MC or MCS Shuffle, Crowd Control, or a glitch level other than None or No Logic after picking an entrance shuffle, and the entrance shuffle drops back to None.

The Basic rule matters most if you are coming from the beginner preset. Basic is the setting that keeps items out of spots that need niche knowledge, and the entrance program has no equivalent setting. Accessibility, the goal, both crystal counts, the item pool, item functionality and the sword mode all pass straight through. Retro is sent to the Python program as Open with its retro switch turned on.

Simple to Insanity, side by side

Each setting on the options page is written as the one before it plus one change, so they stack:

The README for the entrance program gives the same ladder in a sentence each. Restricted "freely connects remaining entrances", Full "mixes cave and dungeon entrances freely", Crossed lets "connector caves and dungeons" link the Light and Dark Worlds, and Insanity "decouples entrances and exits from each other".

Simple keeps the map's shape

Simple is the version where the overworld still makes sense once you learn which door is which.

Dungeons only trade with dungeons. On Open and Standard, nine single-entrance dungeon doors go into one pool: Eastern Palace, Tower of Hera, Palace of Darkness, Swamp Palace, Thieves' Town, Ice Palace, Misery Mire, the final section of Skull Woods, and Ganon's Tower. Any of those doors can lead into any of those dungeons.

Three four-door dungeons trade as whole blocks. Hyrule Castle, Desert Palace and Turtle Rock each keep their four entrances together and swap with each other door for door. The options page's example: if Hyrule Castle and Desert Palace swap, Desert Palace's main entrance leads to Hyrule Castle's main entrance, its left entrance to the castle's left entrance, and so on. Outside Inverted, the code counts Agahnim's Tower as Hyrule Castle's fourth door. If the castle's block lands on the desert, Agahnim's Tower is behind Desert Palace's north door.

Skull Woods stays in the woods. Its front doors shuffle with each other and its holes shuffle with each other, all inside the Skull Woods area. Only the final section, the way to the boss, joins the dungeon pool.

Caves keep their shape. Single-entrance caves and houses trade with each other. Caves with two entrances trade with other two-entrance caves, so a pair of doors that used to be linked, such as the two doors of the Kakariko Elder's House, is still linked by some two-door cave. The README's description: outside Light World Death Mountain, "interiors are shuffled but still connect the same points on the overworld."

Light World Death Mountain is its own little pool. Its entrances only shuffle with each other. The options page says the cave where the Old Man is lost, the way up the mountain, is not randomized, but in the pinned code both of that cave's doors are shuffled inside this pool along with the rest. Restricted is the step that throws the whole group into the general pool.

Holes stay paired with their cave. Drop into a hole and walk out, and you come out at the cave door that belongs with that hole, wherever the drop actually took you.

Ganon's Tower and the Pyramid are always in play

The entrance program has a switch that keeps Ganon's Tower and the Pyramid Hole out of the shuffle. Its help text: "If set, the Pyramid Hole and Ganon's Tower are not included entrance shuffle pool." Including them is the default, and the generator's handoff never sends that switch. So on every alttpr.com entrance seed built from the public source, both are in play.

Outside Inverted, Ganon's Tower is one of the nine single-entrance dungeon doors on Simple and Restricted, and from Full upward it goes into the general pool. The tower's door on Death Mountain may lead somewhere else entirely, and Ganon's Tower may be behind a door you walked past an hour ago.

The Pyramid joins the holes. From Simple to Crossed, holes move as pairs with their cave door, and on an Open seed there are eight pairs outside Skull Woods: Kakariko Well, the Magic Bat's cave, the cave east of the graveyard, the Lost Woods hideout, the Lumberjacks' tree, the Sanctuary and its grave, your uncle's secret passage, and the Pyramid. Standard pins the uncle's passage, which leaves seven. Ganon's room can sit under any of those holes, and the Pyramid Hole itself can drop you somewhere else.

That matches a line on the options page. Fast Ganon normally makes "the hole leading to Ganon" permanently open, "except if entrances are randomized". In the entrance program the Pyramid Hole needs Agahnim's second defeat whatever the goal, and the ROM it writes leaves the hole closed. On a Fast Ganon entrance seed, your job is finding which hole drops into Ganon's room. If it turns out to be the Pyramid Hole after all, you need Agahnim's second defeat.

Insanity cuts the way back

Insanity keeps everything Crossed does and then breaks the return trip. Entrances and exits are decoupled: go in one door, come back out, and you can be somewhere else entirely. The options page adds three details:

• Single-entrance caves still let you out where you came in. The README says the same.
• Holes are no longer paired with a cave door.
• Skull Woods stays in the woods, apart from the final section.

That last line is where the sources disagree. The README implies otherwise: it says holes stay paired and the front of Skull Woods stays confined "in all modes other than Insanity". The Insanity code in the pinned commit matches the README. It lists the Skull Woods holes alongside Kakariko Well and the rest in one hole pool, and puts the Skull Woods doors into the general door lists. If you are playing Insanity, trust the spoiler log or your own notes over the options page on this one.

Standard and Inverted bend the rules

Standard keeps the prologue playable. In every setting the code pins your uncle's secret passage, and the options page says Hyrule Castle is not randomized on Standard. That holds for Simple and Restricted, where the castle's whole block stays home. From Full upward the code only pins the castle's front door, so the escape still starts where it should, while the castle's two other doors go into the pool with everything else.

Inverted moves the house. The options page notes that on Inverted, Link's House "exits to a random overworld location (instead of at the Bomb Shop)", and both Link's House and the Bomb Shop are randomized. The dungeon blocks change too: on Simple and Restricted the code makes Ganon's Tower Hyrule Castle's fourth door and puts Agahnim's Tower in the single-entrance pool instead. Everything our Inverted guide says about Link's House sitting where the Bomb Shop normally is assumes no entrance shuffle.

The hints spend up to eight slots on doors

The Hints option still works with entrance shuffle on, but the hints come from the entrance program, because the generator writes that program's patch over the ROM. If hints are on, the sign north of Link's House reads "The telepathic tiles can have hints!"

The program has 20 hint slots: 15 telepathic tiles (Zelda Wiki calls them Telepathy Tiles) and five lines of Dark World dialogue. On an entrance seed it fills them in this order:

A door hint reads "X leads to Y". In an entrance seed that saves you a walk, because the alternative is going through the door yourself. The v30.5 update notes recorded the entrance program's update to v0.6.2 as "now with more hints".

Where you will run into it

Presets. The live site's settings list two presets with entrance shuffle:

Crosskeys is also the example of the live site and the public source drifting apart: the public config gives it 100% Locations, while the live settings list 100% Inventory.

The Daily Challenge. The weights in the generator's public config leave entrance shuffle off 92 times in 100. Simple, Restricted and Full get 2 each, and Crossed and Insanity 1 each.

The spoiler log. When a seed comes with one, the site's spoiler viewer adds an Entrances tab listing the doors and where each one leads. Without one, the hints and your own notes are what you get.

Everything else we have written about the game is on the A Link to the Past coverage hub. For vanilla geography, which is what you are trying to rebuild in your head, start with the Light World guide and the Dark World guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• Start with Simple. Dungeons only trade with dungeons, caves keep their shape, and holes still come out at their own cave.
• Expect Advanced placement. The site switches Basic off, along with glitch logic, MC and MCS Shuffle, and Crowd Control.
• Remember Agahnim's Tower travels with Hyrule Castle on Simple and Restricted, as the castle's fourth door (Ganon's Tower takes that role on Inverted).
• Don't expect Ganon's Tower on Death Mountain. The public build always puts it in the shuffle, and the Pyramid Hole joins the holes.
• On Fast Ganon, find the hole into Ganon's room. The Pyramid Hole stays shut until Agahnim's second defeat.
• Leave Link's House and the tavern's back door off your notes. They never move, except Link's House on Inverted.
• Turn hints on. Up to eight of them tell you where a door leads.
• On Insanity, write everything down. Exits no longer lead back, and the sources disagree on Skull Woods.