Guardian Acorn, Piece of Power and Tracy's Medicine

Kill Counter

Guardian Acorn, Piece of Power and Tracy's Medicine each use kill counters, which increase for every enemy you kill. These counters are kept track of when your game is saved.

• As a rule of thumb, an enemy is only added to your kill counters when you kill it and see the purple light and smoke effect.
  • There are some exceptions to this, such as each iteration of Master Stalfos in Dungeon 5 counting towards your kill counter for a total of 4 times.
  • After killing a main Ghini in the graveyard, you will get a kill for each duplicate Ghini that dies as a result of the main being killed.
  • Kills by Bow-wow do not add to the kill counter, with the exception of the extra-large swamp flowers.
  • Stomping Cheep Cheep doesn't add to the kill counter, killing them in other ways does.
  • Bombites don't count unless killed with a bomb of your own. The enemies they kill however do count.
  • Using Magic Powder on Antifairies counts as a kill.
  • Slime Eye, the boss of the third dungeon, is only 1 kill.

The process for powerup drops is as follows. Whenever you kill an enemy, increase the counter by 1. Whenever a replaceable drop table is called (which in the case of an enemy kill would be immediately after increasing the counter), check if the kill counter is higher than required. If it is, replace this drop with the powerup and subtract the required number of kills from your counter.

Guardian Acorn

A Guardian Acorn is a powerup that drops from enemies very frequently in Link’s Awakening. It makes you take half damage for a certain amount of time. Due to the fact that we already do not want to be taking damage and that it takes time to pick it up, it is regarded as a pretty universal time loss. It could be useful in Hero Mode, since you cannot heal, it would allow you to perform tricks that require you to take damage for a lesser cost, reducing required deaths, ultimately gaining time. Fortunately for most, it is relatively easy to manipulate the Guardian Acorn as its kill counter resets every time you take damage.

The Guardian Acorn will drop every 14 kills without taking damage (Possible exceptions: Dying to the Shopkeeper, drowning, falling in lava or in a pit don't reset the Acorn count, but being hit by a Bone Putter or a rising floor tile will reset the Acorn count despite you not taking any damage, getting stunned by Slime Eye, Armos Knight and the Stone Hinox also reset the Acorn count). More details on that in the Piece of Power section.

Piece of Power

A Piece of Power is a powerup that drops from enemies somewhat frequently in Link's Awakening. It gives Link +1 Sword damage, 25% increased movement speed, and extra knockback on his sword hits. The runner is able to manipulate when it drops with some careful and on-the-fly routing.

The formula for how many kills it takes for a Piece of Power drop is ( 32 + Total Heart Containers ). At the start of the game when you have 3 total heart containers, this means that a Piece of Power drops every 35 kills. Later in the game when you might have 5 total heart containers, they will drop every 37 kills. You can use this formula to your advantage to get a Piece of Power drop when you want it, such as before long boss fights like Slime Eel.

There are some intricacies to this manipulation that you should know:

• If both the Guardian Acorn and the Piece of Power can drop on the same kill, the Guardian Acorn drops.
• Many enemies use drop tables aside from the regular random rupees/hearts drop tables. These drops can't be replaced with a powerup, meaning the enemy won't drop one even if it caused you to reach the required kill count. These include: all bosses and mini-bosses, ghinis, armos, bombites, antifairies, and sparks.
• If a powerup should have dropped on kill but couldn’t, it will drop the next time any replaceable drop table is called. This could simply be the next kill, but can also happen in other circumstances. Notably, bushes/grass/rocks are not normally replaceable, but refer to the low health drop table (with increased heart drops), which IS a replaceable table, meaning that these objects will only drop a powerup when you are in low health. Crystals, however, will always be replaceable with a powerup. This is often referred to as "Piece of Power Storage" or “Acorn Storage”.
• The formula is updated dynamically to adjust to your current heart container count, meaning that adding a heart container to your total immediately adds one more required kill to your formula.

Due to the animation and text box that comes with picking up a Piece of Power, it is best to avoid picking one up in places that you don't explicitly need its effects.

Tracy's Medicine

Tracy's Medicine is an extremely useful item that powers Tracy Boosts. In her house, Tracy will sell her medicine to Link at one of two different prices: 28 rupees or 42 rupees. This price is set by whether your current kill count is an even or odd number. As such, it is possible to manipulate what the price is by knowing your total kill count.

• Even: 28 Rupees
• Odd: 42 Rupees

An exception to the above is that on every 8th purchase of Tracy's Medicine, it will only cost 7 rupees.