Action Swap

Explanation by SeedBorn

Action Swap with Shield

To get Action Swap using a Shield, you will also need a First Person Item and a Deku Stick:

1. Pull a ranged weapon (Bow or Hookshot) into Link's hand.
2. Stand in a place where Link can talk to someone, or read something, or has Tatl text.
3. Hold shield.
4. Press the Deku Stick button and press A (or C-Up for Tatl text) on the same frame, or the 1st or 2nd frame after pressing Deku Stick.

If done correctly, the item pull sound will play as Link interacts with the NPC/sign/Tatl, but the Deku Stick will not visibly enter Link's hands. Pressing the Deku Stick button again will cause Link to pull it out without a sound. From here:

• Rolling, shielding, or jump attacking will get rid of Action Swap, as will taking damage, pulling out another item, getting more text, grabbing a ledge, Marching, Dancing, reaching a load zone, or voiding. If you haven't used the Deku Stick yet (ranged weapon is on hand), you can still roll, shield, take damage, get text, grab a ledge, March and Dance without losing the stored Action Swap.
• Pressing the Deku Stick button again will shoot a lit arrow, which can be used to light torches and melt ice. This crashes the game if you have 0 arrows.
• Pressing target right after beginning to shoot the arrow will shorten the animation and reduce the stuttering.
• While still targeting, pressing the Deku Stick button again within a 3 frame window after shooting the first lit arrow will shoot a second Lit Arrow; this is known as "Double Action Swap", which is demonstrated in a video below.
• Lighting the Deku Stick on fire will cause it to start growing downwards infinitely. This can be used to strike distant objects, such as the Hidden Owl Statue.

The long stick is obtainable even without a Bow, and will not crash the game after storing the Action Swap as long as you simply press the Deku Stick button once, which will make a Deku Stick visible, at which point you can lead it to a lit torch to make it grow backwards.

Example with Lit Arrow

Why Lit Arrows

The reason that Deku Stick Action Swap produces Lit Arrows, according to ttto's research, is that every "arrow" entity (also used for Deku Bubbles and OoT's Slingshot) has an associated type, such as "Fire" or "Light" or "Lit" or "Shot from horse". The "Lit" state happens to use value 0 to denote that it's lit. Source: MM's Decompiled code You can see this being used when an arrow passes through a flame, its arrow type gets set to 0 to light it. Source: MM's Decompiled code

It's worth noting that while lit arrows are their own type of arrow, they use the Fire Arrow damage type (just like Fire Arrow does), as explained during the Spring Water Facts video.

Normally, when an arrow is shot from the Bow, it looks up its type based on the kind of item you're using which can be "PLAYER_IA_BOW_FIRE", "PLAYER_IA_BOW_ICE" etc. If you're Deku, you just shoot ARROW_TYPE_DEKU_BUBBLE (reminder that 0th Day allows Deku to shoot Elemental Arrows using only Magic Power instead of arrows).

However, when holding a Deku Stick as if it were a First Person item, this look-up gets "0". it is not known why for sure, though it’s probably because initialized variables are always 0 before they're assigned, but it could be more complex than that.

• "So! You shoot an arrow with Deku Stick, it's arrow type '0', aka it's lit as hell" -ttto

Example of "Double Action Swap"

Example with Long Deku Stick

Action Swap Anywhere

It's possible to perform Action Swap anywhere (accessible to human Link) as long as the Ocarina is not in the top left slot of the inventory, which makes Tatl available to talk after 30 seconds upon entering a scene (assuming the game's clock was not paused) or 30 seconds after deleting Ocarina. She remains interactable for the following 120 seconds, after this, she will stop trying to talk to Link. If you do interact with her, she will also not attempt it again.

The only known method of restoring the ability to talk to Tatl anywhere is concluding Link's death animation (can't be saved by a Fairy, can't be interrupted by healing mid-air. Not even Song of Time brings her back).

Ocarina deletion & its consequences

The easiest way to remove Ocarina from your inventory is to Equip Swap a bottle over the Ocarina slot, then use the C-Button in which you equipped this bottle, which will replace the Ocarina with this bottle's new content.

Other than losing the ability to play songs easily, which may be circumvented by using Ocarina Items, the other major consequences of not having Ocarina are: - Time flows faster; - With Ocarina, regular time flows 3 units per frame. While Inverted, it flows 1 unit per frame. - Without Ocarina, regular time flows 5 units per frame. While Inverted, time flows 3 units per frame.

• Termina Field becomes emptier, as it loses its music, all enemies, most grottos (except for the two next to Astral Observatory), some grass patches, all chests, rocks, ice, jars, butterflies, Gossip Stones, soft soils, fish & hidden rupees;

• Link is no longer able to reach The Moon by playing Oath to Order atop the Clock Tower;

  • Since Termina Field is different, the "Giant's Cutscene" fails to load, placing Link near the entrance to West Clock Town instead.

Reobtaining Ocarina

To obtain the Ocarina of Time again, you may use a glitch called Get Item Manipulation.

Action Swap without Shield

There are other ways of performing this trick without a Shield, which may require Tatl text or a height difference.

Safer Action Swap (from First Person)

If you're doing Action Swap using Tatl, from sources such as dialogue prompts related to the lack of Ocarina (Tatl appears on the HUD after 30 seconds) or from floor triggers (e.g. by the snowballs blocking the path to Mountain Village), it is safer to do it using your ranged weapon in First Person.

By simply going into First Person view using one of those items, you will have the same 3 frame window to press Stick followed by C-Up to get the Action Swap, (Stick+C-Up/Stick, C-Up/Stick, ,C-Up), but if you press C-Up in any of the 3 frames following that (Stick, , ,C-Up/Stick, , , ,C-Up/Stick, , , , ,C-Up), you won't lose the Tatl text, unlike if you did it using Shield.

Auto-Rolling

You usually need a Shield for Action Swap because Link can't interact with NPCs & signs if he pulls out a Deku Stick while standing, but he can if he's crouching and holding his Shield.

Instead of a using a Shield to talk to something while the Stick is being pulled, you may use Link's property of automatically rolling, if you hold forward on the Control Stick whenever he touches the floor after falling a height at least 87.5 units (for context, a backflip goes up to 21 units).

By using Deku Stick on the frame right before Link touches the floor, his auto-roll prevents the Stick animation from finishing, while still allowing Link to interact with something during the roll (NPC, sign or even Tatl, if you target an enemy after Link started the roll), which will store an Action Swap.

• This can be used to burn the curtains in Igos Du Ikana's room, by climbing the side of his throne, jumping off and asking Tatl about one of his lackeys as seen on this video.

• This can also be used to hit the Hidden Owl Statue in West Clock Town. If you have an explosive, you can perform a Long Jump and interact with the banker, as seen on this video. Even without explosives, this can happen on the First Day specifically, since during the first 24 hours, the Bomber kid near the lower part patrols a convenient area.close enough to the banker's ledge, from where Link can roll jump, as seen on this video. It's usually done at Night, but it can be done during the morning as long as you have arrows, since you'll be able to shoot a lit arrow on a torch, then use that fire to create the "long stick".

Alternatively, the necessary height difference may be obtained by bomb hovering, which must be followed by diving straight down from it, as demonstrated by PushyMisumi.

Action Swap without Shield or Text

On top of not needing a Shield, there are also 2 ways of performing Action Swap without text entirely.

Action Swap as Goron

If you have the ability to use unrestricted items as a Goron, such as through the use of the 0th Day glitch, Link can do Action Swap by simply having the First Person item on hand, followed by using a different item.

• This can be used to melt Goht's ice using Goron Mask, Bow, Bottle and Deku Stick. The procedure is detailed below:

Melting Goht's Ice

There are 3 important things you must take into Goht's room before using Goron Action Swap to melt its ice:

• Stored Song of Time
• Owl Save Storage
• "Stick Crap"

Stored Song of Time

You can store a Song of Time either by doing an Ocarina Dive and voiding out before the "Yes/No" text box comes up or by doing time stop in front of a Gossip Stone, then playing Song of Time and moving into a load zone before the text appears.

In order to maintain this property, you must not Interact with anything that produces a text box, such as NPCs, signs, locked doors, collect items, Stray Fairies, Gold Skulltulas etc.

Owl Save Storage

There are 3 known ways to acquire Owl Save Storage:

• Saving at the Hidden Owl statue in West Clock Town, located behind the upper load zone to South Clock Town, and then loading the file you saved at, which should place Link in the Mayor's Residence as seen on this video.
• Voiding out after selecting "Yes" on an Owl Statue's saving text box, which should place Link on his last entrance point as seen on this video.
• Talking to an un-hit Owl Statue while it was off-screen and having a stored Song, then moving into a load zone after selecting the bottom option while said Owl Statue was on-screen as seen on this video.

In order to maintain this property, you must neither Soar anywhere (Owl Statues or Dungeon Entrances) nor save at owl statues.

"Stick Crap"

"Item Crap" is the popular name of the trick to prevent item ammo counts from being reset upon confirming a Song of Time. In this case, you'll need to do it with Deku Sticks, so you'll equip swap Stick onto a C Button, equip "real" Stick over another button and duplicate a Bottle over the "real" Stick button. If doing it with the ESS method of bottle duping, you'll need to catch something on the bottle that went over "real" Stick after you pick up at least one Stick to have as your ammo. This way, the equip swapped Sticks will not be reset after using a Song of Time. The step by step can be seen on this video.

In order to maintain this property, you must neither equip over your button that contains the Stick ammo nor equip the item pertaining to the inventory slot over which you equip swapped the Sticks.

Performing the glitch

Once you're at Goht's room with all that, you have to:

• Equip 2 items that are usable by Goron on your C Buttons that don't contain Deku Sticks (e.g. Ocarina and Goron Mask).
• Pause, hover the cursor over one of your inventory items and press A in order to bring up a text box. After closing its descriptive text, the Song of Time text will appear.
• Unpause, confirm "Yes" on the stored song text and shortly after transform into Goron.

Note: if you take over 2 seconds to transform after confirming "Yes", it won't work. In fact, there's 1 frame after these ~2 seconds on which you transform exactly on it, it may cause the game to crash because it mixes up transformations and its models as seen on this video.

Note: the time of day slightly changes the outcome of saying Yes to Song of Time here. During day, the Song of Time text will be cleared automatically. However, during night time, the Song of Time text will stay up, preventing you from pausing (for the next step). In order to remove this text, you must either press the Ocarina button or catch something in a Bottle (such as Bugs or Fish, which you can bring on a bottle duplicated over any item slot other than the 6 regular bottle slots, since those are not reset by Song of Time). That will bring up its own text, which can be cleared normally.

• Pause and equip any type of 1st person item on one of the C Buttons that contained an item usable by Goron, then equip the remaining item usable by Goron on the C Button that contains Sticks. If done properly, you'll have your 1st person item and your Deku Sticks on undimmed C Buttons (e.g. your equips were Ocarina on C-Left, Goron Mask on C-Down, Deku Sticks on C-Right; after confirming your Song of Time and turning Goron, equip Hookshot over C-Left and then equip Goron Mask over C-Right).

Note: depending on your current way of playing the game, having one of these 1st person items on Goron's hand may crash the game. Information about which items are safe to use can be found on this video.

• Roll into at least one of the jars that contains arrows on Goht's arena in order to get some ammo (you need arrows for this, you can use any 1st person item as long as you have a quiver/Bow, just like Action Swap as human).
• Press the C Button that contains your 1st person item, that makes Goron hold it on his hand, then hold A to curl, press B to pound, then let go of A and press the C Button containing Deku Sticks before Goron lands on the floor.

If done correctly, Goron will shoot a lit arrow out of the Deku Stick that appeared on his hand while mid air, which will melt Goht's ice as seen on this video.

Entering & Exiting Water

The first known use of Action Swap in Majora's Mask happened in Woodfall Temple, as shown in Kaztalek's video, where Link side hops towards water while holding the Hero's Bow, presses Stick 3 frames before entering it, then touches land before Link automatically puts away the Bow.

• This can happen anywhere with the appropriate combination of shallow, yet swimmable, water and terrain, such as Zora Hall, as shown in this video.

• It is possible without shallow water through the use of Ice Arrows and precise timing, as shown in this video, in order to make Link pop up into the melting platform without putting away the Bow.

Other uses

• Performing Action Swap while grounded, but with any Sword item (Kokiri, Razor, Gilded or Great Fairy's Sword) instead of a Deku Stick, causes Link to shoot an arrow at himself, which deals the expected 2 points of damage, a.k.a. 1/8th of a Heart (every Heart has 16 hit points, despite only 4 being visible).

• If you do as mentioned in the bullet above, then use the Sword mid-air, pressing the Sword button once will "quick draw" the Sword. Pressing it again grants Link a Ground Jump mid-air. Pressing the Sword a third time allows Link to do an actual jump slash. This was used in the 2-pause LOTAD by Kaztalek, which on top of giving Link some extra distance on his jump, causes him to play an unused "turnaround slash" animation upon landing.

Petrie911 explains that "when Link jump slashes, it consists of two sword animations--17 is the jump and 19 is the landing. During the state transition, it simply adds 2 to the current animation to get the next one, the reason for this being that the unused flip slash is animations 16 and 18 and uses the same function. It looks like that state transition happens twice because of the double jumpslash, so instead of the landing animation it plays animation 21, which is one of the two unused turnaround slash animations".

• Action Swap is not limited to melee weapons. It can happen with multiple different items, as demonstrated on Kaztalek's Goron Action Swap video (also shown above), producing other projectiles such as Deku Bubbles (consumes 2 points of Magic Power and an arrow) and an unused projectile (consumes an arrow, looks like a thrown Deku Nut, sounds like a Slingshot and interacts with nothing).

• Action Swap can also be done after using Remote Hookshot. If you use the Empty Bottle after drinking Milk, a mixture between Bow & Bottle will appear on Link's hand, altering the behavior of the Hookshot's hitbox and potentially causing a displacement, as explained by Exodus in this video. The unused projectile mentioned in the bullet above can also be shot while in First Person using this "Bowttle", if you press the Empty Bottle button while having arrows.