Empty Lake Hylia

How To

This glitch can only be done between finishing Lanayru Twilight and beating Lakebed Temple. During Plumm's minigame, clip out of bounds and die, either by voiding as many times as needed or by bonking in the place shown in the video below to land and take 4 hearts of damage. Link will respawn in Lake Hylia without the water and some other actors loaded.

This glitch can be used to enter Lakebed Temple without Zora Armor or water bombs even after raising the water level during Lanayru Twilight.

How It Works

Information By Dragonbane

It abuses a global system added for what what seems to be purely wagon escort so a void/game over during the escort would put you back into the same escort state. The escort state is merely temporary (triggered via a state override) and temporary states are supposed to be cleared by a void/death. Which would end the escort if you voided which obviously would be a glitch so they added that system. Except its a global thing and not just for Hyrule Field.

The way it works is that if on a loading instance there is no state override set (next state needs to be FF = default, always the case when you void or die), the default next area state according to story progress should be 0, and you have the flag set that indicates you died/voided (the flag is what makes the camera turn around Link after you spawn so it might be set in a few other cases) then the Stage takes the prior state you had instead of the determined default state for the area.

State 0 for Hyrule Field is post twilight so it makes sense. Lake Hylia post twilight is also state 0, it changes again after beating Lakebed and warping the cannon. Only between after twilight and beating Lakebed Empty Lake Hylia glitch works since that’s all default state 0.

If you die in the Plumm Mini-game it sends you back to Lake Hylia instead of the same area with a special game over override which still has the flag of the camera turning around Link after you stand up. So that triggers the glitch and Lake Hylia is put into the state you had prior (=the Plumm Mini-game state from Zora’s river which is state 4). State 4 in Lake Hylia is not defined thus none of the state dependent actors are loaded including the water. So you get Empty Lake Hylia glitch as a result

Last updated 10/08/2023 – anorakkis