Arbiter's Grounds poe gate skip (tool assisted demonstration)
404This is a TAS done on vanilla TP. It's not at all optimized, but I just wanted to show that it was finally possible. Technically I did hack in my hidden skills value to give myself shield attack because I didn't realize I'd need it when I started, but otherwise this is without cheats/hacks. This will save around 4 minutes on the next any% or All Dungeons TAS.
Many thanks to all the people who have put time and effort into brainstorming and testing ideas for this over the years. This was very much a community effort. I think the only idea I personally contributed to this working version was the method of getting onto the out of bounds seam.
There are several ways this could be done faster for an actual TAS. The manip to get the bubble past the gate at the beginning could be much faster, the step clip can be done with a nearby skull instead of a pot from across the room, and the position and angle setup for crossing the sand could be much faster. I already found a way to cross the sand as wolf (way more precise than it seems like it would be) instead of using shield attack, which is good because getting shield attack would have cost around 3 minutes for any%/AD, eating most of the time the skip saves. This also means this trick doesn't add any items for low%. You can see what that looks like here: • Crossing sand as wolf for poe gate skip
Why won't you (edit: WILL you) be seeing this method in RTA runs?
Getting the bubble behind the gate is completely RNG-dependent and is not a likely thing. Could easily spend minutes or more just trying to make that happen. (edit: I solved this • AG - clawshot bubble through poe gate )
The step clip probably isn't that hard with a setup. (edit: bdamja made a setup • Consistent poe gate step clip setup with p... )
Lining up to walk across the sand is incredibly precise. Link's x position needs to be roughly between -750 and -749.993. That's under 0.01 units. For reference, when you hold the control stick up and make Link run on flat ground, he's moving 23 units every frame. (edit: isaac made a setup • Poe Gate Skip Setup: Crossing the Sand )
After boomeranging the bubble at the end, its movement is random. Sometimes it doesn't come within targeting range at all. When it does come within targeting range, it needs to be close enough to give the Finish prompt but far enough towards the load zone that Link won't get stuck in the corner to the side of the gate during the ending blow, as there's no way out from there. When the Finish prompt does appear, it usually only appears for a small number of frames, so this would be both RNG-heavy and difficult to execute.