Magic Cape Tech
Certain game actions pause the magic drain of the cape. In particular, magic will not be consumed while grabbing a wall (or other such object), or while actively slashing your sword. This is commonly used in rooms such as Ganon's Tower Tile Room, but can also be used to good effect during situations such as a Vitreous fight.
Note that magic will still drain slowly (one point of magic every two slashes) even when slashing optimally without any pauses.
The magic cape has an internal cooldown counter (RAM address 7E02E2) that has the following logic:
- Cooldown is set to 20 when activating the cape.
- Cooldown is set to 32 when deactivating the cape.
- Cooldown is set to 32 when loading a file.
- Cooldown is set to 32 when mirroring to the entrance of a dungeon.
- Cooldown is decremented by 1 each frame that the cape is selected as the active Y item and you are in a state where you could activate the cape with a Y press.
The last bullet point in particular means that cape cooldown is not reduced while dashing, bonking, transitioning screens, walking on auto-stairs, etc.
The cape cannot be activated or deactivated using the Y button while the cooldown counter is greater than 0. However, it can still be deactivated by other means -- most notably, via quickswap or menu.
This cooldown should be kept in mind (and ideally negated in advance) anytime before using the cape; this is especially important in scenarios such as boss fights when immediate cape usage may be vital, or when the cape is used multiple times within a room a series of rooms.
When deactivating the cape, Link will enter a "cape poof state" for 24 frames. Link can still use his sword or Y items during this time, and can charge dashes, but cannot walk normally using the d-pad.
More specifically, this appears to be governed (or at least correlated with) the RAM values at 7E03B5 (walking) and 7E03B4 (dashing), which decrement from 7 to 0 before rolling back to 7, and the RAM value at 7E083D, which cycles between 3 values.
Cape poof state has slightly different properties if the cape is deactivated by pressing Y/running out of magic versus quickswapping/menuing to a different item -- in most cases, the latter is preferred.
(The boots are required to use this technique)
If poof state is entered by switching away from the cape (via quickswap or menu), then tapping A while holding a direction during poof state will cause Link to walk in that direction for the remainder of poof state. This can be used to effectively bypass the normal poof state movement restriction. Link will only start moving once the A button is released, so you'll normally want to tap it as briefly as possible.
Note that Link will be unable to change his walk direction for the remainder of poof state unless A is tapped again.
This technique can also be used to avoid the stationary pause normally associated with transitioning out of bunny form after being hit by a bunny beam.
Cancelling a dash during poof state will put Link into a poof walk in the direction of the dash, meaning Link will forcibly walk in that direction for the remainder of poof state. To avoid this (usually unwanted) behavior, a poof walk can be started in a different direction (by tapping A while holding a direction), allowing Link to change directions immediately instead of waiting for poof state to end.