LoZ: aLttP | Understanding Damage

Continuing to adhere to the "100% No Save and Quit" route off of zeldaspeedruns.com, you spend the majority of the run wearing the green tunic as your primary protection. Following this route you skip grabbing the blue tunic in the Ice Palace. Why such madness? Why leave yourself unprotected? By doing so you shave a mess of time off of the speed run to avoid back tracking and extra screwing around (if you are speed running that is).

If you are not speed running, get the blue tunic when you can and carry on your quest. If you are speed running (or striving to speed run) and will be under protected, it's not a bad idea to understand how damage works in LoZ: aLttP. I always assumed that each grade of better "armor" just increased over all damage reduction. Not true. Strategywiki has a great break down by each enemy and boss as to how they hurt you and you hurt them using various weapons.

If you are speed running for real, chances are you have some serious skill in the game and you are well aware of how many hits you can take from which enemies and bosses. If you are me, you are dying all over the place while wearing the green tunic because you are a magnet for damage. I needed to do some research to to understand how I could avoid being a damage pin cushion.

Let's start here: 1 full heart can count as our standard unit of measure for damage link can take as a whole number. The smallest possible increment of actual damage is 1/4 of a heart.

The Desert Vultures will deal 1 heart of damage to Link in the green tunic, 1/2 heart of damage if wearing the blue tunic, and 1/4 of a heart of damage if wearing the red tunic. In many cases, the blue tunic will reduce damage by 1/2 and the red tunic will reduce damage by 1/4. You would think that you could assume that this scale could be applied to all damage, it can't. Some enemies cause fixed quantities of damage regardless of your defenses. The Armos Knights will deal 1/2 a heart of damage regardless of what "armor" you are wearing and Ganon will deal 8, 6, and 3 hearts worth of damage for green/blue/red armor respectively.

The tunics don't always math out to an exact figure for protection in this game, but understanding the break down and where you can't afford to take hits is key to running the game in the green tunic.