Equip Swap can equip any item over certain slots in the inventory, which is used for duplicating items (notably Zora eggs) and for preserving items that would otherwise be erased because of some glitch involving their item slots. Equip Swap can equip items to any slot reachable with either an up-right or down-right tap from the "Z" menu position or an up-left or down-left tap from the "R" menu position; the most common slots to equip swap to are the ocarina slot (top-left), the moon's tear/title deeds slot (top-right), and the Light Arrow slot (top-right when moon's tear slot is empty).
This example below demonstrates equip swapping a bottle with a Zora egg over the Light Arrow slot and putting it on c-right.
Troubleshooting step 4 above:
If you equip an item that can be given to an NPC, such as the priority mail, then toggle to a menu page that you can equip swap from (map or masks page, depending on what item slots are available) before closing the menu and giving the item away, then upon pausing again, it is still possible to toggle back to the items page and equip swap the item that was given, putting the item on a c-button even though it is no longer in the inventory. However, since the items page updates when it comes up again, there is only one chance to equip swap the item; item recovery requires first try equip swap. This also means that item recovery must be done before loading or reloading an area, as doing so automatically toggles back to the items page.
On Wii VC versions, it is possible to buffer equip swap using the Wii's Home menu, accessed with the Home button on a Wii remote. Each Home menu buffer costs 13 seconds and equip swap is typically much quicker than that to fail and retry, so this is only useful for item recovery. To buffer inputs with the Home menu, open the menu, close the menu, begin holding the desired inputs at any point before the N logo fades, and continue holding them until the game resumes. Conveniently, it is also not difficult to advance one frame at a time with Home buffering: To do so, press the Home button on the Wii remote during the last half second or so of the previous buffer when the N logo is fading. On vanilla Majora's Mask, this occurs after the 11th time a blue face of the N faces forward; on kz, it occurs after the 7th time a blue face of the N faces forward.
Note that because this video was recorded on kz, the N logo rotates for a shorter time than it would on vanilla Majora's Mask, as described in the paragraphs above. The first buffer in this video is 1f early (see buffer frame images below), so this demonstrates advancing 1 frame with a second Home buffer.
2f early | 1f early | correct frame |
Menu corner between Start and B buttons | Menu corner between magic meter and Start button, closer to Start | Menu corner between magic meter and Start button, closer to magic meter |
2f early | 1f early | correct frame |
Menu corner between Start and B buttons | Menu corner between B and A buttons | Menu corner between A and C-left buttons |