Ganondoor (Deku Tree)

FAQ written by mzxrules

When I perform Ganondoor (Deku Tree), the screen goes black / softlocks. What am I doing wrong?

This is a pretty common mistake, but it isn't exactly obvious why this is occurring to anyone who hasn't spent time figuring out how wrong warping works.

More often than not, what you are doing wrong is you're save quitting after defeating Gohma.

Here's why: Whenever you wrong warp, you are really setting the game up so that it will play a cutscene in the area you are warping into. If the area you end up at doesn't define any cutscenes (which is the case with Ganondoor), then a value called the Cutscene Pointer, which is used to point to the data of the cutscene to play, won't update.

This causes the game to try to play the “last cutscene”, or whatever data is being stored where the last cutscene use to be. It's this “last cutscene” that causes the game to soft lock, so special care must be taken to make sure that the Cutscene Pointer points to data that won't cause a cutscene to play, at least with this particular wrong warp.

There are a few “last cutscene” setups that will avoid the softlock.

• The fastest and most reliable last cutscene to use is the Inside the Deku Tree intro cutscene since it works on all versions, and (barring memory corruption) will always have a consistent outcome. The problem with this one though is that once you enter the dungeon, you cannot save and quit as the cutscene pointer isn't something that the game needs to save. When you restore your game, your last cutscene will (almost) always be the Title Screen cutscene (which causes the softlock).
• If you did save after beating Gohma, you can make still the Title Screen cutscene work as your last cutscene in all JP or US versions, and I believe PAL versions as well.
• As a Child, head to either Link's House, or the House of Twins, pause the game, then immediately go back to Gohma's room and perform the wrong warp. However if you are playing JP 1.1, or PAL in German or French, pausing in Link's House will not work. Pause in the House of Twins instead. If that doesn't work, try pausing in the Kokiri Shop
• As an Adult, simply pause once in Gohma's room.
• If you can't make the Title Screen cutscene work, one last option is to use the Hyrule Field Intro cutscene, the one that plays when first stepping into Hyrule Field.