BOOK I - Farore's Wind - Teleport Drift, Hover Teleports, and Applications

BOOK I - FARORE'S WIND

Teleport Drift, Hover Teleport, and Applications

Teleport drifting is something very weird and very useful that most Zeldas have seen as a phenomenon but have not found consistency in it. Farore's maintains some of Zelda's momentum and is most apparent during doublejump. DJ back or forward followed by an immediate Farore's carries Zelda's teleport startup in the direction of the DJ at a reduced speed. This enables you to take evasive action and start a teleport to somewhere safer or quickly adjust your Farore's position to make a sweetspot possible. Teleport drift also happens during fastfall and you can start a fastfall followed immediately by farore's to drop your teleport faster than usual.

Teleport drift is also affected by momentum prior to teleport outside of DJ. If you begin a Farore's immediately out of hitstun while still moving from an attack, your Farore's will drift with your momentum. This stacks with DJ drift and can be used to move a considerable distance away from your initial location preventing combos and giving you quick options to ledge where you are very strong.

A low/flat recovery is possible in certain situations by double jumping slightly below the ledge and drift teleporting into ledge grab range. This is one of the safest possible recoveries as the length of Farore's magnet grab makes it more difficult to stuff recovery and edgehogging this is marginally effective as Farore's snaps to the ledge as soon as it is unoccupied but has options for many frames to avoid death in the event of a longer edgehog.

Since teleport drift is affected by momentum, it obviously is also affected by a lack of momentum. If you're holding a DJ you can perform a drift stop teleport by jumping straight up with the control stick in neutral / up into immediate farore's. Stop teleports are useful to sweetspot Farore's as stopping drift allows you to more reliably hit an aimed-for point be it on a legde or a platform for an edge cancel. Drift stop teleports are still affected by prior momentum from attacks after hitstun but seem to ignore momentum from wavelands / shield push / etc. Drift stop teleports are sometimes inconvenient, like when you're trying to fastfall drift before your doublejump you will often DJ a frame or two before Farore's and perform a normal drift or drift stop. If you input up-B within a frame such that there is never a naked control stick up input you will be able to fastfall drift even with a DJ.

Grounded Drift teleports are possible by teleporting after jumpsquat similar to WD. I refer to these as hover teleports. You can also DJ immediately after jumpsquat for a bigger DJ drift teleport. This is considered an aerial teleport and is best used on flat ground to Farore's edge cancel, which will be covered soon. A Farore's from ground at any angle horizontal and below is considered grounded the entire time and cannot be edge cancelled in my testing as it seems zelda comes out of teleport with exactly 0 horizontal momentum.

Zelda does NOT drift (slide) during grounded Farore's. If you begin a Farore's on the ground, it seems to set your X momentum to 0. This makes a sliding cancel like Sheik's teleport edge cancel impossible, but the same idea can still be applied to quickly grab ledge and throw out a hitbox. If you hover teleport while running to the ledge, you can start a farore's as soon as jumpsquat ends either by a jump or by sliding off the edge drift teleporting. The teleport should drift far enough if you're near ledge that you can sweetspot it easily with SE / SSE inputs but you can get pretty tight with it. You can also use your Farore's while sliding to stop yourself on the spot; this is especially useful during amsah teching as it gives you an unexpected way to burn momentum and regian stage presence without you needing to grab ledge.

Zelda's drift teleport usually is used with a DJ, but it's also possible to fastfall drift with farore's while holding a DJ. You need to either tilt into utilt range for upB, or buffer the up input during some other aerial or uninterruptable action so you do not DJ. One super cool and flashy application of this is waveland off ledge to no-jump drift tp. It throws a hitbox and grabs ledge very shortly afterwards. You can do this with either method; I find it easiest to buffer up while wavelanding.