In Zelda 1, the ladder was an item that allowed you to cross over specific patches of water and lava. Let's make a screen filled with “water” (even though it looks like lava) to test this out. Draw the following screen on Map 3→Screen 41:

The “water” on this screen uses Combo 568 CSet 3.

Minor Tangent: In most of the dungeon palettes, this looks like blue water. Since this section of the tutorial is only going over extremely basic quest creation, we don't have to worry about the fact that Link can swim through the substance that looks like lava using the flippers. But you will be able to backtrack and fix that when we go over basic Combo creation and editing in the next chapter.

Anyway, let's go through our basic screen setup procedure.

Door Combo Sets and Placing Doors

• Place the doors. (Screen→Doors or F6).
• There is an Open door to the West, a Locked door to the east, and a Walk-through wall to the south.
• The arrow that shows up for the Walk-through wall is not visible when playing the quest in Zelda Classic.

Note: Walk-through walls are walls that appear normal, but when pushed against for a second, will allow the player the pass through them.

Placing Enemies

• Place some enemies on the screen if you want.

Placing Items

• Place a Map on the screen.
• Use some of the optional item screen flags if you like.

There is nothing special to set up on this screen since the ladder will automatically work all of the time on NES Dungeon DMaps. However, if this were an overworld DMap, we'd have to do one of two possible things.

We'd either have to set a quest rule to always allow the ladder under Quest→Rules→NES Fixes…

…Or we'd have to set a screen flag under Screen→Screen Data→S.Flags 2. On non-NES Dungeon DMaps, this is always the opposite behavior of the current quest rule state. On NES Dungeon DMaps, this screen flag is entirely ignored.

This is how the ladder looks in Zelda Classic:

This next screen is mostly a filler screen since we're not using anything new. It will contain a key on the screen and a raft inside of an item cellar. However, we can use the room to demonstrate a few things about how Zelda Classic operates.

Draw the following screen on Map 3→Screen 51.

Door Combo Sets and Placing Doors

• Place the doors. (Screen→Doors or F6).
• There is a Walk-through wall to the west.

Placing Enemies

• Place some enemies on the screen if you want.

Placing Items

• Place a Key (Normal) on the screen.
• Use some of the optional item screen flags if you like.

Placing Combo Flags

• Place Combo Flag #2 (Push Block (4-Way, Trigger)) on one of the blocks.

Armos Knight and "Under Combo is Combo 0"

• Set the Under Combo (Screen→Under Combo) to the floor combo (Combo #516 CSet 2)

Setting up an Item Cellar

• Make sure Tile Warp A is Cave/Item Cellar.
• Set Warp Return Square A.
• Set Screen→Room Type (R) as Special Item.
• Set Screen→Special Item (A) as Raft.

There are a few things to note about this screen.

First off, let's go over how NES Dungeon walls operate. If you play test this room or have been play testing the previous rooms as you've created the dungeon, you've probably noticed that Link can walk into a room even if there is no entrance door. This is because the NES Dungeon DMap forcefully pushes Link two combo lengths into a room when he first enters it. This allows him to pass through walls he'd normally not be able to pass through. We can take advantage of this to force one-way paths for Walk-through walls (like we have done for this room) or even regular doors (though you should use 1-Way Shutter doors for that purpose since they graphically make sense).

The second thing worth noting is that we have essentially placed two different items on a single screen. The item you can place directly on the screen has a different “has been picked up” state than the Special Item available in the Special Item room.

In Zelda 1, there were stairs that led to passageways that linked various dungeon rooms. We're going to begin setting that up by creating a new template screen.

Remember setting up the Item Cellar template? Get ready for some déjà vu since this process is going to be almost entirely identical. All you have to do is replace Screen 80 in the steps with Screen 81.

Copy Map 2→Screen 81 to Map 3→Screen 81.

The only true difference on this template is that there are two pre-programmed entrances instead of the one that is present in Item Cellars. Passageways have the same rules regarding the four spawning keese and they can even contain Special Items like an Item Cellar if you set that up as we did with the Item Cellar template screen. But we're not going to get into that latter thing since while the item setup process is almost identical (the warp is the only difference), it can get confusing from a gameplay perspective unless you manage it properly.

Now that we have the passageway template set up, let's actually use it. Draw the following room on Map 3→Screen 42.

For the most part, our setup here is going to be identical to what we did on the first item cellar room. This includes using Stairs Secret.

Door Combo Sets and Placing Doors

• Place the doors. (Screen→Doors or F6).
• There is a Locked door to the west. It will link to the door in the previous room.

Placing Enemies

• Place some enemies on the screen if you want.

Placing Combo Flags

• Place Combo Flag #2 (Push Block (4-Way, Trigger)) on one of the blocks.

Armos Knight and "Under Combo is Combo 0"

• Set the Under Combo (Screen→Under Combo) to the floor combo (Combo #516 CSet 2)

Setting the Cave Exit Point

• Set Warp Return Square A.

Secret Combos

• Set the Secret Combo for Stairs under the Misc Tab to a set of stairs. (Screen→Secret Combos)

Stairs Secret

• Set the Stairs Secret location.

Now let's get into the new stuff. Unlike Item Cellars, we are going to have to actually set up some warp information since we want our passageway to lead us somewhere. Open Screen→Tile Warp (F10) and edit Tile Warp A.

Set the Warp Type as Passageway, the DMap to our dungeon, and the screen to Screen 74 (remember that you can also just click the DMap graphic as shown in the screenshot).

And we're finished. The passageway should look like this in Zelda Classic: