Selecting a preset will replace all randomizer settings to make them follow the selected preset, which can either be a randomizer built-in preset or a custom one. If you have made unsaved changes to your randomizer settings, be sure to save them before selecting a preset, in order to avoid losing them.

Built-in randomizer presets currently include the following:

• Default: the default settings for the randomizer, including Basic skill assumptions and Normal item progression. This is highly recommended for first-time players.

• Community Racing Season 3: the settings currently used in community races, including Hard skill assumptions, Tricky item progression with 2 additional Super packs, and "Save the animals" required.

To create a new custom preset, use the "Save Settings" button at the bottom of the page. To manage existing custom presets, click the gear icon to the right of the preset selection.

Skill assumptions determine which tricks the randomizer assumes the player is able to perform. This affects where the randomizer may place key items on any given step. Anything selected here is "fair game" for the player to be required to do in order to progress.

Examples of expected techniques from the presets are as follows (expand the "Customize" section to see complete details along with animations):

• Basic: Wall jumps, shinesparks, simple uses of frozen enemies, and navigating heated rooms without Varia (but only with plenty of extra energy).

• Medium: 1-tap shortcharge, infinite bomb jumps, sequences of 3 or more wall jumps, and underwater movement tech such as crouch jumps, down grabs, mid-air Spring Ball jumps, and Gravity jumps.

• Hard: Stutter 2-tap, mockballs, damage boosts, gate glitching, cross-room jumps from air to water rooms, trickier climbing on enemies, and ice clips assisted by Morph and X-Ray.

• Very Hard: Stutter 3-tap, complex shinespark setups, speedballs, temporary blue suit, Spring Ball jumps off of walls, Flatley jumps, grapple jumps, Crystal Flash, evading Metroids, and using a turn-around to jump around a corner.

• Expert: Stutter 4-tap, CWJ, Baby Metroid skip, stutter water shortcharges, double Spring Ball jumps, crystal flash clips, precise ice clips, and short X-ray climbs.

• Extreme: Double-stutter 4-tap, longer X-ray climbs, long tunnel crawls, crazy crab climbs, Multiviola ice clip, and glitched X-ray modes (G-mode, R-mode, X-mode).

• Insane: Triple-stutter 4-tap, Taco Tank, crossing Colosseum with no movement items, and very slow & tricky crab climbs.

Select one of the preset difficulty levels and then, if desired, refine it by clicking the gear icon on the right and modifying the selections. Note that if you then select a preset again, it will override any customized settings that you made.

The descriptions above are only a summary. Clicking the gear icon will show a list of the tricks in detail, with animations. It's recommended to take a look to make sure you understand all the kinds of things that you may be expected to be able to do!

Item progression settings affect the rate at which the randomizer will place key items, and which locations it will place them in, within the constraints of the selected "Skill assumptions" above. Four presets are available:

• Normal: Key items are placed generously: by the time 50% of items are obtainable, at least 75% of key items should be obtainable. Morph, Bombs, and an ETank are placed early. Key items have no specific tendency to be in harder or easier locations to reach. Beams, additional tanks, and ammo are spread out uniformly. Multiple progression options are generally possible from relatively early in the game.

• Tricky: Key items are spread out at a roughly uniform pace but tend to be placed in harder-to-reach locations. Beams, tanks, and ammo are spread out uniformly as filler. Multiple progression options are generally possible by the middle of the game.

• Technical: Key items are delayed and tend to be placed in harder-to-reach locations. Tanks and certain beams (Charge, Wave, Spazer) are spread out as filler. Access to ammo other than Missiles is often delayed. A single progression sequence may be forced until late in the game.

• Challenge: Key items are delayed similarly to "Technical", but access to tanks is often delayed. Charge and Spazer are the only beams placed as filler. A single progression sequence may be forced until late in the game.

• Desolate: Some key items may not be placed at all, and the amount of ammo and tanks is greatly reduced. A single progression sequence may be forced through almost the entire game.

For players new to this randomizer, the "Normal" preset is highly recommended. The "Tricky" preset and higher settings tend to make the game significantly more difficult. The "Technical" setting is recommended for players who want to be forced to learn new techniques to progress. Be careful selecting "Challenge" or "Desolate" settings as these can be fairly punishing: they are likely to require the player to go without Energy Tanks for much of the game.

"Item progression" and "Skill assumptions" synergize with one another: harder item progression settings increase the likelihood that harder techniques selected in the "Skill assumptions" will actually be required to beat the game.

The item progression settings can be customized by clicking the gear icon on the right. Note that selecting a preset again will override any customized selections.

These options help provide a smoother, more intuitive, and less tedious game experience. Several presets are provided:

• Off: All quality-of-life options are turned off. This is for players who want a full experience of exploration, with a similar feel to the original game. This may involve a lot of wandering around and backtracking to figure out where to go. Map stations are harder to find and provide minimal assistance as all item dots look the same.

• Low: Many quality-of-life options are turned off, restoring some unintuitive but potentially interesting vanilla game behavior: some items do not spawn until defeating Phantoon or waking the planet, Acid Chozo statue requires Space Jump to use it, and completing the escape may require collecting certain items and/or carefully managing energy in the Mother Brain fight. Map stations are somewhat less powerful because all ammo and tank items appear as small dots the same as Missiles.

• Default: Quality-of-life options are turned to their generally recommended settings (mostly on). Map stations are very useful, with different item dot shapes to distinguish three tiers of items: Missiles, other ammo/tank items, and unique items. Enemy drops are somewhat improved, reducing the need for long farms.

• High: Map stations reveal even more information: ammo items (Supers and Power Bombs) are shown with a a small "X" while Energy Tanks and Reserve Tanks are shown with an "O". Map stations also reveal area connections in neighboring areas, showing how they connect back to the current area. Energy stations and E-Tanks also refill reserve energy, and E-Tanks can be disabled.

• Max: All quality-of-life options are turned on to their highest settings. This includes respin, lenient Space Jump, and momentum conservation to more fluidly control Samus, and an extra-fast Mother Brain fight that completely skips the second and third phases. Energy can also be manually transferred back into reserve tanks.

Individual options may be customized by clicking the gear icon on the right.

This setting determines the conditions needed to open the way to Mother Brain:

• None: The way is already open from the start of the game.

• Bosses: Defeat Kraid, Phantoon, Draygon, and Ridley.

• Minibosses: Defeat Spore Spawn, Crocomire, Botwoon, and Golden Torizo.

• Metroids: Defeat all the Metroids in the four Metroid rooms.

• Chozos: Defeat Bomb Torizo and Golden Torizo, and activate Bowling Alley and Acid Chozo statues. Note that Phantoon must be defeated before the Bowling Alley statue can be activated.

• Pirates: Defeat the enemies in Pit Room, Baby Kraid Room, Plasma Room, and Metal Pirates Room. Note that Morph and Missiles must be collected before the enemies spawn in Pit Room.

• Random: Complete 4 random objectives from the above list. Search for X's on the map to find the objectives to complete.

In every case, the way to beat the game is to escape after defeating Mother Brain. Objectives are marked with X's on the map.

This setting affects how the rooms are arranged on the map:

• Vanilla: The rooms are arranged as they are in the vanilla game, i.e. there is no map randomization. Consider checking out VARIA Randomizer, which has more specialized support for vanilla map.

• Standard: The rooms are arranged in a random but relatively friendly way: one-ways tend to have short return paths that loop back around.

• Wild: The rooms are arranged in a more random and less friendly way: there will often be one-ways with only long return paths.

Be aware that randomized maps (even "Standard" ones) tend to be much more difficult than the vanilla map: expect to encounter frequent risks of death & softlock, particularly at the beginning of the game. "Standard" maps should typically be relatively straightforward to navigate once you have collected enough items, but reaching that point probably won't be easy. "Wild" maps are even more spicy and tend to contain some very long one-way loops (like the Lower Norfair loop in the vanilla map, or even longer).

When using Vanilla map, it is suggested to use "Neutral" item progression (instead of "Forced") since otherwise the location of key items may be overly predictable.

Details

On all settings, the randomizer guarantees that one-ways (such as falling through crumble blocks) always loop back around somehow, though the path back could be long and require certain items. This setting ("Standard" vs. "Wild") affects the typical length of such paths.

The "one-ways" considered here are situations where navigation in a "wrong" direction might not be not possible within the room, even with all items collected, without the use of techniques above Basic:

• Crumble blocks in Spore Spawn Super Room, Green Pirates Shaft, Big Pink, and many other rooms.
• Sand transitions.
• Green gates (whether or not they are glitchable).
• Speed blocks in Crateria Super Room and Crocomire Speedway.
• Big Pink morph tunnel Super block.
• Acid in Amphitheatre.
• The barriers in Spore Spawn's Room, Crocomire's Room, and Botwoon's Room.
• Acid and solid block in Acid Statue Room.
• Bowling Alley Chozo.
• The walls separating the Main Street morph tunnel from the rest of the room (a "zero-way").
• Mother Brain Room and Bowling Alley (top vs. rest) are also treated as zero-way.

Likewise, in measuring the length of paths to reverse a "one-way", the types of paths considered are those which will be possible with all items collected but without the use of techniques above Basic.

This setting determines the types of non-gray doors that exist in the game:

• Blue: All doors are blue, except for gray doors.

• Ammo: Red, green, and yellow doors are randomly mixed in.

• Beam: Beam doors are randomly mixed in, replacing some of the ammo doors.

Gray doors are unaffected by this setting and always exist in the same set of rooms: boss/miniboss rooms and the four Pirates rooms (Pit Room, Baby Kraid Room, Plasma Room, and Metal Pirates Room).

For ammo and beam doors, both sides of the door will have the same color and share a lock, so that unlocking one side of the door also unlocks the other.

Ammo and beam doors will not be placed on or immediately connect to any special tile such as a save, map, refill, objective "X", or a gray door.

This setting determines where Samus begins the game:

• Ship: Samus begins in Landing Site at the Ship.
• Random: Samus begins in a random room somewhere on Zebes.
• Escape: Samus begins in Mother Brain Room at the start of the escape sequence.

If "Random" start is used, generally Samus will not be able to save or refill at the starting location. The player will need to find the Ship in order to complete the escape sequence. In some cases, reaching an initial save station could be challenging, though the quality-of-life option "Guaranteed early save station" limits how bad it could be.

With the "Escape" option, Samus will start with all items, and all that is required to beat the game is to make it back to the Ship in time (possibly after saving the animals). Save stations do not work during the escape, but map stations do. This option can be combined with the "Maps revealed from start" option (under "Other options"); otherwise it will likely take many escape attempts in order to find the Ship.

Details

For Random start, the logic ensures a pathway exists from the starting location to some "hub" room with enemies that can be defeated with Power Beam and which drop all types of resources (energy, Missiles, Supers, and Power Bombs). The logic follows certain rules with respect to this hub room (similar to how the Ship is treated when not using randomized start):

• There is always a path from the starting room to the hub and back without needing to collect items.
• Items are only in logic once there is a path to the item and back to the hub without using the item.
• The hub room is shown as the starting and ending point of routes in the spoiler map.

This setting affects whether saving the animals (Etecoons and Dachora) will be possible and/or required in the escape:

• No: Saving the animals might not be possible, as the escape timer does not account for it.
• Yes: Extra escape time is given, and the player is required to save the animals.
• Optional: Extra escape time is given, making it possible but not required to save the animals.
• Random: "No" or "Yes" is selected with 50% probability each. The player finds out during the escape.