Link's Decision 2: Chronos the Tears of Fate
Game Readme Comes with the quest, but you can see it here too.
Rules You're meant to look at these, but I'm sure some people prefer doing it completely blind.
Items and Enemies Pictures of each so you can recognize everything. This comes with the quest, so the intent is for you to look at this.
Classes This is only descriptions of each class. There's links to the class item chart, and what's special about the Thief.
Overworld Walkthrough Eight links to choose from, anything from barely-labeled minimaps to full resolution maps with every secret labeled.
Shopping A list of purchasable items including the best place to buy, followed by a list of every shop location with prices. SPOILERS
Dungeon Walkthrough All the dungeons listed in order with links to maps and the text directions. SPOILERS
Mountain Caves Walkthrough This includes the caves and overworld for the mountains in all three time periods, maps and written directions. SPOILERS
Caves and Miscellaneous Maps for the Help Cave, HCP Cave, Coin Cave, Plundered Grave, Warp Zone, and others. SPOILERS
Side Quest Walkthrough The first part also gets you cheaper shops, although you might have already done that part. SPOILERS
Heart Container & Magic Container Checklist Locations and descriptions of every one. SPOILERS
References There are some culture references in the game (some are pop-culture), including the eight secret money caves with characters. No spoilers.
Blind Easter Egg Locations Just the overworld coordinates for the eight easter egg caves, in case you want to be surprised.
End of Game The end of the game and post-game. If you can't finish the post-game stuff, read about the secret ending. You did more than you were told about. SPOILERS
Music A list of songs from the game. All 100 of them. You can hear every song in the quest regardless of class choice. SPOILERS
Cheater If you must use cheats.
Quest page on PureZC
Download the quest here (v1.5, 9/10/2023)
List of Videos A list of videos, including the where each Let's Play took place and what the topic was.
Trailer on Youtube (2m47s).
Thief Special on Youtube (27m20s). This video gets the Mirror Shield less than 90 minutes into the game, and more. BIG SPOILERS
Official Let's Play (15hr23m). I don't know how to make a LP. Sort of like a director's cut, because most discuss some aspect of the game.
Music Video (2m38s). An AMV-style video for "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants using footage of this quest, with lyrics.

The basic setup is that one province in the neighboring country needs Link's help. Ganon has invaded a magic bunker, and only a hero would be able to collect the six keys to enter. Link is dumped there with almost nothing, knowing nothing of this province or where to find these keys. Link isn't left without help. There will be no explanation of who Chronos was, how it's tied to fate, or why they would only have six tears. It's a movie reference.

This is my third Zelda Classic quest, and sequel to my first quest. Link's Decision (2007) was maybe the first ZC game that offered a choice of character class (I have no idea how to verify this, but nobody has contradicted it so far). You could choose knight (hammer) or wizard (wand), with some class-specific dungeons that gave items only available to that class. The two classes were fairly balanced for different play styles, and it took two playthroughs to beat all the class-specific dungeons.

Link's Decision 2 took things a step further with 2.10 (most of the work on this quest does pre-date the 2.50 release, see later for that) items and capabilities. Now there are four classes, with each of the 12 class-specific dungeons available to two classes. Each class gets a different set of half of the class items, with certain advantages to each. You do not get to choose a class until you've gotten through about a third of the game. Brief descriptions of each class are below, but additional information without spoilers is in the Classes link above.
Knight - Offense and Defense.
Wizard - Magic and Trickery.
Monk - Magic and Defense.
Thief - Offense and Trickery.

The next thing to note about this one, it's quite a bit larger than the first one. This is just a single overworld map of area, but it takes place over three time periods, so it's really three similar overworld maps to explore. There are seven time warps to go between time periods, one near each main dungeon, and one in the town.
There are way more dungeons. This time there are six main dungeons, but they each exist in all three time periods, so more like eightteen dungeons. There are twelve class-specific dungeons, but each game can only access half of them. There are four optional dungeons with very useful items. Then there's the final seventh level.
Every heart container, heart container piece, and magic container can be obtained before entering level 7. Every item (limited by your class) can be obtained before entering level 7. Despite the fact that level 7 is in three time periods, none of the parts include any items at all, including when you kill bosses.

There is one big side quest: finding a golden statue, although gilded is probably a better description. While there is no item reward once you find the golden statue, you'll be plenty rewarded along the way. It has nothing to do with the main story whatsoever, and nobody in the game knows anything about a golden statue. You'll just have to stumble across it, or follow the side quest guide.

History (why is there a new v2.10 quest?):
This quest was started back when 2.5 was in beta, but around the same time as 2.50 was released with new capabilities, I lost my files in a harddrive crash, leaving me with an old beta with only up to level 3 and enormous holes. I gave up at that point. Too much effort lost, and had to spend time elsewhere. But then late 2021 I found something when looking through some old backups. A version with the main six levels completed, along with a lot of the rest. It was enough to make me finish the quest. It's taken longer to complete than I wanted, but now it includes everything originally envisioned.

Lore (what's Calatia):
Based on what I found when making my last quest, Calatia is Hyrule's closest ally and western neighbor. If Hyrule were to fall to Ganon, Calatia would immediately be overrun through the mountain passes, so NES Link was sent from his home in Calatia to save Hyrule. NES Link being from Calatia doesn't really prevent earlier and later iterations of Link from being Hylian. This is from the official comic books that went with the NES games and goofy cartoon. Link and Zelda go adventuring together in both Calatia and Hyrule, Ganon was not always the villain, and reportedly Zelda rescues Link almost as often as he rescues her in the comics. This doesn't have anything to do with the NES Link or the comics. A second country that existed next to Hyrule seemed like a good idea for a quest location. I'm calling it part of one of the outer provinces of Calatia, not the entirety of the country. Despite being in the official comic books, Calatia is not part of the canon.

Quest - Legend of Zelda: The Nine Villages (2008) - Combine Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 into one enormous game. 9 full overworld screens, world map fast travel, 19 mandatory dungeons, 7 optional dungeons, not as difficult, 90-ish songs, 20+ hours.
(The Nine Villages on PureZC)
Quest - Link's Decision(2007) - Only two classes, one overworld map, and 17 total dungeons, it's a much smaller quest but still much larger than Zelda 1. This is the first ZC quest that let you choose a character class or anything along those lines, predating those options and enhancements to Zelda Classic that enabled classes.
(Link's Decision on PureZC)

Download Zelda Classic In case somebody is really lost, and has no idea how to play this quest. Zelda Classic is the free, open source program required to play my quest. This quest is meant to be played in ZC v2.53 (the most recent non-beta version), however it fully works in ZC v2.10. There are only a couple minor issues with playing the quest in v2.55alpha, an odd thing with money caves and the Secret 4 directions are slightly off. There are hundreds more custom made quests you can play, some of which are made by teams instead of solo like this one. The most complete list of quests is on PureZC.

Main Page Map Legend Overworld Dungeons Rules Story Items and Enemies PureZC