The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Unused Enemy Damage Variables
This is a sub-page of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Every enemy in the game has damage charts, which is a sequence of bytes determining how much damage an enemy will take from a particular attack. Certain bytes in the damage charts are set, but not normally used.
The bytes were long speculated to be intended for additional magic arrows and spells. According to the source code leaked in July 2020, the unused bytes after the three Magic Arrows were indeed used for Wind Arrows, Soul (Spirit) Arrows, and Dark (Shadow) Arrows, respectively[1], which can be hacked into the game[2]. Their coding defaults to the Fire Arrow Actor as their original actors were removed before release[3].
None of the arrows need any magic to use. Like the Light Arrow, killing an enemy with one of these damage types causes them to drop a specific item on death, with Wind giving a magic jar, Soul giving arrows, and Dark giving a fairy[2].
Additionally, after the Din's Fire byte, there are two more bytes which are never used. They were intended for the removed Ice spell and Light spell[1], the latter of which does damage only to "dark" enemies like Floormasters, ReDeads and Dark Link.
