Yellow Cap Switch



The Yellow Cap Switch (sometimes shortened to The Yellow Switch) is an enigmatic object that can be found within B3313. Although locatable in Bob-omb Cavern, its only real home is the Holy Yellow Switch Palace, where it can be found and pressed.

The Yellow Cap Switch's Effects
The Yellow Cap Switch's primary function, when pressed, appears to be to randomly shuffle numerous flags within the game's data. Upon activating the switch, the textures in the HYSP will glitch to a random texture, and a random string of dialogue will be displayed. The flags it shuffles upon being pressed can change the following values:


 * Whether or not you have your hat (Not immediately apparent until you warp out)
 * What type of B-Roll HUD the game uses
 * The state of all 8 Overworld ID Stars
 * The state of all 3 of the other Cap Switches (Pressed or Unpressed)
 * Whether or not getting a Star in a painting sends you back out of it (If this flag is disabled, then warps functions like in 0.7 where getting a Star sends you to Plexal Upstairs and dying sends you to Plexal Lobby)
 * Modify various Personalization Values

After pressing the Switch, the player will have no choice but to teleport back to the Beta Lobby, as there is no exit or warp out of the HYSP. If the player returns to the HYSP, they can press the Yellow Cap Switch again to reroll all the flag values once more.

Some things to note about Pressing the Switch:


 * While the game rerolls the values for all the above flags, it is not guaranteed to actually change them at all if it happens to reroll to the same/identical value, i.e. pressing the Switch is not guaranteed to remove your hat.
 * Similarly, even if you lose your hat or 0.9-style warping, you can gain these abilities back by continuing to press the Switch until it rerolls to a value that restores them.
 * The effects listed can usually be undone by loading a saved state in your emulator from before you pressed the Switch.
 * However, if after pressing the Switch you save your game, the effects will essentially be locked onto that save file. While it can still be undone, you will need to load your save state and then save your game to overwrite the tainted save file.
 * if the random dialogue string chosen when pressing the Switch is one relating to the Cap Switches, or the Castle Secret Stars, the save prompt will still appear at the end of the dialogue, possibly overwriting your save! Take care to not mash through the text in order to avoid this happening.
 * There have been some claims that the game saves the states modified by the Yellow Cap Switch to the player's eep file (essentially meaning that it's saved automatically in a separate location from your save file), theoretically permanently tainting your save even if loading a prior state. However, this does not appear to fully be the case, as most of the effects changed by the Switch listed above can be undone by loading a save state and have no lingering effects.

Should you Press the Switch?
Generally speaking, no. While pressing the Yellow Cap Switch theoretically can be beneficial, like if one hasn't located the other Cap Switches or Overworld ID Stars yet, the far, far more likely outcome is that the player will end up losing their hat (which only makes the game more difficult due to the extra damage taken), their ability to warp out of paintings (which only makes the game more tedious when it comes to fully completing a level/hub area), or possibly both at once. While the player could theoretically press the Switch again a few times to try and get them back, it will reroll those first two flags as well, making the entire reason they pressed the Switch in the first place null and void. If one wants to press the Switch simply for the added challenge, it should be done as early in the player's save file as possible so as to avoid potentially erasing vital progress.

Trivia

 * Originally, the Yellow Switch was meant to be far more destructive in 0.9, supposedly being powerful enough to remove entire objects and warps.
 * While the Holy Yellow Switch Palace was present as early as v0.6.1, but the Switch was unable to be pressed as getting close to it would freeze up the game.