A Ledge Warp (commonly abbreviated to LW) is a technique that allows a position to temporarily be stored, then later teleported back to. This is performed by morphing during a ledge mantle animation (the one where Samus barely makes a jump and pushes herself up), moving somewhere else, then unmorphing. After unmorphing, Samus will be instantly teleported back to the position she initially morphed at.
This is caused by the fact that morphed Samus and unmorphed Samus are technically different entities and store some values in memory separately, including animation flags. The exact mechanics of why Samus is teleported aren't fully understood, but it's most likely caused by the animation being queued up to be played despite being interrupted by morphing. Assuming this is the case, when Samus unmorphs the animation resumes, overwriting her position to where the animation was supposed to take place. In normal gameplay this is too small and quick to notice, but by interrupting the mantle by morphing, Samus's position can be largely displaced first, causing her to effectively teleport.
All load screens (transports, checkpoints, etc.) remove the Ledge Warp state, preventing it from being taken to another area.
Performing a Ledge Warp is a three step process:
It's very important to remember to unmorph in the air and facing the correct direction. Failing to do so will cause Samus to unmorph as normal without teleporting, often leading to a large time loss.
If you try to store a LW with no setup, it will be extremely difficult to actually use, as you'll have no idea whether you got it or not without internalizing the timing. You should instead find a setup to use that can visually guarantee that you either stored it or didn't. There are two main setups used for Ledge Warp: the Flash Shift and 4-Tile setups.
This abuses the same reverse Flash Shift slide used to perform air walk. By pressing down during a backwards Flash Shift, other actions can be performed while keeping the Flash Shift momentum. Combining this with a slide can allow Samus to get stuck floating on the ledge and easily store a Ledge Warp.
It can most easily be performed with the following steps:
If performed correctly, Samus will slide off the ledge backwards and be floating in place. From this position, pressing morph will store a Ledge Warp 100% of the time.
This is the original Ledge Warp setup. It requires a frame perfect input, so it's largely obsoleted by the Flash Shift setup, but it still has some uses. This is typically only used if you don't have enough space for the Flash Shift setup, have to store a LW underwater, or you're more used to this method and find it comfortable.
It can be performed with the following steps:
If the morph is timed correctly, Samus will land on top of the ledge in morph ball, which guarantees that you have a Ledge Warp.
Assuming the setup is performed properly, there are a few failure cases for the morph timing. The visual cues are straightforward to correct for and are as follows:
Ledge Warping was discovered five days after the game's release on 2021-10-13. It was found on accident while attempting to obtain Screw Attack by Gravity Suit by Puff, and was quickly isolated and understood on its own by various researchers, mainly RoboRotembo.
Ledge Warping was initially classified as a Major Glitch on 2021-10-31 following the poll results of the No Major Glitches Voting Poll.
Ledge Warping was later reclassified as a Minor Glitch on 2022-06-04 following the No Major Glitches rule rewrite. Due to it generally not being useful for sequence breaking and only serving as a movement/routing optimization, no clause was included for it in the new ruleset, allowing it in all NMG categories.