Stalfos

The Stalfos (sometimes referred to as Stalfos Knights) are skeletal knights that have challenged Link since their debut in the original The Legend of Zelda, and currently is the only enemy to have appeared in every game in the The Legend of Zelda series to date. The name Stalfos is both singular and plural (variations such as Stalfo and Stalfoses, etc. are incorrect). Their name is a portmanteau of stal- and -fos; meaning skeletal ( see stal ) humanoid ( see fos ).

Igos du Ikana, Skull Keeta, Captain, Master Stalfos, Captain Stalfos and Stallord are the most notable Stalfos across the Zelda series.

Characteristics
Though the Stalfos has changed quite a bit across titles, the physical and behavioral generalities have, for the most part, remained constant. Stalfos, since the original The Legend of Zelda, are weapon-wielding, undead, skeleton warriors who frequent dungeon locations and stand-in as mini-bosses from time to time. The first The Legend of Zelda as well as the up-coming Skyward Sword provides the Stalfos with swords for each hand, The Adventure of Link provides the shield, and only in the incarnations seen in Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess do these foes adapt a strategic, defensive sword-fighting style, living up to the fearsome, powerful name they have built for themselves across the series. Interestingly, the majority of Stalfos enemies in the series do not wield any weapons but use other conventional means of attacking and defending from Link's attacks.

Stalfos are seldom isolated, appearing in groups of two or more. Their tendency to group increases the strength of the opposition, in all titles except Ocarina of Time in which the Stalfos challenge Link one-on-one if Z-Targeted; the other Stalfos politely wait their turn and begin their fight once their former has been vanquished. In Four Swords Adventures, the standard Stalfos accompany the Big Dark Stalfos in attacking Link, and they can be found in either the Light or Dark Worlds during the battle.

Weaponry and Attack Power
While the long sword is a staple of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, the larger versions of the foe seen in A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Twilight Princess, and Spirit Tracks, the Stalfos in the original Legend of Zelda, as well as in Skyward Sword, carry swords in both hands. However swords are not the only weapon used by the Stalfos to inflict damage, the Stalfos also make do with chucking bones (as in A Link to the Past and the Oracles), their own skulls (as in Four Swords), and even wielding heavy spiked clubs (as seen in The Wind Waker).

The Stalfos of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess can perform sword slashes, overhead jumps and are able to block Link's attacks effectively, while the Stalfos seen in The Wind Waker use its blunt weapon belligerently. The only way to damage them is to wait until they lower their guard or to stab them in the back.

Furthermore, the amount of damage dealt increases as the series progresses, from a small nick in The Legend of Zelda to multiple hearts in Twilight Princess, the use of swords and other dangerous weapons having a large edge over those Stalfos that resort to other means of inflicting damage. Only in The Legend of Zelda do these foes receive an upgrade called the Blade Beam in the second quest, an attack that takes two hearts from Link after every successful strike.

Dismemberment and Regeneration
As skeletons, their bones can be thrown, and coincidentally, these foes can loose body parts in the heat of battle. Humorously, in The Minish Cap, these creatures can be decapitated through use of the Gust Jar or the Cane of Pacci, and can be chopped in half in The Wind Waker. In both cases, the remaining segments of the body operate as if always in such a form, though impaired due to the lack of the body parts that were sliced off in battle. Picking up the Stalfos' club in The Wind Waker forces the foe to rip off one of its arms to use as a weapon, thus continuing the battle.

Interestingly, beginning with the Stalfos Warrior in A Link to the Past, few Stalfos incarnations can regenerate given time. Especially in situations when more than one Stalfos is present, as in the Arbiter's Grounds in Twilight Princess, or in one of the rooms of the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time, if Link takes too much time to defeat the collective group of Stalfos, one that was defeated earlier may rejoin the fight, revitalized to full health once more. Only the creatures seen in The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks arise, reforming their dismantled skeleton bodies while the Ocarina of Time version simply pops up from the ground.

Featured first in A Link to the Past with the Stalfos Warrior, a Bomb must be placed by the dismembered remains of a defeated Stalfos, granted there are remains, to fully defeat it, or it will continue to regenerate. The incarnations seen in Ocarina of Time regenerate on their own given time, and the versions of The Wind Waker crumple, leaving a bouncing head to carry on the vitality of the body. In the latter, once the head is dispelled, the skeleton is fully dead.

Varieties
In all titles, save for all of the console games except The Adventure of Link and Four Swords Adventures, two Stalfos varieties exist: a weaponless version, and a larger Warrior, Stalfos Knight or similar iteration. The Stalfos incarnation without a weapon incorporates an increased amount of defensive tactics, such as jumping, to evade defeat. These ill-equipped Stalfos are the ones to resort to bone or skull throwing to make up for their lack of a legitimate weapon. The larger incarnation is capable of dealing more damage and carrying out more of an offensive strike against Link with a weapon of some kind.

Coloration
In The Adventure of Link, Stalfos come in three varieties: white, red, and blue. White Stalfos are simply skeletons with swords and shields that are considerably weaker than their red and blue counterparts, both of which possess increased fighting finesse, including jumping and thrusting attacks. All forms are highly vulnerable to attack, however, as they rarely move their shields.

In Oracle of Ages, there are two types of the regular Stalfos: blue and orange varieties. The blue versions are standard Stalfos that simply walk about, while their orange counterparts tend to jump away from Link's sword slash, and have the ability to toss bones. This coloration is mirrored in The Minish Cap, in which the blue iteration only jumps, while the red uses bones as their primary weapon. Furthermore, a special kind of Stalfos known as the Blue Stalfos is the mini-boss of the Ancient Tomb, the eighth dungeon in Oracle of Ages. In Oracle of Seasons, both the blue and orange Stalfos make appearances, but there are also red and green varieties, each of them have their own unique abilities.

Ikana Stalfos
Stalfos in Majora's Mask are the long-dead skeleton knights of the Ikana Kingdom, Igos du Ikana and his. To truly vanquish the two defeated guards before they regenerate, light must be reflected from the Mirror Shield onto their fallen forms. King Igos du Ikana is the largest and most powerful Stalfos figure in Majora's Mask; he can exhale a poisonous breath onto Link, detach his head (in which case it flies around the room and tries to bite Link) and make his body invulnerable to attack. Defeating him leads to freeing his soul and him teaching Link the Elegy of Emptiness.

The captain of the Stalchildren in Majora's Mask Skull Keeta, asks Link to bring peaceful rest to his undead soldiers of Ikana after his defeat in battle. Captain Keeta had originally served under King Igos du Ikana.

Size and Strength
In The Adventure of Link,  are armored Stalfos with horned helmets. They behave like their red and blue counterparts, but are more durable and deal more damage to Link.

A Link to the Past introduces a larger form known as the  appearing in the Ice Palace dungeon. These Stalfos are much larger, tougher, and carry large swords. Link must to attack them repeatedly, and when they crumble to bones, he must to destroy the skull with bombs before the whole Stalfos regenerated. The boomerang also works to destroy them, although it takes a large quantity of hits and allows them to regenerate a few times before actually killing them.

Link's Awakening and the Oracle titles carry on the tradition of the size increase with their  which could not only wield swords and shields, but arrows, as well.

The Master Stalfos of Link's Awakening is a particularly large Stalfos that appears in the Catfish's Maw, where he has stolen the Hookshot.

The Big Dark Stalfos are actually the Knights of Hyrule in Four Swords Adventures who have been transformed into beasts by Ganon by sending them into the Dark World. The gems they hold that are the key to the Tower of Winds. When the Four Links defeat one, they obtain the gem the Stalfos was guarding. Once the Links have all four (one for each Links' color) they gain access to the Tower of Winds where Princess Zelda is held.

Weaknesses
Overall, the Stalfos enemies are weak to carefully timed sword strikes, as most conventional overworld enemies are, except for the fact that Bombs, Boomerangs, and Arrows also do the trick in dispelling these creatures, dependent on the title. Decapitating or dismembering these monsters aids in their anniliation, however, regardless of method, when it comes to Stalfos that can regenerate, Link must make sure to place a Bomb on their remains, or fully defeat the entire creature before moving on. In The Wind Waker, the Skull Hammer is very effective against Stalfos once it has been decapitated.

Zelda Game and Watch
In the Zelda Game and Watch, Stalfos hide themselves below the platform Link is on and attack upwards. However, their attacks are slow and in a sweeping motion, making them easy to dodge. Between one and three Stalfos appear on each floor.

Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
On Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland's Cape Treasure, Tingle meets a band of Stalfos pirates under the command of Captain Stalfos when they land their Pirate Ship. They have their hideaway on a small island not far off the coast of Cape Treasure. Due to some circumstances, the pirates believe Tingle wants to join them and so they take him to the hideout. There they tell Tingle to help the pirates in order to obtain three Pirate Items. The pirates claim to have almost no enemies, except for dogs. Their "natural enemies" gnaw at their bones, which is why they are afraid of Tingle's later pet dog Barkle, who frightens the Stalfos pirates at Cape Treasure's dock. He suddenly appears again in the hideout, but Tingle manages to "rescue" the pirates.

When Tingle obtains all Pirate Items, he meets with Captain Stalfos, but due to a misunderstanding, he has to defeat the pirate captain in a fight, since Captain Stalfos is about to cut off Tingle's flesh so that he can become a true pirate. After Captain Stalfos' defeat, the pirates return to their ship and decide to keep up the contact with Tingle, even if he can't become one of them. They present him with the Bone Ocarina, and anytime Tingle plays it while standing on a dock, he summons the Stalfos pirates who bring a Merchant with them.

Notable crewmembers: Engineer, First Mate.

Link's Crossbow Training
Stalfos also appear in Link's Crossbow Training, in various Defender-type stages. Several of them hold shields much like their Twilight Princess counterparts. The shields can be shot several times to be destroyed, allowing the Stalfos to be hit, or the shield can be circumvented with a single Bomb Arrow.

Ocarina of Time Manga
In the Ocarina of Time manga, one Stalfos (or, rather, the floating disembodied head of one) returns to Ganondorf to report an encounter with Link. Strangely, Ganon calls this Stalfos by the name of the Twilight Princess boss, Stallord.

The Shadow Prince
In The Shadow Prince, Princess Zelda, Link, and Charles of Moria encounter Stalfos when they accidentally fall into the Underground Tunnel, which is a maze infested with these skeletal warriors. After the fall, Link notices a piece of paper sticking out of a rock and tells Zelda and Charles he's found a map, hoping that it's not fake.

If Link thinks the map is fake, he will throw it away and tell Zelda and Charles to follow him. With the Stalfos pursuing them, Link tries to get the group out of the tunnel, but he trips on a Stalfos since the tunnel is so dark. The page ends with a Game Over as Zelda cries to Link saying that he picked the wrong path, claiming that they'll die at the hands of the Stalfos.

However, if Link decides that the map is real, he will tell the Zelda and Charles to follow him after examining the routes just as the Stalfos begin to approach them. Eventually, they safely exit back out to the woods, leaving the Stalfos howling at the end of the tunnel.

Trivia

 * According to a Kokiri, a Stalfos is the result of what happens when someone gets lost in the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time.
 * Also in Ocarina of Time, Stalfos' eyes shine (even while Navi is telling Link about how to defeat them).
 * Interestingly in Majora's Mask, when Link wears the Bremen Mask and begins to march, the two Ikana Stalfos will passively follow him until the mask is taken off.