I went ahead and cleaned up option 3 a bit, here's how it looks right now:

If people are okay with it, then we'll go with this for the path screens.
I did make the animation a bit faster before the water drains.

Here other things I did address in the shared folder.
- MMC1 WaterFall fix. This should just work if you like to compile it without MMC5. A proper delay was needed to not collide with Automap workload.
- Added a Fix in the misc.asm file. The wand windup collusion on Links back is removed. Also added the routine for the beeping but did not change it. The beeping should stop after a view times in my opinion.
- Changed drops so the enemies that shoot arrows now drop them. Added a bit more 5 point rupees since grinding sucks.
- There was basic Ram values added that make it easier to manipulate animations if anyone likes to play with them.
- Documented some stuff on the credits and added some routines that are documented badly. (But might give the right ideas if you like to change them)
I will take a break from this project again. Here a repost of my link for people interested to test/share.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8g8d2d7n80o3tg9/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Redux-PRG0.zip?dl=0
Damn you managed to get the animation to stop for the pond screens when using the flute, that's amazing!
I took a peek at your code, and managed to implement it all properly.
I'll jump ahead and test the Credits address you posted, will update with anything I find.
In the meanwhile, I took the liberty of uploading both the MMC5 source code we have right now, and also I have added the latest MMC1 source code as well.
Latest Redux source code:https://www.dropbox.com/s/rihbtgkwus0ddf2/Zelda1-Redux.zip?dl=0The MMC5 has the latest code made by Bogaa for all the MMC5 source, modified Automap for it, and also slight changes to other files. The main thing here is the Automap with the MMC5 ASM.
As for the MMC1 code hasn't seen much changes lately, except for one new ASM file which NES Dev Forum's user Fiskbit worked on last week (which came out of nowhere). Apparently, this makes the MMC1 ROM to have CHR-RAM animations by using a method with a specific header type called NES 2.0. I have converted his code to work with the Redux code and the animation works in 4 banks. Fiskbit mentions that with his code, all that would be need would be to make the Automap tiles always be in the tile range $30-$4F in all banks, and move the overworld graphics to new banks, possibly bank 8 or above so we have enough space for the graphics.
Here's the NES Dev thread for those interested:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20858#p262366Just to be clear, we'll keep pushing forward mainly with the MMC5 code Bogaa has worked on during the last months for the final release, but if the MMC1 method sees some evolution, we could probably have both an MMC5 version and also an MMC1 version for reproduction cartridge compatibility.