Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Mostly spoiler-free)

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greensara
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I am working on the Goron area and am almost through it I think. It's been a ride for sure. Something I found probably too funny but it's a slight plot spoiler if you haven't started there yet:
Spoiler:
I just found it hilarious to see meek little Yunobo all pimped out, lol! Guess that's why he wasn't in the trailers.
I think I need to start increasing my stamina more now versus hearts with how much gliding I do to get around and avoid fighting.

Edit: Finished the Goron one and it was pretty good. One particular aspect I won't spoil definitely gave old Zelda game vibes. Started the Gerudo and Zora areas, but I don't know which I will get to completing first.

Slight Tarrey Town Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Got my dream home mostly built how I want, room-wise, but it sure is ugly. Going to have to figure out a better shape maybe? At least I can store some extra/special weapons now if I want.
Also I figured out a nifty trick which was probably obvious to some people but not me relating to shrines:
Spoiler:
All the lightroots have shrines above them. So if you've found the shrine on the map, you can find the lightroot in the same spot and vice versa. So handy, except when the shrines are in caves, lol. Edit: Opened some spoilers and saw others also noticed, oops.
Found something I actually liked about the Depths:
Spoiler:
The bone horses! They are easy to tame and make it so much easier and less scary to get around. Unfortunately they don't help in areas you need to climb.
Edit 2: Decided to do the Zora one first. I liked it okay.
Spoiler:
Lol, the bromance continues.
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Mikodesu
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Kikki wrote: May 24, 2023 3:46 am Ahh, don't know if you want to know, so I'll spoiler it. About the somehwat Zant-ish armor set, full and upgraded...
Spoiler:
Having the full set doesn't make you invincible to gloom...though it is a BIG help. What each piece does is give you one...well, I think of them as 'heart protectors'. So if you have the full set, you have three protective hearts. The gloom 'breaks' your hearts each second you spend in it, so you have several seconds of walking through gloom 'free', as the armor absorbs that and those hearts break in place of your actual health. Then as soon as you are out of the gloom, they repair...unlike your real hearts, which will only repair if you get to a lightroot or go to the surface. (Link in the depths is me in winter versus me in summer, lol. I, too, have my heart dramatically healed by sunshine.)

My set is upgraded only once, since I'll have to fight 9 freaking froxes to upgrade it to level 2 to get the bonus, but knowing it'd be such a pain to upgrade, I decided to look up what you get out of it other than higher defence, but the set bonus at the second fairy upgrade doesn't appear to make you invincible to gloom, either. It simply gives you a fourth protective heart, and since they heal as soon as you get out of the gloom, they really are very useful and let you walk through all but the biggest patches of the stuff without worrying.

Basically the set makes it so you can be significantly less wary of gloom and gloom-ridden monsters, but it nowhere near makes you invincible, unfortunately. I was hoping that, too, and if it had, I'd have gone to the bother of killing all those froxes for it. But for a fourth protective heart, each of which lasts one second of gloom-walking? Nah. Though froxes are easier than taluses, so there's that, at least.

Overall, I've found the Miner's set more useful to exploring the depths than the Depths set, although the Depths set is strangely adorable and the Miner's set is strangely disturbing, like a glowing lightbulb clown + S/M kink + plague doctor. Put it all together, and you're not sure just what kind of kink Link is running. I also have the Dark Link set, but it can't be upgraded (ARGH) so the defence is terrible, and I don't like sets that make Link look like other games' versions of him, it looks so jarring in this game world and I prefer he just looks like this world's version of himself, so I'll probably never use it...it only has the same bonus as the Sheikah set anyway, which you can upgrade and thus has much better defence. Oh, I mean the 'stealth' set. WHY DID THEY RENAME IT?? Why does the existence of the Zonai mean the devs had to try to erase the Sheikah's contributions to the world? Bad world-building, Nintendo!

As of yesterday, I have over 2/3 of the depths mapped...84 lightroots of 120. My tendency to: 1) climb everything 2) glide as much as possible rather than walk and 3) avoid all battles, works really well down there. Not for gathering stuff (other than zonaite from the un-abandoned mines, where there are no enemies anyway) but it's great for finding lightroots!
Apologies for taking so long to get back to you on this...I kept thinking, THIS one, THIS time I'll get the other pieces, and kept getting other stuff instead.
Spoiler:
What a shame it doesn't provide total immunity, since it's SUCH a hassle to upgrade. It's not as if blunt weapons are easy to come by... I already didn't fight many Talos' in BotW for that, and they were a little easier to scrounge up.

I've had worse luck finding Miner's set pieces, though, just the chest piece. For whatever reason it feels like a Death Stranding reference to me, if you've seen trailers for it. The big glowing lightbulb looks very...pregnant belly. Maybe that's what the plague doctor helmet means? :lol: Oh boy, can't wait till I pick that up, that'll be something.

I was hoping the set would make fighting a certain mini boss a bit less of a pain... I'm sure you've come across them, but in case somebody who clicks on this hasn't....
Spoiler:
Phantom Ganon + Hands. I'll either have to save and play around and load to figure out a way to deal with them, or just look up a guide. Can't stand boss design like that, where the enemy you're fighting creates a damaging forcefield. And both him AND the hands are SO aggressive. Hate it.
--
I have finally explored enough of the d***** to progress plot. This is why I've been avoiding spoilers so carefully, I did not expect to find what I found. I expected something more...traditional? But what was there was incredibly impressive, compared to the rest of the area. It gave off a very 'I have arrived' feel. Took me a while of hunting around for it to click WHERE exactly I needed to go, but when it did I bee-lined and found it immediately.
Spoiler:
Wasn't expecting an immediate Koga fight, however, after obtaining the final power. (That got spoiled for me early on by an idiot in a stream, though they didn't say where it was, even above ground or below.) Weird that the fight itself didn't actually USE the power. Unless you can break down vehicles with the power and I spent ten minutes running around and jumping on them for no reason. :lol: Very possible.
May go back to main quest for a bit. Gotta get it done eventually, I suppose...
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About blunt weapons...personally I find the best ore-smashing weapons either use boulders (fused to anything at all, though uncorrupted base weapons work best, ime) or for something specifically hammer-like, then the...I will call them the 'ceiling hyenas' head pieces.

Of course, you may go ??? to 'ceiling hyenas', but I'm not sure if the name of the monster is a spoiler. They were not in BotW (nor any other LoZ game, as far as I know; I believe they are new to the series) but you find them very frequently in caves, and they have horns, I think it is, shaped like hammers, and they do that smashing damage type that works great on boxes and ore.

I kill a lot of ceiling hyenas. I really hate them, so whenever I see them, I go full murder mode. All of you must die. :eek: :eek: :eek:

I think I will finally start playing again, today. Such a gorgeous day, but I did about 5 minutes of yard work yesterday and ended up having to double all my meds that night so I'm feeling discouraged from movement again. I wish I could progress through physical therapy faster; doesn't seem possible that I'll get this body up to spec before next year's growing and cycling season. At best I think I may be able to do some cycling in the autumn. That'd be really nice; won't hang my hat on it, just in case, but will aim for it until/unless I come to know better.

At least I do feel like playing Tears again, though. The story this time is a real ka-pow of a thing, both compelling and terribly discouraging, lol.
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Bluie
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Phew, I beat it, with the true ending too. I'm feeling a ton of emotions right now, but it was extremely satisfying. If anyone needs pointers for the final boss or how to get the true ending, feel free to ask me. Looking for it online is spoiler city.
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Congrats, Bluie! :)

As for me, fortunately I'm already on track for the true ending...I have a feeling from what I know at this point that anything else would leave me very unsettled. All I need to do now is complete one or three main quests and I'll have everything. I could do it pretty quickly now, I think, but I intend to finish all shrines and do all quests and find all armor, first, so it's gonna be a while. Though I reserve the right to change my mind on anything that requires stressful (for me) levels of reaction speed or anything that makes me feel bad about myself, lol. I'm growing increasingly less able to tolerate gaming that makes me feel pathetic.

I figure I won't have the motivation to do all that stuff after completing the story, so I'm putting it off until I've done everything else I want to do.
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Mikodesu
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Congrats, Bluie. :) I've heard TotK can be 100%'d in under 150 hours, sounds like you did a heck of a job knocking it out! (Not sure if you completed or not, but it was fast!)


I am still pokey butting around. It's good to know the FD armor is worth keeping an eye out for. I've been wearing the head piece since I got it, since I love FD. :D Such a cool reuse of the model back in the day.

Finished the Zora area tonight, and it was PRETTY disappointing. I DID manage to completely break one of the puzzles in the dungeon, though. So glad I clipped it, because it was hilarious.
Spoiler:
Whatever you're supposed to do with the one that has the high speed spinning thing, I have no idea. I shot it with a water thing, and then an arrow. Arrow I got second try.
Since that's done I'll probably go back to mapping the underground, or do some side quests. There are a near endless supply of them. Maybe I'll make a nice supply of food and go to Lurelin. I am getting incredibly burnt out on shrines though. I have less issues with running out of materials for them than I did in BotW, but more often than not they're just wasting my time. And occasionally the physics makes them wonky as hell. I'd rather have a simple time waster than that.

Next day edit:
Did a bunch of combat tonight and was reminded of why I hated combat in BotW but enjoyed it in Elden Ring. Resource management. Game developers CANNOT properly manage the resources a player will need in a game this big, like they can in a linear, short game. BotW had the advantage of a single unlimited resource (bombs). If you ran out of everything you could throw bombs until whatever you were fighting died (or you did).

TotK? Naaaah. Surely you'll pick up enough stuff to keep crafting! And it's not as if the devs weren't aware that limited resources could be an issue, or they wouldn't put them in shrines! GAH

I also ended up finding a weapon I won't ever use. Got it in a chest, and it doesn't appear to be corroded.
Spoiler:
So it won't respawn in the depths when it breaks.
Aka. Get « Snuggly Bunny ». Really hope there's eventually a nice display case I can stuff this thing in, because it's just taking up space at this point.

Don't know what possessed me, I downloaded my clip and some video editing software and I've been looking at my puzzle skip. Zora dungeon, you have been warned.
Spoiler:
As it turns out, the spinney thing takes 20 frames to rotate, so 2/3 of a second. Very odd interval. What's also odd is in the video you never see the arrow hit its target. Where it hits is the side of the spinney thing that's right BEFORE the target, so I think the game must have calculated that if it HAD kept spinning I would have hit it???
If I'm feeling REALLY spicy I'll make a clip of the full speed skip + slowmo. Don't have the energy to learn how to set playback speed tonight.
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greensara
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To be honest, I think I did the same thing for that puzzle of the Zora section. I couldn't think of another way myself and I have been trying to play blind.

If you need storage, progress the story in Tarrey Town, then you'll have options. Don't want to say more as it might spoil it but it's a feature.

I've progressed the story to the point now you can tell it's winding up to head toward the ending, but I am not ready for the ending yet! I will probably try to put it off longer to get more shrines/hearts and better gear first. My number one recommendation is to cook, cook, cook! For one particular scenario that took me by surprise
Spoiler:
Purah sends you to the castle
I was sure I was not going to get through it and ate every non-potion cooked item I had, barely squeaking by with like a couple hearts left. I was both relieved and thinking, I need to cook waaay more food. That was one problem I had in Harvestella, after you were full, you couldn't eat more to recover. Luckily, Link still has the stomach of a teenage boy, lol.
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I actually wish there was a limit on healing like the old days. Imo it wouldn't make the game harder either, just better balanced. As it stands the devs are basically assuming we have infinite healing, which leads to crazy damage numbers. :| And they seem to love enemies that have infinite health and can one-punch-man you... I haven't even gotten to the food inventory limit yet, either.

I'll definitely work on Tarrey Town, knowing that'll help my storage problem. I've gotten there but haven't done much with it. :lol: There's just way too much to do in this game!


I tried to sequence break the Goron area tonight and the game wouldn't let me. Found the dungeon, hopped the fence, went up to the map station and...got an error? Ah, well. I tried. (Should make that piece of the story a cakewalk at least.) Spent most of my night hunting lightroot. Not a fan of the equipment requirements in certain areas, though. Like I know, Nintendo, you want to force us to use what we bought a bit more. But does that have to come with glowy red particle effects on top of glowy red, life sapping goo? When I already can't see?
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Mikodesu wrote: Jun 01, 2023 8:19 pmSpent most of my night hunting lightroot. Not a fan of the equipment requirements in certain areas, though. Like I know, Nintendo, you want to force us to use what we bought a bit more. But does that have to come with glowy red particle effects on top of glowy red, life sapping goo? When I already can't see?
Yeah, that was really awful. I mapped that area right away when I found it because I hated that effect so much that I wanted to never have to deal with it again, as quickly as possible. I'd already figured out how to minimize use of brightblooms at that point, but I had to give up and use them like crazy there, to reduce the blinding effect. I don't know why they added that! What was the point in making it not only unbearably hot, so you have to use certain things, but also impossible to see in, so that you have to use OTHER things that you can't use while using the things you have to use to not burst into flame.

I don't get it. What was the point of adding the fiery sparks to make our vision even worse? If it was to make us grumpily determined to destroy the area problems as fast as possible, I guess it worked on me, at least.

I haven't played in days, again. I guess I'll go back and do a third regional phenomena, though I really should concentrate on shrines for a bit. The reason I haven't: I don't wanna. I particularly dislike how they have, over and over, reused the whole Captain Underpants set-up for trials. The enemies are difficult enough WITH my armor, Nintendo! Eventide Island was only as fun as it was because it was unique. Spread the same situation over twenty other trials and it's just tiresome.

Better stop, or I'm gonna talk myself out of returning to the game today, lol. Plus it's quarter after six already and I need to hurry and get out there to water all my plants before it hits 'fry' levels of hot.
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Mikodesu
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I still have a couple more lightroots to get around there, unfortunately. :lol: Ugh. I did as much as I could stand last night and then started on another area tonight that was all climbing, so I'm barely over half collected still. 65, 66, right about there.

On the subject of the nakey shrines... I think I liked the concept more in the beginning. I wouldn't even mind going in with limited equipment, so long as you can properly defend yourself. There have been a couple of fun ones, though. The car one was especially cathartic. :D


Kept telling myself to go to Tarrey Town tonight, to do those quests, and just never got to it. Oh! I did do the Bargainer Statue quest. Bit disappointed that there's not more of those scattered around. I have half the map left to uncover, and you're done?! Boo! I also managed to get ahold of the BotW Champion's Tunic... and those upgrade mats are a bit...« Cow Poopoo »? I get what they're going for, but. Since a separate, similar tunic is in the game....why are we being stingy?

May have to limit the amount of time I spend in the depths a bit, since it seems to be my favorite part of the game... And there's a whole lot more to do. I have a very tiny stockpile of bombs and muddle buds again, at least.
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Mikodesu wrote: May 30, 2023 8:59 pm Congrats, Bluie. :) I've heard TotK can be 100%'d in under 150 hours, sounds like you did a heck of a job knocking it out! (Not sure if you completed or not, but it was fast!)
Ahhh, no, I didn't 100% it. I'd say I'm at... maybe 70%? I focused on a good chunk of quests (I pick up every one I see) but I only mapped out the depths to the point of what was needed. I hate it down there, I hate the dark. One of my biggest fears IRL is inky darkness hiding things I have no control over to defend against, and the depths are exactly that vibe. Yes, there's lightroots and the seeds to help you along, but it doesn't stop me from hating exploring down there.

My main focus was getting an armor set fully upgraded, doing all the main quests, and dabbling in whatever sidequests I had. I wanted to at least get the story done so I wouldn't be spoiled for it, and with that done, I can put the game away and focus on other stuff until I'm ready to go back to it. I definitely used the (now patched) dupe glitch to speed up my process. Duping all the mats I needed for my armor (I ended up going full Zora armor because I like it the most) + duping diamonds to sell for infinite arrows helped a lot. I guess that's 'cheating' but whatever, it's a single player game.
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Bluie wrote: Jun 03, 2023 4:24 am Ahhh, no, I didn't 100% it. I'd say I'm at... maybe 70%? I focused on a good chunk of quests (I pick up every one I see) but I only mapped out the depths to the point of what was needed. I hate it down there, I hate the dark. One of my biggest fears IRL is inky darkness hiding things I have no control over to defend against, and the depths are exactly that vibe. Yes, there's lightroots and the seeds to help you along, but it doesn't stop me from hating exploring down there.

My main focus was getting an armor set fully upgraded, doing all the main quests, and dabbling in whatever sidequests I had. I wanted to at least get the story done so I wouldn't be spoiled for it, and with that done, I can put the game away and focus on other stuff until I'm ready to go back to it. I definitely used the (now patched) dupe glitch to speed up my process. Duping all the mats I needed for my armor (I ended up going full Zora armor because I like it the most) + duping diamonds to sell for infinite arrows helped a lot. I guess that's 'cheating' but whatever, it's a single player game.
70% is still incredible, though, this far from release. :)

Hopefully you at least didn't go into the depths at night (real world) to help out a little bit. I get where you're coming from, it still makes me nervous. I just love exploring. Probably the main thing that keeps me wanting to go back down there.

If item duping is completely patched out I may have to Google some money making tricks, it's just absurd how much money the game demands you have... why do you even have shops, Nintendo, if there's no easy way to make enough money to afford anything in them?!


--
To my credit I stayed out of the depths like a good little grownup and did sidequests today. And a few shrines. I'm at 72 right now, and still very burnt out! Shrine quests are about as interesting this time as they were last time, but at least in BotW there was a CHANCE you could get a real shrine instead of a 'blessing'. Also, these puzzles HAVE to be simpler than what was in BotW... I swear I didn't do anymore than 80-85 shrines in BotW in my whole time with it, and I've breezed through 70 of these already... and there are two whole regions I haven't even mapped!

Might go knock out the Goron quest/dungeon tomorrow, see how that goes. Gotta do some armor upgrading beforehand, though, now that the fairy quest is done.
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I really like the 'blessing' shrines, though...so much more interesting than the others. You may have to do even more work to get into the blessing shrines than you do inside a non-blessing shrine, but it's more fun (shrines are so dull-looking inside, I prefer not to spend any time in there) to do the work of getting to that shrine outside, interacting with the terrain, then when you get it right, simply walk in and pick up your reward for all that work, and be done with it. I particularly dislike any of the Captain Underpants shrines. So sick of Nintendo invalidating all the work I've done in the game so far and taking away all my choices of how to approach things with weapon and armor augments and so on. They make me not want to play the game at all.

I'm at 106 lightroots now, but only 66 shrines (I think) with many more unlocked as teleport sites but not completed, and I got some considerable things done in that one day I felt like playing...all ancient tablets, all quests with Penn, etc, but I can't handle Tears when I'm really tired, so it has to be a pretty good day before I can stand to open the game, lol. I want to continue my progress but when I pick up the controller and I just stare at the icon for a few minutes, then put it back down and turn the console off again. Made good progress for a little bit there, but I've set it back down now and can't seem to get the urge to play back, at the moment. Well, when your primary urge is to sleep, everything else looks too difficult.

I did get the Z armor though, and upgraded it to max. It's got the highest defence in the game and has a useful bonus, and it's comparatively easy to upgrade, so will swap to triple-attack-up foods with this most of the time now, rather than getting triple-attack-up via the FD set and taking defence-up foods. I'd need lynel parts for the final upgrade (no thank you!) so even with triple-defence-up bonus, the FD set doesn't match the Z set for defence rating. Which is fine, since I dislike the FD set and all other sets that make him look like a Link from another game. They just feel wrong to me, in this one.

EDIT: Deleted last paragraph due to a spoiler for a shrine result that I couldn't figure out how to sensor. Sorry if anyone saw it before I took it out...
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Lol, I didn't like the "naked" shrines at all at first, but some of them were fun to figure out. There were too many in my opinion though, so much so that every time I find a new shrine now, my son asks if Link is going to be "nakey"!

I have found over 100 shrines now, mostly on the surface. Not sure what the total is, but I am thinking any left are probably in areas I haven't completely combed through. I've done a lot of the side quests too, trying to put off finishing the main story, but I think I am starting to get a little game fatigue now after putting in so many hours in such a short time. I'm probably going to either go ahead with the story and finish up everything else after, or take a break from it for a bit if I want to try to do everything first.

Advice for the Labyrinths:
Spoiler:
Gloom hands make them a little terrifying at first. If you can avoid them, it's all right.
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Mikodesu
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Like them or not, I at least gotta give Nintendo credit for creativity on the nakey shrines. At least there's more to them than the stupid "test of strength" BS. I'll take it.

I've been doing a lot of cleanup of side stuff. Lurelin quest is going, Tarrey Town is done enough to get access to what I wanted access to (SO EXPENSIVE though). Most of tonight was spent in the depths, cleaning out camps and collecting chests. Got 5 battery pieces in the last two days! REALLY wish the game had planned that quest better, with all the hand holding in this one.

I also want as much of the special armor as I can find before I make my decision(s) about what to upgrade. I've kinda backed off of rushing anymore story. I'll get to it. Still haven't even finished gathering all the glyphs. I keep putting it off to the end of my playtime and then going, ah I'll get one tomorrow. I'm more than half done with them though, so I'll get there.

Edit: Forgot to mention this, no idea how rare this is, but I got a bow out of a crate while clearing camps in the depths! Not a bad bow, either.
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