Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Jonman wrote:

I spent about a half hour banging my head against a shrine that required the glider which i didn't yet have!

Which shrine is that? Seems like an awkward oversight.

In unrelated news: I just cleared my first dungeon. Very satisfied with how it played out.

merphle wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I spent about a half hour banging my head against a shrine that required the glider which i didn't yet have!

Which shrine is that? Seems like an awkward oversight.

In unrelated news: I just cleared my first dungeon. Very satisfied with how it played out.

Spoiler:

Morok Shrine: A Bouncy Device - it's the one on a wee floating island that you climb up a tree root to get to.

The final step involved flinging yourself across a chasm with a spring, but you land so hard it killed me. Might not have done if I had more than 4 hearts at the time, but when I gave up and googled a solution it was all "and use your glider to land", and that's how I knew there was a glider in this game! Went back to the main questline instead of random wandering and got the glider in like the next half hour.

Well, at least you could teleport right back to the shrine after you got the goods.

Now I think about, I had to work around the lack of the glider to get as far through the shrine as I did anyway - would have been waaay easier with it.

Yeah the game is telling me go to the castle but I really wanted to get another partial stamina bar or heart first. Maybe I'll just give in

Stele wrote:

Yeah the game is telling me go to the castle but I really wanted to get another partial stamina bar or heart first. Maybe I'll just give in

If this is pre-glider, just go. It’s just a short story beat but ends with

Spoiler:

Getting the glider and unlocking the ability to fill in the map

This game kicks ass. More insightful commentary coming soon.

Irony upon irony, having gotten the glider and gone back to the shrine that needed it, I STILL couldn't figure out the solution!

I was completely stumped on a shrine where I needed to get to the top of a platform, but couldn't climb it and there weren't any parts to build with. Totally forgot I had the ability to just magic my way to the top. I can seem myself doing that for the whole game through.

Jonman wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I love Link humming classic Zelda tunes when he cooks. Oh my god.

It gives me creepy ludo-narrative dissonance. Like wait a minute, Link can HEAR the same thing as me, the player?

It's been a while, but I think all the ones I've heard him hum are ones that were played on the ocarina in the Ocarina game. I can buy those sticking around in the culture as beloved folk tunes.

As much as I can buy anything cultural and historic on a timeline that's many times longer than recorded human history...

merphle wrote:

I'm right there with you Jonman. I played through BotW to completion, and normally love the Zelda formula, but it just didn't click with me.

Well with BotW the Zelda formula pretty much runs its course once you're done with the tutorial, so...

halfwaywrong wrote:

I was completely stumped on a shrine where I needed to get to the top of a platform, but couldn't climb it and there weren't any parts to build with. Totally forgot I had the ability to just magic my way to the top. I can seem myself doing that for the whole game through.

Yeah, same. I just went through a fairly expansive section that demanded its use, though, which I hope is going to help beat it into my skull a bit more.

Don't forget that you can (usually) use it to escape from the very end of a cave system. Super useful.

I’ve only been able to play like 20 minutes of this because life, but between that little taste and what you all are writing I cannot wait to put more time into this.

There was a moment right after finishing the tutorial plateau in BOTW where the world opened up, I looked off into the distance, and got a few goosebumps as the scope and scale and possibility space came into focus. I hope TOTK captures some of that same magic.

WellAdjusted wrote:

I hope TOTK captures some of that same magic.

I've had that happen at least 3 times so far. You're in for a treat.

I had a moment of weakness yesterday afternoon and grabbed the Zelda Switch version. Now I'm just waiting for Amazon to deliver a controller so I can stop struggling with the small joycons.

Jonman wrote:

Now I think about, I had to work around the lack of the glider to get as far through the shrine as I did anyway - would have been waaay easier with it.

Yeah, the game could have been SLIGHTLY better at telegraphing that you're not quite done with the the tutorial before you get the glider (and the first tower). Granted, most people will probably assume that the glider will come soon -- but also, most people are going to have a hard time not just immediately getting off track as soon as the open world is available.

Amiibo chat

As far as I can tell, most (all?) of the amiibo that gave you armor sets in the first game will still give you the same sets, and there are one or two new amiibo with full sets as well (generally the ones you would expect -- versions of link from different games).

A number of others, both new and old, have one or two random special equipment pieces (a one off piece of armor, or a particularly iconic weapon or shield). Again, some of these are the same as from BotW, some are new.

Additionally, a great many have unique glider cloth items that they can drop, which is entirely new. I haven't yet found the place to actually use them, although I encountered someone in on the road or at a stable somewhere who told me, and it's where you might expect if you cared a lot about fashion in the first game.

That all being said, it doesn't seem like there's any guarantee you'll get the special pieces on your first scan or anything. I can't remember if this was the case in BotW, but it's a bit random here. I definitely got a few of the special items as I was scanning yesterday, both others I just got random equipment or resources instead. So, it will probably take a few days to actually get full sets out of all of them.

One final note: if you go searching for more info, most sources are patchy, incomplete, or wrong. This was probably the best source I managed to find.

Yeah in BotW it was crazy random. I borrowed a full set from a friend to scan for weeks. And I ended up with 3 Epona horses, and duplicates of several armor sets.

Jonman wrote:

Irony upon irony, having gotten the glider and gone back to the shrine that needed it, I STILL couldn't figure out the solution!

It took me awhile to figure out the room they are telegraphing you to bounce up in is not the right way. If the ceiling had been lower in that room it would have been much more clear.

So, monster parts.

As in BotW, monsters drop various body parts -- teeth, horns, tails, etc. They can still be used for cooking, and you can still sell them, but as you'd expect, you can also use them for weapon fusion.

And, the game doesn't make a big deal about this, but in a way this is actually a back door solution to one of the more salient complaints that people had about the weapon durability and limited gear inventory systems in the first game. Basically, as you collect monster parts, you are building a stockpile of powerful weapons that aren't limited by inventory constraints that you can hold onto until you want/need them -- so, it somewhat alleviates the issues of not being able to have a quality weapon available when you really need it.

Of course, you still need to make hard choices about the base weapons you are carrying to fuse them to, so it doesn't completely obviate the very intentional and (for many) generally very fun friction that is the point of the system -- that is, having an additional, omnipresent meta layer of resource management choices involved in combat and exploration -- but it significantly expands your possibility space for interacting with those choices. And, it's very nice to be able to ease the anxiety about using your active weapon inventory, as well as have additional reasons to fight random monsters rather than to just run/avoid them.

That being said, I am still being a bit more cautious about fusing monster parts than I would like to be. I've checked the prices, and for the most part the sell value of the parts is small enough that it's not like you are throwing away money using them (which is good!) -- and the ones with a big sell price are also ones with big (like, really big) attack power value when fused.

However, I do worry that there will be a special vendor or other system somewhere where monster parts will have some other important use -- after all, in BotW they were needed for armor upgrades, so at the very least that will probably still be the case here.

I also tried to cook a couple of elixirs. I thought I knew what I was doing from last game. But every attempt was the inedible mess thing. So maybe I'll figure it out later or find a guide if something changed with monster parts.

Son of a Female Doggo. You get to keep your horses from BotW!

After I caught this new horse I named Blue, the guy at the stable said I already had horses registered. But I didn't bother to stable blue and check. Gotta go turn this mid horse in and get out Epona, haha

Fredrik_S wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Irony upon irony, having gotten the glider and gone back to the shrine that needed it, I STILL couldn't figure out the solution!

It took me awhile to figure out the room they are telegraphing you to bounce up in is not the right way. If the ceiling had been lower in that room it would have been much more clear.

Exactly that.

Stele wrote:

Son of a Female Doggo. You get to keep your horses from BotW!

After I caught this new horse I named Blue, the guy at the stable said I already had horses registered. But I didn't bother to stable blue and check. Gotta go turn this mid horse in and get out Epona, haha

I guess horses live awhile. I did not play much of botw but when son reached the first town and met Purah (I think her name was) he exclaimed “oh.. she is all grown up now! She used to be a kid in botw” that the world clicked for me. Its the same but older. Its all really well thought out and well made.

Stele wrote:

I also tried to cook a couple of elixirs. I thought I knew what I was doing from last game. But every attempt was the inedible mess thing. So maybe I'll figure it out later or find a guide if something changed with monster parts.

Insect plus monster part seems to generally work, but all monster parts seem to work. I’ve just been using chu chu jelly.

I jumped down a well with red around it... all I'll say is woah

My horses imported but I dont remember these at all, just some crappy ones with 2 'giddyups'. They might have been from my original save or maybe I finished the game on my wife's profile instead of my own. Really not sure, but I was disappointed. I certainly didnt beat the game with a 2 giddyup horse

Non spoiler question - is there a reward for rebuilding all the houses where supplies are stacked or is it just a story way to explain how there are always pieces around to create things.

Omg, just realized a hilarious/genius thing about Fuse.

Spoiler:

You can fuse weapons TO OTHER WEAPONS.

I accidentally attached a spear to a sword and now i have a 12 foot thing that is AMAZING at cutting giant swathes of grass in a single swipe and finding a bajillionty critters

Yes, Jonman. I figured that out when my weapon inventory got full. Good stuff.

I like this game so far, but feel like I pick the dumb solutions and am missing out on a lot. Up to shrine 4.

just found powered wheels and a steering column and now I’m rolling through Hyrule in a monster truck.