Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Airplane mode for me for awhile.

It makes me irrationally annoyed they patched this. It is no way hurt anyone or prevented people from finishing the game. It would be like patching Breath of the Wild so you couldn't turn the controller over for that one Shrine so it was a blank table rather than the maze and thus easier to solve. Or many other methods in other games to get lots of money or break the economy in ways to benefit the player.

Why should Nintendo care how people enjoy the game? It isn't multiplayer which might give an advantage over other players, etc. It just feels petty to me. Like "you can't play it that way so I will make it so you can't" rather any other reason.

The great fairy armor upgrades are super helpful. Early on I kept getting one shot but a few upgrades basically triples your armor. It's a big difference.

Also got two of the armor that helps your skydive better. It's a notable speed boost for travel. Although occasional it triggers this light that I have no idea what it means.

I had a side quest that mentioned fairy fountain I think. Really need to stop and do that, at least find one.

master0 wrote:

The great fairy armor upgrades are super helpful. Early on I kept getting one shot but a few upgrades basically triples your armor. It's a big difference.

Also got two of the armor that helps your skydive better. It's a notable speed boost for travel. Although occasional it triggers this light that I have no idea what it means.

Certain sky ruins seem to have a low gravity bubble around them. A blue flash around you means you've entered and yellow means you've exited, if I remember right.

polypusher wrote:
master0 wrote:

The great fairy armor upgrades are super helpful. Early on I kept getting one shot but a few upgrades basically triples your armor. It's a big difference.

Also got two of the armor that helps your skydive better. It's a notable speed boost for travel. Although occasional it triggers this light that I have no idea what it means.

Certain sky ruins seem to have a low gravity bubble around them. A blue flash around you means you've entered and yellow means you've exited, if I remember right.

That's definitely it. Yellow flash after jumping off water temple.

I don’t have a problem with them patching it out. It wasn’t an intended part of the game. If they wanted cheats in the game they would have put them in as an option.

I got something cool today because my stamina wheel was upgraded to an additional full wheel (5 total upgrades).

Okay I will say the four labyrinths kind of suck. Copy pasted find four switches and fight a boss.

I hope the remaining two main temples aren't also find some switches and fight a boss as well... Like the first two are.

Aristophan wrote:

I got something cool today because my stamina wheel was upgraded to an additional full wheel (5 total upgrades).

I got that too. Really cool scene. Also an extra stamina wheel is so nice for climbing and travel.

Huh, I’m 3/5 of the way to second extra bar of stamina, and I don’t recall anything special along the way — did I miss something?

zeroKFE wrote:

Huh, I’m 3/5 of the way to second extra bar of stamina, and I don’t recall anything special along the way — did I miss something?

Minor hint

Spoiler:

You need two bars worth of stamina to unlock something but need to find it. There is quest.

Full Spoiler

Spoiler:

You can unlock the mastersword with two bars of stamina. The quest can be started from kokiri forest.

Ah, heh, yeah — I figured I should do more than one temple before pursuing that.

In both BotW and here, once I started upgrading my stamina I put every upgrade into stamina until I filled the second wheel. The way they represent it in the UI works really well but I can't bring myself to look at a partial circle for longer than I have to.

Vargen wrote:

Wells?!

Huh. As it turns out, yes, wells. I might never have noticed otherwise. Or it at least would have taken me a lot longer.

My previous Zeldas were Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. I didn’t glom well onto Breath of the Wild because of how the weapon breakage was constantly annoying me. I love the weapon fuse system in TotK. This feels like what Nintendo was trying to accomplish over a decade ago with cheats and tricks and all manner of compromises. TotK feels like Zelda without compromises. You can go over the entire breadth and length of Hyrule. It’s ruined but populated. It’s got a robust environment game. The UI has been streamlined and improved. It even looks good doing all this.

Finished the first major story quest!

Spoiler:

- The Wind Temple was an impressive set piece. Loved the location in the skies.
- Platforming to get there was a little frustrating, but I loved the arrival sequence.
- The actual temple was a head scratcher - it took me a little time to work out how to progress.
- The boss was a little easy - and much less terrifying than those gloom hands! I think it helped that I already disabled the gun turrets so I could explore in safety.

Now I’m back in Lookout Landing. Need to gather ingredients and cook up a storm — I drained my provisions in the previous sequence.

Vargen wrote:

In both BotW and here, once I started upgrading my stamina I put every upgrade into stamina until I filled the second wheel. The way they represent it in the UI works really well but I can't bring myself to look at a partial circle for longer than I have to.

Same.

That also makes me very curious about the full stamina bar quest mentioned last page.

I finished my third full stamina bar last night, and still don't have the aforementioned quest. Hmm.

I'm up to 18 heart containers, and have unlocked all of the map towers. I also completed one of the major story beats at Hyrule Castle, and am continuing on my merry way.

Spoiler:

OMG the "Zelda" who's been running around causing mischief isn't actually the real Zelda??

Lots of progress yesterday. I beat the Wind Temple. Loving the reward.

Spoiler:

I love Ghost Birb so much. Seems like I'm constantly getting to the end of a weapon's combo with the enemy still on a sliver of health, only for an arrow to fly in from off-screen and finish him while I'm readying another. Awesome.

Also figured out how to get into the Lost Woods and got the thing there.

Spoiler:

Feels good to have the Master Sword in hand again. I'm assuming it goes on cool down like it did in BotW? Haven't had it for long enough to know.

The Phantom Ganon fight was touch and go, but I had just enough health that he couldn't one-shot me, and a full inventory of healing and buffing meals got me through.

Also unlocked the first Great Fairy, so I'm rocking a little more defense. Between all of the above I'm feeling pretty capable. I just got the quest to start upgrading the Purah Pad, probably going to move in that direction next. Might also be time to stop avoiding some of the optional bosses / elite mobs as I explore the world, just in case some of them are blocking good loot.

I really need to do the first fairy. I keep wandering off and getting distracted. Lots of shrines and I'm up to 10 hearts but sheesh I need to upgrade some armor.

I dunno if this happens for everyone but I was let down by the first Great Fairy. I have armor with +8 defense and +attack, but she couldn’t upgrade that. She could only make the +3 stuff into +5.

I think that specific set of armor can’t be upgraded. (Maybe as a tradeoff for the fact that it essentially starts with +2 or +3 stats.)

Yeah but like half of the rest of my armor couldn’t be either.

It's a combo of how many fairies you've found vs the level of upgrade and then what materials you have on hand. I think it's just like BotW?

If you don't have needed materials in inventory it doesn't highlight that the armor can be upgraded.

Never stayed focused enough in BotW to upgrade armor a lot of this is new to me

Stele wrote:

If you don't have needed materials in inventory it doesn't highlight that the armor can be upgraded.

That doesn't appear to be the case. At least, I had one armor piece (Barbarian's chest piece) that needed multiple of an ingredient I didn't have any of to upgrade, but it still displayed what ingredient I would need.

For all the color palette and light colors and theming, this game can be legitimately terrifying. Like, I'm just going around picking up greens and herbs for a trip and suddenly there's some huge otherworldly monstrosity flinging breath weapons at me.

I use Ultrahand often used to create animations for Recalling. It's probably broken, really, but that's the kind of broken I like.

Partially spoiler, but not really, is that you can queue up and use Ultrahand while Recall is still running. Basically, you can Recall something into a position from which you can Ultrahand it again. Using this tactic, you can UltraRecall your way across bare chasms and up cliff faces so long as you can step on something from which to loop Recall back into Ultrahand. You can do swap tricks with two objects, too.

I used this on a few Korok puzzles instead of building vehicles.

I love the "farming" I'm doing in TotK because it's basically hunting and mining, which make sense for making money. Hunting moose and bear in the frozen tundra is super profitable.

As for the game, I've been so lost in it, I haven't even had time to post here!

Weapon breaking was a deal breaker for me in BotW. They solved it with the fusion system in TotK. I love how each monster now yields several weapons from its parts.

Stele wrote:

I really need to do the first fairy. I keep wandering off and getting distracted. Lots of shrines and I'm up to 10 hearts but sheesh I need to upgrade some armor.

I have decided to focus completely on this until I have all 4 unlocked. I'm close to 70 hours in now with 10 hearts and upgrades from 2 fairies, and I'm once again starting to get 1-shot by some non-boss enemies.

I'm honestly a bit shocked by how punishing the damage is in this game. I don't remember it being like this in BotW. It's not a big deal for me because I'm a glutton for punishment, but I can imagine it frustrating a lot of people.

hbi2k wrote:
Stele wrote:

If you don't have needed materials in inventory it doesn't highlight that the armor can be upgraded.

That doesn't appear to be the case. At least, I had one armor piece (Barbarian's chest piece) that needed multiple of an ingredient I didn't have any of to upgrade, but it still displayed what ingredient I would need.

Yeah I mean it's in the upgrade list but color is grayed out. Here's a screenshot I found since I haven't got there yet:

IMAGE(https://www.gamersheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/How-To-Upgrade-Armor-In-Zelda-Tears-Of-The-Kingdom.jpg)

I finished the water temple. It was a bit more dungeony, and the the boss was a hoot. I really liked it. One more to go on those.