The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I was trying to post a big long thing about how I also neglected horses the entire game and now feel weirdly sad about it. Didn't tame one or anything. But ilx died and I lost the post.

i mean if the story's boring and you don't want to do the side quests or the shrines, that's pretty much the whole game?

i never really understood boarding horses. your horse is kept at the stable for you, but then if you're out riding around having an adventure and you need to get off your horse to explore some area, that horse is lost unless you come back for it within a certain amount of time? or do they go back to the stable? it always felt like more trouble than it was worth

i liked in witcher how you could just whistle for your horse anywhere and it would magically appear, even if you had abandoned it on the other side of the map

If you feed your horse three or four apples, it gets more obedient and easier to steer.

NB - you don't have to complete a shrine to be able to warp to it. You just have to activate it at the entrance.

Once you have enough stamina (from completing shrines) it gets a lot easier to tame horses, as it takes longer for the horse to throw you off.

do they go back to the stable?

There's a shrine next to every stable, so theoretically if you lose your horse you can just warp back to the stable and pick it up.

Or, er, go to the horse god to resurrect dead horses.

I turned off the shrine ping because it got pretty annoying, but I should probably turn it back on again.

The flashing dot on my map, is that my next major quest goal, or only the most recent/top of the queue? Every place I go I seem to encounter people telling me to go somewhere else, but I'm not sure what to prioritize. I'm also having trouble with scale. Dots that seem close by take forever to get to, and sometimes I get to where the flashing dot is but somehow fail to satisfy whatever completion criteria I'm meant to satisfy.

Re: the horse, I meant is it better to have one dedicated horse, or do all horses fundamentally serve the same purpose? For example, I misplaced the horse I had been using so later hopped on a different horse, and it seemed pretty much the same to me. Can I train it to do different stuff? Like, I dunno, fly? Fight battles for me?

う...うまー！

...！？

う..うまー！

#ゼルダの伝説 #ブレスオブザワイルド #任天堂 pic.twitter.com/X2ELHrI6Ka

— ゴリライブ(イカ絵RTマン 及び クソリプマン） (@untiiiiiikong) March 4, 2017

https://i.imgur.com/pK74g.gif

I turned off the shrine ping because it got pretty annoying, but I should probably turn it back on again.

yeah you should turn it back on

the best way to play this game is to just noodle around in pursuit of some proximal goal and not worry about if you get distracted and wind up somewhere else. Just live in the game, man.

The yellow dot on the map is an indicator for your current activated quest; you can make a different quest active in your quest log in the + menu.

But it doesn't matter which quest is foremost?

Matter in what sense? There is no ulterior reason to prioritize anything over anything else.

Because if you don't do quest X you can't get reward Y and you need reward Y to complete quest Z?

You cannot move on to Y until you do X?

i turned off shrine ping until i had traversed the entire map on roads and hit up all the obvious ones like the ones in towns and next to stables, then turned it back on to find the out of the way ones

Because if you don't do quest X you can't get reward Y and you need reward Y to complete quest Z?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 31, 2019 9:36 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's vanishingly little of this other than in the sequence of events leading you into each divine beast, and that's pretty linear and easier to keep track of.

You cannot move on to Y until you do X?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 31, 2019 9:37 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Y = enjoying the game
X = stop worrying about playing it "correctly"

Yeah, it's easier to just fart around and do whatever makes you happy. The quest log keeps track of things pretty reliably.

There are three types of quest:

Side quest: Like, "fetch me the ingredients for a delicious devil stew from the castle and i will give you a disappointing 20 rupees" or "guide this message in a bottle down the river for a disappointing selection of rubies." These quests are all totally optional. Some are really fun, it's not just fetch quests.

Shrine quest: These are totally optional too. They're like side quests, but if you beat it, you'll uncover a new shrine.

Main quest: If you just want to complete the plot and finish the game as quickly as possible, you have to do (most of) these.

Then there's completing the shrines (these are optional but build up your health and stamina for battles) and finding your lost memories (which are totally optional, but if you get them all, you get a slightly better ending and a bunch of fun cut scenes during the game)

And theoretically you don't even have to get the divine beasts, but three of them are awesome fun dungeons, and the camel is a fucking wanker.

the divine beasts should not have been so dungeon-like. the shrines are better, optional dungeon puzzles. the initial catching/taming part was a good idea, but you should just fight the boss when you get inside.

josh I was only joking about having you banned

and every boss fight should have involved controlling the divine beast in order to deliver a final death blow

you should maybe prioritise the main quest and you’ll find yourself ambling into side quests along the way

I suggest you start by locating kakariko village (is that what it’s called? the first main village) and going from there

Yeah, I've been there, then to the annoying j-pop scientist, then ... back?

go to Zora Domain imo

And theoretically you don't even have to get the divine beasts, but three of them are awesome fun dungeons, and the camel is a fucking wanker.

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, January 31, 2019 11:30 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had no idea if there was a particular order to them when I first played (before losing the first switch), and this was the only one i made it to/beat. definitely looked up tips on how to beat it tho

Josh, generally, when I played the game, I did the following:

1. Did not cook at all, but explored every realm and used shrine-completion as an opportunity to heal.
2. Stuck to the main quest religiously until Zora's Realm was completed, as the ability you get from defeating the Divine Beast there is extremely useful.
3. Prioritized exploring the map, activating the towers.
4. Prioritized finding all four fairy fountains and upgrading my armour-- not cooking meant that I had naturally acquired most of the required ingredients to do so.

Because if you don't do quest X you can't get reward Y and you need reward Y to complete quest Z?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 31, 2019 5:36 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there is very little of this in the game (if any?) which is very unusual for a zelda game (a franchise which is big on this type of gating). if you’re skilled enough, you can walk off the plateau and straight to the final boss

I remember the early game being very difficult - requiring careful management of weapons, use of situational advantages in combat (bombs, barrels, stealth etc). there comes a point where you stop picking up clubs and sticks and start collecting swords and spears etc

this is a little way into the game and is the fun of progressing

for travel you can fast travel - a lot of the wonder comes from just traversing the world on foot and coming over small settlements, set pieces, large towns, merchants etc

fgti’s scheme is good

we are here for you josh. this is a safe space. I will not call for your removal from the board and have removed you from my badposters.xls

Cool. Coming from Dark Souls, there is no "right" way there, but there are wrong, practically irreversible things you can do, and big mistakes to make, that can seriously impair enjoyment.

I think dark souls was a really weird entry point for you. DS is awesome and there’s a reason there’s an entire genre called “soulslike” games. But it’s no sort of measuring stick other games. In general, although it sometimes makes sense to compare one game to another, especially games in the same series, I try to approach each game on its own terms.

the best way to play this game is to just noodle around in pursuit of some proximal goal and not worry about if you get distracted and wind up somewhere else. Just live in the game, man.


Otm

^yes so many play sessions were like shaggy dog stories

I like FGTI's approach, but I did a variation - lots of cooking and not a lot of fairy fountain stuff. The fairies start asking for a LOT of stuff in exchange for the later upgrades, and they aren't that necessary if you have some of the better dishes in your inventory.

I also managed to get through the game without almost any horse combat. I think there was some kind of horse combat training game upon which I never stumbled.

Long story short, I mostly wanted to make sure there wasn't something that if I missed or forgot to do early on I would seriously regret. Like, "oh shit, I should have told that dude in that field 'yes!'"

I'm pretty sure that the only thing you ever lose access to, in the whole game, is the interior of the divine beasts, after beating bosses. You need not regret anything.

so basically play it as just a bunch of adventures and puzzles and challenges, or, if I want, story mode.

play it however it makes sense to you! if you're craving a challenge, head straight for the castle in the middle. you'll probably get your ass kicked and realize you need better equipment. the way to get better equipment and weapons is just to explore and do quests. there's no correct or incorrect order to do the quests, you just kind of figure it out.

personally the way i played it was something like

*takes out binoculars*
whoa, there's a shrine way up there on that mountain, i'm gonna try to get to it
*many adventures take place on the way to the mountain*
fuck, wait, it's cold on the mountain. i need some sort of cold-repelling food before i try it again.
*adventures take place. the sun goes up and down several times. i totally forget what i was doing, while also completing 17 other shrines and finding a fairy who wants to have sex with me in the woods*
oh yeah, i was going to try to find that shrine on the mountain!
*many adventures take place on the way to the mountain*
etc

if you want structure or to be told how to play the game, here's a way:

defeat the four divine beasts, then go to hyrule castle in the middle

otm

those fairies are extremely horny

but just keep in mind that another way to play is try to find a tree at the top of a large slope and then blow it to pieces and have fun pushing the logs down the hill

do we think you might not fully appreciate how novel and brilliant botw is with all its freedom and fluidity - if you're not invested in the zelda franchise having never played all the key mainline games ?

lol for some reason 90% of the times my partner would sit down to watch me play for a bit, I'd be at the fairy getting ready to upgrade like 7 items. "uh no it's not allllways like this I swear"
leisure suit link

love those fairies

xp that was my experience as well!

every time i visit the fairies i think about george constanza's desire to date an extremely tall woman

I wonder if BOTW being someone’s first open world game dulls its impact a little. I feel like if you haven’t slogged through dozens of similar but terrible games over the years you might not see it as particularly mind blowing. But stuff like how you never need to do X in order to do Y, you get every ability from the outset, you can go literally anywhere as soon as you leave the plateau, the geography being meticulously designed to constantly reward you for exploration but doesn’t FEEL meticulously designed, you can experiment without breaking the game, fire and ice and magnetism and gravity and momentum all work as expected which encourages you to dick around with them, etc—it’s like aw yiss they finally got it all right.

otm - a lot of the systems are perfectly tuned and feel "right", which might not be so exciting unless you have experienced lots of other games where similar systems are a toil.

it's kind of like the jump in super mario bros 3, which is still one of the greatest jumps of all time. unless you have played a bunch of 2D platformers with subpar jumping mechanisms, you might not appreciate how perfect it feels in SMB3 and how hard that is to accomplish