The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Isn't it every three days like in BotW? Feels the same to me and y'all just forgot how annoying it was originally

Rains just as much too but at least you can get around that now

@Trayce:

The sceptres/wands/staves will break, but there are ways to get more. It's better to just fuse them with gems and shoot magic rather than bashing enemies with them. Either way they'll break eventually.

The wand system is pretty sick in this game imo

Are all the chasms linked? Or are they separate?

I'm assuming the entire depths is the same area as surface map, but down below? Hving not explored it much I couldn't say for sure but its what I've assumed.

Things I am yet to see:
durians
radishes
any porgy fish

Things I didnt expect and dont know wtf to do with it:
Golden apple!?

I’ve found radishes, albeit very sparingly. I think durians are gone.

Theyre certainly not where they used to be in the cliffs just above Lakeside Stable.

Oh which reminds me - its weird seeing the dragons just idly surfind round in the sky now. They dont seem to dip down like they used to. Ive been able to surf near one on the way down from a sky archipelago, and when you get close they do still trigger the music and the updraft, and you *can* still shoot scales/horns etc off them.

Yeah I shot a scale off one within the first couple of days, but - get this - that was UNDERGROUND. First time I leapt into a chasm was at Kakariko and Naydra was just gliding around down there. Blew my mind re: the scale.

I had a similar experience where I was in the Depths but I heard the distinctive, lovely dragon music before I saw anything. I was so surprised! Then I looked up and saw one of them just working their way up thru a Chasm.

A note on the Depths/Chasms: the geography is the inverse of the surface. Mountains are valleys, bodies of water are walls. Also the lightroots/shrines correspond to one another.

I’ve found a couple of shrines that don’t have light roots and vice versa.

i was sky diving and a star fragment just pulled up next to me both of us falling tother i reached out and grabbed it, blessed moment

I still don't really know what star fragments are for

in botw they were mostly for upgrading armor tho you could cook with them too, in this game you can also fuse them to weapons

game seemed a little slow to get started, then I actually went to Lookout Landing

BOTW got me so used to having a permanent quest marker at the castle that I always ignored

I read somewhere that shrines don't always correspond with lightroots, but all lightroots are attached to shrines. Unknown if confirmed, though I'm sure someone's already 100%ed the damn thing.

Assumed fusing a diamond to a weapon would be extra durable. Was sorely disappointed.

xxxp Trayce wrt to the dragons I was near the chasm at Kakariko and heard the music only to witness Naydra descending into it! Was a glorious sight - decided to fall down with her, and then realized YOU CAN GRAB ONTO HER AND RIDE HER. Basically some Shadow of the Colossus shit - which just made me feel incredibly giddy. Seems like they regularly fly around in all three regions and you can use them as transport!!! Just make sure to have the appropriate armor to protect you form their elements.

I wondered about that! Given I wasnt getting frozen when I was right up next to Naydra. It now occurs to me I was dressed for the Rito temple so.

This game is so fucking great.

IME, shrines on the sky islands don't correspond to lightroots, but the ones on the surface do. I haven't yet found a counter-example. It is wild that I have logged almost 80 hours in this game and it is still surprising me. I just found my first low-gravity zone for example.

had a similar dragon experience as octobeard. amazing moment for sure

On corresponding shrines, the names of the lightroots are their matching shrine names spelled backwards

Who’s built themselves a house yet?!

i built the beginner house but i havent done anything with it

Now I have a fancy house I basically feel like I’ve completed the game.

Fire temple argh. Theyve taken the bit of Minish Cap I hated most and made it 3D and added lava.

i have beaten the game

thank you for saving the kingdom

I was running around the fire temple confused trying to figure out why I couldn't do anything. Turns out that I had just climbed in instead of taking my buddy with me. Didn't realize you needed to have him to really do anything.

But overall I found it much easier to eschew the trial and error of the mine carts and just use a combination of climbing around and ascend to skip them.

Yeah this is what half of reddit are saying too - ascend + fire hydrants. I tried this cheese but I just got hopelessly lost and also nowhere I tried would let me ascend anyway.

as with the divine beasts of BotW, I've gotten through the Rito place and the fire temple by doing random stuff until it somehow worked.

My brief Gleeok encounters so far have me feeling there won't ever be a time when they won't obliterate me instantly.

gleeok strat fire eyeball fused arrows at their heads

i have beat the game, while prob completing 20% of it, looking forward to the real work of getting all the outfits

i defeated my first gleeok last night and then immediately died when phantom ganon showed up and i'd already used my good items

I love those little guided tank things

Stoked to get back to Lakeside Stable and environs for some reason. Just a good spot.

Finally went back to the wind temple and finished it. Then got stuck into the secret tunnel at Lookout Landing…

I'm in the middle of that boss battle, it's annoying

Yeah, that's (the Wind Temple boss, I'm assuming you mean) is a cool fight conceptually, but in practice is deeply annoying. Conversely, the Water Temple boss is conceptually irritating, but in practice isn't so bad.

I finished the main temples and did the subsequent goose chase around Hyrule Castle/Phantom Ganon boss fight and now I'm not really even sure where the game wants me to go next. So it's back to aimlessly trawling the Depths for treasure.

i enjoyed the wind temple boss because diving through them ice holes is real satisfying

spoilers for great plateau+depths area: was probably expecting too much but i was really disappointed in the resolution to the big bargainer statue quest - the dialogue made me think it would go in a much more interesting direction and maybe provide some small gameplay perk you didn't have before. i actually stayed up way later than i meant to because i was so curious about what would happen. instead it was just unlocked the next bargainer shop item and threw in a heart/stamina container. doubly disappointing because it was basically all there was to do at the great plateau, which was one of the more intriguing areas to revisit

i do think this game improves on BOTW's problems with intrinsic rewards but still not great

to me getting the outfits is the most important thing

outfits are imo one of the only good intrinsic rewards the games offer and totk seems to be better about how they're distributed than botw but in this case the outfit reward is the exact same thing you'd get for randomly stumbling on any random bargainer statue that isn't missing its eyeballs

that one was kind of a lot and i got really confused for a minute as to where the statue was after i already had two eyeballs in it, i somehow lost it, it turned out to just be way lower than i was looking

it's annoying how you get basically the same 5-minute cut scene each time you beat a temple boss

I should not have purchased this on an overriding impulse on Friday night. Digging it but damn is the Great Sky Prologue/Tutorial/First Biome way too long. The open nature of the rest of the game is kinda contradictory to the more on-rails needs of the tutorial. I spent a good 2-3 hours wandering round and exploring the snow-packed sections before realizing I needed to hit the waypoint in another island first to activate goals.

Oh and the “should not have purchased on Friday” is because this weekend was also a 2-day meetup I attended so I wouldn’t get home till later in the evening and then play till like 1-2am because it was that compelling. That was my mistake.

I also explored the snow section too soon, but actually really appreciated that I could - someone new to the series might have missed the tutorial on cooking beforehand and just moved elsewhere.

If anything it reminded me a lot of the Great Plateau. You were locked into it similar to this, it took a somewhat similar amount of time/effort to trudge through, though the shrines were accessible initially, limiting the notions of "early" exploration.

I think this expresses one of the main differences of this game vs BotW. The original was a bit more structurally open from the get go, and far less "linear". TotK, while still being largely open, has a more defined and structured set of things to do early on, both in the tutorial and the world at large.

I think that works great for players who have played BotW first, and builds on the existent magic of the world. For those coming in fresh, the "mystery" and novelty of the world as perfectly presented in the OG is not quite as well laid out. I.e. I feel the game is 10/10 for those who loved BotW, 9/10 for n00bs.

in short, feels to me like exploring the world *was* the game in botw, while totk is more objective/task oriented. of course you can ignore those objectives and just build death machines if you like.

exploring the depths has felt the most similar to botw to me, where the joy is in uncovering the map and making discoveries. its also a higher degree of difficulty, reminds me of botw when i would get blindsided by a strong enemy or fall from a height when running out of stamina. that doesn't happen so much in the overworld in this game

I spent ages last night on that shrine "built for rails". I'd keep thinking I totes had it, with my various slapped together slabs but theyd all fall off halfway along where the rail broke. I was ready to give up but something tickled the logic/sceience part of my brain and I started being methodical, then actually worked it out.
Now maybe other ppl would've instantly gone "oh yeah you'd need to do this" but I never do, and I was pleased with myself!