The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

silby: a duhoy, that should have been obvious to me haha.

Yeah mipha's grace i dont find i trigger off that often, esp as I usually carry a few fairies around as well anyway.

BTW I rarely see fairies at the fountains anymore. Do they disappear late-game or something?

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

mipha's grace triggers before fairies, though, right?

I think I might need cold weather gear if I'm going to deal with the bird people and their environment. Either that or roast a crap ton of peppers.

― Josh in Chicago

fortunately a shop in the rito town sells some! unfortunately it's ridiculously expensive :( saving up to buy armor was not one of my favorite parts of the game...

mipha's grace triggers before fairies, though, right?

Oh does it? Hm maybe I just never notice when it happens haha!

What's the quickest way to get cash? Blow up rocks and sell what you get? Just sell everything?

Sell ore yeah (but bear in mind you'll eventually need some of each kind for armour upgrades).

A quick way to make good money is to gather as many "luminous stones" as you an and sell those, theyre worth a lot and easy to find at night (they glow).

Make and sell meals - selling them to shopkeeps or to Beedle is easiest.

DO NOT sell any guardian (robot) parts such as cogs, springs, and esp cores. They are rare and you will need them later for cool gear.

Easy meals to make quickly - load up on apples, mushrooms, berries and fish.

the quickest ways to get cash don't open up until later in the game. it depends on what you've done so far. selling gems can work. cooking and selling recipes also. if you've killed monsters you can sell the monster parts you get. at the point you're at in the game you'll probably have trouble scraping together the 1,150 rupees you'll need to get enough armor to get to level 2 cold resistance, though. :(

something you might try early in the game is seeing if you can hunt for meat, and then cooking five meat together and selling them. you can get pretty decent money for that and meat isn't the most efficient way of healing anyway.
it's good practice at stealth/bow & arrow skills as well.

yeah luminous stones will give you 70 rupees each and are plentiful, that's definitely another good way of making some quick money

The fastest way to make cash is to go to places in the mountains, kill things like elk or whatever, grab the meat before it freezes, hopefully it's "gourmet", combine 5x meats together (5x gourmet is best), cook it, sell it, lather rinse repeat

I wouldn't recommend selling other shit, it's useful to hold on to for upgrades. I didn't sell any gear and I found that in general my natural collection complimented my armour upgrade needs very well-- I seldom had to go hunting for specific deficiencies

Certain things like moblin tusks that you have 100s of, those can be sold though

Save your coloured Lizalfos horns, they are scarce and useful

Yeah electric and fire liz tails also, I had a bitch of a time finding enough of those for the armour upgrades they wanted. I ended up using the sonar thingy... I assume everyone knows you can set it from detecting shrines to detecting whatever you like, right?

The other thing I had a hard time getting my hands on (outside of the one shop that sells them) is swift violets.

Is grinding really an essential thing here? Like, keeping in mind that people have played under all sorts of self-restricted conditions, is it possible to advance in this game without a specific thing that does the thing? Or does that thing just make things easier? Am I going to have to spend hours scouring for stuff? I'm already having trouble keeping track or all the ingredients and equipment, and right about now I wish I knew where to find that magic maraca Mario world refugee dude again so that I can expand my inventory again.

magic korok man is on the hill on the road into kakariko village. unless you’ve upgraded a number of times, at which point he moves to the lost forest/hidden woods

I think I only upgraded once, but I couldn't find him again. is he only there a certain time of day?

I tended not to use the item detector and just search online as to where I could pull/buy the items I was missing.

It's weird, it doesn't feel like I sunk as many evening hours into this game (compared to Dead Cells, Dark Souls, Skyrim) but I did get 120 shrines, all the armour upgrades, and cleared the DLC content. Absorbing game!

@ Josh: It's not so much grinding as it's like, you look at what armours you have, what you need to upgrade them, you explore territories where the missing ingredients are naturally located, completing shrines on the way, then you find you've accumulated the ingredients for the upgrade, warp back to fairy and do so, and keep that up.

Once you've got the revival upgrade and three fairies unlocked (desert fairy is last) then the game seemed in my play through to be ridiculously balanced and enjoyable

the korok guy moves somewhere else in between kakariko village and the lost woods no?

i thought he kept moving with each upgrade but it was a long time ago

zelda's an odd game because the 'grinding' - completing puzzles to increase your hearts/stamina, searching for stuff to upgrade your items - is pretty much the game...but it's fun, so it's not a grind. honestly josh i'm not sure how you're enjoying it (maybe you're not?) if you don't like the shrines. for me, i was actively seeking out shrines most of the time. i wish there were more of them!

I’d like to grind........... on prince sidon amirite

ya the shrines rule

if u hate shrines, I have got some divine beasts you’re going to love.......

yeah I loved walking through the world, or gliding over the world, but the point of my wandering was to find shrines. I really never worried about what gear I had until I'd pretty much done all the shrines, because you get so much good gear in them. I never had much money, probably I would have had to grind to get that, but I didn't need to because in regular game play I got enough to afford the big costs, the last fairy and the other big expense I can't remember anymore.

I actually am enjoying the wandering around stuff. But no, so far I'm not really enjoying the shrines, because I see them as chores, impediments to my quest for more hearts and stamina, which help me fight and wander, etc. They're mostly unsatisfying PIAs for me. And yeah, I remember seeing a clip of someone solving some divine beast (camel?) and thinking at the time, no way am I ever wasting the fucking time to do that. Again, I'm not some huge gamer, so I don't have many frames of references. But I've been enjoying this less than I enjoyed Dark Souls. I still think it's fun, and it's still good enough to have drawn me away from Spider-man (which I've barely played). But in DS it felt like putting in the time and learning to fight really accelerated powering up, there was a sense of momentum, but in this I'm not getting that vibe. For example, no amount of hearts or stamina will make me think using a leaf to awkwardly navigate around spikes while on a platform suspended by balloons is fun. The challenge is not in the challenge, the challenge (for me) is wanting to try it more than a couple of times. Vs. some bosses in DS, which gave me some real satisfaction.

so you like fighting more than 3d-platformy puzzling, that's fine & makes sense!

I thought that fighting hinoxes (hinoxen?) was fun even at low levels, because you can evade their bashes. & then eventually lynels are lots of fun, but you'll want better weapons and probably more hearts before you take them on.

Yeah, maybe that's it? I mean, I loved Hollow Knight, but I don't remember much of that feeling like a chore. Or really involving much rote puzzle solving? I like the surprises of finding stuff, I just don't like ... the redundancy? Like with Hollow Knight, I "finished" the game, but damned if I'm ever going to try to 100% it, let alone find every charm or worm. Who cares, you know?

I did find my first hinox (I think). It was sleeping near the bird people. But it looked pretty huge, and given I've barely made a dent in the rock monsters or guardians, I just snuck past it and took one look over my shoulder at it lumbering after me before recognizing I probably made the right choice.

the puzzles in the shrines are not rote at all though

I meant rote in the sense that they all kind of start and end the same, and a lot of the puzzles in the middle are just doing the same thing again and again until you succeed. The puzzles, at least as I've experienced them so far, seem to be variations on the same themes.

now I will say finding or getting to some of the shrines, I've actually found that to be pretty satisfying. doing some tasks and seeing one rise out of the ground, or finding my way past thorns. I find that sort of problem-solving more fun than the interiors. I'm off and happy enough just to have activated the shrines to give me places to teleport to.

arsehole shrine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcKELDqNl5I

that's a good shrine

xpost Yeah, exactly! I actually tried that one, and after the first couple of conveyor belts (which weren't that bad) I got to the part with the stasis, and squatting, and running, and carrying, and avoiding the lasers, and I came *this close* (assuming there wasn't a lot more) and I was like, fuck this, I'm done. Same with the one involving wind travel and balloons and spikes and stuff. It just kept going until I couldn't take it anymore.

I'm also at a point where if I enter the shrine and it promises a modest combat trial or whatever, I'm in, but if it says difficult combat, fuck that.

ha, i remember not enjoying that particular shrine

tbh of all the "big" monsters hinox are prob easiest once you want to have a crack. A few well aimed arrows into their eye, whack them while theyre down.

now I will say finding or getting to some of the shrines, I've actually found that to be pretty satisfying. doing some tasks and seeing one rise out of the ground, or finding my way past thorns. I find that sort of problem-solving more fun than the interiors. I'm off and happy enough just to have activated the shrines to give me places to teleport to.

― Josh in Chicago

fyi some shrines you "solve" by just getting to them, go inside and you just get free shit

I gave up on this game I think during the "you can't see shit in here" divine beast

I dont remember any of the beasts being dark? U sure yr not thinking of that awful inky black forest? (I managed to somehow end up landing in that from the air and thus missed its entrance that had like, helpful torches and shit haha)

there's one beast that starts out dark but it doesn't last long

I gave up on this game I think during the "you can't see shit in here" divine beast

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi)

if it helps you're not likely to be eaten by a grue

FINALLY finished all the Champions Ballad DLC wooooo *fistpump*. Did not expect to have to do a wily monk boss battle at the end! He was fun. More challenging than Ganon tbrh.

...the motorbike's a bit of a let down. I think I prefer my horse!

I keep playing this, and it's fun, but I feel like I'm making no real progress. I mean, I guess I'm getting better - I killed one of those big troll monster things - but I'm still mostly just wandering around and hunter/gathering/replacing weapons.

That actually does serve as progress, the quality of randomized weapon drops increases as you break more weapons. From what I understand.

what is progress? is it winning the game? in that case you need to get back to the storyline/main missions . is it getting stronger? then you have to get back to the shrines. you're right that wandering around randomly is not going to lead to progress.

Progress in the sense that there does not seem to be any clear directive. I don't really feel like I'm working toward anything specific, and the open world environment means I can avoid missions as easily as I can pursue them, but it gives no clear indication which missions are important and which are distractions. For that matter, I'm reluctant to go for the main storyline/missions, as I understand them, if I am woefully underprepared or underpowered. But so far the game has given me no hints as to what underprepared or underpowered even looks like. For example, are certain enemies difficult because I am underpowered/equipped, or are they just ... really difficult? I've gotten hints to pursue at least a couple of the divine beasts, for another example, but there has been given no indication I'm remotely ready to do so without a certain set of armor, or certain number of hearts and stamina, or specific potions or whatever. And I'm reluctant to try if it just means breaking or using up all my weapons.

The rock monsters, for example. Thus far I've mostly avoided them, because 1) I can and 2) fighting them seems slow and fruitless at this point. And that's even assuming the rewards are worth the effort. The giant sleeping troll I woke up and killed, for example, I honestly can't remember what that earned me. Or if I should even care.

i will suggest a direction: go take down a divine beast. you can do it with whatever weapons or items you have right now. if it's too hard, note what was too hard about it, and come back later. (this approach is pretty much identical to what it was like to play the original NES Zelda)

if you try to take it down and find it too hard, you will have lost about 20-30 minutes and will maybe break a couple weapons. you can find new weapons!

The giant sleeping troll I woke up and killed, for example, I honestly can't remember what that earned me. Or if I should even care.

you should not care. i think i only fought the rock monsters like three times, and i stopped fighting lynels because i didn't care. i'd rather be soaring with my paraglider and shooting arrows in slow motion (give that a shot sometime if you haven't already). other people love fighting lynels and seek them out, setting their own goal to beat all of them. you don't get any special reward for doing so (i don't think), it's just what they want. that's why BotW rules - there is no wrong way to play it, other than stressing out about how to play it

otm

otm