Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Oh, nice, that’s easier. I tried catching those fairies around the Great Fairy Fountain near Kakariko Village like that but I failed, so I wasn’t sure it was possible. I’ll try again.

Yea, and be aware that sneaking around in water is noisy, so you have to be extra slow/careful for creatures near it.

Yeah, you gotta sneak to get the fairies.

I REALLY liked the adventure of heading up the road to Zora’s domain. While I could have skipped it (Rito Power)

The battles with the shock-arrowed lizalfos, multiple camps, rolling rock traps. It all felt really balanced, and by the end I felt really good at battling.

The Zora dungeon isn’t too difficult. Tip, stock up on fairies, I had 4-5. Very helpful when you are too slow eating.

Also, you definitely don’t need to kill the guy to get the shock arrows. I liked that part about the quest specifically. That there was this big monster boss that you had to sneak around and collect arrows from the trees and ground.

Will come back to him later, when I am stronger.

If you do the zora “dungeon” make sure your read all the prompts and text. I skipped a few lines and was stuck and had to Google after hours of frustration.

My first trip to the big Lava Mountain place:

[Spoiler]I brute-forced my way to the Goron city, meaning if there’s something I was supposed to do or wear before coming here, I never found it. Heat resistant food didn’t help, and neither did Gerudo garments. The reaction of the Gorons as they see me running around, frantically shopping and hoping to find something just cracked me up. I love the panic. Good news too, I found what I needed in a local shop.

It was quite a tense journey.[/spoiler]

I was a-okay with equipment deterioration until I discovered shield surfing.

Does shield surfing degrade shields? That kind of sucks.

Yes, but I don’t shield-surf enough to know if it’s a set amount everytime you initiate the surfing, or if it actively degrades more and more the longer you’re surfing. And I don’t know if different types of ground degrade the shield at different rates.

But the act itself can degrade/break shields.

Never played a Zelda game before.

My first impression: this Zelda civilization is in ruins and I am not surprised, the craftmanship of everything is shit, I can’t have a weapon last more than one hour.

Except the tech of the ancients, that seems way cool.

Nope, those also break quicker than one would expect given the costs. I thought I could go guardian hunting for days with the ancient sword. I think I got through 2-3 before it broke.

Well all four Divine Beasts are now under control. I guess I could technically make a run for Hyrule Castle, but I still feel like I haven’t discovered half of what’s out there, and I’m apprehensive about ending the game any time soon.

Unfortunately, if I just ignore the storyline at this point I’d feel like I’m wasting time just to do it, or rather, my exploring wouldn’t really be serving a purpose other than delaying the inevitable at this point. I’m over-equipped, have an inventory bulging at the seams with food and ingredients, I’ve been completing side quests as I find them, I have a ton of hearts and stamina. I just don’t see a reason to keep wandering, except for the fact I haven’t nearly seen it all, even if I do have all the towers unlocked.

I guess this is what second playthroughs are for. Now I just need to decide if I should replay soon, or wait for the higher difficulty DLC due later in the year.

Shield surfing doesn’t degrade shields on sand and some other surfaces. It degrades shields faster on rocks or paved paths.

I haven’t gone there yet but I did explore a bit around Death Mountain and found an NPC at a stable who told me about “fire proof” elixers - basically a big step above “heat resistance” that you get in the desert areas. The dude let me buy as many as I wanted from him, but I didn’t yet because I couldn’t tell if he was trying to rip me off.

I haven’t found any more yet though about how to make them for myself, though I assume that’s part of it if you take the main roads heading toward Goron City.

Yea, I didn’t know about those, heh. I simply broughts oodles of full health-restore food platters.

I just finished the main quest. I’m watching the credits right now, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep playing or not after they’re done.

When all is said and done I completed 50% of the shrines 60ish/120 and found 25% of the Kuroko seeds about 100/400. I feel like I only completed 20% of the side quests, and unlocked all the towers. Hell, I only found two Great Fairies too. So all in all, even though I completed the story, I didn’t come anywhere close to completing the game as a whole. I could play through this a second time, and except for key story points and towers, have a completely different experience throughout most of my journey.

This game is just crazy huge.

Credits are done. As for whether I can continue where I left off, nope. I can reload an earlier save or start all over.

Small question about the controls: how do you cancel a bow shot once you’ve hit the trigger? On that same note, is there a way to manually sheathe a weapon once it’s drawn?

The answer is the B button on both counts. For cancelling shot, just don’t release the shot until you hit B.

Thanks! I know it’s a somewhat silly question, but I’m in a situation where I play the game once a week when I’m hanging out with my one friend who’s got a Wii U – can’t afford to waste time on control schemes!

Also, you can switch arrow types by pressing left on the d pad while Link is holding his bow.

re seeds: There are 900 not 400!

re save: It should mark the before boss fight save with a star and add a completion percentage counter to the map

I’ve been going through the “OMG I didn’t know you could do that!” thread on GAF and my mind has been blown a dozen times. The degree to which the systems interact in this game is incredible. Especially for a Nintendo game where everything is usually sandboxed.