Pretty sure I’m shortening my lifespan with how much of BotW I’m playing. And not just by virtue of spending all my time on it. I’ve been up since early hours of the morning playing it three days in a row now.
Never take off the Sheikah armor unless I badly need better armor. Half because I prefer being stealthy, half because I’m a Sheikah slut.
I think that’s what makes this such a successful open world game. Most modern ones don’t care much about maintaining any sense of mystery–if there’s something for you to find, it’s going to end up as an icon on your map for you to chase.
Breath of the Wild, though, doesn’t just say, “You see that mountain? You can climb it.” It also puts something unexpected on top for you to find. And maybe something behind it, if you’re curious enough to look.
I just bought a house. I only have a door, a bed, and a legendary weapon of the Gerudo hanging up on the wall.
this game has fucking consumed me ive been playing nonstop for 3 whole days, everything is so good and fantastic just AGH
tho i do have a few really really big nit picks, biggest being the weapon durability. Id be fine with it if it didnt also break on environmental objects. Most puzzles using stasis require atleast 1 weapon to break and its annoying as fuck.
other biggest peeve is a narrative thing; (spoilers) I despise stories that happen /after/ the meat and you only see the good parts via flashbacks/memories. I hate how zelda, daruk, mipha, etc are non existent save for in memories or as a couple lines of dialogue as ghosts when they were the coolest and biggest parts of the hype leading up to the game. I was going in really hoping zelda finally wasn’t gonna be a damsel in distress for once after that outfit reveal 
I legit feel the game would be 100x better if it just took place 100 years prior instead of after the fact
but besides those two big complaints, im loving everything else so much
If you keep a sledgehammer on hand for mining it lasts basically forever, even on stasis puzzles. I realised it’s a bad idea to do multiple combat trials in a row since you have to discard a bunch of good weapons. I haven’t had an issue with weapons breaking since you get them with such frequency. Upgrading weapons capacity a couple of times lets you have one of the more utility tools each, some travelling weapons, and then the serious firepower, and korok seeds haven’t been hard to come by for me.
I have some serious complaints about some aspects of this game but this is one of those times when a game is way greater than the sum of its parts so I end up not even really caring that much. All I want to do is just go off and explore everything I can and I honestly have never had that experience in a game, not in Elder Scrolls, not in Fallout, never.
Somehow I’ve completely forgotten where I saw any sledgehammers and it’s making it tricky to get money, which I need a lot of to keep arrow supplies up. Turns out you don’t realise how many arrows you go through until you aren’t getting refills every two seconds.
Hey I should mention, anybody playing who hasn’t done any of the main dungeons yet, it’s a really good idea to at least do the Lanayru one. Completing it gives you an auto-revive to double your maximum health (or maybe it’s +5 hearts, not sure) that recharges every 30 minutes or so and makes getting around a lot easier.
I love how easy it is to get distracted by the sight of something. I was set on gliding towards the bazaar and I just wound up drifting over to the Gerudo Shrine and checking that out; if I clear out my unsolved shrines during lunch tomorrow I’m probably gonna just wander around the desert a bunch. I also finally got a second piece of cold weather clothing, so I can finally explore Hebra, Mount Lanayru, and the Gerudo Highlands without worrying about temporary buffs. I also appreciate that it accurately makes the desert super cold at night, so you’re kept on your toes.
Mechanics spoilers: Speaking of cold weather, I realised that holding a torch in the cold is enough to keep you warm, so you can get by with that if you aren’t going to run into any enemies. Also, I’m pretty sure if you’re at maximum health, no regular enemy can oneshot you. I would consistently get beaten by giant clubs and wizrobes and combat trials and I would still have a quarter of a heart left. Only the Yiga patrols and direct hits from guardians have wiped me out in one hit, I think. Can someone else confirm?
Spoilers for the Gerudo branch: [spoiler]Turns out having the ability to freeze an enemy in time for six seconds busts stealth sections in half. I still really liked the atmosphere of the Yiga hideout and Karusa Valley. Going through the valley felt suitably eerie, the uncertainty of who might be watching down from on high, and the various means of hiding passageways in the hideout itself were clever and felt like something a ninja clan would actually do.
Naboris felt a lot more involved and complex than Ruta did to solve. In the latter, pretty much all of the terminals were easy to find, and the puzzles were just about reaching them. Half the time in Naboris I couldn’t even tell where the terminals were, and once I worked out where I needed to get to it would take less than a minute.
What I really liked about the dungeon was how open it was, with a single central chamber that made for probably the most mobile boss I’ve fought in a Zelda. I didn’t even move around all that much, but I was jumping up and down the various ramps to keep away from Thunderblight’s attacks. Thunderblight’s second phase felt like a better execution of what I can see is going to be a recurring theme of the boss fights. Against Waterblight, the second phase only used cryonis to defend myself, while I was able to use magnesis in this fight to turn the tables and place the lightning rods next to Thunderblight’s head. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how stasis gets used, at least.
Also Gerudo Link is a blessing.[/spoiler]
god FUCKING DAMMIT I FORGOT I COULD DO THAT
Why not just use bombs to blow up ore nodes? Obviously you don’t want to do that on a cliff face but it works great for most of them.
You should also use bombs to blow up those wooden crates at the campsites. They usually have fruit and arrows in them, and it’s an easy way to restock your basic arrow supplies.
Hot tip for carrying around a torch: If you need to pull out a different weapon to fight and don’t want to have to go relight the torch, you can throw the torch on the ground and it won’t go out. This is also useful if you need to climb over something and can chuck the torch over it.
Just be careful you don’t burn anything important down!
If you need a sledgehammer, one tends to spawn at that house you can buy in that town near Kakariko, I forget the name.
Aside from the shrines and four beasts which I figure are tied to another dungeon or are dungeons themselves from what the Zoras have said, are there any other types of dungeons? I’m hoping some of these ruins I’m coming across have secret entrances or something like in Zelda 1. Was dissappointed when there wasn’t anything behind the Lyonel guarding some ruins by the coast besides two silver rupee chests.
Depending on what you count them as, some of the towers are pretty challenging. The one in the region northeast of Kakariko, for example, is surrounded by a destroyed citadel with tons of Malice (purple gunk on the ground that hurts you a ton if you touch it) and you have to weave your way around the citadel, fight enemies and mini-guardians, and try to find a way to glide over the Malice to start climbing the tower. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a dungeon, but it was a self-contained climbing and combat challenge sort of like an outdoor shrine.
I’ve never been overly into Zelda games, but holy crap, Breath of the Wild. It might be one of my favorite games ever (I’m not very far into it, but what I have seen is amazing, put plainly).
I have made the important discovery this afternoon that there is a reason you definitely want to pump up your health. I don’t know if stamina upgrades cap off at a certain point; it would make sense if they do, but since you might not find every shrine, I advise getting heart containers.
Spoilers for Eldin branch.
Based on the order of the Divine Beasts on the loading screen and the complexity of the quest compared to Gerudo, I think Eldin is built as the second area to be visited, even though it’s got the most severe and punishing environmental barrier. Had to skim several handfuls of monster parts to afford the fireproof clothes, but it all worked out. Weirdly, the errand before I could go to Rudania was really short compared to Lanayru and Gerudo (although I suppose the longest part of Lanayru was just getting to Zora’s Domain in the first place). So the main quest section of Eldin wound up being much shorter than I was expecting, and I knocked it out in just a couple of hours. Rudania was a cool dungeon; this time I wound up just finding all of the terminals by running all over the dungeon one time, hitting the eyeballs when I saw them. I didn’t ever have to actually look at the map, only use it to rotate the beast, which was even easier than I found Vah Ruta. Fireblight definitely felt a lot more basic than Thunderblight, since I don’t think I needed to heal myself once during the fight; which was fortunate, since I used most of my food against Thunderblight and hadn’t cooked since. I made use of one of the spoils from a combat trial, and smacked him down with an Ancient Battle Axe++, which did 60 damage per hit, and I feel like that makes a pretty good case for always having one or two boss crushers in your inventory.
Anyway these Gorons are perfect children and I love them all. Aside from all that I’ve been doing some mild exploration. Nothing as significant as when I was travelling around to hit all the towers, but I’ve been seeking out the memories and anything that looks curious on the map, but I haven’t had any standout cool stories happen to me now that I’m pretty comfy with the basic systems. Even so, just wandering around and doing random, typically uninteresting and useless stuff feels so good.
Honestly, I think the environment in the Rito territories is a lot worse than Eldin. The game gives you multiple opportunities to protect yourself from the volcanic heat in Eldin, but you have to run around with bad/no equipment on your way to Vah Medoh because of the frequent thunderstorms.
There is a very good reason to get more hearts before you go hog wild on stamina. Grab a couple stamina upgrades because they’re nice to have, but then try to get 13 hearts as soon as possible. I won’t tell you why, but you’ll be glad you did, and no, temporary hearts won’t help you.
That said, don’t worry about it too much. You can respec hearts for stamina upgrades, and vice versa, for like 20 rupees each near Hateno Village. So if you’ve gone all-in on stamina and you figure out why you want 13 hearts, you can respec, go do that thing, and then go change back.
Stamina caps at three full circles, which takes 10 upgrades (40 spirit orbs).
Currently going through Van Ruto, and having to pause for class right as I’m about to get the terminal on the trunk. Spent the longest time trying to get the timing right on the huge wheel, which wasn’t fun since I already “solved” the puzzle when I first landed on the wheel.
