Zelda Day 2017: Breath of the Wild & romhacks

December 26, 2017 2:36 PM

Link trolls the Yiga Clan (Twitter video links: you may want to unmute them): Basic level - Advanced level - Expert level - Overkill level - Assistance: On - But make sure you set it up right....
That's right, it's Zelda Day 2017! There's more....

This year, have a look at these Breath of the Wild videos, some made by people on their consoles! You can take your own short videos too: hold down the Screenshot button (on the left controller) for a couple of seconds to record the previous 30 seconds of gameplay! You can then go into the system Album to trim and upload the video to social media.
There's BOTW spoilers throughout this:

• Before BOTW's release, some devs had been recorded as saying you could walk up and challenge the final boss from the beginning. They were right! After you finish the Great Plateau area and get the Paraglider, it's possible to walk directly into Hyrule Castle and fight Ganon; you don't technically need to do the Divine Beast dungeons! You still have to fight their bosses though; they show up before the main Ganon fight! The reward for doing them is, you don't have to fight them before Calamity Ganon, and if you do all four CG loses half his health before the fight. It also changes the ending slightly. Here's someone tackling the full fight, with three hearts (29m23s).
• Glitch World: Start the Ganon fight during the "Flying Man" flight distance minigame (there's multiple ways to do this). The fight will start, then immediately end and you'l be returned to the flight tower. This causes lots of things to mess up. Saves and reloads made in this state won't get you out of it!
• People have figured out how to abuse the Trial of the Sword DLC to reset the game's event flags, thus letting them do things like get more than 900 Korok seeds.
• Stuck with the Wii U version of BOTW? There is one cool thing you can do with it that's currently impossible on the Switch version: you can mod it! IGN rounded up a few of them here. Here's a Polygon article on them.
• What's the safest place to hide from a Guardian?
• There is a place in the game where you can kill four Guardians at once.
• Guardians sometimes have a strange interaction with rafts.
• Getting a Guardian into Kakariko Village.
• Try to use one puzzle ball on a different puzzle. (It doesn't work.)
• Flying machines! Trying to make a flying machine.
• Let's play Bomb Dismount!
• The Horse God has different dialogue depending on how a horse kicked the bucket.
• It's possible to get a horse onto the Great Plateau, but it's a lot of trouble!
• Lifting a Stalnox with a metal chest.
• Bokoblin flight class.
• Polygon: Bike tricks in the new DLC.

Extras!
This Google Docs document is intended for randomizer players, but is full of esoteric Zelda 1 lore.
I've recently had opportunity to research Zelda romhacks. Here's some for you:

• Zelda 1 with an automap!
• Zelda Outlands is a decent challenge hack.
• The Legend of Link adds amazing graphics to Zelda 1, and is still under active development.
• the_icepenguin has made some very challenging (even more than usual!) Zelda II hacks: Journey of a Day - Shadow of Night - Leaf of Inertia.
• I think this Zelda II hack that reduces the game to just its boss fights is rather fun!
• Goddess of Wisdom, and an enhanced version, are Link to the Past hacks and very challenging.
• But Parallel Worlds, and a remodeled version, are even tougher!

And a few more factoids about BOTW:
- After beating the game, go back to the guy in the Hateno Tech Lab and you can buy additional photos. If you get them all (pretty easy if you have enough rupees), you get the Confidential Folder.
- If a monster manages to make it into Karariko Village. Impa will sometimes run outside her house, somehow still on her cushion.
- Here's a video about the language used in the game's signage. Also, the glyphs that appear in the game's magic effects and ancient places is also a language that has been decoded. Notably, the "distilling stone" bears the message "MASTER USING IT AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS", and the text on the Beacons you can place is apparently "ITS DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE".
- The empty slot in your controls list is for the Jump Slash. To unlock it, find it by talking to the combat guy in Kakariko Village.
- After winning the game, talk to Kilton to find out how to earn the Medals of Honor, for beating all the overworld bosses.
- If you're trying to solve a "complete the stone pattern" Korok puzzle, the type that's usually a circle but once in a while isn't, but can't find a rock, try this. Stand in the center of the pattern, facing the direction of the place where he rock should be, and walk forward. Very often you'll find a rock along that line.

posted by JHarris (22 comments total)

Having spent only around sixty hours with the main game and none of the DLC thus far, Zelda : Breath of the Wild is a lot of game and the fact that it's still surprising and inspiring players nine months after release is quite a thing. Happy Game(s) of the Year, Nintendo!
posted by chainlinkspiral at 2:51 PM on December 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a BOTW fan this has me squealing with delight.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:54 PM on December 26, 2017

A horse GOD? This is literally the first I’ve heard of such a thing, nine months later
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:04 PM on December 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

A horse GOD? This is literally the first I’ve heard of such a thing, nine months later

I came across it totally randomly trying to find the last Great Faerie I'd been missing. Heckin' surprising, I'll tell you what.
posted by curious nu at 3:11 PM on December 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

And thanks as always, JHarris!
posted by curious nu at 3:12 PM on December 26, 2017

My most emotional moment was when I got my second horse.

I had killed a bokoblin on horseback and the rest of his crew, then took the horse he was riding. He was dark grey with a lightgrey snout so "Eeyore" was what I planned to name him.

Well of COURSE this was near a guardian. Did my best to escape, but BLAM! The guardian hit me. Eeyore got away. Whew, reload.

Damnit, I'm gonna succeed this time... Recaptured Eeyore, and guardian attacked.

I did it, I was able to survive this attack!

Eeyore, unfortunately, ended up in flames.

I honestly had a moment of sadness for a fictional creature in that failure. He was there, doing as a horse does with his bokoblin master. All day, everyday, like a good horse.

Then along comes this punk kid, who kills his master and tries to take over, and in the process gets a guardian targeting him, great, now poor Eeyore's in danger.

Bam! The fire hit, WHOOHOO I think I'm alive!

And beside me, burning in the flames, my poor Eeyore who hadn't even had an official name at the Stable, yet.
posted by symbioid at 5:03 PM on December 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

In case you missed it, we had a lot of fun with the Zelda is the boy meme earlier this month.
posted by adept256 at 5:19 PM on December 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

I beat BOTW on my Wii U and just started it on the Switch, forearmed with a lot of knowledge (though I just found my first shrine i missed on the last play through) and the game is just so so good. I’m super excited to learn about the post-Ganon stuff, since I didn’t realize anything changed after you beat him.

(I finally saw the Lord of the Mountain! He got away though 🙁)
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:25 PM on December 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

Range Jr got a Switch for their 10th birthday and I've been jealously playing BOTW after bedtime for a couple weeks now. It's so so good. I have not owned a Nintendo device since the NES and haven't played a Zelda game since the gold cartridge we got for Christmas when I was a kid. It's so good. Have I said that yet? So so good.

Nintendo really seems to have mastered the "surprise and delight" part of design. My favorite so far - there's a thing in the DLC that shows you where you've traveled on the map, which has obvious benefits for completionists. And it does - for the entire history of your save file, not just after you got the DLC. Those sneaky motherfuckers are recording the data for everybody, just in case you buy the DLC later.

(And I haven't even tried it yet - I'm resisting on my save; kiddo got the DLC after beating Ganon, naturally about 50x faster than Dad is going to...)
posted by range at 8:03 PM on December 26, 2017 [3 favorites]

My least proud Horse Moment so far was probably when I was just sort of cruising along and noticed that WHOOPS THERE'S a CLIFF and leapt off my horse, hoping that it would figure out that it probably shouldn't continue running along at top speed when it got to the edge. Instead it rocketed off the edge like some sort of Wile E. Coyote predicament, and I found my now-dead horse a remarkably distance away.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:06 PM on December 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

I had a much less tragic horse moment when I wanted to put my new saddle and bridle on one of my horses and the lady at the stable wouldn't do it because she said I didn't love my horse enough.

I know how to resolve it, but it still made me sad.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 10:22 PM on December 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

I didn't love my horse enough.

There's a cartoon about that.
posted by adept256 at 11:32 PM on December 26, 2017

I'm still sad that I wasn't able to keep the Stalhorse that I caught on the big frozen plain, but apparently they have a limited lifespan. I was gonna name him Bone Machine and everything.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:31 AM on December 27, 2017 [5 favorites]

Seriously, why is there a monster bridle and saddle if I can't have a monster horsie?
posted by asperity at 8:21 AM on December 27, 2017

I had a stalhorse for the DLC2 plateu challenge. It made it a lot easier. At night, the bokoblins at the southern encampment ride stalhorses. They only last till morning, but he was the best little skeleton horsie.
posted by domo at 9:22 AM on December 27, 2017

This just occurred to me, but anyone tried barrelling the Giant Horse into a Guardian to see what happens? Because now I'm wondering if I can just trample all of the Guardians patrolling in front of Hyrule Castle.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:06 AM on December 27, 2017

I saved up to buy the glow-in-the-dark spandex lucha libre skeleton disguise. But it doesn’t seem to work, the skeletons still attack me. is there something i’m doing wrong? i want to be friends.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:31 AM on December 28, 2017

I've noticed the same thing. I am going to try unequipping my weapons and see if it helps. I have noticed that the Majora's Mask doesn't work if you have your weapon drawn.
I am also disappointed that I can't put the Ancient Bridle and Saddle on the Giant Horse.
posted by domo at 9:39 AM on December 28, 2017

Here's an interesting video of advanced Lynel-fighting tricks. For instance, the Lynel's attack pattern seeks to keep it on-camera at the top of the screen during its running-around phase. If you spin the camera around continually during this time, you can prevent it from attacking! The video also shows off something called bomb parrying that you just know is going to become a show-off speedrun strategy.
posted by JHarris at 10:14 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

And yes, I have upgraded the glow-in-the-dark armor to max.
posted by domo at 11:01 AM on December 28, 2017

If you spin the camera around continually during this time, you can prevent it from attacking!

If I vomit, the Lynel has definitely won.
posted by asperity at 10:59 PM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I figured it out. I think I put on the armor too late. Not sure how the skeleton spawning calculations are handled, but if you put on the armor before you go to a new area it works.
posted by domo at 1:23 PM on January 11, 2018 [3 favorites]