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June 16, 2023 8:28 AM Subscribe

Tears of the Kingdom site will help you make those wild builds you're seeing Meet the inventors making Hyrule’s most complicated contraptions.

posted by Fizz (116 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite

It's only been 1 month. I knew this was going to happen and I hope it never stops. I love the creative ways people are crafting & engineering all manner of things. And the longer people spend with this game, the more of this we're going to see.
posted by Fizz at 8:35 AM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

The construction mechanics are really remarkable in this game. Particularly because they're sort of a side game; very little of it is required for most of the game and a lot of what you need is much simpler than the constructions on display here. Which is awesome. They built a whole sandbox physics simulator and folks are going to town with it.

My favorite thing is how people have figured out you can build way more than with just the Zonai devices that you carry with you. Many objects littered around the world, like there's a whole "tumbleweed meta" around building very light flying craft using tumbleweeds (which apparently weigh basically nothing but are rigid and fairly large.) A key technology is it's possible to exfiltrate special parts that are used in some of the shrine puzzles, there's a lot of flying craft built around giant propellers for instance.
posted by Nelson at 8:38 AM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]

So...these folks who are building all this stuff, are they actually playing the game? They don't seem to be up against any of the resource constraints that I run into every 30 seconds. Yesterday I spent my whole session trying to get up to the highest hyrulean engraving--pitched just high enough, and far away enough from all the other islands, to be a problem--and managed to use up so many supplies and cores, that now I'm back in the depths forcing poor Mineru to mine things for me. That's not a criticism at all of these folks--clearly they're having fun, and it's showing off lots of interesting stuff--but boy is their experience different than mine!
posted by mittens at 8:39 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

There's been a lot of item dupe cheats. Also resources become less and less of a problem over time.
posted by Nelson at 8:42 AM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

TIE Fighter
posted by saladin at 8:45 AM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

Where do people get the time for this stuff
posted by gottabefunky at 8:49 AM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

That said, the creativity is astonishing. TIE fighter!

so where my x-wing?
posted by gottabefunky at 8:52 AM on June 16, 2023

Building my own version of this was awesome just not very practical compared to the hoverbike:
Perpetual Motion Drone (infinite energy via fused sheine batteries).
posted by Ryvar at 8:56 AM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

I watched a play through, heavily edited down, that was completed in about 14 posting sessions. He wasn't playing to goof around, just to get through it. There were a LOT of times where it was sort of clear to me, as a non-gamer, what the game designers were suggesting he do to solve a thing. But he didn't see it and he just did other things until he solved it, and then would say "oh, wait, I should have...." But the point is, there is NO ONE WAY to play this game. It's amazing, and I love that it exists.
posted by hippybear at 9:00 AM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

Oh, and the spreadsheet for anyone interested in getting serious about this stuff (full list of available parts, known properties).

Someone built a scale so we know roughly what the most frequently-used items weigh, which is usually measured in Links but for lighter objects 1 Link = 12 apples = 1 hydramelon + 4 apples.

General process to source a lot of the more esoteric objects is you visit a shrine you’ve beaten, fuse the parts to your weapons and leave.
posted by Ryvar at 9:02 AM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

A neat video I saw the other day: Tears of The Kingdom Wants You To Cheat
posted by theodolite at 9:05 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

One of the more interesting things I've seen is using two wagon wheels and a stabilizer to make a functional gimbal, which allows you to do interesting things with aircraft.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:12 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

Agree with the above, my favorite thing about this game is that you can mostly play it your way. Main quests are for suckers, I'm chasing hidden statues in a rift off in the snowy mountains. And using Blurpees to find each and every cave. Every damn one. Squeeee.

Heck I ended up at one of the four primary temples before I'd done any of the quests to get there. Via the magic of goofy cartoon-physics rocketry.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:25 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

two wagon wheels and a stabilizer to make a functional gimbal

The gimbal system is awesome but you’ll often need a second stabilizer to serve as a relative offset anchor to whatever assembly the control stick is connected to by the gimbal, especially for armed vehicles.

Two stabilizers top to top produces a sort of anti-gravity effect but seems to (relatively) reduce the torque imparted on the whole assembly by the control stick.

Zonai cooking pots are shockingly useful as a semi-rigid two-axis flex joint. Sometimes you think you want a complex multi-axis gimbal only to discover a cooking pot was the best answer all along.

Two large powered wheels can produce additive torque *if* you use the correct attachment order.

Finally: max simultaneous dropped items = 21, max objects in an assembly = 21 (fused weapon items count as 1), and I believe max active attachments across all assemblies is slightly higher than that (~24?).
posted by Ryvar at 9:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

One thing I don't get about this is how anyone is farming enough zoanite to make so many damn things. I keep having to crawl down into the depths to mine zoanite just to autobuild basic shit, or go kill zoanite warriors to get stuff to trade at the fabricator. The hours people are putting into this game are bonkers!
posted by dis_integration at 9:35 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

One thing I don't get about this is how anyone is farming enough zoanite to make so many damn things.

As pointed out above they are often abusing dupe glitches. And at least a few videos recorded havent made much progress in the rest of the game, as suggested by hearts, stamina and battery.
posted by pwnguin at 9:49 AM on June 16, 2023

A lot of the people seriously into this (including me) disabled automatic software updates on their Switch after the 1.1 patch and are still using the easy dupe glitches. Most say they’ll turn it back on when the first major DLC drops. You don’t especially need to dupe for the exotic Shrine parts - just have a lot of weapons handy - but it can be convenient.

For example using Zoanite swords for insulated fused shrine batteries. Any perpetual motion / infinite energy build will need at least four of those. Only the weakest Zonaite swords have non-conducting handles, and that’s essential for keeping them electrically isolated from the charging motor. Because dissassembly has to be done in Tarreytown any complex work with the electricity-based components winds up being pretty labor-intensive even with infinite free Zoanite.

Re: progression - a lot of engineers are lagging behind, it’s true. I have full double-charge battery, 15 hearts and 3 stamina wheels, plus fully upgraded Zoanite armor. Which is theoretical max Zoanite power + enough normal gameplay upgrades to tangle with a Lynel if I absolutely have to (though orbital laser or the HiMARS cruise missile builds with a custom payload are better).
posted by Ryvar at 10:04 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

From Ryvar's spreadsheet:

Backpack Korok: Presents opportunities for both incredible compassion and incredible cruelty
posted by gottabefunky at 10:05 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

And here I am still struggling to get the skateboard right.

For crazy builds, I've also been enjoying the automatic chicken egg farm.
posted by fight or flight at 10:08 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Speaking of backpacks - there's a mechanism to cheese the bokoblin mask and elemental bokoblins that basically involves disarming the bokoblin and setting it up so they're throwing chu-chu jellies or bombs or fire fruits or whatever at a homing droid upended on a stake at the right distance, then you position yourself so you can _only_ grab from them when they reach back to get something from their pack, and take it from their hands. They'll never run out of ammo, and you'll get like 24 per minute.

And then a blood moon comes along and ruins all your setup.

And yeah, count me in as glad that ultrahand construction isn't as vital to the game as it could have been. I do a bit, but only grudgingly, so I'm mildly annoyed that my Ancient Saddle has been zapped out of existence. I'm doing a lot more running because my horse just is never anywhere near whistle range, and starting every zone from the Stable kinda gets old. I know the intent is more, I dunno, make a car or a balloon or something and drive or fly over, but it just doesn't appeal / occur to me.
posted by Kyol at 10:17 AM on June 16, 2023

Oh hey there's my x-wing
posted by gottabefunky at 10:26 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know the intent is more, I dunno, make a car or a balloon or something and drive or fly over, but it just doesn't appeal / occur to me

Hoverbike is all you need. Autobuild favorite slot #1, costs 9 zonai if you don’t have parts on hand or nearby, toss one of the large gleambulbs at it if you want a portable sun in the Depths.

Fuse a dragon scale to it if you want it to not despawn until almost halfway across the entire world map. “Virtual” Dragon Scales can be in your autobuild and only cost an additional 3 zonai, they will still get the full +2000 Zonai despawn distance buff (default = 100~200 IIRC).

Attach Kuroks on the rear of the back fan for easier transport.

You honestly do not need any other build, the rest is just for fun. Only other QoL build I might recommend for most players is the orbital strike laser cannon Fizz linked in the OP if you don’t want to fight most of the harder minibosses or Lynels “for real.” Talos and maybe one or two others are immune to it, but those ones are all easier and also extremely vulnerable to the HiMARS build.

But seriously: hoverbike, maybe orbital laser, done.
posted by Ryvar at 10:45 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]

Passion of the Korok
posted by gottabefunky at 10:50 AM on June 16, 2023

I have been loving the hoverbike since it was first mentioned in one of the prior threads, but what I really want is some way to line up the fans and control stick evenly, so I'm not constantly having to steer to keep a straight path. All this tech, and no rulers!
posted by mittens at 10:51 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah, I think the last time I tried making one I discovered that a _certain_ sage counts towards flying weight. I should give it another shot.
posted by Kyol at 10:56 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not a big gamer so I'm quite slow at progressing and am just starting to explore building but yeah I already really love how this game allows you to play it however you want to - even more than the original. If I want to spend 1000 hours just building weird contraptions, I can! If I want to just collect mushrooms and cook them, I can! If I want to fight everything in sight, I can! I like that the construction aspect is designed to ensure that the game designers could never predict everything we can build!
posted by latkes at 10:57 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Airbike / Hoverbike is an interesting thing in game balance to me. There was an inconclusive discussion on Reddit this week about whether the game was designed around its power. Are you supposed to use it or is it cheese? It's clearly very powerful; cheap to build, takes care of about 90% of your travel needs. Also it's not really telegraphed in the game. Plenty of basic vehicles have hints or outright construction plans in the game. Not the airbike, you have to invent it yourself or find it online.

The design is a little weird. Single fan designs don't really fly well in the game. Double fans are hard to get right too; you have to build this one specific arrangement of fans at an angle to get it to be easily flyable, it's not obvious. Was it intended? Surely the playtesters discovered it themselves.

My conclusion is that the game balancers knew about it and decided it was fine. End of the day Nintendo games are all about helping the player have fun, not proving some point in a battle of wills between players and dungeonmasters. They must have realized given the physics engine that some simple construction would end up being powerful, probably figured out this design themselves. And then let it be because hey, it's not really hurting anything.

I also think it's a funny quirk that no one can build one that flies perfectly straight, as mittens says above. So many of the parts snap together at convenient alignments. But not these, not in this configuration. Either that or the physics engine somehow conspires to make simple straight flight difficult. Maybe the Zonai hadn't discovered how to construct a dihedral to overcome the left-turning tendencies from the fan torque.
posted by Nelson at 11:22 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I love the creative ways people are crafting & engineering all manner of things.

Where do people get the time for this stuff

Diverting time from RW crafting and engineering.
posted by fairmettle at 11:27 AM on June 16, 2023

I also think it's a funny quirk that no one can build one that flies perfectly straight, as mittens says above.

My autobuild slot 1 version will fly perfectly straight for ten seconds post-liftoff before very slowly beginning to roll/yaw, and I think that’s probably the best possible due to floating point accuracy limitations (32-bit floats = roughly 7 digits of decimal precision, but games sometimes use packed half-floats for rotation where we can get away with it and “sometimes” becomes “often” for multiplayer games).

There are little directional symbols on the reverse side of the fans and getting those aligned helps but does not 100% correct the problem.

The real reason for this is that Nintendo chose to have component anchor points not auto-align if the relative angle offsets are at 45 degree increments. Multiples of 90 degrees will snap and designs using those can be built consistently.

The entire attachment system here is really just a mild variation on the same system common to Fortnite, Ark, Rust, Besieged, etc. I’ve built or heavily rewritten three implementations of this in the last six years and in Nintendo’s defense enabling auto-alignment for the 45 degree offsets does start causing major UX issues with having too many valid solutions to choose from/dithering between anchors on the slightest player input wobble. I assume it’s even worse for gamepads - I’ve mostly worked with keyboard+mouse for these.

If anyone’s interested in looking at how such a system is actually built there’s a relatively solid free implementation in the Unreal Marketplace under the name Easy Building System.
posted by Ryvar at 11:41 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]

There are pre-made hover-vehicles using 4 fans in a couple of places so the concept is already given to you, then it's just a matter of adapting one to meet your needs. I've slowly started to autobuild useful vehicles to get stuff done and today I used one to fly really high so that I could land on a dragon. Probably a better way to do it using rockets but I haven't designed any rocket powered vehicles yet.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:05 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I saw a part of a play through where the player had discovered that if you were in the air, you could drop pins at the ground and if there was actual ground underneath they'd be on your map, but if there was water they wouldn't be, and he did a lot of pin dropping and traced out an entire island hidden in the miasma, and so he dropped onto it and played through an entire section of the game he wasn't supposed to have discovered yet.

Later, he gets to the point in the game where he would have been directed toward there, and the game is all "oh, you have to go to there and do that thing and find this person" and then suddenly goes "oh, I see that person is already here! well, you need to still go and do that and acquire this thing". And then the game is all "oh, you already have the thing, well..."

It was interesting to see how the game engine was processing the checkmarks the player had in their spreadsheet when they were in an unexpected order.
posted by hippybear at 1:21 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

Personally, I'm most excited about getting around faster. Flying vehicles are quite slow compared to what you can get up to with wheels. Fans and propellers seem to either provide no thrust or full thrust only, based on RPMs. Meaning spinning them faster doesn't make you go faster. Which is sad because they look and sound like they should be much, much faster.

In contrast, wheels and gear ratios basically can't be stopped without breaking all of physics. Wagon wheels seem to have sufficient traction to go fast. You can get it even faster with a second big wheel. Higher speeds seem unsteerable though. Probably a combination of "traction is required for acceleration and for turning" they taught in drivers ed, as well as just needing a lot of time to counteract the momentum you already built up over time.
posted by pwnguin at 2:20 PM on June 16, 2023

Link's Fashion Debut may be the most creative use of Zonai stuff I've seen yet. Spinning wheels make a laser light show with Hudson backup dancers.
posted by Nelson at 2:43 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Link's Fashion Debut may be the most creative use of Zonai stuff I've seen yet. Spinning wheels make a laser light show with Hudson backup dancers.

Balenciaga's got some catching up to do.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:18 PM on June 16, 2023

I saw a part of a play through where the player had discovered that if you were in the air, you could drop pins at the ground and if there was actual ground underneath they'd be on your map, but if there was water they wouldn't be, and he did a lot of pin dropping and traced out an entire island hidden in the miasma...

I was very proud of myself a few weeks ago when I independently discovered that you can do this in the underworld if you're trying to figure out if you can get to or through a particular unmapped area: the mapping tool won't let you place markers in/on solid stone. That helped me figure out how far a particular wall extended so I could see if I could get to the other side without going back to the surface and finding a chasm on the other side of the wall.
posted by ElKevbo at 4:50 PM on June 16, 2023

That helped me figure out how far a particular wall extended so I could see if I could get to the other side without going back to the surface and finding a chasm on the other side of the wall.

The impassable walls are just (mostly) where there is water on the surface—the exception being that some small bodies of water are elided away. But I don’t think there’s ever an impassable wall where there isn’t water. Flipping back and forth between layers on the map is very helpful for mapping out paths in the Depths.
posted by BlueDuke at 6:36 PM on June 16, 2023

How does fusing it to a weapon work? You can’t unfuse once you’ve fused, right?
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 6:54 PM on June 16, 2023

I've been waiting to see if anyone will be able to prove the game is turing complete given all the flexibility. Though with a limit of 21 fused objects, it might not be.
posted by ockmockbock at 7:02 PM on June 16, 2023

Ope, that's what I get for not reading all the links, looks like only very simple calculations can be done.
posted by ockmockbock at 7:23 PM on June 16, 2023

How does fusing it to a weapon work? You can’t unfuse once you’ve fused, right?

There's a young Goron in Tarrey Town who will charge a small fee to unfuse weapons, leaving you with the original object, which you can then use for other purposes. It can even be used to smuggle things out of shrines.
posted by JHarris at 7:33 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

The impassable walls are just (mostly) where there is water on the surface—the exception being that some small bodies of water are elided away

Another exception I found is the island in Lake Hylia, in the Depths there is a passage out of it.
posted by JHarris at 7:35 PM on June 16, 2023

> the mapping tool won't let you place markers in/on solid stone.

Fun fact, you can navigate the depths by selecting the map for Hyrule. The depths are the exact inverse of Hyrule, water is impassable rock walls, mountains are valleys, etc., and every light root is in the same place as a shrine above ground. When dealing with a tricky spot in the depths, I just switch the map to the surface one and follow along the shore of the rivers and lakes. (and i see now that others said this above)
posted by dis_integration at 7:50 PM on June 16, 2023

That "swimming through matter" mechanic I've seen a lot.. how much matter can you go through? Can you get to the surface from a cavern using that?
posted by hippybear at 7:54 PM on June 16, 2023

For the "ascend" ability you refer to: Many ceilings in game are passable (not the depths), however there's a limit with how high the ceiling can be away from you before you can't pass through anymore.
posted by yoHighness at 8:03 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

> That "swimming through matter" mechanic I've seen a lot.. how much matter can you go through? Can you get to the surface from a cavern using that?

ascend will take you as far as it goes the next empty space. it's usually how i exit a cave, and there are places where you can leave the depths by ascending to the surface. you just have to be close enough to the (flattish) surface above you for ascend to reach it.
posted by dis_integration at 8:03 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

fnord
posted by yoHighness at 8:04 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not a gamer, obviously. But this game is endlessly fascinating even for someone like me.

I'm not sitting on twitch watching that live play action though. RTGame's videos are what I watched, and then some other videos for cool shit.
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM on June 16, 2023

Often the thing that interests me most isn't even the game but more like how far does this thing go? Once I figure that out I'm happy, maybe read the wiki to fill out some blank spots and put it down. But when you get a hive mind of engineers... dammit at this point I've been waiting for like 6 weeks to know where it peaks (refreshing this quite a lot). I suppose I am now waiting for people to mod the game to remove the 20 piece limit. Anyhoo I feel like this post is a solid selection of the highlights. One recent fave was people researching whether a gatling gun, which moves a mask in front of beams, procs damage more often due to flickering. Also this youtube channel seems to collect all the Hyrule Engineering stuff.
posted by yoHighness at 9:54 PM on June 16, 2023

How great is the hype around this game? As part of a post on our blog, I made a ten second Youtube video about a troll shrine I encountered.

At this moment, that video has over 167,000 views. It beats all my other videos combined by an order of magnitude--it would be two orders except a couple of other videos on Tears of the Kingdom I posted have over 4K and 10K views.
posted by JHarris at 10:06 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

We mostly haven’t been building all that much. Just occasionally as needed to solve things or to get to a higher island. But watching my partner try to build some kind of wheeled vehicle on the depths and struggling figuring out what would be stable and be able to traverse terrain was surprisingly fun for an activity that mostly involved running into trees or tipping over into a slight hollow. A sky island “fetch the crystal” shrine encouraged building a plane and landing it some elevation below which required circling to lose elevation. It was fun!
posted by R343L at 11:16 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh also another crystal to the spot one I had to make some kind of boat and well I was like I need amphibious wheeled vehicle for this task. In retrospect I did not need to put wheels on it and there were only 2 of each side available nearby so ended up with a totally ridiculous and impractical (and slow!) vehicle for getting to the spot. But it was fun!
posted by R343L at 11:21 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

At this moment, that video has over 167,000 views.

Uh. Holy shit. I’ve been playing Diablo 4 this week but maybe I should start posting some videos. That’s crazy.

Also this youtube channel seems to collect all the Hyrule Engineering stuff.

I’d been wondering whether to link that channel because seemingly every video has like 1-2 instances of “…seriously?” fart-joke-type memes. Or maybe I just have, like, zero tolerance for Kurok torture shit (orbital bombardment and planetary-scale genocide in most games is fine but torturing a lone Kurok? Bruh. Cringe.)

Aside from that it’s a pretty great roundup of Hyrule Engineering, ToTK Twitter and his own viewers (some of the clips come from people in his comments). It’s understandably a little behind but almost everything worth checking out winds up there in a few days.
posted by Ryvar at 12:03 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd joke about ~~crouton~~ korok petting but am also disgusted with the totk sadists.
posted by yoHighness at 3:12 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have grown to resent the koroks. At first I was horrified at how cruel people were willing to be, but then one rolled all the way down a hill when a bokoblin blew up my vehicle, so now I'm less inclined to be charitable.

That said, if one ever just started sobbing at how bad a day they were having, it would absolutely destroy me

Re: resources, I'm finding myself not having too many issues with zonaite, and I'm not using dupe bugs. Large zonaite is worth 20 of the regular ones, and it drops about half the time from zonaite veins, so the bulk of my battery was bought with just them. My small zonaite is prioritised for builds, and if I end up having lots of zonaite, to the point where 60 zonaite is no great deal, I might pour it into getting 20 charge crystals. (The other thing is that significant fights in the Depths often gives you charge crystals, and Yiga camps and Froxes are much less tough than they appear, so if you've got some armour and tools to give you strategic options, you should be good to go. Yiga camps give you new blueprints; Froxes have lots of zonaite and their vacuum attack only works on the closest thing to them.)

The other thing I'm doing is using the sky island gumball machines - they respond particularly well to small zonai charges, which are otherwise not very useful, and that gives you lots of parts you can drop down easily for builds.
posted by Merus at 5:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't mind the Korok torture per se, some of it is pretty creative. But when "content creators" start dressing up in the Klan hood and burning crosses I have to roll my eye at a new generation of edgelords retreading old ideas whose resonance they don't understand.

The Koroks were one of my favorite things in BotW, the way they gently encouraged you to consider every aspect of the environment carefully in case there was a surprise hidden away. We still have those in ToTK.

But the new "I need to reach my friend!" Koroks don't work for me. Partly because they're so explicit and interrupting. Also the writing. The Korok asking for help is really obnoxious; demanding dialogue, whiny voice acting, too tired and lazy to move himself. It'd help if they had a little variety. The payoff is the delight I hear in his friend when you bring him over. "You're here!". In my head canon the lost friend is the schlemiel and the little dude chilling at the campfire is the schlimazel.

But mostly my complaint with the Korok pairs is game mechanics. The task isn't much fun to perform, most of the time the quickest solution is just to pick him up and slowly walk him over. The very first korok uniting is an interesting puzzle involving rails and gondolas, that was great. I get they didn't want to create 100 more shrine puzzles but something that used the building mechanics more would have been more interesting.
posted by Nelson at 6:40 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm kind of divided on the backpack koroks--picking them up and carrying them is dull to an extent that feels weird in a game where so much of the environment wants to get your attention and make you think. But there have been so many where I couldn't just carry them that I do think I've learned more about how cars, boats and balloons work--or don't work--than I would have otherwise, and getting them to their friend is a little less fraught than some of those shrine crystal challenges in the sky that use the same mechanics. I will say one particular pair, separated by an unboatable, unswimmable, un-tree-bridgeable bog really did my head in for a while.
posted by mittens at 7:14 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Sometimes you think you want a complex multi-axis gimbal only to discover a cooking pot was the best answer all along.
posted by Cogito at 8:18 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]

But the new "I need to reach my friend!" Koroks don't work for me. Partly because they're so explicit and interrupting.

Yeah, I think the big problem with them is that most koroks are something you can do on the way, they're not much of a detour, but the backpack koroks require a pretty significant detour. I've taken to putting down map markers for them in case I need to upgrade my pockets.

On the other hand, I understand why they exist; they're pretty explicitly a "build a vehicle and drive it" challenge and that kind of thing is inherently going to be a detour.
posted by Merus at 8:46 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I might be the only one for whom all this building freedom is/was a detriment in the early game?
When you first splash down in Hyrule, you KNOW that construction is going to be a big thing, and there are piles of “materials” all over the place, but you don’t yet have the good pieces, you haven’t been taught that you can rewind movements you make using the ultra hand (!!!), and your battery’s tiny anyway. So for the longest time, when every enemy encounter was “three guys rush at you, whack them with your stick,” I thought I was playing “wrong.” I felt like “what am I missing here?” I’m on my way to the second boss and it only now seems like my toolkit is expanding in fun ways.
posted by TangoCharlie at 9:49 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

As the seed requirements for inventory expansion shoot up, it becomes less tempting to collect seeds. Even at double the usual reward, taking Koroks to their friends is such a diversion that I frequently just mark the location on the map and get on with what I was doing.

One of the great things about TotK is that there are devices, and lots of things to do with them, and they can be a great help, but also it is rare that you have to use them. That's actually pretty hard balance to strike with a game design, giving interested players a way to use a special mechanic to accomplish tasks, but also giving players who'd rather not bother their own ways to do it.

Something I think Tears doesn't do so well is giving players good rewards for exploration. I haven't noticed the upgrades for collecting Sage's Wills as having much effect, and late in the game it's likely that Old Maps will lead you to treasures you've already found. Handing out the old Amiibo and DLC equipment as exploration bonuses often feels like an unreward: congratulations! You've now got another extremely weak piece of armor you're going to have to spend resources to make usable! And usually doesn't have any special powers, and costs lots of gemstones and even rare Star Fragments to improve! You're welcome!
posted by JHarris at 9:51 AM on June 17, 2023

I feel the same about the disappointing exploration rewards!

For me, the games with the most satisfying rewards are Hollow Knight and Mario 3. Hollow Knight somehow manages the trick of just having the Right Number of Things: I am interested in precisely that number of nail upgrades. And in Mario, I'm always going to be happy to get another leaf.

I also like the way that Half Life and Dynamite Heddy etc. do it: just stating that in the last level you found 3/5 secrets.

I wonder if ToTK could do something similarly minor for most exploration challenges: just have some text flourish recognising that you got to the attic of the ruined abbey in Mabel Town, well done!

That or give me three rockets in every chest. I love rockets.
posted by Hermione Dies at 11:18 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think reward progression was a problem in Breath as well, and I've come to terms with it by just taking the completion of a task as an intrinsic reward itself, taking the things you're rewarded with as just a post-facto marker of how difficult or involved the devs considered that task. (That said, the biggest disappointment might be the weakness of the rewards for getting the top tier at the handful of minigames characters offer you.)

Actually, in every Zelda game, I'd always go out of my way to try to get every single thing, and by the end it's always a bit of a let down to realize (yet again) that there wasn't any need for most of it (since the games have to be tuned for those who don't collect everything). So maybe here it's just a little more up front about that.

In any case, it's funny hearing a few of you talk about skipping helping those little backpack critters (who are not lazy -- they volunteered to carry the most stuff!), because I think there's a certain extent to which helping them out is, like, the whole game for me! (Plus finding their hidden friends, plus collecting treasures, even though most of them seem to be worthless.) (An exception, that I had to learn in the previous game as well, was to not bother trying to collect all the treasure chests from all the little monster outposts scattered around. I think those even respawn?)

Related note: I think a downside of these open worlds is that at a certain point it starts feeling like there's no mechanical progression, either. I enjoy these a ton, and I wouldn't be too sad if this is all they ever made moving forward, but part of me misses the sense that each area is building on everything you've learned from all the previous, and growing in complexity as you go. The feeling of freedom is great, especially the feeling of true exploration, but -- and I know they won't do this -- I'd be totally happy if the main dungeons/quests required a mandatory order. I'm (probably) only going to play it once, so I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it, losing a big sense of progression in exchange for knowing that you could be tackling them in any order.
posted by nobody at 11:21 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

My biggest letdown in BOTW was working so hard finding shrines to get max health and stamina and then finally fighting Ganon was such an underwhelming experience. I didn't need to have all that to defeat him. And then after it just put me back in the game as if nothing had happened. I think Tears improves upon it in almost every way but I'm not ready to fight Ganon yet so I don't know if that's changed.
posted by downtohisturtles at 12:40 PM on June 17, 2023

Agreed that challenge rewards are generally disappointing… but the upside to that is that if, say, I’ve set myself the task of reaching that shrine over there, but I see a Significant Tree along the way, I’m much less likely to get distracted, knowing it’s rewards will be, you know, fine.
That said, I just finished a cave that gave me a glowing green rock which pointed to and unlocked an otherwise inaccessible shrine, and that was a pretty good reward. I like the shrines. They teach you how to play the game better, which is a reward that doesn’t break after three minutes’ use.
posted by TangoCharlie at 5:34 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Except the green laser shrines are almost always just here’s a treasure chest and an orb.
posted by pwnguin at 7:06 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

The feeling of freedom is great, especially the feeling of true exploration, but -- and I know they won't do this -- I'd be totally happy if the main dungeons/quests required a mandatory order. I'm (probably) only going to play it once, so I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it, losing a big sense of progression in exchange for knowing that you could be tackling them in any order.

What's interesting is that I think Breath of the Wild was much more open than this one is: you make the game a lot harder on yourself if you don't follow the main quest until you get the glider, and then go west first, as that's where both the Great Fairies questline and the newspaper questline both start. Presumably if you skip the glider you're also skipping the Sages, and I don't yet know how badly that goes for you.
posted by Merus at 7:09 PM on June 17, 2023

There's definitely a sense of... I dunno, I wish more of the puzzle solving that you have to do in the temples and shrines existed in the overworld as well, but on the other hand, I think it's not that the overworld doesn't have puzzles, it just has a different kind of puzzles to solve - koroks and "just how do I _get_ there?" and whatnot.

And apparently there's an autobuild rupee glitch that works in 1.1.2 now. There's an initial zonaite investment, but once you have the build favorited, well. I keep kind of worrying that they'll come up with a truly vital patch (a better sage ability interface, for example?), but so far the patches have only really fixed a couple of early quests and duplication glitches soooo heyo 1.1.1 for lyfe.
posted by Kyol at 8:59 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

GIANT ICE BOOMERANG
posted by Mister Cheese at 9:20 PM on June 17, 2023

Yesterday I spent my whole session trying to get up to the highest hyrulean engraving

Just remembered this: if it's really the very highest one, and if it's causing a lot of pain to get up there, you...might not need to actually make that trip.

Giving away the location in question:

If it's the one that's far above Lookout Landing...

And then, assuming we're talking about the same one, giving away how you might have realized this beforehand (I hadn't, for what it's worth):

...even though the star-shaped island is still in the sky, you've already seen that engraving fall to the ground. You may have even photographed it already. Unfortunately, it doesn't add the "ancient tablet" marker to the map for this one.

(When I had just one remaining to find I'd assumed it was that one, but it turned out I'd missed one elsewhere.)
posted by nobody at 10:44 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm also down to one remaining, and tried to find that one just in case there was another one there. I have no idea where the final one is. Although since the reward is just 100 rupees and I've already finished the main quest and have the star on my save file it's not really a high priority.

I mentioned in a different thread that it's actually pretty easy to miss the paraglider, and one other early subquest strands you high up in the air with the stated expectation that you probably have it. I was really annoyed by that.

Besides the mandatory powers the game won't even let you off the tutorial islands without and the paraglider, the biggest mandatory quest to pursue in the early game, I think, is the Great Fairy quest. Getting better armor makes the game SO MUCH EASIER. Each extra point of armor is a quarter-heart taken off of every source of enemy-caused damage you receive, down to a minimum of one quarter-heart! I think the highest armor you can have is 72 points, which is 18 hearts. It really makes a full tank of health last much longer. And it isn't that hard to unlock them once you know where to go. It's definitely worth prioritizing.
posted by JHarris at 10:53 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

For anyone looking for a new dupe, here's one that works in 1.2.2: frozen meat sticks. If you go to a cold enough area and try to autobuild a weapon with meat attached to it, the meat freezes when spawned and somehow that glitches out the autobuild so it doesn't spend your zonaite. You can then sell the frozen meat.

I don't like to cheat in games like this, I prefer playing within the game design constraints the developers intended. But a lot of folks find it more fun to have infinite money and that's fine by me. I wonder if it's important that the glitch be a little weird and difficult to perform as opposed to just a simple GTA-style +100,000 rupees cheat code? It feels more like you're outwitting the game to use an unintended exploit.
posted by Nelson at 6:41 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

It feels more like you're outwitting the game to use an unintended exploit.

The Spiffing Brit has a video for on of the Sims games that involves an exploit, thank goodness this is only in game, where you build a swimming pool, and you date women and get them pregnant and get them to go into the pool for a swim, and you build a small wall around the pool that traps them in the pool. So they're pregnant, they have to give birth, and one of the rewards for giving birth is you get a bassinet or something. But the women can't give birth in the pool. But they're trapped there. So they get to the birthing moment, the bassinets spawn, no babies are born, the women are still pregnant, they spawn more bassinets, etc.

The bassinets can be sold for money.

It's a morally horrid exploit, but it's infinite money for that game.
posted by hippybear at 7:13 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I sometimes think that life and experience are recursive, that when you read a story or... "churn?"... some other sequential narrative... "thing?" you're kind of spending a bit of your own life to give them reality. If you think of it like that then the exploit hippybear describes is pretty damn terrible, but on the other hand Spiffing Brit isn't emphasizing with the characters, it's just a system, graphics stacked atop numbers. The graphics are just an interpretation of them. Math doesn't have an inner life... does it?

Naw, it really doesn't, but some of those interpretations are awful. Maybe that's all consciousness is, an empathetic interpretation of abstract systems. Or maybe I should do something better with my time than come up with crazy ideas like that.
posted by JHarris at 7:32 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Korok basketball, although it's really more of a trebuchet.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on June 18, 2023

As with many things in life, you start off wanting to play basketball, you end up designing a trebuchet. I remember I was making a pizza once....
posted by hippybear at 8:27 AM on June 18, 2023

...and that's how my uncle ended up being executed for racism.

Wait, what?
posted by hippybear at 8:28 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think the highest armor you can have is 72 points, which is 18 hearts.

Max level Zoanite armor is 84 defense (28*3), and I think there sets with higher defense. That said, most of the sets with useful combat abilities tend to top out at 60 defense as a balance.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

you...might not need to actually make that trip

that's it, i'm joining ganondorf's side. burn hyrule down.
posted by mittens at 2:12 PM on June 18, 2023

I can't find the paraglider.. halp?

I feel like if you're not super into gaming or online game community you would never find this??
posted by latkes at 5:57 PM on June 18, 2023

Yeah, I missed the glider for a bit too. Go back to Lookout Landing and follow that quest line that take you into the area around Hyrule Castle.
posted by JHarris at 5:59 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I feel like if you're not super into gaming or online game community you would never find this??

??? Once you land after the tutorial section, the quest marker sends you to Lookout Landing. I feel like it's a pretty straightforward expectation that players will go around talking to NPCs at that location so they can figure out what the next steps are. I suppose the game never straight out says that if you follow the quest Purah gives you, you'll get the paraglider, but I still think the game does its best to make Lookout Landing your "base" in the early game. So you really should talk to every single NPC in this location, and pay particular attention to the Main Quests they give you. Basically, if it's marked as a Main Quest in the log, that's the game telling you this is a thing you need to do to progress the game as intended, and getting the paraglider and unlocking the tower at Lookout Landing are both part of the Crisis at Hyrule Castle Main Quest.
posted by yasaman at 10:30 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

Quest markers disappear if you get another quest. To get the marker back, you have to go to your quest list and reselect it. And more than one quest extends out from Lookout Landing. I think the geoglyph quest also extends from there, to meet Impa at the first 'glyph, and that's the one that stranded me in a balloon high in the air and told me to glide down.
posted by JHarris at 1:14 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think I saw the castle, thought "that was the hardest part last time" and took off in a different direction and lost my way?? I will try to figure out next time I play, thanks all!!
posted by latkes at 8:13 AM on June 19, 2023

FWIW I've seen plenty of comments from people who somehow missed the paraglider, including Maddy Myers on Triple Click who's as much a professional gamer as anyone can be. The clues yasaman talks about are all there but they're just the kind of thing that makes perfect sense if you are "super into gaming" but maybe not so obvious to someone playing casually.

Also not clear to someone distracted by all the exciting things to do and the freedom available the moment you get out of the sky. That's the real strength of TotK, the freedom to do what you want coupled with the design being rewarding for going off in random directions. Mostly the game is good at guiding you to the really important things but this one missed for some folks. I think it's really weird you could ever get off the sky island without the flight device, personally.

I hit another awkward open / game progression problem. Towards the endgame, after you've completed a group of major quests. And it's not quite clear where to go next but there's this one obvious spot to explore. So I did and found myself moving through a progression of increasingly difficult boss-leadup-battles until I got to one I just couldn't kill at all. Fortunately I recognized I'd overstepped where I was expected to go in the game and moved on but I could imagine that being really frustrating for someone who wasn't quite clued in to the game balance hints.

After getting the 4 sages and the Master Sword I figured Ganon had to be under Hyrule Castle. So I dove in and triggered the final endgame boss rush sequence. But I hadn't yet gotten Mineru, the mechasage. The game lets you do this but then instead of Mineru going offscreen with the Seized Construct you're left to fight it yourself and without the robot knockback attack you need to defeat it. Your weapons do a little damage, maybe 1/500th of its health in an attack, but it's a miserable fight. Apparently it is possible to win that and then the whole game but you end up with a "bad ending" without the final payoff. I'm a little baffled the game designers even allowed the player to do this; it seems like a bad experience.

posted by Nelson at 8:49 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think it's really weird you could ever get off the sky island without the flight device, personally.

My guess has been that they thought of this but the problem was that you could then glide way too far afield during that first big skydive down to the ground. (Or they were just committed to the idea of a huge skydiving freefall to start things off there -- with the one goal being to make sure you land in water. If you had the glider already, it would seem like the goal would be to use it sparingly so you could still turn it on right before hitting the ground? Which would be a less satisfying signal/task.)

Not that this excuses it, but for what it's worth it does seem like the people here reporting that they didn't get the paraglider right away did so because they were being too savvy, not not savvy enough.

It would have been a bit anathema to the open world feel, I guess (but as I've said further above, I think they could have sacrificed more of that), but maybe they should have had a character run over to you right after you land: "Oh my goodness, did you just fall out of the sky?! Here, take this!" (or at least "Here, come with me!").

(In an even less open-world version of this, you'd probably skydive into a pool at Lookout Landing, so you'd be surrounded by characters right away.)
posted by nobody at 9:51 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nelson: Again, the problem is that the game gives you the tools and information, but doesn't force your hand - and that can put the player in a bad place.

The expected path is:
* Get the Four Sages.
* Return to Lookout Landing, where you are told that "Zelda" is seen at the castle.
* Chase the imposter from ambush to ambush, culminating in a mass Phantom Ganon fight in the Sanctum.
* Return and reveal the impostor, which gets the folks in Kakariko to let you go into the floating ring.
* Learn the fifth sage's name (Mineru) and that she's tied to the Zonai Ruins.
* Go to the Zonai Ruins and complete a quest chain that dissipates the storm in the sky.
* Go to the islands revealed, and find a door that takes a good amount of hearts to open (TotK's version of pulling the Master Sword.)
* Find the construct head, and use it to descend to the Depths (this also unlocks a 1.1.2 dupe glitch, so it's really worth doing.)
* Complete the Construct Factory side quest, building Mobile Suit Mineru.
* Ride Mineru to the Spirit Temple, and defeat the Seized Construct to gain her stone.

The problem is that while that's the path, you're not led by the hand to it - the game expects you to put two and two together.

Also, it's quite possible to get Mineru beforehand, which results in "Wait, you already found her? Didn't you think this was important to say?"

posted by NoxAeternum at 12:33 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thanks for putting these in spoiler tags by the way.

I've explored nearly the entirety of the skies and the surface (including a major -- and majorly involved -- questline that I'm certain was meant to come later), but I've only just recently finished my fourth regional emergency and haven't followed the next marker to the castle yet. (I keep getting distracted; including checking out the area that I suspect Nelson is referring to, but eventually dropping a travel marker and leaving when it started feeling like it was probably the end of something, not the beginning.)

Side note: I've been a bit worried that completing that major quest early would trigger game-ending stuff upon heading to the castle now, but Nelson's question makes clear that won't be the case, so thanks for that!
posted by nobody at 12:54 PM on June 19, 2023

Yeah, it occurs to me, tooling around in the depths on my hoverbike, lighting up roots to find shrines at some later point, that I'm probably subverting some of the designer's planned "hey Link, come over here, it's mysteriously lit up in the depths, that's interesting, don't you think??!?" goals.

On the other hand, compared to running around with a bow and brightblooms, it has been absolutely 100% more enjoyable. I'll come back around later to mine and explore, I guess. I mean, I've stopped for one or two "huh, where does this mysterious ascend-able tower down here take me?" which have been kind of nothingburgers so far.
posted by Kyol at 1:52 PM on June 19, 2023

Also, it's quite possible to get Mineru beforehand, which results in "Wait, you already found her? Didn't you think this was important to say?"

Really? How? I found the Spirit Temple early and nothing there seemed to work without having done the Zonai Ruins stuff leading up to it, which itself didn't seem to work until I had done the stuff in the sky with the thunderstorm islands.

I got to two of the temples early, without the sages help, and got to see a unique animation at the entry terminal, a big "X" sign, letting me know it woudn't work yet. In neither case did it t explain _why_ it wasn't working but I pieced it together.

posted by JHarris at 4:47 PM on June 19, 2023

Now this is ~~podracing~~ tumbleweed exploiting. A very fast vehicle powered by one fan. It blows on a stack of 17 tumbleweeds which somehow all magnify the speed of the board you're standing on. Frozen fish make for sled skids.
posted by Nelson at 6:58 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Regarding getting a certain sage early:

There is nothing stopping you from getting to Dragonhead Isle while the storm rages, and it's pretty simple to locate Mineru's Door once there, even if you can't see your hand in front of your face. As long as you have around 15 or so hearts, you can open the door and begin the process of getting Mineru (and if you're on 1.1.2, you want to do this sooner than later to get access to a dupe glitch that requires the unique aspects of Tobio's Hollow Chasm.)

posted by NoxAeternum at 7:08 PM on June 19, 2023

Direct drive engine; two big wheels turn a wagon wheel on which a shrine propeller is mounted (via a bearing made from an apple). A stabilizer keeps everything upright.

This guy used this engine principle to create a very efficient flying machine with the unfortunate side effect of spinning you around a few times a second. Then he rode it for 7 minutes to the top of the sky. One problem with flying a long time is the Zonai flying devices tend to time out and disappear after a minute or so. This aircraft has no flying parts so is probably exempt.
posted by Nelson at 7:43 AM on June 20, 2023

Re: Nelson’s podracer, some theory-crafting with a lot of useful facts: Electric Shrine Motor + propeller vastly outperforms standard Zonai fans. Total thrust = 50-60 Links (still 2:1 power:weight). You’d need some kind of small leg brace for the motor underside (sideways Narla Scale to keep large despawn radius?) but it should be possible to fit a reversed, self-contained infinite power propeller inside an open Bokoblin cage.

Also, Electric Shrine Motors have functionally infinite durability, unlike Zonai Large Wheels which last about 7-8 minutes under high stress (much like a stressed glider can disappear in as little as 40 seconds).

Speaking of durability: the Zonai Electric Emitters also have a limited lifespan measured in several minutes of continuous operation. In theory this does not apply to parts fused to shields as part of an assembly, and fused shields count as one object in build limits so the ideal power source of a perpetual electric motor should be a Mighty Zonai Shield with a fused Electric Emitter.

Combining all these, it might be possible to make a dual-assembly verson of the podracer with a “caged” infinite engine. You’d still be bound by roughly 21 active attachment limit across both assemblies, and a perpetual propeller motor is a minimum of 8 pieces, plus the brace (forward end of which can be the shield emitter as a monopod). Call it 9 total.

That leaves Bokoblin Cage + lightest non-conducting base platform + control stick … call it 9 part count for tumbleweeds vs the 17 in that video?

Probably more like 8 if your “base platform” connecting tumbleweeds to cage is a line of Korok Leaf-Control Stick-Narla Scale (2k despawn radius on chassis as well).

Not sure it’s worth the thrust gains, but could be an interesting (and incredibly complicated / labor intensive) experiment. If you can find a way to get a stabilizer up front at 22.5~30 degree down pitch it might be possible to get airborne at speed… Also worth testing whether tumbleweed force scales with the double thrust of two propellers on an electric motor (propellers are RPM threshold binary, not linear scaling, so the extra weight just means longer initial spool-up).

I know what I’m doing tonight…
posted by Ryvar at 8:45 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh and re: direct drive propellers - I’m starting to see people use Flux Construct cores (the spikey rods) as a drive shaft for these in the most recent builds. I have no idea why… friction + a convenient length, maybe?
posted by Ryvar at 9:02 AM on June 20, 2023

I know what I’m doing tonight…

"Hey, Ganondorf is out in Hateno tapdancing on the pumpkin fields again."

"Go away, I'm working here!"
posted by JHarris at 4:11 PM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Building a stable single-fan aircraft using materials with negative weight. "the Water Globules found on the way to the Water Temple actually reduce the weight of the weapon!"
posted by Nelson at 6:59 AM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funnily enough I felt this Zelda has the best rewards for exploration in a long time.

I mean traditionally the big hitters have been hearts, armor and items/weapons. The traditional Zelda items are no more (although there are still items that help with navigation and puzzle solving like leafs, fans for sand, ice/fire and Zonai items). Hearts (and stamina) have transformed into light rewards from shrines, and armor has picked up the slack as an additional reward in caves and the depths. Rupees seem also more worthwhile as they aren't hidden under every patch of grass.

I think this is more generous than at least BOTW, Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess and even further back depending on taste.
posted by ersatz at 6:19 AM on June 22, 2023

Update: looks like I guessed wrong about what quest would come after the big Hyrule Castle quest.

So...when does the game explicitly point you toward Korok Forest?

Wait, I played a bit more instead of posting this and just had a randomly uncovered korok say:

Ya-ha-ha! You found me!
Hmmm...
I'd heard that Korok Forest was all weird for a while there.
But I guess now it's back to normal. That makes me happy! Yay!

Sounds like that would have otherwise been a spot for the pointer. Was it because I collected a certain number, or just that it was the first one I'd found since finishing up at the Castle? Nearly certain it's not tied to this incidental-seeming location.

Oh wait,

I bet the big maracas-playing korok would have pointed there upon talking to him next, had he not already moved there, right?

posted by nobody at 7:20 AM on June 22, 2023

I found the Korok Forest quest after I'd found a certain number of Koroks. He pointed me to the forest and said "we need some help" and I was off.

Ironically I'd done game progression in the "wrong" order...

I'd already gotten the Master Sword, so while it was fun to rescue the Deku Tree it didn't set up the big plot progression I think most people experienced. I pulled the Master Sword just after collecting all 18 memories; I came out somewhere and there was a dragon right there. So I flew up to it and it had a ~~thorn in its paw~~ sword in its head so I yanked it out. It was all a bit anti-climactic.

posted by Nelson at 7:35 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Huh, the thing I realize now, however, is that I have collected a lot of Koroks. (Oh, but maybe this was the one that pushed me over the edge for the very last inventory upgrade, though I'd thought it was five more I needed. Was that the trigger for you?)

(It doesn't seem Nintendo-like to tie it to that high a number, given how big a questline it is.)
posted by nobody at 7:45 AM on June 22, 2023

Well maybe I'm wrong about the Korok Forest quest coming "after I'd found a certain number of Koroks". I thought that was what had happened but I didn't pick up many Koroks at all, well under 100 total. This discussion says it's tied to "a certain point in main quest progression".

While trying to figure out how this works online all I found was a lot of people confused. It's possible to do various parts in various orders, some of which are more confusing than others.
posted by Nelson at 12:30 PM on June 22, 2023

I randomly ended up in the Korok Forest by exploring the underground, which worked great because I'm never a fan of the wandering through mist thing they make you do otherwise. I even got reset once just gliding too close to it on my way somewhere else.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:13 PM on June 22, 2023

I randomly ended up in the Korok Forest by exploring the underground

Same thing here, but I decided afterwards (based on a line spoken by some character) that that was probably the canonical intended solution after all. (Which would make sense, given that they did the mist puzzle in the last game, and what's new now is the underground.)

Does anyone remember how that's hinted at when you do things in the intended order? Is there another way to get there?
posted by nobody at 1:51 PM on June 22, 2023

Yeah, I definitely kind of broke progression by doing the memories quests, then going to the korok forest and getting the master sword - after the last sage quest, Purah went "oh and you've already got the master sword? I guess you can go fuck up ganondorf now then huh. shoo. git."

It's kind of wild to me how much more I _know_ I have to do, and how many things I completely managed to skirt from botw. I never crossed hyrule bridge (er bridge of hylia whatever), I didn't have to really scrabble to get to the tops of the towers, lurelin can stay pirate infested for all I care. And yet, there's ol' boy G.

Time to go knock out the Shrines I mapped from the depths. Do all the lightroots always reveal some portion of the depths map, or do you eventually get to like 80% lightroots with 100% of the map revealed and you've got to find the ones the devs buried inside structures to make them harder to find?
posted by Kyol at 1:52 PM on June 22, 2023

> Do all the lightroots always reveal some portion of the depths map

Yes, though it becomes increasinly obvious where the lightroots are in all three dimensions. "probably in a hole in that wierd dark spot in the map"
posted by pwnguin at 1:56 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

The key realization to make about lightroots is, lit ones don't reveal the map, instead, unlit ones darken it. The amount of map revealed by a lightroot depends entirely on the locations of unfound ones near it.
posted by JHarris at 3:10 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does anyone remember how that's hinted at when you do things in the intended order? Is there another way to get there?

If you go through the main entrance the game gives you a hint to try going underground. I first tried to parachute myself in, but that didn't work either. If I remember Hestu mentioned needing to return to the forest early on, but that's conditional on running into him in the first place. My number of Korok seeds was pretty low.
posted by ersatz at 3:16 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Carnival ride
posted by Nelson at 4:46 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Vaguely related: Mars First Logistics just entered early access. No idea but the demo videos look good. It's a puzzle game where you build vehicles to move stuff around. The physics simulation looks roughly the same complexity as TotK's.
posted by Nelson at 5:07 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, and my dumb protip the other night was realizing that the minimap stays with whatever map you last were viewing, so you can have the hyrule map displaying in the minimap while you're in the depths and vice versa. Makes it easy to know when you're coming up to a river/wall, although the mirrored elevations still gave me a couple of headaches.
posted by Kyol at 6:19 PM on June 22, 2023

More physics than engineering, but today on Reddit someone posted how blowing up a rock wall with 20 bombs triggers a Blood Moon. Which was a real head scratcher but I like this explanation

bloodmoons double as a panic button for the game to avoid running out of memory. If you have too much going on at once, a bloodmoon will trigger to reset most things so the game doesn't crash. It's a neat failsafe that's not too in your face while still allowing the game to function on the Nintendo Switch's abysmal 4gb of memory.

Apparently other physics-stressing ways of blowing up rock walls (like multishot arrows) can also trigger it.
posted by Nelson at 4:07 PM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Bringing spreadsheets to Hyrule engineering: Flight Speed data comparing multi fan/propeller configurations. Basic pattern is adding more propellers or fans does not increase top speed. Fans are faster than propellers.
posted by Nelson at 2:12 PM on June 26, 2023

I've come to the conclusion that while the hoverbike is awesome for exploring the depths, it's a bit too hard to control in skyrule, and I really just need to make a quad platform for tooling around up there. Although I suspect it's going to be a decision between how I want to burn zonaite - by autobuilding 9 zonaite hoverbikes and yeeting them onto some poor unsuspecting hylian while I glide to whatever undersized sky island I'm aiming for, or burning ... probably 20 some zonaite quads but maybe getting a second or third use out of them.

Hrm. Maybe I should follow one of the "don't touch the left stick" guides for building flat and level hoverbikes, see if it helps if I'm not fighting that bit of drift while also trying to manage altitude and descent profiles...
posted by Kyol at 9:17 AM on June 27, 2023

I've got a perfect hoverbike build in favorites, no left or right drift that I've used for most of the game. I've also got like 100 control sticks but 2 fans in inventory, so 4 fan builds will really eat into the zonai budget =(

Now that I've found all the shrines and roots, its on to destroying all the big monsters I flew past, and for that, we've seen some pretty neat drone warfare builds. Fans on construct heads to push the build in circles while sky lasers destroy the monsters. Or whatever dark magic powers today's finding.
posted by pwnguin at 9:47 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

The tumbleweed meta is over. Welcome now to the guard rail meta. As seen in such builds as the improved hoverbike. Basically it's a piece that weighs basically nothing.

Also patch 1.2.0 is out and it disables a bunch of the old building hacks folks were using, particularly fuse entanglement. So some of the weirder builds won't work any more.
posted by Nelson at 4:11 PM on July 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Apparently this is where the guard rail meta started. Someone used stakes as a pry bar to break apart some stuff hidden away in a particular temple late in the game. It's likely the developers didn't think anyone could ever get ahold of these parts and build with them, which is why they have glitchy (but useful) physics.

I hope Nintendo stops patching out creative stuff like this. I understand removing the most basic item dupes or game-breaking stuff. But if a player in a single player game wants to work this hard to get some weird physics items, they should be allowed IMHO.
posted by Nelson at 5:20 PM on July 6, 2023

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