Zelda Day 2023

December 26, 2023 4:04 PM

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild, has a secret experience system that doesn't make your character stronger, it makes the enemies harder. Here's 102 ways to kill a bokoblin in that game. If you got it for the holidays and want some tips, here's 10. How to send Link waaaaay up into the sky with just a fan and a plank, using Oriented Carryable Objects (OCOs). And here's TerminalMontage's speedrun cartoon, featuring Cucuí Ganon.

A couple of other Zelda-related things of interest:
ZIIAOL is a remake of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for Windows, with new areas, features and secrets!
The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Dungeon is a romhack of NES Zelda that turns it into a sequence of randomized dungeon rooms, where you try to get through as many as you can.

posted by JHarris (15 comments total)

For more (much, much more) BotW/TotK silliness, also check out Kleric's channel.
posted by xedrik at 5:16 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have played a ton of this game but videos like the recall launch one are always a reminder that there’s so much else going one that I’ve barely scratched the surface of. I had kind of intuited the broad outline of the experience level stuff, but it was still interesting to see it laid out so precisely.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:08 PM on December 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can we please focus on how Zelda is the boy.
posted by signal at 6:38 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

xedrik, I've posted Kleric's videos on multiple previous Zelda Days! I didn't have a lot of time this year, but I wanted to make sure something went up all the same.
posted by JHarris at 7:21 PM on December 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Happy Zelda Day, JHarris!
posted by kaibutsu at 7:23 PM on December 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have put so many hours into ToK and not once did it occur to me to use Recall on an arrow being shot at me.

I have been a fool.
posted by Zargon X at 9:02 PM on December 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

Every year I'm surprised by how these people get Zelda stuck on the Front Page. I understand why.

In the contents down here, people say things like...

signal (quoting Cortex): guys can we please focus on how Zelda is the boy

followed by LeoTrotsky: ...and Metroid is the girl.

---

The combinations of stuff in Tears of the Kingdom has tipped my small brain to say "everything can be a macguffin."
posted by k3ninho at 1:18 AM on December 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I need to actually finish ToTK one of these days - something about the systems made it less of an open world exploration game for me compared to BoTW. I think it's because there are so many unfinished macguffins in the depths and you're flying over most stuff anyway, so you don't get that moment on horseback where ... "Hey, what's that over there?" and off you go to discover something kind of neat.

Now it's like "ok I gotta go halfway across the zone to get there lemme spawn a flying machine because the nearest stable is a 5 minute jog in the wrong direction and they removed the Ancient Saddle so I guess I'm flying?" and instead you miss all of those lovely little story elements that BoTW had.

I probably need a story refresher at this point, though.
posted by Kyol at 6:05 AM on December 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

build carts, not planes.

i’ve had good luck with:

• four small wheels, mounted on
• two wooden crossbars, mounted on
• a wooden bar running the length of
• the piece of wood you standing on, with
• (in the depths) a giant brightbloom stuck on the front, and
• (if i’m feeling spicy) a big ol wall of spikes on the front

much faster than big-wheel carts, and just as good at traversing broken terrain.

sometimes when i’m feeling violent and/or want to pick up some extra food, i drive my spiky-front lifted-suspension murder-cart around on the surface for a few minutes, park, and then scrape off all the prime meat and miscellaneous bird parts that have accumulated on the murder-hood of my murder-cart.

zelda is the boy. the boy who is a psychopath.

one critique i have, though, is that there are key features of the game that take a little while to find. notably, building murder-carts is much easier once you pick up autobuild, but you can play for like fifty hours before you even know autobuild is a thing that exists.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:23 AM on December 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh, I know I could make a landcart, but the zonaite cost of the usual two fan flyer is only what, 9 zonaite? Cheap! But also kind of optimizes some of the fun out of the game, too.

And yet, you can kind of tell they intended for traversal to be a thing - the Master Kohga quest is all over hell's half acre, for starters.

Ech. Frustrating.
posted by Kyol at 8:47 AM on December 27, 2023

(also it sort of seems like a modern internet complaint that there isn't some goddamn turbonerd spreadsheet of individual autobuildable components and their zonaite costs, and yet when I search all DDG points me to is "here's how to get autobuild!" yeah thanks, that's not what I was asking for, guys.)
posted by Kyol at 8:51 AM on December 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nearly every component has a cost of 3 zonaite, with very few exceptions.

There are such spreadsheets, but as is the way with Google's decay and Discord's current popularity, it's a lot harder to find them now than the days when you could find someone's notes posted on a blog, or even a static site somewhere. And when you do find them, there's a good chance they'll be on Reddit's increasingly corporate website. A source for a lot of information in the subreddit Hyrule Engineering, but I don't wish to give Reddit the Pagerank credit.

Ah, here's a Google Sheets document listing lots of devices and their properties. Maybe it'll be useful for you! (There's probably some spoilers in there.) And here's a vehicle duration calculator. And a table offering alternate uses for Zonai parts, with helpful links!
posted by JHarris at 1:55 PM on December 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

The recall launch thing is pretty neat, but I’m skeptical of anyone who posts a video showing in EXCRUCIATING detail how to throw oneself high in the air and simultaneously can’t figure out that using the paraglider at the end will save them from smashing into the ground

Also I know full well YouTube vids need to be at least 10 minutes to get monetized, but seriously, that set of instructions could have been 2 minutes. What 99% of YouTubers need is a good editor, telling them to shut up and get to the point.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:41 AM on December 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't enjoy building stuff in the game and have done fine so far without doing it except when absolutely necessary. I also touch horses as infrequently as possible -- pretty much only if someone is really sad about their horse wandering away, so I'll go retrieve it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:55 AM on December 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

Here's an informative and fun video demonstrating the properties of every usable wooden item in the game!
posted by JHarris at 9:43 PM on December 29, 2023 [1 favorite]