The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I think it says I have been playing for 25 hours or more? I guess that is possible. maybe ity including my daughter's play time?

no, that's me. but I am very slow to pick up on these things, so 25 hours for me is probably more like 5 hours for most people.

you are doing it right imo. I did many towers and shrines before the first beast.

Same, and I especially took my sweet ass time once I finished the first beast and had a sense of how long the entire game would take if I rushed through.

it seems like everyone did the zora's domain beast first but somehow i ended up doing it next-to-last. i did the bird one first.

i get semi-irrationally annoyed by zora's domain because the town/castle is a pain in the ass to navigate, with all those long bridges that loop around and you can't always tell which one takes you where. i should probably go back and explore that area some more because i hurried out of there before.

I did the cunt camel first

brb, headed to "posts out of context"

Confession: I x-skip almost all the mini cut-scene sequences I can skip, often in the shrines, but I never skip the the cooking, which I dutifully sit through and enjoy.

same

kinda want the cooking music as a ringtone

Why is it sometimes you get an even more cheeful tune when you make a recipe? I keep thinking I've done something cool but I can't figure out what I did or what it's done.

It’s a critical hit, the resulting meal is a little more effective

Yeah, though I rarely pay attention to the ingredients. When I make an inedible dish, can I use it for anything? Can I weaponize it?

There’s a lady east of the desert, right at the bottom of the map, who lives on a rubbish dump - I think she gives clues about how to make useful trash meals but I’ve never followed it up

it's a goofy thing. they still up being bad food but they'll give you more hearts than one. not really worth it imo

inedible meals will replenish you a bit is all, I think?

And I gave this tip upthread - when the blood moon first peeks over the horizon get thee to a cookfire and make everything you can, because *every* meal will have that extra bonus (the jauntier music)

I've gotten back into this game. I found the monster gear guy and bought some of the masks but I can't tell if they actually do anything.

They sort-of disguise you from the monster you're imitating, so you can basically stroll into a bokoblin camp with the mask on and at least at first, they'll just chill with you, til you try nicking anything or hitting them, though.

The Lynel mask barely works at all - I can stand closer to one/move past one (it made getting a bit of treasure in the coliseum easier for example) but he's not as stupid.

Lots of firsts today. I think I found my first Lynel, which maybe killed me even when I was hiding? Or something else killed me, at least, while I was hiding. I stabled my horse (which I named Horse). I hit my first super cold environment and had to take my first elixir (which I was happy to learn was still working when I continued the game after dying). I found my first lost memory (which I was not looking for). Found another fairy (which I was looking for). Gotten better at killing things, and also at getting to hard to reach places, like the tower dripping with lava. (I ate some food that gave me extra hearts so I could just plow through.) Found the hawk people and was introduced, unwittingly, to a dramatic cut scene introducing what I presume is a flying Divine Beast (which I was not looking for). Still annoyed by the shrines, still annoyed by running out of arrows, though now I know better and just teleport back and buy more (as available).

You've triggered the Rito divine beast - thats one worth doing, because you'll get the revali's gale power which lets you do huge wind-lifted jumps up in the air.

that's probably the most useful of the powers you get from the divine beasts. the one from the zora's domain beast comes in handy too but it's not as fun.

Yeah mipha's grace i dont find i trigger off that often, esp as I usually carry a few fairies around as well anyway.

BTW I rarely see fairies at the fountains anymore. Do they disappear late-game or something?

Fairies won’t appear at the great fairy fountains if you’re already carrying three (I think) fairies

I think I might need cold weather gear if I'm going to deal with the bird people and their environment. Either that or roast a crap ton of peppers.

silby: a duhoy, that should have been obvious to me haha.

Yeah mipha's grace i dont find i trigger off that often, esp as I usually carry a few fairies around as well anyway.

BTW I rarely see fairies at the fountains anymore. Do they disappear late-game or something?

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

mipha's grace triggers before fairies, though, right?

I think I might need cold weather gear if I'm going to deal with the bird people and their environment. Either that or roast a crap ton of peppers.

― Josh in Chicago

fortunately a shop in the rito town sells some! unfortunately it's ridiculously expensive :( saving up to buy armor was not one of my favorite parts of the game...

mipha's grace triggers before fairies, though, right?

Oh does it? Hm maybe I just never notice when it happens haha!

What's the quickest way to get cash? Blow up rocks and sell what you get? Just sell everything?

Sell ore yeah (but bear in mind you'll eventually need some of each kind for armour upgrades).

A quick way to make good money is to gather as many "luminous stones" as you an and sell those, theyre worth a lot and easy to find at night (they glow).

Make and sell meals - selling them to shopkeeps or to Beedle is easiest.

DO NOT sell any guardian (robot) parts such as cogs, springs, and esp cores. They are rare and you will need them later for cool gear.

Easy meals to make quickly - load up on apples, mushrooms, berries and fish.

the quickest ways to get cash don't open up until later in the game. it depends on what you've done so far. selling gems can work. cooking and selling recipes also. if you've killed monsters you can sell the monster parts you get. at the point you're at in the game you'll probably have trouble scraping together the 1,150 rupees you'll need to get enough armor to get to level 2 cold resistance, though. :(

something you might try early in the game is seeing if you can hunt for meat, and then cooking five meat together and selling them. you can get pretty decent money for that and meat isn't the most efficient way of healing anyway.
it's good practice at stealth/bow & arrow skills as well.

yeah luminous stones will give you 70 rupees each and are plentiful, that's definitely another good way of making some quick money

The fastest way to make cash is to go to places in the mountains, kill things like elk or whatever, grab the meat before it freezes, hopefully it's "gourmet", combine 5x meats together (5x gourmet is best), cook it, sell it, lather rinse repeat

I wouldn't recommend selling other shit, it's useful to hold on to for upgrades. I didn't sell any gear and I found that in general my natural collection complimented my armour upgrade needs very well-- I seldom had to go hunting for specific deficiencies

Certain things like moblin tusks that you have 100s of, those can be sold though

Save your coloured Lizalfos horns, they are scarce and useful

Yeah electric and fire liz tails also, I had a bitch of a time finding enough of those for the armour upgrades they wanted. I ended up using the sonar thingy... I assume everyone knows you can set it from detecting shrines to detecting whatever you like, right?

The other thing I had a hard time getting my hands on (outside of the one shop that sells them) is swift violets.

Is grinding really an essential thing here? Like, keeping in mind that people have played under all sorts of self-restricted conditions, is it possible to advance in this game without a specific thing that does the thing? Or does that thing just make things easier? Am I going to have to spend hours scouring for stuff? I'm already having trouble keeping track or all the ingredients and equipment, and right about now I wish I knew where to find that magic maraca Mario world refugee dude again so that I can expand my inventory again.

magic korok man is on the hill on the road into kakariko village. unless you’ve upgraded a number of times, at which point he moves to the lost forest/hidden woods

I think I only upgraded once, but I couldn't find him again. is he only there a certain time of day?

I tended not to use the item detector and just search online as to where I could pull/buy the items I was missing.

It's weird, it doesn't feel like I sunk as many evening hours into this game (compared to Dead Cells, Dark Souls, Skyrim) but I did get 120 shrines, all the armour upgrades, and cleared the DLC content. Absorbing game!

@ Josh: It's not so much grinding as it's like, you look at what armours you have, what you need to upgrade them, you explore territories where the missing ingredients are naturally located, completing shrines on the way, then you find you've accumulated the ingredients for the upgrade, warp back to fairy and do so, and keep that up.

Once you've got the revival upgrade and three fairies unlocked (desert fairy is last) then the game seemed in my play through to be ridiculously balanced and enjoyable

the korok guy moves somewhere else in between kakariko village and the lost woods no?

i thought he kept moving with each upgrade but it was a long time ago

zelda's an odd game because the 'grinding' - completing puzzles to increase your hearts/stamina, searching for stuff to upgrade your items - is pretty much the game...but it's fun, so it's not a grind. honestly josh i'm not sure how you're enjoying it (maybe you're not?) if you don't like the shrines. for me, i was actively seeking out shrines most of the time. i wish there were more of them!

I’d like to grind........... on prince sidon amirite

ya the shrines rule

if u hate shrines, I have got some divine beasts you’re going to love.......

yeah I loved walking through the world, or gliding over the world, but the point of my wandering was to find shrines. I really never worried about what gear I had until I'd pretty much done all the shrines, because you get so much good gear in them. I never had much money, probably I would have had to grind to get that, but I didn't need to because in regular game play I got enough to afford the big costs, the last fairy and the other big expense I can't remember anymore.

I actually am enjoying the wandering around stuff. But no, so far I'm not really enjoying the shrines, because I see them as chores, impediments to my quest for more hearts and stamina, which help me fight and wander, etc. They're mostly unsatisfying PIAs for me. And yeah, I remember seeing a clip of someone solving some divine beast (camel?) and thinking at the time, no way am I ever wasting the fucking time to do that. Again, I'm not some huge gamer, so I don't have many frames of references. But I've been enjoying this less than I enjoyed Dark Souls. I still think it's fun, and it's still good enough to have drawn me away from Spider-man (which I've barely played). But in DS it felt like putting in the time and learning to fight really accelerated powering up, there was a sense of momentum, but in this I'm not getting that vibe. For example, no amount of hearts or stamina will make me think using a leaf to awkwardly navigate around spikes while on a platform suspended by balloons is fun. The challenge is not in the challenge, the challenge (for me) is wanting to try it more than a couple of times. Vs. some bosses in DS, which gave me some real satisfaction.