Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Postbox: Bipin & Blossom's Son

Hello Tourist and congratulations for all the good work, especially about the Oracles!

I would like to ask you something about Bipin and Blossom's son, whom I called Link. I play the games with a New 3DS XL and the bought and downloaded versions (PAL I think).

I have chosen to take the Ages-Seasons-Seasons-Ages route and right now I'm at the first Seasons' Linked playthrough (with Ages' Secret to Holodrum), with 6 of 8 Essences of Nature at the moment.

At the initial Ages' completion I think that I have reached Link's childhood by 150 Rupees and Sing decisions, if I recall correctly. The result was the Shy one.

The problem is that at the Seasons' continuation, things seem to have stuck at this point. Link's parents refuse to ask me any questions and just keep telling me the initial hello stuff. It is as if the game thinks I haven't got any Essences yet. If I speed-catch Link, he says "You're Chris? I'm Link! No way!", or something like that.

If game mechanics correlate this situation with time somehow, besides story progression, neither changing seasons with the Rod, nor planting Gasha Seeds and harvesting them seem to have an effect so far. Even though I must confess that only after Level 6 completion I started to plant Gasha Seeds, because some Level 4 & 5 randomness rings are left for the collection, so it wasn't very urgent. I have harvested about 20 Seeds so far.

Could all this be a glitch?

Could I miss something that as long as I don't do it, the growth from childhood to adulthood effects aren't triggered?

Is there really an option for a forever Shy child? I certainly hope not, just for completion's sake.

The funny thing is that there are some opinions and discussions around the Web that comment about too much pampering! Well, I admit that according to this way of thinking, yes, I have pampered the child a little bit, but I didn't mean to freeze things forever!

Any clues or ideas?

Thank you very much and keep the devoted work!

Chris from Greece

Hey Chris,

thanks for the message!

The child's growth is indeed triggered by planting Gasha Seeds. However, 20 should be plenty, so it's weird that you haven't made any progress yet and neither the child nor the mother give you any choices.

As far as I know, there is no glitch or bug or bad choice that might prevent you from evolving the child. Even a baby can be fully grown in a Linked Game. So, that's the good news, we just have to find out what's blocking your progress. Try keep planting Gasha Seeds and visiting the family regularly in between. Also, try some of the lower class Gasha Spots as well, it might be that you also have to use some of them.

Let me know in the comments, whether this worked or not. If not, I'll do some more research. If anyone has any ideas, also please post them in the comments.

PS: Good choice with the Ages → Seasons → Seasons → Ages route!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Tourist and thank you for the tips!

Be prepared for an over-explaining! I guess that sometimes all info is welcome, even the tiniest detail!

I have some good news and some comme-ci-comme-ca ones!

The good news is that Link is a happy Arborist about 24 hours now, willingful to follow his father's career!

A funny detail about this is that yesterday I shut down my 3DS for a small break, then I wrote my message, and three or four hours later, when I re-opened 3DS, I surprisingly found that things had already gotten finally to the next level! It is as if I just wasn't patient enough!

The so-so news is that I'm not very sure why this relief happened, what are the gameplay mechanics behind it. I'm not a software programmer though, so it doesn't count!

Let's take things from the beginning.

When I mentioned that I speed-catch the running Shy child, I wasn't very accurate. I didn't mean that I did it at each family visit. In fact, this is something that I never really got to do at the first Ages' playthrough. I thought that it is impossible for some reason. I tried it a few times without success and impatiently stopped trying after a few seconds, in order to achieve the next goal.

A few hours before writing my message, I had a hunch that if you persist on trying to catch him, he would say something eventually, because it could be possible that he needs at least an initial hello-talk in order to move on. And indeed, surprisingly without so much effort as expected, and in fact easily enough, yes, the Shy child speaks!

So I didn't ever speak to the child himself, neither at Initial Ages, nor at Linked Seasons, only until 6 Essences of Nature later!

That doesn't necessarily mean that it was exactly that event which unlocked progress, but I guess that this is a possible scenario.

This stage of progress could or could not be dependent on just having a conversation. But the next stage is definitely dependent on it, because Link asked me if I am strong! Of course, Blossom also asked me something, if I was quiet, I think. So things got unlocked. A few moments later, there we go, with the father and the son taking care of the house garden together!

Something observable about all this is the speed of progress, not having to wait about the next Essence or needing many visits. Is it possible to have an adult son after Level 2 or 4 perhaps, if you do everything correctly as soon as possible/reachable?

But to tell you the truth, the most possible scenario is in fact Gasha Seeds. With the suspicion of the Gasha Seeds necessity, I overall had harvested about 5 ones at Samasa Desert, about 5 ones at Mayor Ruul's residence, about 5 ones at Impa's (and Zelda's) temporary refuge, and about 5 ones at Tarm Ruins, in order to find out if it helps. Before shutting 3DS down temporarily, I had harvested 5 more at Tarm Ruins for those much wanted Level 5 Rings.

So it could be just a few seconds or visits or restarts more! And about the randomness of the Seeds, I hadn't really thought about it. It could be also a possible scenario.

Final (personal) diagnose:
high possibility of Gasha Seeds, unknown one of their randomness, enough/so-so one of just speed-catching, low one of restart (because I constantly do this, with both internal gameplay save and Return/Restore Points), low one of visits (I also did it frequently).

Thank you very much and keep up the devoted work!

(If you find out that Nintendo has eventually decided to release Four Swords Anniversary Edition or Minish Cap (for handhelds) or A Link to the Past (Four Swords version) or Four Swords Adventures or any other beauty, tell us because they could again wisely (kidding) decide to do so for only e.g. a week, just like last time for a few days.)

Unknown said...

(Well, yeah, your guides mention this route as more preferable than the Seasons-Ages-Ages-Seasons one, so I picked it for the experience. And if we take the fact in mind, that Seasons is (very slightly) more typically the initial storyline, if we ever had to choose between the two, then this means that the Ages-Seasons-Seasons-Ages one has the Seasons-Ages story-experience at the end and the Ages-Seasons one at the start, which means that the typical one comes final. "Good" things are better at the end than at the start!)

TourianTourist said...

Hey,

nice to hear that you could clear this issue. Not fully talking to the kid definitely was the cause of it.

And I'm sure that Gasha Seeds trigger the growth of the child. You can still fully develop a baby at the end of a Linked Game by planting Gasha Seeds. It think you also need to collect a number of Essences first, before certain stages can be reached, but the Essences do not actively trigger the growth, they are a blocker.