Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 20


After defeating the final boss and completing the story of the game, I have to admit that my motivation to go on sank a little. I haven't even played on Monday, which was my first day without the game since the release. Part of the reason is that there is mostly only generic / repetitive stuff left. Hunting down all the overworld bosses, finding all the Koroks, clearing all Bokoblin camps that have a chest, collecting stuff to upgrade all the armor and of course looking for shrines, where the latter is probably the most interesting thing left to do.

I've always been a 100% guy, when it comes to Zelda, but with this game it's almost a little too much. However, I managed to complete Adventure Mode in both Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors - Legends, so this should be moderate in comparison. The main problem is that there are no divisions on the map, especially with the Koroks. You might get stuck with 890+ Koroks and have no clue, where to look for the final ones. Here it would be better, if the game just told you the totals on a per-region basis like they did with the Gold Skulltulas, Poe Souls or Maiamais in previous games. But this might be the new map feature that is coming with the first DLC, who knows...

But what keeps me going is that in general the fighting is a lot of fun in the game and so is the exploration with the ability to climb everywhere and to play around with physics. The primitives of this game are so good that I don't mind the "filler" content, which is now left, as much.


Stasis Canyon

In that sense I made it my goal yesterday to ride through Tanagar Canyon all the way from the west end to the Forgotten Temple... I do like, how even can go explore the big chasms in the landscapes. They are not just some bottomless abysses like in Twilight Princess, they are full valleys, where you can go down and explore.


This particular area was nice, because there were quite some use cases for the Stasis ability, which outside of fighting enemies seems to be rare. I mostly use it to "scan" the area for enemies, pick ups and treasure chests, where all of this will be highlighted in a bright yellow.

But here you can even find an entire golf course designed just for this ability, which was a fun little minigame distraction. There is also the Dunba Taag Shrine down here with "Build and Release" puzzle for the Stasis Rune. So, there's lots to distract you from your goal of reaching the Forgotten Temple, which already is quite the long tour on its own.


I didn't know what to expect from this place, but tons of decayed Guardians aiming at you wasn't on my list. Here they seem to have a similar range and field of view to the Guardian Turrets at Hyrule Castle, but all you have to do is simply glide through the place and enjoy, how all the beams miss you. And... you get another questionable blessing for this action, offered by Rona Kachta. I say questionable, because there is no way, how this Sheikah Monk could have foretold that this place would be riddled with decayed Guardians thousands of years later, unless they really possess the ability see the future. But in that case they would have been smart enough to not built an army of robots that would destroy Hyrule on day.

But whatever... I collected four Spirit Orbs and it was nice to have a Goddess Statue right behind the shrine to exchange it for yet another Heart Container.


Monster Hunter

When I talked to Kilton after beating the game, he offered a new section of dialogues about the overworld bosses: Hinox, Talus and Molduga. It seems there is a total of 40 Hinox, 40 Talus and 4 Molduga in the game, where he wants you to defeat all of them. So, this will be another big quests all over the game world.

I previously defeated three Molduga in the Gerudo Desert, where I thought for today I should be looking for the fourth one to see what happens, when you defeat them all. The thing was in an area called "Arbiter's Grounds", which other than the name doesn't seem to hold any references to the same place in Twilight Princess...


Back at Kilton's shop, I was offered with a "Medal of Honor" (seriously, Nintendo?) for slaying all Molduga. I'm not sure, if they hold any value other than bragging rights, but I would have done this quest anyway. Defeated overworld bosses even have a star and a "Defeated" next to their HUD entry, if you fight them again. So, at least I will know about the ones that I don't have to fight again immediately. Ideally the game would also mark their positions on the map, but I will simply do that on my own using the stamps...

Also, while looking for the last Molduga, I finally found out about the triple trees. I've noticed this several times in the game that there are spots with three trees aligned in a line. Those are rather conspicuous and I knew that a Korok would be hiding there, but I never could figure out, what I had to do here. But with the cacti in the desert it's a lot more obvious, what you have to do, so I finally figured it out.

Well, I feel like there are more Korok puzzles that I'm missing, because there are still so MANY of them left. I always loved the collectible quests in Zelda games and the Koroks seem to be like the ultimate challenge in this department. I've put over 180 hours into the game now and completed all the main quests, but I still haven't even found a third of the Koroks yet. Still, I did manage to get all weapon stash upgrades already, where I was surprised that it didn't take a total of 300 Korok Seeds to do so. I wonder, what the rest of them will offer at the end.


Cold Mounts

With the usual "I have too many good weapons" problem I decided to fight another Lynel, where I chose the north of the Tabanta Snowfields. I also wanted to test Urbosa's Fury on one, after I realized, how much damage this ability actually does. It's a lot! Well, I certainly wasn't surprised, when I learned that the White-Maned Lynel in the area already had been replaced with a Silver Lynel. It's probably the same already in other areas, so I decided to give it a go, where to my surprise it didn't seem to be much tougher than its white-maned siblings. Usually the silver enemies have a lot more health than the other variations, but this doesn't seem to be the case with Lynels. Well, I'm not complaining, because the White-Maned Lynels were already quite difficult already.

Other than that I've seen and mounted my first Stalhorse:


Sadly, much like the Lord of the Mountain, it doesn't seem to be a keeper. I didn't even have the chance to bring it to a stable, because it dissolved at dawn. But it's still nice to see that you can ride all kinds of crazy things in this game. And I also got a picture of it, where I could complete a sidequest at the nearby stable.


Current Progress:
  • Main Quests: 15/15
  • Side Quests: 63/76
  • Shrine Quests: 34/42
  • Shrines: 96/120
  • Koroks: 283/900
  • Talus: 9/40
  • Hinox: 15/40
  • Molduga: 4/4
  • Map Rate: 44.74%

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