Thursday, October 17, 2013

Maiamais & Upgrades in A Link Between Worlds


You've probably seen this before. If not, let me introduce to you what could potentially become one of my alltime favorite collectible sidequests. Maiamais are basically a mix between the Secret Seashells from Link's Awakening and the Gold Skulltulas from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and the upgrade system in Four Swords Adventures. There are those little shell creatures hiding in the environment, making whiny noises. And you have to detach them from the walls using wall merge or Pegasus Boots and bring them back to their mother, who lives at Lake Hylia. For every ten Maiamais you can chose one of your items to be upgraded. Nintendo showed us the bow upgrades, which shoots three arrows at once.

The upgrades seem to be similar to Four Swords Adventures, where you can give a Great Fairy an item and she makes it better. This is what the upgrades did, to get an idea what they could to in A Link Between Worlds:

  • Bow: shoots an array of three arrows, faster charge
  • Boomerang: greater range and speed
  • Bombs: four times the size
  • Hammer: bigger shock wave
  • Slingshot: scatter shot of three seeds
  • Fire Rod: Cane of Somaria
  • Roc's Feather: double jump
  • Pegasus Boots: air walk
  • Shovel: dowsing
  • Lamp: no upgrade

Well, some of these upgrades were mandatory to beat the game. Since the Maiamais are an optional sidequest, I guess that all of the upgrades are optional as well. So, you won't turn the Fire Rod into the Cane of Somaria, I guess. Unless of course there are certain mandatory upgrades received in other means. For example the shop in the Lower World could be an upgrade shop, if this does make sense. The upgrade for the Pegasus Boots is probably not an option though, since the wall merging ability covers crossing abysses in a way.

Skyward Sword had also certain upgrades, the only interesting one though would be the one for the Bug-Catching Net. I guess, it's safe to assume that we will get a similar upgrade for the net in A Link Between Worlds as well. For the bombs they could give them the "Remote Bombs" upgrade from The Minish Cap. Unless it's necessary to lay multiple bombs at once. I don't think that you can undo the upgrades.

I'm hoping that they find a nice upgrade for the lamp, which they weren't able to do in Four Swords Adventures.

No comments: