Monday, December 11, 2023

Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 28

riding across Hyrule Field with the golden Epona

This won't be an actual update, but more of an appendix to the last one. With the Sea-Breeze Shield in my possession, I had everything I wanted for my weapons gallery, which meant that it was finally time to share my current "dream home" with you. If you don't care about this topic, then feel free to skip this post, because I haven't made any actual progress since yesterday.

And to be honest, I've completely rebuild the whole house last weekend. Before it was mostly flat, with all five stand rooms on the lower level, where it was quite the challenge to keep the entire house within the boundaries. So, I've decided to make it more vertical with a three-story home:

standing in front of my house with the Royal Guard uniform and Epona in the stable

It's ugly and probably looks like most other player-made houses out there, but that's what you get with the limitations. The top is open, revealing the two most important rooms when it comes to functionality – the bedroom and kitchen:

There are two ways of quickly accessing it. If you come from the Rasitakiwak Shrine above and you can just fly up there with Tulin's Gust:

standing with Tulin on the hill above the house

I take it back that I find Tulin's ability only mid-useful, by now it has probably become my most-used Sage's Vow, next to Mine-ru. Anyway, you may notice the weirdly placed upside-down outdoor staircase on the other side – this is other way up to the top of the house, using Ascend:

ascending through the wooden stairs

Works like a charm. Now, the rest of the rooms are mostly just stands. There are weapon stand rooms on each floor, but there is also one bow stand room and one shield stand room, where I mainly use the use as a gallery for rare items.

the Scimitar of the Seven, Boulder Break and Lightscale Trident from left to right
Sword of the Hero, Sea-Breeze Boomerang, White Sword, Sea-Breeze Shield, Hylian Shield, Daybreaker from left to right
Biggoron's Sword, Fierce Deity's Sword, Dusk Claymore from left to right
Dusk Bow, Great Eagle Bow, Demon King's Bow from left to right

At the top you can find the three Champion weapons. The middle floor has all the one-handed amiibo weapons and special shields. And the bottom floor showcases the two-handed amiibo blades, as well as the special bows. I'd love to also showcase all of the Demon King's weaponry, not just the bow, but you can only have three weapon stand rooms at the most. It's still three times as much as in Breath of the Wild, where this wouldn't have been possible at all.

middle floor, staircase side

I know that the two stairway rooms are a bit unnecessary, because you can always use Ascend or simply climb, but I wanted this to feel like an actual house as much as possible. I might experiment with a more open design in the future, however, because I'm not entirely happy yet. I would mainly like to make use of the gallery as well and maybe get a flower bed somewhere in there, but I've already hit the 15 room limit with my current setup.

In general, the Hudson Construction Dream Home is probably the one area in Tears of the Kingdom where I see the most potential for improvements. The room limit should be higher, at least 20, but ideally up to 30. There should be rooms with actual windows, which you can open and close from the inside via an interaction, as well as some patches with plants and trees. And you should be able to color the outside walls somehow, maybe by throwing certain materials at them, e.g. use tomatoes to paint your house red. The other Hudson houses look just so much more lively and colorful in comparison...

It would already make a huge difference if Nintendo were to implement a number of small changes like this, but sadly they are done with the game and therefore this won't be happening (maybe in a remaster in ten years or so). It's arguably not the most important thing, however, where this isn't Animal Crossing and I didn't really bother with this until now. But it feels very much like this feature was a half-hearted effort and that's a shame, because it is the biggest thing the game let's you do with the Ultrahand ability.


Progress:

  • Side Adventures: 59/60
  • Side Quests: 122/139
  • Korok Seeds: 650/1000
  • Old Maps: 29/31
  • Recipes: 103/228
  • Map Completion: 86.39%

Remaining Medals:

  • Taluses: 76/87
  • Hinox: 63/69

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