My remaining three milestones for Tears of the Kingdom were finding all Koroks, filling out the recipe book, and completing Hyrule Compendium. I've made good progress on all those three fronts during April and I've even achieved one of the goals, so here's my update.
A Korok A Day Keeps Hestu Away
As for the Korok search, I had made it my mission to find at least one more Korok each day, pushing myself to get the last 15 Korok Seeds. And this went well for a while, where my method was to simply study the map and look for suspicious spots that could be housing another Korok. I've tried to ignore the Hero's Path here, because I've only been wearing the Korok Mask in my late adventures and there is always the chance that I've walked past by a Korok somewhere. (Warning: spoilers for Korok locations incoming!)
A great example of this is the wooden bridge that leads from the Koukot Plateau at the Gerudo Canyon to that little Yiga Clan outpost under the waterfall. I've crossed it several times, but failed to notice the little acorn hanging from it. And this also falls under the "a Korok under almost every bridge" rule. Another of those was at Hyrule Castle, below some rock bridge in the lower area. But there's always one more Korok hiding at Hyrule Castle, so I should probably check again...
A Korok, who was easy for me to find by just looking at the map, was at the ice lake on the Great Plateau, where the Keh Namut Shrine used to be in Breath of the Wild. There used to be a treasure chest there and now it's a Korok, which makes a lot of sense, but for some reason I've never really checked the lake, probably because I was too distracted by the whole eye thing during the "A Call from the Depths" quest. You have big red arrows pointing at the spot, however, so that's not really an excuse.
Another Korok was hiding close to the Great Fairy Tera at the Military Training Camp. There was even one more stone circle that I hadn't found, next to Walnot Mountain. And a trickier Korok was sitting at the edge of Upland Zorana.
Some of them also seem to like the proximity of Taluses, where I've found one at the Regencia River, not far from the Battle Talus there, and another between some rock formations at the southern stretch of the Tanagar Canyon, where there is also a Stone Talus not far.
So, I've made new discoveries pretty much all over the map and – with the exception of the one at Hyrule Castle – I've made them all by looking at the map and trying to identify likely Korok locations. But I've exhausted this method and really don't know where to look anymore, so I couldn't keep the pace of one Korok per day in the end, or else I already would have them all. But I'm down to seven missing Koros, so that's something.
Baked and Frozen
While I'm busy with searching for Koroks, at least this makes enough time pass for Kiana at Lurelin Village to come up with another recipe. It seems to take about two to three hours of play time for her to "regenerate", so it's not tied to defeating monsters, as I had previously assumed, and works similar to Uma's crops on the school's field in Hateno Village.
But this doesn't really cut it... I had almost 100 missing recipes and I hopefully won't need over 200 hours to find the rest of the Koroks. But of course this included many things that Kiana won't teach you anyway, like all the burnt and frozen ingredients, so I've wanted to narrow it down as much as possible to get a clear picture.
I've started by throwing things into the nearby beach fire, but of course it had to rain soon after. So, the best spot to do all this is without a doubt the huge hotplate in the middle of Goron City, because it's always on and it never rains there. Just equip your fireproof set and go:
This involved some experimentation and it took me a while to find out about the "Campfire Eggs", because I had the "Cooked Eggs" in my recipe book, where I thought that I already had the eggs covered. But those were made from hot spring water and curiously that's the only ingredient in the game that can be cooked like that...
Oh, and I also had to hunt some Eldin Ostriches beforehand, because
I've never got any "Raw Whole Birds" during the entire game. I rarely hunt animals, so most of the meat that I have came either from Bokoblins, who were hunting themselves, or from wolves who decided to attack me.
As for freezing ingredients, I've used a Sapphire Rod for this, where you can freeze a lot of them at once. At first I tried to simply drop materials on the ground at the Hebra Mountains, where normally they freeze on their own. You even have to be quick when to pick up meat from a wolf, for example. But for some reason this doesn't happen with meat from your inventory...
All this freezing and burning already filled a good chunk of the recipe book, but I've also managed to complete all potions (I've never found any Mighty or Tough Elixirs), as well as all the monster and dark food made by Monster Extract and Dark Lumps, where those were quite similar to each other, so I could derive some recipes here.
But this was the easy stuff and while I also managed to discover some more normal recipes on my own, it wasn't a whole lot and I will be dependent on Kiana for the rest of the 36 recipes that I'm currently missing. Let's see what I will be able to finish first... Finding all Koroks or learning all recipes?
Compendium Complete
With that you've already guessed it – the one goal that I have achieved in the meantime was completing Hyrule Compendium. To be honest, this was mainly done in a single evening today, simply to have another milestone to talk about before the month is over. For the most part this was just taking pictures of the horns, which was some boring busy work, which I wanted to make less boring somehow...
So, my idea was to use appropriate surfaces as a backdrop for materials from the same group of monsters or entities. I've already done so with the Construct Horns, near the entrance to the Temple of Time, and now I was doing the same at the other end of the temple for the dragon parts:
I've decided to place them on the pedestal where you put the broken Master Sword after the tutorial, because this felt like an appropriate and meaningful spot for them, considering what happens "later" there. Then I went up on the archway with Ascend to take a picture from above to have a nice camera angle. This only works in the early morning, because the archway will cast a shadow soon and then the sun will then disappear behind the Temple of Time. So, this was whole process was much more of a hassle than to simply drop them somewhere and be done with it... But the result is nothing to sneeze at:
It looks really nice arranged like that. And if you do the same with other groups of materials, but with a different location for each group, you will get this nice visual indicator of what belongs together:
For the Gleeok Horns I went back to one of the King Gleeok sky islands and placed them where the treasure chest used to be. The Frox Fangs were taken at a Lightroot. For Lynel parts I simply used some grass, for Horriblin horns I went to a sunlit entrance of a cave (at Atun Valley), and for Bokoblin parts I went into one of the new giant camps... Just to give some more examples.
It's a bit inconsistent what goes into the compendium and what not, however. In Breath of the Wild you didn't have any monster materials in its Hyrule Compendium, because there are already the pictures of the monsters and those can lead you to the materials. Well, as I've said before, it can also be handy to use the materials to lead you to the respective monsters, so this change may not have been the worst idea. But it's somewhat arbitrary what monster parts can be photographed, because it's not just the new horns, but not everything either.
It would make sense if this was about what materials give you special fuse effects, but that's not it either. For example, eyeballs are part of the compendium now, but not the wings, even though both have a distinct effect when fused to arrows. And then you have all four different Keese Eyeballs in there, as well as the new Aerocuda Eyeballs, but not the Octoroks Eyeballs for some reason, even though they are as homing as the others... That's Octorok discrimination right there!
But whatever... It's done. My Hyrule Compendium is finally complete and Robbie is happy, so let's see what you can get out of this....
If I ever replay Tears of the Kingdom in the future, which probably won't happen until there is some remaster or updated version, then I will most likely just purchase all the compendium entries, like I did in my last two playthroughs in Breath of the Wild. While I'm quite proud what I have created here, when you are as perfectionist as me about this, it saves a lot of time to buy them. And having all the default "stock images" can be interesting as well.
Progress:
- Korok Seeds: 993/1000 (+8)
- Recipes: 192/228 (+57)
- Map Completion: 99.71%
Compendium Completion:
Materials: 126/126 (+68)
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