Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 36

All good things must come to end and so does my journey through this iteration of Hyrule, after over a year. As my last steps towards completion, I've filled out the recipe book and finally found that last Korok, who had escaped me for way too long. But I've also went back to my house to come up with something more satisfying, so that Link will have a nice place for his well-earned retirement.

The Last Drop

There were four more recipes for me to learn and this was meant to be straight-forward: I search for that 1000th Korok Seed and meanwhile Kiana will cook whatever I'm missing. Easy peasy palm fruit squeezy, right?

First thing was the Copious Mushroom Skewers, which is something that I would have found out myself if it weren't for its placement in the list. It's number 20, while the Copious Meat and Seafood Skewers are #7 and #8 respectively. Why it's not directly before those, I don't know, but this is what prevented from even bothering.

Next I got the Pepper Steak (#37), from which I could derive the Pepper Seafood (#38). Those are two more recipes that I probably could have found out myself much earlier, because they are as simple as it gets, but it didn't really matter at this point...

Problem then was that Kiana gave me some Simmered Fruit next, which indicated that she was out of new things to come up for me. But there was one last recipe that I was missing, number 119, and I only knew that it was some sweet dish, between the Honeyed Apple and the Fried Bananas. And this now gave me a riddle.

So, I thought that maybe this is another special recipe, where there is potentially another unlisted side quest for me to find, similar how you can learn the Creamy Heart Soup from Calyban. (You also are taught this recipe in Breath of the Wild in Gerudo Town, by the way, but since there was no recipe book in that game, I never cared and therefore didn't remember.)

The best lead I had was Amali, Kass's wife, who unlike her husband can still be found, at the Hebra Trailhead Lodge. She talks about how she's going to cook her children's favorite dishes once she finished up cleaning there. But she never finishes... I tried taking all the things or to clean the place Gust-Bellows-style, but nothing happens.

I believe the whole reason why the game keeps her there is because it gives an explanation why the supplies keep respawning. Free oil jars for the win. Though, this is a pretty terrible way to use this character, especially since there are other Rito women who could have done this job.

Another possibility for a "hidden" recipe was Cottla at Kakariko Village, where you can learn the Hot-Buttered Apple and Honeyed Apple from her mother's hidden diary, but this also really didn't lead to anything. Though, it was nice to actually follow her into the well once. I don't think I had done this before... Or it's been so long that I forgot about it.

So, in the end I was just experimenting with Courser Bee Honey in order to see if I may discover some other combination. And that's when I noticed that I had never tried honey on its own... I expected this to result in dubious food, but it was worth a shot.

Oh, okay... there is candy?! I didn't know that. The worst part is that this super simple recipe existed in both Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity already, I just never knew or cared. This just shows how much of an impact the recipe book had on me, where it's an excellent addition. (I don't want to get too much into the rumored Breath of the Wild remaster already, but this is one thing it needs.)

As for why Kiana couldn't just teach me this, I don't know... Maybe it's because this isn't really a dish, where it could be that she also doesn't cover other simple recipes like this. Or maybe she just doesn't like candy.

Home for a Hero

All for me left to do in order to finally complete this game was to fly over Hyrule and search, search, search for that last Korok. But somewhere in between I needed a distraction, something else to do, so I decided to return to my house and really make it my "Dream Home", as far as that is even possible with the limitations at hand.

I wasn't really satisfied with my previous designs, so I wanted to change this before I shelve this game. Of course I won't make much use of it then, but it's not like the house is really an important location throughout the game. It's mostly just a good place to take photos, because it never rains there.

Anyway, my first house grew too long because of all the rooms with stands that I have. I use three weapon stand rooms for the amiibo and Champion weapons, as well as a stand room for bows and shields, so that's five rooms in total already, a third of what's allowed. And even with a second floor the house turned so long that it barely even fit within the boundaries.

My solution then was to create more of a tower, with three stories, but this one looked like a giant, ugly block. And it also wasn't very accessible, while there wasn't even space for all the rooms with special features, because you need at least two sets of stairs.

So, I've went back to a design with only two floors and this time created an L-shaped in relation to the entrance. This made it all more compact and fit together perfectly. Another key difference is that I'm now using the garden pond as a roof terrace pool, which also allowed me to move the paddock right next to the entrance.

When you enter you will get a cozy kitchen area to the left, where I'm quite happy how this has turned out. So far the furnished square room was always just there, because I kept the kitchen upstairs, where it's quicker (for me) to access. But this way everything is coming together more nicely, especially with the small stove in the corner (though its chimney leads directly into my bedroom).

You also get all the amiibo weapons down here, separated between two-handed and one-handed, ordered by appearance in the series, as well as the special shields. And yes, I've never touched that Hylian Shield, even though by now I have more than enough money to afford replacements.

The weapon gallery continues upstairs with the Champion weapons and the special bows. With this arrangement I even get the weapons of all four Champions right next to each other, which is nice. And the Scimitar of the Seven also sits right above the Daybreaker, though you can't see them together, but you can't have it all, I guess.

Finally, there is the bedroom and the gallery with an opening between, where you can find the "pool" and the flower bed acting as some sort of balcony. There you get a nice view of Death Mountain and Akkala Citadel in the background, while you take a bath.

It's the first time that I actually had space for a gallery and the best thing I still had on my Purah Pad was a map of Hyrule, hand-drawn by my old Yiga buddies. The only other unit with actual utility that I haven't included is the blessing room with the Goddess Statue, but I have no use for that any longer anyway. If I still was earlier in the game, I probably would swap the gallery for it, though.

So, that's it, that's my final house. I know that this isn't all too impressive and that you can do all sorts of crazy designs, even make it fly in the sky, because you can involve Zonai devices and other materials in the building process, but I wanted to keep it simple and basic. As already said, I'm not really using the house as much anyway, since this isn't Animal Crossing (and even there I don't really use my house), but I didn't want to leave it as it was and I'm satisfied with this last outcome. Now Link can live a good life... Once he finds one more piece of poop.

The Last Yihaha

After obtaining the vast majority of Korok Seeds, progress had slowed down on that front significantly. Still, I was able to make steady progress nevertheless, finding one more Korok every other day. So, I didn't really expect that it would take another two weeks to find the last one, but the last one is always the most difficult, at least when you're trying not to use guide maps (and even with those it can be a pain if you're stuck at 999).

What makes it so difficult is simply a bad completion system, where I've complained about this time and time again, already in Breath of the Wild. Most 3D Zelda games in the past gave you some sort of help to narrow down your search for the last of something. If you include remakes and remasters, then pretty much all of them did, like with the Poe Soul counters in Twilight Princess HD.

But the two biggest Zelda games refuse to do it for some reason. It's not that Nintendo doesn't want you to complete them, because then there shouldn't be percentages and rewards in the first place. And there will always be people like me, who will want to complete them, no matter what. So, when Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom get remastered, Nintendo really needs to make the map completion info more regional. Have it for each tower area, in the least.

In Tears of the Kingdom it would already help quite a bit if the Depths and the skies had their own completion rate. Then I could have been sure that there aren't any Koroks left in the sky, for example. But the game doesn't do any of that. It leaves it completely open and you're faced with the search for one specific needle in a gigantic haystack, which is filled with hundreds of other needles.

Of course I could have just looked it up and be done with it. But I was so close to finishing it all on my own that it would have felt like giving up. And it would cheat me out of the joy of finally finding it, where this little dopamine rush whenever the Korok Mask reacts to something after hours of searching is just priceless. If you look it up, it's just a matter of going to a place and cross it off from your checklist. It doesn't come with the same sense of satisfaction when you've finally done it. That's why I kept going...

Still, it felt like I was going against a wall most of the time, because I had ran out of places to investigate. My Hero's Path looks like I have spun a thick web all over Hyrule and there weren't any suspicious spots left to check. I've been everywhere trice and I had no clue where to look.

So, I ultimately I succumbed to the temptation and used the Zelda Dungeon map to narrow it down, to be certain that I've got everything in certain areas, so I don't ever have to search through them again, like Hyrule Castle, Hebra, or the sky islands. But there was always the risk that I just plain-right see where it's hidden and spoil it for me while doing that...

Well, to make a long story short, here's where that intractable, little Korok was hiding during all this time, evading me for over a year:

It was on a steep cliff wall on the edge of the Faron jungle area to the Keeley Plain. I kept thinking that it either had to be a trail flower, an acorn, or one of those Koroks hiding under a single rock in some offshoot corner, because those can be the hardest to spot and most of the other Korok puzzles are big enough that you already see them from a distance.

Well, it wasn't any of those, it was technically another stone formation, but a unique one, where it's actually quite close to those single stone puzzles. While it's probably not the hardest to find, it wasn't as obvious and embarrassing as the others that came before.

So, how did I miss this one? Well, I had searched this area quite a bit to find a cave entrance / treasure chest, but I didn't wear the Korok mask at the time. Still, my Hero's Path made it look like I had "scanned" the bottom of this cliff. And on the map this cliff wall doesn't look like it has anything outstanding to it, so the only way for me to find it was to eventually fly around there again with the Korok Mask equipped.

During all this time I've also stacked up plenty of materials since I had enhanced all my armor, where by now I've got more 30 Star Fragments again and tons of ore, which shows how long I've been flying all over Hyrule to search for Koroks. But I've also used up more than half of my Zonaite to build all those hover bikes.

Dance Dance Hestulution

Time to reap the final reward for all this work... Of course you're just getting Hestu's Gift again, I wasn't expecting anything else. But the actual reward is doing the dance party whenever you want, where I was looking forward to this, because I really like the new stash dance in Tears of the Kingdom and it's been a while since I've heard it the last time.

And there was a small surprise for me that he also offers you to do the classic dance from Breath of the Wild, not that I needed that. Would have been funny if this were exclusive to those who had collected all 900 Korok Seeds before. But I would have liked at least some sort of remark from him about that, something like "Wait? You did it again?", even though Hestu's memory seems pretty bad.

Anyway, here is the magic pile of golden poop in the inventory, where this time it's not right next to the other Korok Seeds when sorted, but in front of the medals, but that does make sense. Sadly, this seems to be it, so when you do everything in the game the horse gear doesn't get aligned as nicely as it could be, with all bridles and saddles right above each other. A solution for that would have been some new item that let's you teleport your horses to you, like the Ancient Saddle did.

And the last Korok Seed also lead to 100.00% on my map, so together with the filled recipe book, the completed Hyrule Compendium, all armor found and enhanced to four stars, and all Paraglider fabrics collected, I'm now officially done with the game. There is nothing left to achieve.

Final Path

In entry 29 I had posted my Hero's Path, before it had started to dissolve, so here's my update of how it looks after all that searching. I was mostly done with the sky at that point, so I will leave that out, but the real interesting part is the surface world anyway, where I've spent most of the time since then:

The difference between the Depths and the surface is quite staggering. This is how much the Koroks amp up exploration and the Depths really would have needed something similar, where the Poe Souls could have filled that role...

 

Some Stats

To finish things off, let me share some numbers about this playthrough. As you can see, I've wrote a total of 36 journal entries, which is the same number as in my original Adventure Log for Breath of the Wild. I've played Tears of the Kingdom for a little over 600 hours, which is a lot, but about the same as my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild.

And I took a total of 1840 screenshots during my journey, way more than any other Nintendo Switch game, but this game can be really beautiful... as long as it's not raining.

 

The End

As I'm writing this, I'm almost feeling nostalgic and I'm feeling like there's now an empty spot in my heart, because Tears of the Kingdom has accompanied for such a long time now, longer than any other singleplayer game that isn't open-ended. It was a bit of a bumpy ride and I wasn't always happy, but it's been a massive experience nonetheless and there is a lot to look back to.

If you really want, you can complete this game within a month or maybe even less, so to say that I've taken my sweet time with this is an understatement. But I think that this was the intent, looking at the current situation of the Nintendo Switch: to give the Zelda fans a game that will keep them busy for a long time. Well, I got my money's worth out of this title, that's for sure, but I'm also ready for the next Nintendo Direct and something... smaller.

For now, I have no plans of replaying Tears of the Kingdom. I doubt I will ever do it until there's a remaster of some sorts, unless they still release the much-requested Master Mode, but that's very doubtful. And as it is right now I have played it enough, where I'd rather revisit Breath of the Wild once more.

Still, I might play Tears of the Kingdom from time to time, because there is one aspect that I haven't really embraced all that much and that is the Ultrahand with the Zonai devices. For the most part I was just throwing out my hover bikes and that got the job done, but there is so much crazy stuff that you can do with this feature, which really defines the game and makes it stand out in the series. So, I might just go and build some tanks, giant flying machines, or other absurd things for the fun of it, but nothing that will warrant a continuation of this blog series.

Thank you for reading! See you with the next Zelda game!

Progress:

• Korok Seeds: 1000/1000 (+1)
• Recipes: 228/228 (+4)
  
• Map Completion: 100%