Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 35

Today is May 12th, 2024. One year has passed since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Nintendo Switch. And I'm still here playing this game, trying to achieve a mostly-blind 100%, but at least I've gotten very close to this goal. By now I have become a master chef in Hyrule, with a well-fed Malanya as my reference, and I'm only one Korok short of the 100% on my map.

Secret Side Quest

While I had completed all side quests listed in the compendium a while ago, it doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't any people left in Hyrule who still may want something. At least, I've found one more person: Calyban in Gerudo Town, who was still busy throwing her bottled messages into the sewers.

Originally, I assumed that this was just to show you the way into the shelter when you first arrive at Gerudo Town. But she keeps doing this, even after the Sand Shroud has disappeared and everyone else returned to the surface. This has me wondering if you're supposed to do something here after all...

And there is this intricate section down there, which connects to the waterfall next to the Sand Seal rental shop, where you have an elevated crack in the wall. If I remember correctly, you even had to dig your way there... for seemingly no reward. And since there was so much to process at the time, I didn't really give it more thought before now.

Well, you can use the crack to lift up the bottle from below. Then you need to get above and use Recall on the bottle to grab it from the surface. That's one complicated puzzle for something that doesn't even get you a registered side quest. Maybe there's an easier way to get the bottle aboveground, but this is how I did.

Then I thought I had to give the bottle to Bozai, who coincidentally was right up there, on top of the secret club, but he doesn't react to it at all, other than the usual Ultrahand-induced panic. This would have been his chance to finally score with the Gerudo, but it's his loss...

Anyway, you can just become Calyban's chosen voe yourself and get a Hearty Cream Soup as a reward, as a token of her love. Since I was still in the middle of collecting recipes, this was the best possible outcome... This seems to be a special recipe, even, similar to the Noble Pursuit, where I don't think you will be able to obtain it from Kiana. And that out of all the Gerudo they would pick the polluter as a love interest for Link, that's rich.

Gourmet Guesser

As for filling out the rest of the recipe book, I'm now down to four missing meals. I've made such good progress, because I was able to identify a big chunk of the recipes  myself after all, so I didn't have to solely rely on Kiana.

There was the Fruitcake, for example, which is something that you learn in Breath of the Wild for a side quest, but I forgot and this had me confused for a while. It's right between the Nutcake and the Cheesecake, where I thought that those use the same base ingredients as the different pies: wheat, sugar and butter. But you don't actually need the butter in some cases... Anyway, you can also make Fruit Pies and Apple Pies, but the Fruitcake – where you have to combine apples or wildberries with some other fruit – eluded me in this list, until I finally remembered it from Breath of the Wild.

Then there were all the different copious meals, which is usually a lot of the same, e.g. five mushrooms for a Copious Mushroom Skewer. But you can't just use the cheapest ingredients, especially with the meat. I'm not even sure you can learn them from Kiana, because she might be too stingy.

Speaking of meat, in some cases you also have three different variants with the prime and gourmet meats, where you may be able to fill the gaps accordingly. It's the same for poultry. In one case I essentially good three new meals at once from Kiana, when she presented me with a Gourmet Poultry Pilaf, from which I could derive the Poultry Pilaf and Prime Poultry Pilaf.

The one thing I wanted the most was the base recipe for the omelet, however, where eventually she proffered me a Mushroom Omelet, which was the key to unlocking the Vegetable Omelets, finally. Now, hindsight bias is questioning me how I wasn't able to find those out on my own, because the base recipe is simply egg, butter, and salt. It's essentially what I would use to make an omelet in real life... Not that the other recipes are equally realistic.

Malanya Munch

Finally, I could get rid of those three apple pies that I've kept in my inventory since October. Those are required for the final speed buff and I had made them before I realized that I didn't know how to make Vegetable Omelets. How hard could it be, right...? I didn't want to eat or sell the pies, because they don't spoil anyway and it was only a matter of time until I find out how to properly make all types of omelets. Oh well... but Malanya sure was enjoying those six month old pies.

With all the culinary knowledge that I've acquired since then, it was easy enough to boost that golden horse into what it should have been from the get-go: a perfect five-star being. Well, it could be slightly more convenient. There is a cooking pot nearby Malanya's spring and it even has a roof, so that's great, but it's still a bit of a walk...

So, I wanted my golden horse to speed things up, but it usually refuses to go on the first wooden bridge that leads to Malanya when it's too fast. One time it even ended up in the pond, unable to get out, so I had to resist my urge to build a hoverbike and instead go back to the East Akkala Stable to save it from its misery. Wouldn't have happened with the Ancient Saddle, I'm just saying.

And even with all those quintuple stars to its name, I doubt that I will use Hypona that much going forward, because horses are no match for the convenience that is Autobuild in this game. I've took it for a ride all over Hyrule Field and it was fun to experience a horse will speed and stamina, but the hoverbike is still faster and doesn't have the same limitations as a horse.

For example, I was thinking of extending my ride towards Faron, but then I would have needed to cross the Great Bridge of Hylia, where you have to get past by a Flame Gleeok without your horse getting charred. Not a great plan.

With that in mind, I doubt that I will bother with upgrading any other of the horses. I might do it for the royal white horse, because it's the only other special horse that can be enhanced. But it's not worth the effort (which includes getting enough ingredients, because Malanya always wants three of everything) for any of the normal horses. And I do like the idea that the golden horse is this special horse with the best possible stats.

Cargo Carriage

You may even want to keep some horses with different stats around anyway, because faster and stronger isn't always better... Well, it isn't in case of the box transport mini-game at the Highland Stable, where I gave it another try with my golden god horse... Which didn't work out.

However, since Blynne keeps telling that this game isn't about speed, I gave it another try with the slowest horse that I still had: Spot. I've only enhanced its pull stat once, so it was mostly three stars. But this did the trick and I was able to solve this parcours for the first time... And score three Pony Points as a reward, greaaaaat! Well, you're told what you will get here in advance and I'm fully okay with mini-games being optional, especially when they are annoying as this one, because then you can just ignore them. At least I have now managed to beat every mini-game in the game, so that's something.

The Last of the Koroks, Part II

While waiting for Kiana to come up with another meal, I was mainly busy searching for the missing Koroks. And with "searching" I mean flying over the world with the hoverbike and the Korok Mask to see if something comes up. At this point I had no real clue where I should be looking, so I simply flew around aimlessly.

Gaps in my Hero's Path all just led to empty places and I also couldn't rely on the Hero's Path to begin with, because I may have passed a Korok without noticing, either because I wasn't wearing the Korok Mask at the time or because there was too much vertical distance. And this even turned out to be true for most of my latest additions.

After collecting all Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild thrice and having found over 990 Korok Seeds in this game, I really expected the last ones to be devilishly hidden in the most obscure places. But this wasn't case, quite the opposite. We're talking about the 101 of Korok puzzles here, giving witness to how lacklusterly I must have been exploring this re-used world in the beginning. Still, spoiler warning for incoming Korok locations! Skip this section if you're still hunting yourself.

Well, of course one Korok was waiting around Hebra. There just had to be, where this never has been my favorite area. But I usually struggle with all the verticality, while this one was close to the flat area, at the east edge of Kopeeki Drifts. This was actually stone circle, which you can all spot on the map. To be fair, it was a very small stone circle, but I probably should have found this one months ago...

Another obvious candidate is the above fellow found on the big stalagmite in the middle of the Skull Lake. This practically reeks of Korok and I'm surprised that there wasn't already one there in Breath of the Wild.

I've said it multiple times that there is a Korok under almost every bridge now, but yet they still manage to hide from me under bridges, in this case the Great Zora Bridge. Well, it's so far below that the Korok Mask won't react when you cross said bridge, but this was a treasure chest spot before. Okay, there were a ton of treasure chests to find in Breath of the Wild, so this doesn't necessarily mean anything, but this little river bank certainly sticks out.

The most embarrassing entry in this Hall of Korok Shame was waiting on the Nephra Hill, north of the Gerudo Canyon. It's so embarrassing, because this is area with absolutely nothing there, except for one rock that sticks out like a sore thumb. And I have flown over this area multiple times, where my Hero's Path even came very close to it... I probably didn't wear the Korok Mask at the time, but I should have seen this from miles away nevertheless.

At least this gave me the confidence that finding all Koroks without using a guide map on the internet is absolutely doable. I've always had the feeling that the Koroks are a bit easier to spot than they were in Breath of the Wild. Well, there are still exceptions, but for the most part you don't even need the Korok Mask.

But this also meant that I had to consider that I'm dealing with some personal blind spots in case of the last three Korok Seeds. So, there might be places with a Korok where I've already been close and for some reason decided that I have no reason to ever look there again. And when I study the map, I usually dismiss places that already have something there, like a shrine or another Korok. But there is no rule that prevents the game from having two Koroks right next to each other or a Korok next to a shrine...

You can imagine how I must have felt when I discovered that there was one last backpack Korok waiting for me, right next to the Siwakama Shrine, at the east edge of the Gerudo Desert. I honestly thought that the one in Akkala (see entry 33) was the last of its kind. But here we are, one last ride to re-unite two friends.

It was even one of the more challenging rides, because the area is patrolled by a Molduga and then you have to cross a lot of sinkholes. I could have just used the hoverbike, but one last time I wanted to do it with the given means. Yihaha!

And to find a double at this stage was hitting the Korok Seed jackpot. But my joy didn't last all too long, because I realized that the double Koroks still only give you 0.04% of map completion... Which put me before a new problem.

The Missing .04%

There are topics all over the internet of people who have found all Korok Seeds, but ended up with 99 point something percent of map completion. This is what can happen if you simply follow a guide map. This even happened to me at the end of my Master Mode playthrough of Breath of the Wild. But I was convinced that this isn't going to happen to me this time, that I'm not going to be one of those people. If you search everywhere with no clue where to look for things, then you will very likely activate all location names and such things.

And it would have added up perfectly if it weren't for this one double Korok that I had just found. Now I was at 99.91% with only one more Korok Seed to find, which meant that I was missing something else somewhere. With the last Korok I'm at least sure that it won't be in the Depths and very sure that it's not in some cave (despite the exceptions). But this one last missing thing on the map could have been anywhere...

At first I was considering that I could be missing a Device Dispenser somewhere, which do count for the 100%.  I even went back to the Fire Temple and the Construct Factory, just to see if there might be a second one at those locations. And I looked into all the orb-shaped sky islands again, because the bigger ones have a dispenser inside them, so maybe one of the smaller ones has one as well. But this wasn't the case. Then there are all the Forge Constructs, small mines and groves in the Depths, where it's easy to miss one, but I seemed to have all of those as well.

And while I'm still determined to find that last Korok Seed on my own, no matter how long it takes, this mystery was so baffling that I decided to use a guide after all, just to find whatever I'm missing. Specifically, I was using the one on gamewith.net.

The very helpful part here were the list of caves with multiple exits, where each exits counts as an individual entry. I was very thorough with exploring all the caves, so I didn't think that this was it, but I had to double-check anyway. And indeed there was one very sneaky cave exit, where I've never went through it, because I hadn't realized that it acted as one.

I'm talking about the Lake Ferona Cave, where you had this little quest with the moon shining through the round entrance... Except that it wasn't the entrance, but a separate hole above, which also counts as its own way in and out of the cave. It makes sense, but from my memory I thought that there was just one way into the cave and that this was where the moon shined through...

But now the last Korok Seed should bring me to 100%, once I manage to find it. I can take my sweet time with it, though, because I'm also still missing four more meals and Kiana is a slow poke. But in the race of what I'm going to finish first, the recipe book or the Korok Seeds, the latter is definitely leading. 

Well, this means that there will be one last entry coming to this blog series to tell you where the very last Korok was hiding and to wrap it all up. So, stay tuned!

Progress:

• Korok Seeds: 999/1000 (+6)
• Recipes: 224/228 (+32)
  
• Map Completion: 99.95%

Tears of the Kingdom – Anniversary Artwork

Today marks the first anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. And to celebrate Nintendo has shared the above illustration on Twitter, which shows a key moment from the game. You can consider this to be quite the spoiler, but since an entire year has passed, I guess that it's fine...

Well, there are those who may want to 100% everything before they beat the game and that can take a while, as evidenced by this blog. But those are the exception and I was confronted with far worse spoilers, where people put the final final boss into Youtube thumbnails after a mere month.

Anyway, I've already talked about how the sales for the game have stagnated, where all this current anniversary marketing is a good way of bringing Tears of the Kingdom back into the minds of the people. Of course there is only so much hype a soundtrack and an artbook can generate, where supposedly the above artwork will also be featured in the latter.

But if you haven't completed it already, Tears of the Kingdom may still be the best thing to play your Nintendo Switch right now and to get more mileage out of this console, before we move into new territories. I'm getting very close to completing it myself and it has been quite the journey...

Happy 1st Anniversary!

Update: You can now also get the new artwork as wallpapers from MyNintendo.

Tears of the Kingdom – Master Works Announced

The second big announcement by Nintendo of Japan for the first anniversary of Tears of the Kingdom is a dedicated artbook, called "Master Works". As you may recall, the Creating a Champion artbook for Breath of the Wild was called the same in Japan, so this is a direct follow-up on this.

I didn't expect this to happen, because the Collector's Edition of Tears of the Kingdom already came with an artbook, where this may seem a bit redundant. But of course not everyone has that edition of the game and this new artbook will be a lot more detailed and also contain concept art of things that didn't make it into the game.

One example would be the different short hairstyles for Zelda. I like the first one of the two where they even have ingame footage, because it truly has a regal feel to it, but overall I think they made the right choice.

The timing is still a bit odd. With Breath of the Wild it made sense that its "Master Works" wasn't released right away, because it included all the DLC stuff. There hasn't been any DLC for Tears of the Kingdom, however, so nothing was stopping them from announcing this book a year ago. (Well, a part of me still hopes that they may release Master Mode this year, but it's very unlikely.)

I will wait for an English version of the book, where hopefully Dark Horse will take on the task once more. But there hasn't been an official announcement yet, of course, because the alternative options look either too cute or too boy'ish.

Via NintendoLife

Tears of the Kingdom – Soundtrack Announced

Right in time for the first anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo of Japan has announced a series new items for the game. Two of those are the official soundtrack for the game, which will be released in two different editions.

Both editions come with a total of 344 tracks, spread across nine CDs, where one has the two dragons from the logo on it, while the other eight are marked with the symbols from the Secret Stones, which is quite clever.

This is the box of the normal edition, using the artwork from the game's cover, but without Link kneeling on that sky island.

The Limited Edition uses a variation of Game Awards artwork for its inner box, but also comes with a box cover, which should match the Collector's Edition of the game itself quite nicely. And there is a small Master Sword statue as well as an added bonus.

After I had a good experience with importing the Skyward Sword soundtrack from three years ago, I have now done the same for the Limited Edition, because it really looks great.

Via NintendoLife / NintendoEverything

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Announced

Well, Nintendo doesn't need a Nintendo Direct to announce new games, this one coming on July 18th. They've just posted a video, which is a bit cringe and dwells in the memories of past of Nintendo World Championships events. This never has been a thing in Europe, so other than the rare NES cartridge this isn't exactly some that you may have heard about outside of North America.

To me this looks a lot like NES Remix, which is one of the few Wii U titles that haven't made it onto the Nintendo Switch yet. The core idea is pretty much the same, where NES Remix 2 even had a remixed version of the original Nintendo World Championships. The main difference is that this is all about online leaderboards, because that's always fun, given that you love playing games to absolute perfection (I usually don't).

So, this is simply another title pushing the Nintendo Switch Online service, similar to Tetris 99 and alike, except that this one isn't for free. But it will still be eShop exclusive... unless you get physical "Deluxe Set". I will try to get my hands on the latter, but otherwise I probably won't bother with this.

The NES Remix games were diverting, however, some nice and casual fun, but I never found them all too engaging. I only ever cared about the Zelda and Metroid challenges, because those are the only NES games that I truly like.

It's also weird that they are calling this the "NES Edition", as if they are meaning to create a "SNES Edition" and potentially other editions later on. But there never has been a "SNES Remix" or a "Game Boy Remix", so this would be new territory. I would love something like this for Game Boy games, though.

Tears of the Kingdom – Sales Have Stagnated

Today Nintendo has released their earnings release for the fiscal year ending March 2024. And while the Nintendo Switch is still doing quite well for its old age, there is one number in in this report that has stood out to me, in comparison to the last one.

At the end of 2023, Nintendo had shipped 20.28 million units of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which was absolutely impressive at the time. But three months later, this number hasn't increased by much, only by 330.000 copies to be exact, to 20.61 million. Here it shows that Tears of the Kingdom likely won't become the same evergreen that Breath of the Wild was, where the game kept selling for years, even to this date.

But it wasn't necessarily meant to be. It was meant to be one of the last big Nintendo Switch games and as such it has created new records for the Zelda series, with 20 million in its first year. That's tremendous and more than twice as much as any other Zelda game that came before Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom also hasn't gotten the same post-release exposure as Breath of the Wild. Effectively, we got two amiibo and an artwork, that was it. Oh, and the latest GDC presentations (which I have yet to watch). This was partly by design and even noble, because it shipped as a full package, with no DLC or major updates coming later. But the game also wasn't showered in awards, since it wasn't as ground-breaking, and it overall wasn't able to stay in the media as much. At least, it looks like Nintendo is going to announce a soundtrack in Japan for its first anniversary (source), so there will be something, but it's certainly no Master Mode.

In addition, you have to consider that not everyone who has purchased Breath of the Wild will also have immediate interest in its sequel. There are those who were dissatisfied with the first title and there are those who are still busy playing it. This may be anecdotal, but I have two colleagues at work for whom the latter is true. And eventually they may adopt Tears of the Kingdom later on, once they are finished with exploring the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild... There is no rush.

So, the game will still keep selling, just not at the same rate as its predecessor. And with the nature of it being a sequel, it will likely also not surpass those sales of over 30 million. But with that in mind, Tears of the Kingdom was already a huge success and further cements this new open world direction for the series, which started with Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo Direct Announced for June

So, the February Nintendo Direct, as predicted by industry insiders and leakers alike, didn't happen, what a surprise. Instead, we will have to wait until June to learn more about what's in store for the Nintendo Switch in its last year. And this really will be its last year, at least without a successor on the market, according to President Furukawa on Twitter.

Nintendo is going to announce the successor in the current fiscal year. But since Nintendo's fiscal year starts in the beginning of April, this could mean that we might have to wait until early 2025 for that announcement. We will have to see. It all does align with my personal expectations, however, so I'm content. And I'm certainly not in a hurry...

You may recall my post about the next Nintendo Direct back in February, where I've already said that we shouldn't expect any news about the next Nintendo system, that it will be one more Nintendo Direct focused on upcoming Nintendo Switch games in 2024. And this turned out to be right, where it's very smart of Nintendo to do this sort of expectation management in advance.

Well, I didn't predict the Direct to happen as late, but they already had set their line-up for the first half of 2024, with games like Princess Peach: Showtime!, Endless Ocean: Luminous, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and finally Luigi's Mansion 2 HD. So, in hindsight it makes sense that they've skipped the February Direct.

Right now I'm very curious about who is developing the last of the bunch. GREZZO has remade Luigi's Mansion for the Nintendo 3DS and if they are working on the sequel as well, then this will mean that we're probably not going to see remakes of Oracle of Ages & Seasons anytime soon... We will know in June, but the Oracle games are really on top of my wishlist for remakes, where we should prepare for a Nintendo Direct full of remakes and remasters. And if we're not getting the Oracle games, then The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are still there as a possibility, like they've always been for the past seven years. But if there's going to be something for Zelda fans in the Direct, it will likely be an old game returning.

A big topic for the last stretch of the Nintendo Switch will be the Metroid Prime series. Will Metroid Prime 4 still release for the Nintendo Switch, or will it be one of the launch titles for the Nintendo Switch successor, or maybe even both? Will we still see remasters of Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3? I expect some of these questions to be answered in the upcoming Nintendo Direct, but not necessarily all of them. For example, they could show us a teaser for Metroid Prime 4, without showing any gameplay. And if it's going to be a Switch 2 title only, then they might not show it at all.

I also think that Xenoblade will be a topic, because they have released those Nintendo Warriors games on a biannual cycle and a Xenoblade Warriors simply makes the most sense at this point, especially after the conclusion of the trilogy. And they might also finally port Xenoblade Chronicles X over to the Switch, just to have the entire series on the system.

Rest assured that there is still some life left in the Nintendo Switch. And if it keeps selling as it does right now, then it may even get close to the numbers of the Nintendo DS, Nintendo's best-selling system so far.

Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 34

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....

Eh? Just another fabric? No nudes of Purah in an envelope? That's disappointing... Well, I was hoping for another key item, because this would push all the saddles and bridles into their own rows at the end, which would look really good. But apparently that's not going to happen.

Of course, you get more utility out of a fabric, but there are more than enough already and this one doesn't look so great in my opinion. And you could have gotten both a fabric and a new "Classified Envelope" as a reward here, since this is quite the task.

Anyway, I now had to check the list of fabrics at the Zelda Wiki, just to be sure that I have collected them all, but this seems to be the case. There is no indicator in the game for this and most of them come from amiibo anyway, where you probably wouldn't want some completion counter.

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)

Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 33

Link was in need of a lengthy break, after searching through Hyrule for one too many hours, and with "Link" I really mean myself. I had arrived at a point where the game wasn't engaging any longer and I needed something else, where for the past four weeks I've been playing some other things for fun, like Lonely Mountains: Downhill and my beloved Unreal Tournament series.

But during all this time I couldn't shake this feeling that I'm 15 Korok Seeds away from the 100%. I've completed all Zelda games so far and I don't want this to be the exception, but I also don't want to be doing it just for the sake of completion. Normally, whenever I go the extra mile in games, like beating the Path of Pain in Hollow Knight, I do so because I'm looking for an excuse to keep playing the game, because it's fun and I want to keep playing it. If I grow bored of a game, then I don't want to force myself to keep playing it. And unfortunately I grew bored of Tears of the Kingdom.

Partly, this is my own fault, because I was replaying Breath of the Wild right before Tears came out, where this ended up being too much of the same. And I'm also too stubborn about not using any guides for my first playthrough, which is only adding to the tedium. But I also blame the game itself for being too much filler and for re-using the same world, which is something I don't want Nintendo to ever do again.

Anyway, with this post I want to briefly talk about what I've been up to before I went into the break, at least from what I can remember. It's not much, but it just makes sense to have this cut, before I return to the game, hopefully refreshed and with less of an urge to play 20 year old arena shooters instead.

Ominous Omelets

Part of the frustration also came from making only very slow progress with the remaining things that I want to achieve, like filling the recipe book and powering up my horses. Even though you can reliably get new recipes from Lurelin, it takes way too long and I have yet to get something that I actually need for Malanya.

I'm still trying to figure out the "Vegetable Omelet" and I thought that maybe I can understand things better by making more of the "Cheesy Omelet", which is the only omelet variant I have so far. For that one I needed to use an egg, Hateno Cheese, but also rock salt, and a mushroom. You leave any of this away and you will only get a regular omelet for some reason. It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever and replacing the cheese with vegetables didn't get me to the desired result.

It also doesn't help that it only records your last five creations for any given food, which makes it impossible to track in the game what you've already tried. The bright side is that you don't actually have to cook absolutely every variant to complete the thing. And to emphasize this again, it's really a me-playing-blind-problem, because you can just look it all up on the internet and quickly be done with it. But if you don't use any guides or tools, then this doesn't seem to be intuitive in any way, at least not to me.

At least I'm getting closer, because most of the stuff that's still missing in my recipe book are the different toasty and frozen things, which should be easy enough to fill out. I hope.

Bird Watch

The other big remaining goal is filling the compendium and here I have successfully completed the "Creatures" section, where it was just mostly all the different pigeons and sparrows that were missing. With most other animals you might spot them from a distance and then may seize the opportunity throughout the game, but these birds are hard to spot and easily scared, so that you really have to put in a conscious effort to look for them and then use your full stealth gear to be able to take a good picture. I also remember how finding all the sparrows was quite annoying in Breath of the Wild...

At least, for the most part I could just refer to my completed compendium from the previous game as to where to find them, but the Rainbow Sparrows still gave me a hard time. I remembered that you can encounter them on the bridge at Lake Floria, but I accidentally scared them all away and then for some reason they never respawned. I was also going in circles on the Guchini Plain again, bringing back flashbacks of my beetle hunt, because the Hyrule Compendium in Breath of the Wild states the "Faron Grasslands" as a possible location. Of course these "common locations" can be misleading and it may also be different for this game... So, after searching through the Faron area for an hour or so, I got nothing and turned the game off in frustration.

The game must have felt this, though, because the next time I loaded my save file, it spawned a Rainbow Sparrow right at my feet. Problem solved! (Luckily, I was wearing the full stealth gear.) And once you have them in your compendium, it's enough to find them again for a better picture:

Now, what remains are the materials, where I'm missing more than half of them, but that's mainly just all the horns. I have all of them in my inventory, so this will be nothing more than some mindless busy work, which also contributed to my loss in motivation. So, I will have to find a way of making this more interesting...

They Still Haven't Reached Their Friend...

My next goal will be finding the last Koroks, where this has slowed down tremendously, from discovering over a 100 between updates to now only a hand full. Well, it was only really three since last time, which includes a double, where my hope is that I have more of those Backpack Koroks left, because this would lower the number of how many I actually have to find.

They tend to be in the middle of nowhere, which also explains why I keep missing them, because I'm usually drawn towards points of interest... Now, as already mentioned, 15 Korok Seeds are left for me to find. I will probably document the final 10, just to highlight the ones that have escaped me for such a long time.

 

Progress:

• Korok Seeds: 985/1000 (+3)
• Recipes: 135/228 (+3)
  
• Map Completion: 99.39%

Compendium Completion:

• Creatures: 92/92 (+13)
  
• Materials: 58/126 (+6)