Topic: Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch/Wii U)

[Spak-Spang]

Bumping this topic since I am late to the party and I finally got Breath of the Wild.

I just spent maybe an hour and a half exploring the plateau to get all the runes and now I can either go fight Calamity Ganon or go and find Impa.  I am not a macochist so I will be finding Impa first and explore the world.

With my 4 spirit orbs I got the stamina upgrades since I want to explore a bit more.

The feel of the game is kinda stressful just exploring the worlds and coming across OP enemies like the Stone guys. Also knowing to be careful around guardian statues.   

I will have a read through this thread to see any tips or anything like that in the coming days.

This is how I felt about this game.  I think other Zelda games had a pretty good learning curve, except for the first.  But this game is hardcore for beginners, and you quickly die and die often.  As you power up that fear goes away some but the enemies do get tougher. 

[M.K.Ultra]

I would recommend playing it as a stealthy game until you have a few upgrades. There is plenty of food, money, and weapons lying around that you can avoid most encounters at first. In hard mode I had to play the whole game like that, stressful indeed.

[Order.RSS]

Hell yeah BShy, you're in for such a treat. The game is definitely difficult early on, but there comes a point when you accrued enough upgrades and skills to basically break the difficulty curve. I won't spoil anything for you and highly recommend going into the game as fresh as possible, but two pieces of advice:

1. Treat weapons and food like ammo in a first person shooter. Use everything all the time, don't be precious and fight giant trolls at low health with a spoon and pot lid when you're sitting on 20 katanas and heaps of mushrooms.

2. Death is more of an annoyance than true punishment in BOTW. Try your dumb ideas. If they fail, try even dumber ones.

[Adrock]

This game is bad, and you should feel bad.

The truth hurts, but someone has to come out and say it. AM I RIHGT?

[Luigi Dude]

The game is very generous with checkpoints so don't be afraid to die.  If you die you'll usually respawned pretty close to the spot you were killed.  This makes fighting some of those tougher enemies worth it since you'll get better equipment if you win, but don't need to worry about losing too much progress if you lose.

[Khushrenada]

This game is bad, and you should feel bad.

The truth hurts, but someone has to come out and say it. AM I RIHGT?

You know what else hurts? The spot on the body where a person's ass used to be before they started talkin' **** about Breath of the Wild!

[Mop it up]

I will have a read through this thread to see any tips or anything like that in the coming days.

Since a large aspect of the game is exploration and discovery, my suggestion would be to play most of the game before reading this thread. I think it'd be more fun to experience things first within the game than to first read about them here.

[BeautifulShy]

So I went and made it to the shrine near Kakariko village and beat it so I could travel warp there after I explored a bit more.  My goal after doing that was search out all the towers in the surrounding areas.   I found the one near Zora river and all these friendly Zora are asking if I am a Hylian or not and I say yes I am and they all want me to meet up with Sidon but I declined because I wanted to explore a bit more. 

Explore I did and I found a tower that was by Hyrule Castle and it was this only military training grounds and the tower was in the middle of it.  It seemed innocent enough with an octoroc and a fire poe guarding the tower and I thought I could cheese it and go glide over to the tower but that was not the right way to go about it.   I was on a platform with a ladder leading down and to the right was a path and as I was crossing the bridge there was a small fry and I dispatched him.   Then I had to take cover because this octo was still spitting rocks at me.   Then as I looked ahead there was three platforms but they were being electrocuted and I thought it was going a certain path but I went too early and got shocked.  Try again and I am looking in my inventory and I had ice arrows. So I froze em and made my way across safely.   

Then I made my way up to the 2nd level of platforms and there didn't seem to be anyone around but I got surprised when the octo down below shot one of those explosive barrels as I was trying to throw my own bombs at the moblin ahead of me but thankfully I was just faraway enough to not get killed in the ensuing explosion.  I finally got the moblin over to my side of the bridge and dispatched em in close quarters with my Ancient Sword.

 I cross the bridge and the tower is right next to me so I look at the fire poe and I am thinking that Poe is too low and it won't see me as I sneak up the tower but hey it does just that and I am looking at it and there are slightly visable foot prints rising up and I am like welp as it enflamed my body as I fall and sink into the mud and die.  So I make it back to that point and I go up to the third level of platforms and as I am climbing I see this singular enemy and I look up to see if there is anything else and guess what there are two stratigically placed explosive barrels and I am looking around both sides to see if I can manuver around them but nope you can't so I stay to my left on the platform and climb up and I swipe my sword at the ememy and he is down and I loop back around to the other side and start climbing up  and I hear an explosion down below. 

That enemy was trying to cause the splash damage to hit me and knock me off the platform as I was climbing. Disaster averted.  I make my way up the rest of the tower with no more incidents and get a warp point near Hyrule Castle and I look around and find another tower and it is in some mountains. I mark it and make by way over and it is too far in and I have no heat resist armor/food and I decide to go back to Kakariko Village and progress the main story. I unlocked the great fairy fountain in Kakariko and I want to get the stealth armor but it is so expensive.

 I have 4 Divine Beasts I can face and I am thinking I am going to explore more in the area in the Great Plateau and surrounding areas and see if I can get more towers in those areas now that I have a second stamina gauge.

[BeautifulShy]

The game is very generous with checkpoints so don't be afraid to die.  If you die you'll usually respawned pretty close to the spot you were killed.  This makes fighting some of those tougher enemies worth it since you'll get better equipment if you win, but don't need to worry about losing too much progress if you lose.

This is very true it is very generous with checkpoints and I am thankful for it. There are so many ways to go about battles and try different routes to get where you want to.

I will have a read through this thread to see any tips or anything like that in the coming days.

Since a large aspect of the game is exploration and discovery, my suggestion would be to play most of the game before reading this thread. I think it'd be more fun to experience things first within the game than to first read about them here.

Yeah I think I read the first page the other night and I was like. Let me savor the experience since I have been wanting to play this for a while.   I will still ask for tips though.

Like what is the best way to get rupees at this early stage? I imagine ore and gems are a good option but I think I remember some armors/weapons nead those for upgrades.

[Order.RSS]

Like what is the best way to get rupees at this early stage? I imagine ore and gems are a good option but I think I remember some armors/weapons nead those for upgrades.

Selling ores is probably your best bet right now, as is selling fully cooked meals (anything with 5 ingredients). You do indeed use ore for upgrades, but I generally held on to 10-30 of each and sold any excess. Don't sell armor or items with Ancient in the name.

[M.K.Ultra]

Don't sell armor or items with Ancient in the name.

Yeah, that reminds me of the one piece of advice I give people is don't sell your ancient cores. I sold them on my first playthrough and then regretted it.

[BeautifulShy]

Well I just had my first blood moon as I returned to the Great Plateau. That was quite the experience.  I get that it is mainly a game management thing of enemies but that was a sight to see.  I think it is also to restock on the materials in the world so that is a bonus.

[Adrock]

Since you're off of the Great Plateau, my main recommendation would be to complete the Divine Beast Vah Ruta which I believe the game leads you to first. This will make subsequent visits to the area significantly easier for reasons and things. Since Nintendo patched the infinite arrows glitch (I never got the chance to take advantage of this), running up Zora River after every Blood Moon can net you a good amount of arrows.

If you're a completionist or at least want to complete the bestiary, try to find the blue colored enemies before defeating more than two Divine Beasts. Certain enemies are replaced by higher level enemies as you progress through the story. Lynels kept kicking my **** in so I mostly avoided them thus I missed the Blue Lynels before they were replaced with Silver Lynels. There is one Blue Lynel that is never replaced, but the area it's in makes it kind of annoying to fight it.

Otherwise, I don't want to say too much as it may spoil some things. For non-spoilery things:

• I upgraded Stamina before Hearts. For all the climbing, it just made more sense to me.
• Don't sell Ancient Cores.
• If you need Rupees, cook food then sell it. Food is the easiest thing to replace.

There is a good sword that's easy to obtain and respawns after every Blood Moon. If you want to know, I can tell you where it is. I will leave that up to you.

[BeautifulShy]

Yeah what I did was I explored the world with my stamina upgrades and find shrines and towers.  I made my way down to the South Eastern island and rafted around there after I got the Shieka Slate upgrades. I also took photos of all my food, monster pieces and I bought 3 or the 4 other photographs so I could find ore deposits and treasure chests.

I have one more area west of the Great Plateau that I want to explore and then I will probably go up Zora River and work on that.


In my time in the southeast islands I came across a chest game where you can spend money to get more money from one of the chests. Usually the way I play these games is pick one and stick with it because more often than not you would be either making back your rupees or getting a surplus of rupees.

As for completionists I think I am not getting all the korak seeds but I will get enough where I am comfortable with how many item slots I get.

  Completing the beastary is something that is going to take some time and if I were to do it it has to be organized. I would want all the towers functional and I would just be going one area at a time and getting all the monsters, items, food and gems in said area before moving into the next area so I would only need to go back and get the new monsters.

I did get a sword with 50 attack and it is a two handed weapon if that is the one you are refering to.  PM me if that isn't the one you are talking about.

[BeautifulShy]

Got the two handed sword that Adrock was talking about. Very easy to get and easily repawnable. 

Last night I went all the way out to the south west region of the map and aside from one very scary monster there wasn't much difficulty getting the tower operational.   I also found a neat trick with small metal boxes and magnesis.  There is usually rupees in those so I make a point of getting those opened up. 

I made it to Zora's domain and got the Zora armor but now I need 20 shock arrows to fight the divine beast in the area and they are on the nearby mountain but it is raining so getting over there is going to be a problem.

[BeautifulShy]

I figured it out as there is a shortcut and I was making things harder than they had to be.  I only got killed by the Linel once when I tried to go for an arrow on top of a rock.

The Divine Beast was a fun fight in the first bit and then the puzzle then boss.   It makes the dungeons a multi tiered affair.   

[BeautifulShy]

Found a nice place to farm rupees and it is on one of the towers and this guy is researching bird-men and he is paying me rupees based on how far I can glide. Been getting 50 rupees each time for a profit of 30 rupees after paying 20 rupees.  Getting to this tower was a chore in itself. There was several enemies along the way and there was 3 horse back riding bokoboblins that got me several times and I thought I could be really smart and just side hop and guard to the tower in the area but they got me multiple times so I was just stealthy and then get up to the tower which was surrounded with Electric Poes, fish moblins and a wide lake surrounding the tower.   I tried to take care of as many of the surrounding bokos as I could before facing some of the water bound enemies. I used the lake to my advantage and use shock arrows on them.   Then I tried ice arrows on the electric poes and they stayed frozen.  I did run into one of the poes higher up and shocked me with my wooden shield, bow and club and there was lightening storms but once I gained my stamina I high tailed it to the top. 


One other tower that I went to there was all kinds of black and red Calamity Ganon essence on the tower and I had to make some stamina potion to make my way up there. Thank goodness for the pot in the area.  Before climbing the tower I wanted to get rid of the rest of the enemies and I did with remote bombs and just making my way inside the different areas. 

I nearly have all the towers but the one eluding me are in the Lost Woods and two other areas.

I am dying a lot but I am not using much supplies unless I need to heal or make a recipe to solve a puzzle like I did above.

[Spak-Spang]

The game almost expects you to use your food in combat early.  You can take a hit that wipes your health and instantly heal.  The game is designed to use your resources often.  That said, I know late game there are several items you will want to collect for crafting and other things.  This is probably the one aspect of the game that I didn't like and didn't feel very Zelda like.  I was in the menu system just as much as I was playing the game, because I was needing to heal.  Needing to switch weapons.  Needing to cook items.  Honestly, that part of the game was a chore and exhausting.  And I hope Nintendo balances it out.  I didn't mind breaking weapons, but it could happen less frequently and maybe be for special weapons and allow a simple base weapon with lower stats to always be available.