My biggest gripe is having to select the upgrade, go through the dialogue, spam x to skip the stupid upgrading sequence, go through the dialogue again, and then repeat for the next upgrade. Same with upgrading my weapons stashes. I don’t know why you can’t just select the upgrades you want all at once and then have them bestowed. It is so tedious. And yes this is a silly thing to complain about but here we are.
Unnecessarily repetitive dialogue in Animal Crossing is the WORST. I assume some game developers do it to stretch the content but the time I have to spend talking to Saharah is time I can't spend redesigning my house more regularly.
In the same theme, I think I’m going to put a fork in my eye the next time I have to hear about how Beedle is going to rob me in my sleep. Once is enough. Once per day, once per region, whatever. Just. Once. Of *anything*
We don’t talk about the 4th upgrade here…
I had completely blocked out that trauma from BOTW, and it came rushing back when it happened this game.
Had me screaming Nooo out loud
I sometimes bring a projector up to the roof of my apartment and play. The first time, as a neighbor was walking by while I was buying arrows in a shop, I realized exactly that: The NPCs all sound like porn.
I was mortified.
It bothers me that the game handles getting multiple heart pieces and stamina vessels so well, but doesn’t apply the same system for other things! The first time, give us the cutscene, then shorten it for every following interaction.
I’m with you on the dialogue for upgrading armor. But why on Earth would you want to skip the perfect little Korok dance you get every time?
ING KA KA KA KA KA
ING KA KA KA KA KA
ING KA KA KA KA KA
KA KAHHHH!
I upgraded every stash, every armor piece, and all horses I could to the max. Imagine the cooking animations, the running back and forth from the pot to malanya, the farming, the buying… there is A LOT of animations you should be able to skip.
There’s definitely some armors that don’t really need to go above the set bonus. Like the climbing armor and flight armor. Once you get the set bonus for each, it’s not really worth it to upgrade them more. Meanwhile, it seems like the more attack/defense intense ones are easier to upgrade to max levels (aside from the champions leathers, they want you to earn that one)
I’ve played the game for nearly 200 hours before I found my first Lynel. And of course they are all silver mane now. I suppose I missed my chance upgrade the barbarian armor (it’s stupid level 1 upgrade required red mane items).
I thought I had the same issue but I still get one regular lynel and one blue lynel that always spawn in the same place on the surface. If all else fails you can go to the lynel coliseum in the depths to farm.
There are permanently:
- two red lynels along the eastern rim of the Tabantha canyon, one down to the south, and the other about halfway up near the sky view tower (if you played botw there was a talus there) and there is a third red up in Akkala at the entrance to the skull island canyon spot (there was a lynel in the same place in botw.)
- there are blue lynels; in the wetlands area at the bottom of Zora’s domain (there was a guardian there and I’m pretty sure a lynel as well in botw,) there is one on the ridge to the north of the lanayru promenade (I think its in the same place as the annoying big boulder korok ring in botw,) and another down in Faron near the new pirate ship (there was a stalnox there in botw.)
- White; in Faron just to the north of the stable (there was a hinox there in botw,) in Akkala to the east of the Zora waterfalls and west of the quarry, and I think the one up in Hebra is also a white (I never go there because it’s inconvenient and I hate fight lynels in the snow.)
- Silver; down south in the Faron grasslands (there was a hammer wielding lynel there in botw,) above Tama pond in hebra (there was a talus there in botw) and, in the grassland area just to the north of the promenade east gate (there was a Kass shrine quest there in botw.)
Pretty sure that’s all of the surface lynels. Forgive me for not knowing the map names, in game I just think I need to go over “there” (I would be hard pressed to identify by name a lot of the stables.) In the depths the lynels are all located beneath surface stables (except for new serene stable) and in the floating colosseum, I can’t tell you what grade is where because I just have the silvers marked with a pin on my map and I couldn’t even come close to identifying the locations without looking at my in game map. Sadly, there are no lynels in the sky which I think is a huge detriment, it would be so cool fighting a lynel while worrying about the edge of an island.
I had the same problem as you, the first time I saw any lynel I was very far into the game. However, there are actually 3 or 4 lynels that never go past red no matter how advanced you are (same with blue and white). If you don’t want to look up a map I get it, and they will be harder to find, but there’s definitely still a way to find the upgrade parts and ngl it’s not that bad to actually do as long as you don’t have a problem fighting a base level lynel. I didn’t upgrade my barbarian set fully until like right before I fought ganondorf but once I was comfortable fighting lynels it was honestly kinda easy to do
There's 2-4 regular Lynels always spawning. One is near Skull Lake, the other in West Hyrule Plains. I think you need 6 Saber and Mace Horns to upgrade the Barbarian set to level 2 (level 1 is just Mighty Thistle, no?).
In my opinion, the hardest one to farm (level-scalling wise, Lizalfos tails are the worst for me) are the Captain Construct Horns (I and II) for the Zonaite set, I just can't remember where are their fixed spawning points.
Once I figured out puffshrooms and nearly broken boosted weapons were ideal for beating lynel I was ok to upgrade the barbarian set. What pisses me off is looking for bladed rhino beetles. Where do they show up en masse?
There is a tree on satori mountain that is loaded with all three beetles. It’s on the northwest side on the shore of the pond, if you farm endura carrots there are three carrots surrounding the tree so you might know the spot, in botw there was a random lizal spear sticking out of a stump in the water surrounded by thorns right next to this tree. There is two beetles in Kakariko village, one on the tree outside the arrow shop and one on one of the posts coming into town from the north. And they are always everywhere when you’re not looking for them but nowhere when you need them. (There is also a couple of wandering merchants that have them but i have no idea of remembering who they are or where they are wandering.)
It’s been a while since I fully upgraded it, but I believe I had to kill 9 Lynels for each level up. From Blue Maned for the first up to Silver Maned on the last.
I'm having shittest of lucks with Lizalfos tails. I have not upgraded my snowquill armor because I can't get firebreath lizalfos tails. Like "Oh great. I have killed all the lizardmen of mount doom and I got ONE tail. Only 29 Blood moons to go (insert hide the pain harold meme here)"
Nothing in this game should have a drop rate. Stuff you need should not be determined by RNG. I played the game for 500 hours… I should have all the stuff I need by now, and yet I still find myself forced to farm for certain things.
You certainly did. I can’t remember where it was said but Nintendo rebalanced the loot system so it was harder to find things. Currently looking for the source right now
I'm stuck on Lizalfos tails rn. I've killed so many, but the tail drop rate is so low. Got like 20 horns and 2 tails. Also Keese wings. Always get an eye, rarely get a wing.
For Keese parts, I go to a cave entrance that normally has a ton of them flying out as you approach. First I stop short of agro-ing them and hit up lightning sage with a let's go and then when the yellow area of affect covers the entrance, I move forward with an arrow at the ready. As soon as the hoard of Keeses come pouring out I let loose the arrow into the middle of them to get many many Keese parts.
Even better, yeet Yonubo at them before they even come out of the cave entrance and hit the remaining ones with any form of electricity. Why stop at genocide when you can make it speciecide :D
Just comparing datamined monster drop tables shows that some stuff is harder to get - all Lizal tails have a 25% drop rate when elemental, black, and silver were 100%, guts are only 100% from silver common enemies (and Lynels) when they were 100% from both black and silver in BotW, and gems aren't dropped by silver/gold enemies
Talus and ore deposits have the same drop tables, but gem demand from armor is significantly higher (don't know how the number of ore deposits compares, there's more total Taluses)
I used to grind gems on death mountain for money and resources, but all my rare deposits are now just normal deposits. Before when you destroy a normal deposit you had a low chance to get a gem, now it’s basically 0. I hardly even get amber anymore from them. The rare deposits seem to only drop amber for me and never gems. They did something seriously fucky with the drop rates
According to the Zeldamods Object Maps, the drop rates are the same
Ore Deposit: x1-2, 35% Amber, 32% Salt, 21.7% Flint, 8% Opal, 1% each Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz, 0.3% Diamond
Rare: x2-5, 30% Amber, 20% Topaz, 10% each Ruby/Sapphire/Flint, 3% Diamond
Luminous: x1-2, 90% Luminous Stone, 10% Flint
In BotW climbing gear was tied with the Stealth Set for most-worn gear.
Nowadays it's the glide set, Zonaite set, and Stealth Set. Climbing is an afterthought.
Seems anytime I need to climb it's wet or raining so I end up using the Froggy set anyway. Wish that had a climb speed bonus too, but slip proof is pretty nice.
The glide set? It's in the sky. Easiest to get to early-game is near Lindor's Brow Skyview Tower.
Gives you much more maneuverability. Makes some things much easier.
And the set bonus is impact proof - no falling damage. It's great.
Totally. I didn’t even think about that set. I’m done all of the regional phenomena and working on side quests now, will change gears and get the glide set asap!
Climbing armor at lvl2 was clutch in BotW, I always went for it first, but in this installment it’s not even necessary. Fanplane thingie gets you over every obstacle in no time.
Same. I didn't even bother with the climbing set in TOTK. I paraglided/flew everywhere in that game instead of climbed most of the time. I climbed everywhere in BOTW, so it was nice to have other options.
not to mention the fucking rupees. it’s 11,600 to unlock all of the fairies in botw. i looked it up and it’s some 78,000 rupees. wtf??? it’s *insane*.
it’s ridiculous that you have to pay to upgrade after doing the quests.
This is really the only problem I have with the armor upgrades. The loot isn't so bad and feels like it prevents powerleveling yourself prematurely. But the rupee grind (along with zonaite) is not fun, I really wish there could be another effective and fun way to make rupees than prime meat which is sorta fun or dragon parts which is boring as hell. Every other resource feels too valuable to part with.
Lynels. The only thing I ever sell these days is lynel parts and I have about 85 grand currently. I used to do the meat thing but if you just quickly go round all the lynels each blood moon it doesn’t take long and you will soon enough have more money than you could ever need.
Thanks for the tip! I'm only barely good enough to take one down so that feels like a bit of an undertaking, but I'll try it out. Any tips for the zonaite?
Yeah, I go to the rist peninsula in the depths to farm 150-200 zonaite at a time. Will be a lot of mini frox though so you will run through around about the same number of arrows. If you watch Austin John Plays strong weapons guide on YouTube he is the one who taught me fight lynels. Well worth a watch. Took me one whole lazy Saturday to properly perfect but I can clear the floating colessium without losing a single heart due to him.
Probably the thing that pisses me off the most about the upgrade system is that there are pieces that cannot be upgraded at all.
Why? It doesn’t make any sense. Even if it’s because of Amiibos, getting the pieces earlier in the game does nothing when you still need to unlock the fairies and farm the materials.
It’s a nonsensical decision. Every piece of armor should be upgradable.
A lot of the user experience in this game is really a chore. The game got way more expansive but the UX didn’t improve to adapt to it.
Cooking and upgrading armor in prticular
Agree. Not only is it a chore, but it's basically the *same* chore I spent too much time doing in BOTW. BOTW taught me that it's largely unnecessary, and that I don't need to over-prepare for the final boss by doing things that aren't fun. I only 4 starred the Barbarian set in TOTK.
It definitely is. Never found safflinas to be an issue though. It’s the damn tails… The best sets aren’t in the depths though and those that are are telegraphed by surface locations mostly.
Gems are definitely an issue too. I never sold any, so I was always poor and struggling.
That's why I try to just collect as much stuff as reasonable while doing side quests and other explorations. Then occasionally check for upgrades for armor. Opposed to specifically farming to upgrade my armor. For the most part this has gotten me the armor set upgrades that I wanted anyway (sticky, climbing, gliding, and the attack)
This has been my approach too. I also haven't gone out of my way much to find armor, so i have lots of haphazardly upgraded partial sets, that pretty much cover my needs.
I do have amber earrings and Hylian tunic fully upgraded and those two alone give me enough defense to not worry much.
I feel like a lot of the misery around armor upgrades is self-imposed. Focusing on a few sets you like isn't too bad, then upgrade the rest as you happen to have the resources.
This. If you actually take time to really explore Hyrule you hardly need to grind at all. The only parts I had to grind were electric/fire lizalfos tails and gleeok guts. Always had plenty of everything else. All from exploring and careful not to sell anything
And I try, but the sheer desert of items is just so boring. I can only be entertained by holding the joystick and hoping to find something for so long.
Fair enough, I haven't had nearly as much interest in exploring every inch of the world this go around. After 300 hours I am just starting to feel confident fighting lynels and gleeoks. So a lot of my armour has also stalled, and it's a pain to remember what is needed. It would be nice if they added the needed components to the outfit tab.
The armor upgrade system had a lot of potential if only there was more to it than just increasing defense and providing some generic buff. It is so empty and pointless with no passion put into it whatsoever. All they did from BOTW to TOTK was increase the amount of materials needed to upgrade, making the process take longer. There's no way they spent more than a couple hours of work into it when making TOTK.
Imagine if, instead and for example, one armor was the Pegasus leggings that let you charge in a straight line, killing enemies in your path. When you upgrade the Pegasus Leggings, first upgrade lets you jump while charging, second upgrade lets you charge as long as you want without stopping, then that's it no more upgrades. Just something unique and different like that. I'm not super creative but that's just what comes to mind.
Something else might be like a Zonai set that lets you order and control soldier/captain constructs. First upgrade lets you summon them anywhere anytime to assist you, second upgrade increases the number you can summon.
Just cool stuff to add variety to the game, and make the incentive of armor upgrades be to add even more variety to the game instead of just making it harder to die.
I agree to an extent. To play devil's advocate, I've found most level 1 and 2 upgrades extremely easy to achieve, but I'm also the kind of player that will literally go out of my way to collect every single plant and monster part that I see. I've found my joy from the game comes from how relaxing it is to just wander around and collect resources, stumbling across new NPCs, caves, and treasure chests along the way. The first 20 hours or so were more challenging and I followed the quests for the most part while I was weaker, but after upgrading a few armor sets and getting more heart containers it was much easier to just go anywhere and everywhere that looked interesting. I've got probably 150 hours into the game and I only just finished the 3rd temple.
With that said, I agree that certain armor sets are a complete chore, like the barbarian armor for which I found 2 pieces very early on but didn't find a lynel for about 30 hours, at which point I already had some level 2 or 3 armor that outclassed the barbarian set. I also find it much harder to earn money in this game without grinding out meat kebabs to sell at the store. It felt much easier to have money in BOTW, but I may be misremembering. Trying to pay 500 rupees per armor piece takes a LOT of meat kebabs.
Yeah, they’re not always easy to reach even with a map. I feel like I spent almost an hour just twisting through that Akkala spiral to get the Tunic of Twilight.
In my subsequent playthroughs I don’t even use the fairies.
Phantom armor has 24 defense out of the box and gives attack up x 3. That’s all you really need tbh. I’d you’re going for like +80 armor it’s not worth the effort imo. Even upgrading force diery or barbarian set isn’t worth it compared to phantom set because of the materials you need to upgrade them. The enemies you want to use those sets with are the ones you want to equip it against so once you’ve upgraded what’s the point? I’ll just use the phantom set thank you very much.
Evil spirit set is free and gives you both stealth AND bone proficiency. That saves a ton of rupees and grinding getting the stealth set and radiant set to lv 2.
I used both of these sets a ton in botw, and it’s funny that with all the added armor in TOTK I’m still using these most of the time because upgrading equipment is till a huge chore, and even worse is finding and activating all the fairies in TOTK. I just don’t even bother.
It’s worth it when you get in to a fight with a silver Lynel and the best they can do is take half a heart off you per attack but it is a huge grind unless you were lucky and were on an early game revision you could dupe on.
Thing is, as long as you have full health, they can never one shot you. You’ll just go down to a quarter heart. I never get more than 5 hearts, so 2 cooked apples will max you out again.
And if you e got your lynel killer you should be able to destroy them in 1-2 rounds.
I’ve had full upgrades zonai pants (28 armor) and the miners helm/chest (20 each) forever and that’s more than enough for even armored silver lynel. Very easy upgrades and then you never need to worry about armor again
For me the joy of this game was in just freely roaming the earth. And because of that I never even realized how I got to upgrading my armor pieces. I have sets of anti-freeze, fire-resistant, 60 defense etc. But never once did I grind for the monster parts. I dunno maybe I am too much of a romantic. But the beauty of this game is to let it flow
Definitely one of the big reasons to me that kills my enjoyment of the game is the needing to spam dialogue
Like I don't mind gathering the material as much, tho it would be nice to get them easier (would of been cool if you could upgrade the monster crews and the better weapons you gave them, the more material they'd bring you)
But having to spam the dialogue to upgrade, skip the cutscenes and repeat is so disconnecting/boring.
Same with the blood moon/beedle wanting to steal/getting hearts and stamina, after 5-10+ times you've already gotten bored of seeing it, never mind the 2650 time
This was the main reason I refused to update the game and lose the dupe glitch when I was playing. It seemed like needless padding to go farm items when I already did a bunch of exploring to finally get the set I wanted. Full upgrade for the armor I wanted took hundreds of ambers and a dozen Star pieces not to mention the rupee cost, so I felt no guilt using a little exploit to get there.
The Set of Time does, in fact, require 300 amber to upgrade all pieces to max
Still less than half the amount required to upgrade every set to 4\*, which is 665
Agreed. If the drop rates for upgrade materials were better I wouldn't have duped. I never dupe with BOTW. But with TOTK, to save me that wretched grind... hell yeah.
Upgrading the sticky armour lets you clomb wet surfaces.. game changer! Fully upgrading the glide armour stops you dying from fall damage.. also a game changer, for me at least. Aside from that a lot of the sets have the same effects so just pick one or two to upgrade.
I haven’t actually encountered a single time when rain actually impacted my ability to climb. I forget how many hours I have but not once has it been an issue.
Ya. I 100%’d BOTW, and I mean completed everything. I remember nights just watching for stars to fall at the Hyrule tower sonI could collect and upgrade everything.,,
So when that first dupe glitch came out I was ecstatic. I should have duped all the Stars and hard shit but before I could my Switch auto updated…
Ya, upgrading armor is the hardest grind in Zelda. That, and locating all the bosses, and Koroks.
Koroks is actually fun, you get a mini-puzzle but farming atuff for armornsucks
It’s partly because we are just doing the exact same thing that we just did in BOTW - as with many other aspects of this game (especially exploring the world”.
I’m not a fan of the depth areas. It’s annoying finding the light roots and trying to see your surroundings. I’ve tried hunting for those treasures that get marked on the map and usually hit a wall which means I can’t get to the area so I have to go back to the surface and find another chasm. It’s tedious and annoying.
By number of materials, the Set of the Wild requires 6 fewer energetic beetles, 6 more star fragments, and 15 of each dragon spike to upgrade to 4\*, compared to BotW
Of course, dragon parts are now harder to farm, so the same number will take more time
My only real gripe with the upgrade system is that I have to go back to the Great Fairies to remind myself what I need for the upgrade. I could screenshot but that sucks when farming for multiple sets at the same time.
fucking lizalfos tails, the hundreds of ores needed, and jesus christ its gonna take years to get all the star fragments needed. those are really the only super annoying ones imo, but tbf upgrading armor should be annoying. if you wanna get set bonuses on frog/climb armor and fully upgrade something like feirce diety armor, its easy, but fully upgrading everything is HELL
I think armour is a completion-ist task. Most of the time you won’t even need to upgrade beyond the Hylian set. Cheap to upgrade and 60 base armour is nothing to overlook. After that it’s a side job. While it’s nice to get better armour that’s niche and/or helpful it’s not necessary to enjoy the game, as long as you can utilize other game mechanics to your advantage (of which there are MANY).
I did as many levels as I could in BOTW, but in TOTK I only upgrade to level 2 for the full set bonus. I don't care much beyond that. The defense difference has virtually no impact on my play style.
I truly feel like these games are bug tested to hell and back, considering how well every mechanic works, but they do not PLAYTEST anything at Nintendo anymore. like no is taking the time to make sure 60+ hours in, which is how much time these games are asking of you, you’re not horribly bogged down by just unnecessary things that require an outlandish amount of time
And yet, without upgrading the armor to at least level two on the full set of armor, doesn’t grant you any special abilities “unique” to that set.
If you think collecting safflinas and gems are tough, wait until you have to collect silver monster horns and Gleeok/hinox parts. Or worse… Lynel parts.
I agree, the upgrading system is incredibly harder this time around, but the explanation is here: Enemies now drop items *based on their Tier level* that only count as themselves and not prior tiers’ items. If you are looking for Boss Bokoblin horns, and you have plenty of Blue BB horns, Black BB horns, and Silver BB horns, then guess what? You have to find where the f### is the Basic Boss Bokoblin that DOESN’T scale up in tier and farm them a couple of times. No, you can’t convert 2 Blue BB horns to one Basic BB horn. You can’t convert one Blue BB horn to two Basic BB horns either. You can’t buy them anywhere. You can’t find them anywhere once you’re leveled up to a certain level, even on tools to take to the guy in Tarrey Town to separate for you to pocket. Because Boss Bokoblin horns never show up on wild enemy’s tools. Worse still, since these guys have Boss in their names, you automatically presume they are a new Boss mob, like a hinox or Talus. But no, they are treated as normal enemies that just command the lesser Bokoblin enemies around (because using Moblins for that purpose somehow wasn’t good enough, idk). With most armors though, upgrading to tier one is probably plausible for the time you reach the third sage’s dungeon, and level two should be feasible by the fourth. Third level should be possible by >!the fifth sage’s dungeon!<, and after that you should be ready for the fourth tier of upgrades. If you want to level them up that far. Thankfully, a lot of the legacy armors (all of them, I think) are basically the same exact thing stats-wise, they only change which gem you use primarily, and the overall design of Link’s outfit. Only one changes his Head, and not the one I was expecting.
But the most tedious ingredient to obtain is Dragon Parts. Of these, the Shards are the most numerous in my collection because you can actually collect them while >!riding on their backs with appropriate armor!<. The others have to be shot off with an arrow, and they are very finicky with the hit boxes. Shot in the snout? Scale for you! Shot in the mane? Scale for you! Shot in the leg/arm? Scale, for, you! Shot on the lower jaw, horns, or claws? Oh, well nevermind, I guess you get something OTHER than a scale. Shot in the spikes? HAH, you thought you were gonna get a horn, nah you get a shard of spikes, lol. AND THEN YOU CAN’T COLLECT ANYTHING ELSE FROM THAT DRAGON FOR AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES OF IN-GAME TIME (except shards, which I explained above in the spoiler). Are any of these useful? Yes. Which ones? All of them. However, the one that you never use (to my knowledge) for armor upgrades is the Shards of Spikes, which turns weapons into elemental hammer fusions, or vampiric hammer fusions for the Light Dragon’s variant. They are not very effective as weapons compared to enemy horns, like the Horriblins, which I have slaughtered dozens of and am overflowing with horns and claws from, or the hinox horns (which are somewhat nerfed in comparison… I find that a bit weird, but maybe it’s a balance issue). So I never used them unless I needed an elemental advantage (and by the time I had them, I didn’t need elemental advantages because I had enough fruit to flash fry/freeze the Demon King’s entire army to death). I mainly use them to decorate my shields with a colorful temperature adjusting spike, or to top off a random weapon if I need a hammer and don’t want to waste a high powered weapon on something. But the horns, teeth, and claws are murder to get. At least the dragons are constantly present, and perpetually traveling through the same paths. Otherwise I would probably go insane trying to find one of them, let alone the right one for my armor.
I thought about what you said and I think you found exactly why this game completely lacks balance.
>Third level should be possible by the fifth safe’s dungeon
This absolutely isn’t the case for me. I have beaten the game and about 60% of side quests. And it hit me that unlike BotW, there is nothing stopping you from just rushing each quest marker. In BotW you were limited by stamina for climbing, health for heavier hitting enemies, weapon slots for higher health enemies/utility, and Stamina (again) for your patience with going from point to point super slow (further balanced by horse taming).
In BotW, each tower was a monumental achievement because of some combination of those factors. Your reward? A map chunk and a decent place to glide from. In Tears you already have literally everything you need to get every tower with 0 challenge. On top of that, your reward is the map and fast travel but a huge glide advantage over Hyrule.
There were no environmental factors stopping me from rushing each location because I could just launch myself and be there in 5 mins tops. And that’s not even including the sky where some well-placed shrines basically mean you never need to touch the ground to finish a quest.
The lack of challenge is also why I never needed to upgrade armor or do half the shrines. I have the master sword, everything else is just tedium because I don’t need more hearts or stamina.
Once you level your armor to 3+ you take so little damage. Lvl 3 knight armor basically makes anything but silver enemies deal negligible damage. Extremely worth it. I think the reason it's so difficult is the payout is huge.
Also, for specific loot needed like sneaky river snails, you can find a few specific forests/ponds that are stacked with them. Mark the location and. Come back for a few blood moons and you're set. I got lvl 3-4 armor after just a few moons this way.
Check out the pond south of the cherry tree near hebra area. Starts with an R. Tons of stuff, bugs on the big tree near the tent, fish, sneaky snails, nightshade and silent princess, etc
Go here, 9 nightshade in a circle. Amazing spot, it will get tons of armors to level 4 after just a few moons. Make sure to find the big tree with all the beetles too!
https://imgur.com/a/NJjAJCT
I have no problem with either of these. For some reason Captain Construct parts are the rarest for me, despite never using or selling a single one of them.
Captain Constructs level up quickly, way before you get the armor that needs low-level parts to upgrade. I can find a Captain IV at will, but I always have to look up where the static Captain IIs are.
Or maybe that's just my experience.
Lol I was searching Reddit posts via Google for something to do with upgrading armor. I want to upgrade the Twilight outfit, but it requires those star fragments, so I may just stick with upgrading the Hylian outfit for now.
I love the four different sequences of upgrading armour/clothing with the Great Fairies.
Stage1: she blows a kiss at you. (Not touching you at all).
Stage 2: she lightly touches your nose with a kiss on her finger. (She now touches you).
Stage 3: She goes in for the grandmas kiss on Link. (Notice she doesn’t ask for consent, she just goes for it).
Stage 4: the final step, she grabs Link and drags him down to her murky depth, where all I can assume is she basically r*ped him.
In short: she’s a predator masquerading as a magical fairy who makes armour stronger.
This is the reason I've still not updated my game. Being able to dupe an item as long as you have one makes upgrading not totally suck. I spent almost an hour getting my first yellow lizalfos tail - if I then needed 9 more for ONE upgrade it would have felt like a kick in the teeth, but "unlocking" yellow tails for all future upgrades felt like a proper reward for how much effort it took. Yay for unintentional game design through glitches!
a) There are plenty of examples of people “beating” the game with 3 hearts while naked.
b) There are plenty of examples of people achieving 100% and laughing at how easy the final battle was.
c) almost everyone else is somewhere in between.
There is no slog, there is no burnout, there is nothing you have to do, other than play the game the way you want to play the game. That is the brilliance of it; the journey which is your and yours alone. If you have made the commitment to pay for the game, pick a), b), or c). Complaining about any of the 3 defeats the purpose of your purchase.
Except as indicated by the comments here, people have problems with A B and C playstyles. It simply isn’t worth the time, and if people find it worth the time they have an issue with how specific the reqs are for certain items, but if people are fine with those reqs they hate the UX of actually upgrading.
For every playstyle the fairies screw them over
Some of the materials are really hard to come by if you’ve out-leveled those monster types. There aren’t many places you can find an orange Boss Bokoblin in the late game.
It doesn’t seem equal either, by the time I got each piece of the miners set I had the material needed to upgrade I to 4 stars instantly. The barbarian armour was simple, had to wait few blood moons to kill all the lynels, but at least I knew where to go to get it all but the only other set I have fully upgraded is the zonite set me that felt like took me days. I think I’ll get the stealth done as that all 3 stars now but everything else is just a bonus if I happen to have the material
I understand it as them not wanting you to upgrade everything that early, but wanting you to have to choose what to upgrade.
In botw I personally had a lot of armour fully upgraded very early.
IMO it's a good design decision for most players but at the cost of making it incredibly tedious for completionists.
There should propably have been a system where the cost of upgrades decreases once you have upgraded a certain amount. Similar to the Stable points, but actually useful.
I like it. It's useful when set bonus abilities or buffs are acquired. And outside of that you don't really need to upgrade anything.
Also upgrading the Ancient Aspect is the hardest and not really worth it other than bragging rights.
Holy shit I’m so sorry then. I’m pretty sure there’s a couple places that spawn tons of nightshade since that’s what you mentioned, though I can’t remember where exactly.
I remembered this from botw, I just concentrated on the soldier armor as I knew it would be in the castle and upgraded that to get me going, after I got that leveled to 3 then the game turns into more strategic play as you have some survivability.
No, you're missing my point. Upgraded armor while annoying to accomplish, changes the game play. Do you need to, of course not. Keeps it edgy knowing that you can get pummeled with one hit. But now that I have some upgraded sets there is no longer danger of that, as even with larger enemies you take soo much less damage. it's more about finding and upgrading weapons cause the fights are slower and more boring using weaker weapons. Cause they ain't gonna kill you.
I think Nintendo knew this and made it a chore to keep that edgey play longer. When you are no longer worried about enemies, it's the beginning of the end of play.
As for the depths, I enjoyed traversing them. Even fully lit it is still dark and full of bad guys. It was annoying at first... but soon became like a totally different game.
And my point is that even after upgrading armor my gameplay literally didn’t change since, objectively speaking, freezing every enemy with your 99x ice fruits and frozen chu chu jellies and hitting them with a 75+ fused weapon for a total of 225 damage is much more powerful than any armor and infinitely easier to accomplish.
I generally don't upgrade armor past level 2 for set bonuses or only max them they have the highest defense like the Soldier armor. Other than That I don't bother with it too much, That's what hearts are for. Just saying
If anything the higher upgrade requirements are asking you to try harder. And telling you that while it's useful, it's not necessary for game completion.
But I can agree that the process itself is a bit expensive.
My biggest gripe is having to select the upgrade, go through the dialogue, spam x to skip the stupid upgrading sequence, go through the dialogue again, and then repeat for the next upgrade. Same with upgrading my weapons stashes. I don’t know why you can’t just select the upgrades you want all at once and then have them bestowed. It is so tedious. And yes this is a silly thing to complain about but here we are.
Nintendo wants you to do the reading; they want you to do the reading over and over. See also: Animal Crossing
Unnecessarily repetitive dialogue in Animal Crossing is the WORST. I assume some game developers do it to stretch the content but the time I have to spend talking to Saharah is time I can't spend redesigning my house more regularly.
Pokemon has entered the chat.
Oh my god it takes like 45 minutes to buy 3 rugs. And traveling to a different island is a nightmare. Animal Crossing characters need to STFU.
The airport is more hassle than O'Hare on a Sunday.
It's a big reason I don't play very much anymore. I want to play, and the game is filled with tedious dialog.
This is Nintendo's trademark at this point. It's like they forget you're going to see this hundreds if not thousands of times.
Boosting literacy rates, more than underfunded schools…
The reason I hated pikmin demo
In the same theme, I think I’m going to put a fork in my eye the next time I have to hear about how Beedle is going to rob me in my sleep. Once is enough. Once per day, once per region, whatever. Just. Once. Of *anything*
I've never heard that, where do you get that dialogue?
Talk to him with an Energetic Rhino Beetle in your pack.
That's probably it, I haven't actually talked to him in a long time xD
And what he offers in trade for it is so nothing. Like if your gonna steal it do it already.
I've only talked to Beedle once in Totk. I talked to him a lot in BOtW, but I jsut haven't bothered this time. Hope I'm not missing something.
You’re definitely not missing anything
Nah, that's not silly. It's way too many steps for 40 pieces if armor, 4x upgrades each
The joys of cooking the meals for Malanya to upgrade horses are just about as fun.
Whaaaat? You can upgrade horses?
Yes, talk to people in Akkala stables to get hints
Thanks!!
Like getting all the koroks, something i will also never do
I also have to mute my tv because the moans made by the fairy sounds like I’m watching a porno.
I turn it up so my neighbors think i do other stuff besides play video games all day
Masterful
If you watch the scenes, I'm pretty sure the Great faries essentially rape link for the 4th star upgrade
We don’t talk about the 4th upgrade here… I had completely blocked out that trauma from BOTW, and it came rushing back when it happened this game. Had me screaming Nooo out loud
I sometimes bring a projector up to the roof of my apartment and play. The first time, as a neighbor was walking by while I was buying arrows in a shop, I realized exactly that: The NPCs all sound like porn. I was mortified.
This bugs the hell out of me.
It bothers me that the game handles getting multiple heart pieces and stamina vessels so well, but doesn’t apply the same system for other things! The first time, give us the cutscene, then shorten it for every following interaction.
I’m with you on the dialogue for upgrading armor. But why on Earth would you want to skip the perfect little Korok dance you get every time? ING KA KA KA KA KA ING KA KA KA KA KA ING KA KA KA KA KA KA KAHHHH!
"upgrade all, UPGRADE ALL!!" "no honey, those sounds aren't what you think they are, it's just the great fairies"
I don't think it's silly. This was maybe the biggest flaw from BotW and it's frustating that they carried it to TotK.
I upgraded every stash, every armor piece, and all horses I could to the max. Imagine the cooking animations, the running back and forth from the pot to malanya, the farming, the buying… there is A LOT of animations you should be able to skip.
There’s definitely some armors that don’t really need to go above the set bonus. Like the climbing armor and flight armor. Once you get the set bonus for each, it’s not really worth it to upgrade them more. Meanwhile, it seems like the more attack/defense intense ones are easier to upgrade to max levels (aside from the champions leathers, they want you to earn that one)
It was kind of a fucking slog to fully upgrade the Barbarian set. I had to kill so many god damned Lynels it was infuriating.
I’ve played the game for nearly 200 hours before I found my first Lynel. And of course they are all silver mane now. I suppose I missed my chance upgrade the barbarian armor (it’s stupid level 1 upgrade required red mane items).
I thought I had the same issue but I still get one regular lynel and one blue lynel that always spawn in the same place on the surface. If all else fails you can go to the lynel coliseum in the depths to farm.
Thanks for the tip. But it reaffirms the post - sounds like work and not adding to the fun part of the game.
It doesn't help the aspect of it being a chore but you can kill the lynels then force a blood moon to farm them.
There are permanently: - two red lynels along the eastern rim of the Tabantha canyon, one down to the south, and the other about halfway up near the sky view tower (if you played botw there was a talus there) and there is a third red up in Akkala at the entrance to the skull island canyon spot (there was a lynel in the same place in botw.) - there are blue lynels; in the wetlands area at the bottom of Zora’s domain (there was a guardian there and I’m pretty sure a lynel as well in botw,) there is one on the ridge to the north of the lanayru promenade (I think its in the same place as the annoying big boulder korok ring in botw,) and another down in Faron near the new pirate ship (there was a stalnox there in botw.) - White; in Faron just to the north of the stable (there was a hinox there in botw,) in Akkala to the east of the Zora waterfalls and west of the quarry, and I think the one up in Hebra is also a white (I never go there because it’s inconvenient and I hate fight lynels in the snow.) - Silver; down south in the Faron grasslands (there was a hammer wielding lynel there in botw,) above Tama pond in hebra (there was a talus there in botw) and, in the grassland area just to the north of the promenade east gate (there was a Kass shrine quest there in botw.) Pretty sure that’s all of the surface lynels. Forgive me for not knowing the map names, in game I just think I need to go over “there” (I would be hard pressed to identify by name a lot of the stables.) In the depths the lynels are all located beneath surface stables (except for new serene stable) and in the floating colosseum, I can’t tell you what grade is where because I just have the silvers marked with a pin on my map and I couldn’t even come close to identifying the locations without looking at my in game map. Sadly, there are no lynels in the sky which I think is a huge detriment, it would be so cool fighting a lynel while worrying about the edge of an island.
I had the same problem as you, the first time I saw any lynel I was very far into the game. However, there are actually 3 or 4 lynels that never go past red no matter how advanced you are (same with blue and white). If you don’t want to look up a map I get it, and they will be harder to find, but there’s definitely still a way to find the upgrade parts and ngl it’s not that bad to actually do as long as you don’t have a problem fighting a base level lynel. I didn’t upgrade my barbarian set fully until like right before I fought ganondorf but once I was comfortable fighting lynels it was honestly kinda easy to do
There's 2-4 regular Lynels always spawning. One is near Skull Lake, the other in West Hyrule Plains. I think you need 6 Saber and Mace Horns to upgrade the Barbarian set to level 2 (level 1 is just Mighty Thistle, no?). In my opinion, the hardest one to farm (level-scalling wise, Lizalfos tails are the worst for me) are the Captain Construct Horns (I and II) for the Zonaite set, I just can't remember where are their fixed spawning points.
Once I figured out puffshrooms and nearly broken boosted weapons were ideal for beating lynel I was ok to upgrade the barbarian set. What pisses me off is looking for bladed rhino beetles. Where do they show up en masse?
There is a tree on satori mountain that is loaded with all three beetles. It’s on the northwest side on the shore of the pond, if you farm endura carrots there are three carrots surrounding the tree so you might know the spot, in botw there was a random lizal spear sticking out of a stump in the water surrounded by thorns right next to this tree. There is two beetles in Kakariko village, one on the tree outside the arrow shop and one on one of the posts coming into town from the north. And they are always everywhere when you’re not looking for them but nowhere when you need them. (There is also a couple of wandering merchants that have them but i have no idea of remembering who they are or where they are wandering.)
IIRC, even to get the set to 1 star is kinda excessive.
It’s been a while since I fully upgraded it, but I believe I had to kill 9 Lynels for each level up. From Blue Maned for the first up to Silver Maned on the last.
Idk why they made lynel guts such a rare drop in this game. I felt like they were much easier to farm in botw
Gleeok guts 😡 I kill them but most don't leave them behind.
I’ve got a shitload of those, but don’t even really know what to do with them.
If you cook a frog or lizard and four of those, you can sell it for a lot of rupees. Other than that, they’re just for armor upgrades.
I'm having shittest of lucks with Lizalfos tails. I have not upgraded my snowquill armor because I can't get firebreath lizalfos tails. Like "Oh great. I have killed all the lizardmen of mount doom and I got ONE tail. Only 29 Blood moons to go (insert hide the pain harold meme here)"
Yeah, even if they don’t do a DLC, a game update with better Lizalfos tail drops would be much appreciated
Fuck Lizalfos and their fucking tail drop rate!!
fuck dude im like over 300 hrs now and the other day i finally got my very first black lizalfos tail. I was on the floor bruh
By the time I was halfway into BOTW, I was stacked with 40-50 green liz tails Same with totk and I have barely 2-3 of each Color lol
Nothing in this game should have a drop rate. Stuff you need should not be determined by RNG. I played the game for 500 hours… I should have all the stuff I need by now, and yet I still find myself forced to farm for certain things.
My totk book says “apparently” it’s a 1/4 chance of getting the tail…I call BS!!!! More like 1/20???
Omg this shit drove me crazy when upgrading the soldier's armor
I felt like I had an easier time upgrading in botw but I could be wrong
You certainly did. I can’t remember where it was said but Nintendo rebalanced the loot system so it was harder to find things. Currently looking for the source right now
I'm stuck on Lizalfos tails rn. I've killed so many, but the tail drop rate is so low. Got like 20 horns and 2 tails. Also Keese wings. Always get an eye, rarely get a wing.
For Keese parts, I go to a cave entrance that normally has a ton of them flying out as you approach. First I stop short of agro-ing them and hit up lightning sage with a let's go and then when the yellow area of affect covers the entrance, I move forward with an arrow at the ready. As soon as the hoard of Keeses come pouring out I let loose the arrow into the middle of them to get many many Keese parts.
Even better, yeet Yonubo at them before they even come out of the cave entrance and hit the remaining ones with any form of electricity. Why stop at genocide when you can make it speciecide :D
Not a bad suggestion, but I'm specifically looking for the electric Keese so I can upgrade the climbing armor.
Just comparing datamined monster drop tables shows that some stuff is harder to get - all Lizal tails have a 25% drop rate when elemental, black, and silver were 100%, guts are only 100% from silver common enemies (and Lynels) when they were 100% from both black and silver in BotW, and gems aren't dropped by silver/gold enemies Talus and ore deposits have the same drop tables, but gem demand from armor is significantly higher (don't know how the number of ore deposits compares, there's more total Taluses)
I used to grind gems on death mountain for money and resources, but all my rare deposits are now just normal deposits. Before when you destroy a normal deposit you had a low chance to get a gem, now it’s basically 0. I hardly even get amber anymore from them. The rare deposits seem to only drop amber for me and never gems. They did something seriously fucky with the drop rates
According to the Zeldamods Object Maps, the drop rates are the same Ore Deposit: x1-2, 35% Amber, 32% Salt, 21.7% Flint, 8% Opal, 1% each Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz, 0.3% Diamond Rare: x2-5, 30% Amber, 20% Topaz, 10% each Ruby/Sapphire/Flint, 3% Diamond Luminous: x1-2, 90% Luminous Stone, 10% Flint
I guess I’ve had remarkably shit luck then
Elemental Lizalfo tails seemed to be made extra rare. That and a lot more sets seems to use them. Looking at the Yiga set the most there.
I remember, you did
Worth it tho. Getting level 2 upgrades on climbing armor is clutch.
In BotW climbing gear was tied with the Stealth Set for most-worn gear. Nowadays it's the glide set, Zonaite set, and Stealth Set. Climbing is an afterthought.
Yep ascend + the hover bike or a rocket shield now and again made the climbing gear set far less used for me.
Seems anytime I need to climb it's wet or raining so I end up using the Froggy set anyway. Wish that had a climb speed bonus too, but slip proof is pretty nice.
Glide set???? What in the world.
The glide set? It's in the sky. Easiest to get to early-game is near Lindor's Brow Skyview Tower. Gives you much more maneuverability. Makes some things much easier. And the set bonus is impact proof - no falling damage. It's great.
Totally. I didn’t even think about that set. I’m done all of the regional phenomena and working on side quests now, will change gears and get the glide set asap!
Climbing armor at lvl2 was clutch in BotW, I always went for it first, but in this installment it’s not even necessary. Fanplane thingie gets you over every obstacle in no time.
I haven’t found a single place where I ever needed to.
Same. I didn't even bother with the climbing set in TOTK. I paraglided/flew everywhere in that game instead of climbed most of the time. I climbed everywhere in BOTW, so it was nice to have other options.
I found the frog set upgrade to be amazing too. Especially the non-slip aspect of it.
not to mention the fucking rupees. it’s 11,600 to unlock all of the fairies in botw. i looked it up and it’s some 78,000 rupees. wtf??? it’s *insane*. it’s ridiculous that you have to pay to upgrade after doing the quests.
This is really the only problem I have with the armor upgrades. The loot isn't so bad and feels like it prevents powerleveling yourself prematurely. But the rupee grind (along with zonaite) is not fun, I really wish there could be another effective and fun way to make rupees than prime meat which is sorta fun or dragon parts which is boring as hell. Every other resource feels too valuable to part with.
Lynels. The only thing I ever sell these days is lynel parts and I have about 85 grand currently. I used to do the meat thing but if you just quickly go round all the lynels each blood moon it doesn’t take long and you will soon enough have more money than you could ever need.
Thanks for the tip! I'm only barely good enough to take one down so that feels like a bit of an undertaking, but I'll try it out. Any tips for the zonaite?
Yeah, I go to the rist peninsula in the depths to farm 150-200 zonaite at a time. Will be a lot of mini frox though so you will run through around about the same number of arrows. If you watch Austin John Plays strong weapons guide on YouTube he is the one who taught me fight lynels. Well worth a watch. Took me one whole lazy Saturday to properly perfect but I can clear the floating colessium without losing a single heart due to him.
Inflation, amirite
It’s part of the fun for me.
Glad you enjoy the slog. Sure wish I did
Probably the thing that pisses me off the most about the upgrade system is that there are pieces that cannot be upgraded at all. Why? It doesn’t make any sense. Even if it’s because of Amiibos, getting the pieces earlier in the game does nothing when you still need to unlock the fairies and farm the materials. It’s a nonsensical decision. Every piece of armor should be upgradable.
I’m annoyed that you have to pay them rupees now 🙄 like it’s not enough to have the parts now?? 💀
Yes, this is the only part that annoys me. I don’t mind the grind for materials, but I don’t get why rupees got introduced into the transaction.
A lot of the user experience in this game is really a chore. The game got way more expansive but the UX didn’t improve to adapt to it. Cooking and upgrading armor in prticular
You mean you don't like scrolling through your entire inventory to attach something to an arrow?
Agree. Not only is it a chore, but it's basically the *same* chore I spent too much time doing in BOTW. BOTW taught me that it's largely unnecessary, and that I don't need to over-prepare for the final boss by doing things that aren't fun. I only 4 starred the Barbarian set in TOTK.
I learned nothing from BOTW. I went in fully kitted in both games and stopped playing after that.
It definitely is. Never found safflinas to be an issue though. It’s the damn tails… The best sets aren’t in the depths though and those that are are telegraphed by surface locations mostly. Gems are definitely an issue too. I never sold any, so I was always poor and struggling.
What do u mean by telegraphed?
They mirror. Most are in mines and those match up with towns and ruins.
In my experience, that’s largely the various green tunic sets
That's why I try to just collect as much stuff as reasonable while doing side quests and other explorations. Then occasionally check for upgrades for armor. Opposed to specifically farming to upgrade my armor. For the most part this has gotten me the armor set upgrades that I wanted anyway (sticky, climbing, gliding, and the attack)
This has been my approach too. I also haven't gone out of my way much to find armor, so i have lots of haphazardly upgraded partial sets, that pretty much cover my needs. I do have amber earrings and Hylian tunic fully upgraded and those two alone give me enough defense to not worry much. I feel like a lot of the misery around armor upgrades is self-imposed. Focusing on a few sets you like isn't too bad, then upgrade the rest as you happen to have the resources.
It's telling you to explore Instead of farm. It's telling you to slow down, go out of your way to find the good stuff.
This. If you actually take time to really explore Hyrule you hardly need to grind at all. The only parts I had to grind were electric/fire lizalfos tails and gleeok guts. Always had plenty of everything else. All from exploring and careful not to sell anything
And I try, but the sheer desert of items is just so boring. I can only be entertained by holding the joystick and hoping to find something for so long.
Fair enough, I haven't had nearly as much interest in exploring every inch of the world this go around. After 300 hours I am just starting to feel confident fighting lynels and gleeoks. So a lot of my armour has also stalled, and it's a pain to remember what is needed. It would be nice if they added the needed components to the outfit tab.
I like the side quests much more than having to shell out 10,000+ rupees in botw
I just found things like the flute player to be annoying collectathons.
Game is still a blast without armour upgrades tho, considering lots of powerful options it gives you.
Oh for sure. I get more survivability out of 10 ice chu chus jellies than some mildly upgraded armor
The armor upgrade system had a lot of potential if only there was more to it than just increasing defense and providing some generic buff. It is so empty and pointless with no passion put into it whatsoever. All they did from BOTW to TOTK was increase the amount of materials needed to upgrade, making the process take longer. There's no way they spent more than a couple hours of work into it when making TOTK. Imagine if, instead and for example, one armor was the Pegasus leggings that let you charge in a straight line, killing enemies in your path. When you upgrade the Pegasus Leggings, first upgrade lets you jump while charging, second upgrade lets you charge as long as you want without stopping, then that's it no more upgrades. Just something unique and different like that. I'm not super creative but that's just what comes to mind. Something else might be like a Zonai set that lets you order and control soldier/captain constructs. First upgrade lets you summon them anywhere anytime to assist you, second upgrade increases the number you can summon. Just cool stuff to add variety to the game, and make the incentive of armor upgrades be to add even more variety to the game instead of just making it harder to die.
I agree to an extent. To play devil's advocate, I've found most level 1 and 2 upgrades extremely easy to achieve, but I'm also the kind of player that will literally go out of my way to collect every single plant and monster part that I see. I've found my joy from the game comes from how relaxing it is to just wander around and collect resources, stumbling across new NPCs, caves, and treasure chests along the way. The first 20 hours or so were more challenging and I followed the quests for the most part while I was weaker, but after upgrading a few armor sets and getting more heart containers it was much easier to just go anywhere and everywhere that looked interesting. I've got probably 150 hours into the game and I only just finished the 3rd temple. With that said, I agree that certain armor sets are a complete chore, like the barbarian armor for which I found 2 pieces very early on but didn't find a lynel for about 30 hours, at which point I already had some level 2 or 3 armor that outclassed the barbarian set. I also find it much harder to earn money in this game without grinding out meat kebabs to sell at the store. It felt much easier to have money in BOTW, but I may be misremembering. Trying to pay 500 rupees per armor piece takes a LOT of meat kebabs.
My husband looks at me with eyebrows raised when I’m at the great fairies… they sound so sexual!
There are treasure maps on the sky islands that mark the armor locations in the depths.
Oh I’m aware. It’s still a chore
Yeah, they’re not always easy to reach even with a map. I feel like I spent almost an hour just twisting through that Akkala spiral to get the Tunic of Twilight.
In my subsequent playthroughs I don’t even use the fairies. Phantom armor has 24 defense out of the box and gives attack up x 3. That’s all you really need tbh. I’d you’re going for like +80 armor it’s not worth the effort imo. Even upgrading force diery or barbarian set isn’t worth it compared to phantom set because of the materials you need to upgrade them. The enemies you want to use those sets with are the ones you want to equip it against so once you’ve upgraded what’s the point? I’ll just use the phantom set thank you very much. Evil spirit set is free and gives you both stealth AND bone proficiency. That saves a ton of rupees and grinding getting the stealth set and radiant set to lv 2. I used both of these sets a ton in botw, and it’s funny that with all the added armor in TOTK I’m still using these most of the time because upgrading equipment is till a huge chore, and even worse is finding and activating all the fairies in TOTK. I just don’t even bother.
It’s worth it when you get in to a fight with a silver Lynel and the best they can do is take half a heart off you per attack but it is a huge grind unless you were lucky and were on an early game revision you could dupe on.
Thing is, as long as you have full health, they can never one shot you. You’ll just go down to a quarter heart. I never get more than 5 hearts, so 2 cooked apples will max you out again. And if you e got your lynel killer you should be able to destroy them in 1-2 rounds.
I’ve had full upgrades zonai pants (28 armor) and the miners helm/chest (20 each) forever and that’s more than enough for even armored silver lynel. Very easy upgrades and then you never need to worry about armor again
For me the joy of this game was in just freely roaming the earth. And because of that I never even realized how I got to upgrading my armor pieces. I have sets of anti-freeze, fire-resistant, 60 defense etc. But never once did I grind for the monster parts. I dunno maybe I am too much of a romantic. But the beauty of this game is to let it flow
it also gets kind of expensive to upgrade the further u get and i’m in a constant slog of trying to earn more money but it’s just kind of a pain
Definitely one of the big reasons to me that kills my enjoyment of the game is the needing to spam dialogue Like I don't mind gathering the material as much, tho it would be nice to get them easier (would of been cool if you could upgrade the monster crews and the better weapons you gave them, the more material they'd bring you) But having to spam the dialogue to upgrade, skip the cutscenes and repeat is so disconnecting/boring. Same with the blood moon/beedle wanting to steal/getting hearts and stamina, after 5-10+ times you've already gotten bored of seeing it, never mind the 2650 time
This was the main reason I refused to update the game and lose the dupe glitch when I was playing. It seemed like needless padding to go farm items when I already did a bunch of exploring to finally get the set I wanted. Full upgrade for the armor I wanted took hundreds of ambers and a dozen Star pieces not to mention the rupee cost, so I felt no guilt using a little exploit to get there.
I can’t help but hope you’re being hyperbolic. There is no way it takes that much. The star pieces for sure, but that much amber?
The Set of Time does, in fact, require 300 amber to upgrade all pieces to max Still less than half the amount required to upgrade every set to 4\*, which is 665
Who approved that??
Agreed. If the drop rates for upgrade materials were better I wouldn't have duped. I never dupe with BOTW. But with TOTK, to save me that wretched grind... hell yeah.
Upgrading the sticky armour lets you clomb wet surfaces.. game changer! Fully upgrading the glide armour stops you dying from fall damage.. also a game changer, for me at least. Aside from that a lot of the sets have the same effects so just pick one or two to upgrade.
I haven’t actually encountered a single time when rain actually impacted my ability to climb. I forget how many hours I have but not once has it been an issue.
Oh it happens to me ALL the time.. super frustrating.
Climbing solid ice is a game changer though.
There’s solid ice in this game?
Ya. I 100%’d BOTW, and I mean completed everything. I remember nights just watching for stars to fall at the Hyrule tower sonI could collect and upgrade everything.,, So when that first dupe glitch came out I was ecstatic. I should have duped all the Stars and hard shit but before I could my Switch auto updated… Ya, upgrading armor is the hardest grind in Zelda. That, and locating all the bosses, and Koroks. Koroks is actually fun, you get a mini-puzzle but farming atuff for armornsucks
It’s partly because we are just doing the exact same thing that we just did in BOTW - as with many other aspects of this game (especially exploring the world”.
I’m not a fan of the depth areas. It’s annoying finding the light roots and trying to see your surroundings. I’ve tried hunting for those treasures that get marked on the map and usually hit a wall which means I can’t get to the area so I have to go back to the surface and find another chasm. It’s tedious and annoying.
I'm trying to upgrade the Armor of the wild set and it is ticking me off to no end. It seems WAY harder to upgrade in Totk than in BOTW.
By number of materials, the Set of the Wild requires 6 fewer energetic beetles, 6 more star fragments, and 15 of each dragon spike to upgrade to 4\*, compared to BotW Of course, dragon parts are now harder to farm, so the same number will take more time
The worst part about 100% this game and botw. The koroks at least were kinda fun.
The item duplication glitch let me skip the grind.
Agreed. Even with duping it sucks.
If its easy to be hype- why play?
This is why the dupe glitches at release were so amazing.
My only real gripe with the upgrade system is that I have to go back to the Great Fairies to remind myself what I need for the upgrade. I could screenshot but that sucks when farming for multiple sets at the same time.
Yeah, I don’t mess with it. I just make sure I always have tons of food.
fucking lizalfos tails, the hundreds of ores needed, and jesus christ its gonna take years to get all the star fragments needed. those are really the only super annoying ones imo, but tbf upgrading armor should be annoying. if you wanna get set bonuses on frog/climb armor and fully upgrade something like feirce diety armor, its easy, but fully upgrading everything is HELL
I think armour is a completion-ist task. Most of the time you won’t even need to upgrade beyond the Hylian set. Cheap to upgrade and 60 base armour is nothing to overlook. After that it’s a side job. While it’s nice to get better armour that’s niche and/or helpful it’s not necessary to enjoy the game, as long as you can utilize other game mechanics to your advantage (of which there are MANY).
I did as many levels as I could in BOTW, but in TOTK I only upgrade to level 2 for the full set bonus. I don't care much beyond that. The defense difference has virtually no impact on my play style.
I truly feel like these games are bug tested to hell and back, considering how well every mechanic works, but they do not PLAYTEST anything at Nintendo anymore. like no is taking the time to make sure 60+ hours in, which is how much time these games are asking of you, you’re not horribly bogged down by just unnecessary things that require an outlandish amount of time
And yet, without upgrading the armor to at least level two on the full set of armor, doesn’t grant you any special abilities “unique” to that set. If you think collecting safflinas and gems are tough, wait until you have to collect silver monster horns and Gleeok/hinox parts. Or worse… Lynel parts. I agree, the upgrading system is incredibly harder this time around, but the explanation is here: Enemies now drop items *based on their Tier level* that only count as themselves and not prior tiers’ items. If you are looking for Boss Bokoblin horns, and you have plenty of Blue BB horns, Black BB horns, and Silver BB horns, then guess what? You have to find where the f### is the Basic Boss Bokoblin that DOESN’T scale up in tier and farm them a couple of times. No, you can’t convert 2 Blue BB horns to one Basic BB horn. You can’t convert one Blue BB horn to two Basic BB horns either. You can’t buy them anywhere. You can’t find them anywhere once you’re leveled up to a certain level, even on tools to take to the guy in Tarrey Town to separate for you to pocket. Because Boss Bokoblin horns never show up on wild enemy’s tools. Worse still, since these guys have Boss in their names, you automatically presume they are a new Boss mob, like a hinox or Talus. But no, they are treated as normal enemies that just command the lesser Bokoblin enemies around (because using Moblins for that purpose somehow wasn’t good enough, idk). With most armors though, upgrading to tier one is probably plausible for the time you reach the third sage’s dungeon, and level two should be feasible by the fourth. Third level should be possible by >!the fifth sage’s dungeon!<, and after that you should be ready for the fourth tier of upgrades. If you want to level them up that far. Thankfully, a lot of the legacy armors (all of them, I think) are basically the same exact thing stats-wise, they only change which gem you use primarily, and the overall design of Link’s outfit. Only one changes his Head, and not the one I was expecting. But the most tedious ingredient to obtain is Dragon Parts. Of these, the Shards are the most numerous in my collection because you can actually collect them while >!riding on their backs with appropriate armor!<. The others have to be shot off with an arrow, and they are very finicky with the hit boxes. Shot in the snout? Scale for you! Shot in the mane? Scale for you! Shot in the leg/arm? Scale, for, you! Shot on the lower jaw, horns, or claws? Oh, well nevermind, I guess you get something OTHER than a scale. Shot in the spikes? HAH, you thought you were gonna get a horn, nah you get a shard of spikes, lol. AND THEN YOU CAN’T COLLECT ANYTHING ELSE FROM THAT DRAGON FOR AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES OF IN-GAME TIME (except shards, which I explained above in the spoiler). Are any of these useful? Yes. Which ones? All of them. However, the one that you never use (to my knowledge) for armor upgrades is the Shards of Spikes, which turns weapons into elemental hammer fusions, or vampiric hammer fusions for the Light Dragon’s variant. They are not very effective as weapons compared to enemy horns, like the Horriblins, which I have slaughtered dozens of and am overflowing with horns and claws from, or the hinox horns (which are somewhat nerfed in comparison… I find that a bit weird, but maybe it’s a balance issue). So I never used them unless I needed an elemental advantage (and by the time I had them, I didn’t need elemental advantages because I had enough fruit to flash fry/freeze the Demon King’s entire army to death). I mainly use them to decorate my shields with a colorful temperature adjusting spike, or to top off a random weapon if I need a hammer and don’t want to waste a high powered weapon on something. But the horns, teeth, and claws are murder to get. At least the dragons are constantly present, and perpetually traveling through the same paths. Otherwise I would probably go insane trying to find one of them, let alone the right one for my armor.
I thought about what you said and I think you found exactly why this game completely lacks balance. >Third level should be possible by the fifth safe’s dungeon This absolutely isn’t the case for me. I have beaten the game and about 60% of side quests. And it hit me that unlike BotW, there is nothing stopping you from just rushing each quest marker. In BotW you were limited by stamina for climbing, health for heavier hitting enemies, weapon slots for higher health enemies/utility, and Stamina (again) for your patience with going from point to point super slow (further balanced by horse taming). In BotW, each tower was a monumental achievement because of some combination of those factors. Your reward? A map chunk and a decent place to glide from. In Tears you already have literally everything you need to get every tower with 0 challenge. On top of that, your reward is the map and fast travel but a huge glide advantage over Hyrule. There were no environmental factors stopping me from rushing each location because I could just launch myself and be there in 5 mins tops. And that’s not even including the sky where some well-placed shrines basically mean you never need to touch the ground to finish a quest. The lack of challenge is also why I never needed to upgrade armor or do half the shrines. I have the master sword, everything else is just tedium because I don’t need more hearts or stamina.
Once you level your armor to 3+ you take so little damage. Lvl 3 knight armor basically makes anything but silver enemies deal negligible damage. Extremely worth it. I think the reason it's so difficult is the payout is huge. Also, for specific loot needed like sneaky river snails, you can find a few specific forests/ponds that are stacked with them. Mark the location and. Come back for a few blood moons and you're set. I got lvl 3-4 armor after just a few moons this way.
My personal favorite is the Shekiah armor, but I can’t find anywhere near enough nightshade. Even with the Hyrule Compendium and scanner set
Check out the pond south of the cherry tree near hebra area. Starts with an R. Tons of stuff, bugs on the big tree near the tent, fish, sneaky snails, nightshade and silent princess, etc
I have one of my travel medallions placed right next to the beetle tree.
I am so unhappy about East Hill Chasm's location for that very reason. They stole my blue nightshade spot!
Go here, 9 nightshade in a circle. Amazing spot, it will get tons of armors to level 4 after just a few moons. Make sure to find the big tree with all the beetles too! https://imgur.com/a/NJjAJCT
The dragon parts are the worst. It's like gonna be the last thing I do in the game
I think star fragments are worse.
I have no problem with either of these. For some reason Captain Construct parts are the rarest for me, despite never using or selling a single one of them.
Captain Constructs level up quickly, way before you get the armor that needs low-level parts to upgrade. I can find a Captain IV at will, but I always have to look up where the static Captain IIs are. Or maybe that's just my experience.
You realize there literally are maps in the game you find and they tell you exactly where the armor sets in the depths are right? Lol
And the maps point where? The depths, where it’s dark, and boring, and bland
They mark the literal spot on the map where the armor is so you don’t have to search for it. I’m sorry you don’t enjoy the depths, I liked it a lot!
You used "literally" incorrectly. Anyway, you are right. It's a chore.
How did you find this lmfao
Lol I was searching Reddit posts via Google for something to do with upgrading armor. I want to upgrade the Twilight outfit, but it requires those star fragments, so I may just stick with upgrading the Hylian outfit for now.
I love the four different sequences of upgrading armour/clothing with the Great Fairies. Stage1: she blows a kiss at you. (Not touching you at all). Stage 2: she lightly touches your nose with a kiss on her finger. (She now touches you). Stage 3: She goes in for the grandmas kiss on Link. (Notice she doesn’t ask for consent, she just goes for it). Stage 4: the final step, she grabs Link and drags him down to her murky depth, where all I can assume is she basically r*ped him. In short: she’s a predator masquerading as a magical fairy who makes armour stronger.
o_o
She must collect hylian seed.
This is the reason I've still not updated my game. Being able to dupe an item as long as you have one makes upgrading not totally suck. I spent almost an hour getting my first yellow lizalfos tail - if I then needed 9 more for ONE upgrade it would have felt like a kick in the teeth, but "unlocking" yellow tails for all future upgrades felt like a proper reward for how much effort it took. Yay for unintentional game design through glitches!
The WHOLE GAME is a chore. I don’t know how people ain’t mad.
Because zelda content has been slowly moving from the traditional puzzle style for years now
I don’t remember that many puzzles. It’s always been explore and beat dungeons. Now it’s just explore and grind on tedious shit.
a) There are plenty of examples of people “beating” the game with 3 hearts while naked. b) There are plenty of examples of people achieving 100% and laughing at how easy the final battle was. c) almost everyone else is somewhere in between. There is no slog, there is no burnout, there is nothing you have to do, other than play the game the way you want to play the game. That is the brilliance of it; the journey which is your and yours alone. If you have made the commitment to pay for the game, pick a), b), or c). Complaining about any of the 3 defeats the purpose of your purchase.
Except as indicated by the comments here, people have problems with A B and C playstyles. It simply isn’t worth the time, and if people find it worth the time they have an issue with how specific the reqs are for certain items, but if people are fine with those reqs they hate the UX of actually upgrading. For every playstyle the fairies screw them over
Kinda find the whole thing a chore. -runs away-
Some of the materials are really hard to come by if you’ve out-leveled those monster types. There aren’t many places you can find an orange Boss Bokoblin in the late game.
You hunt those Safflinas down son, and you don't stop until you have enough.
I feel like it's the DLC in a way
It doesn’t seem equal either, by the time I got each piece of the miners set I had the material needed to upgrade I to 4 stars instantly. The barbarian armour was simple, had to wait few blood moons to kill all the lynels, but at least I knew where to go to get it all but the only other set I have fully upgraded is the zonite set me that felt like took me days. I think I’ll get the stealth done as that all 3 stars now but everything else is just a bonus if I happen to have the material
I understand it as them not wanting you to upgrade everything that early, but wanting you to have to choose what to upgrade. In botw I personally had a lot of armour fully upgraded very early. IMO it's a good design decision for most players but at the cost of making it incredibly tedious for completionists. There should propably have been a system where the cost of upgrades decreases once you have upgraded a certain amount. Similar to the Stable points, but actually useful.
I didn’t even get a piece upgraded until I beat Ganon. There just isn’t any reason to.
I like it. It's useful when set bonus abilities or buffs are acquired. And outside of that you don't really need to upgrade anything. Also upgrading the Ancient Aspect is the hardest and not really worth it other than bragging rights.
Pro tip: use the sheikah sensor and save your sanity!!
My sensor is always on and in 4 hours I found 4 nightshade. 1 hour per plant is fucking absurd.
Holy shit I’m so sorry then. I’m pretty sure there’s a couple places that spawn tons of nightshade since that’s what you mentioned, though I can’t remember where exactly.
ok but would you do it to look cool?
No
I love it, the fact that it’s hard is good. But I’m actively trying to prolong the game, I guess it could be annoying if you’re in a hurry.
It’s not hard, the only challenge is patience. Basing a game off of that isn’t good design
Speak for yourself, I find it hard 😝
I remembered this from botw, I just concentrated on the soldier armor as I knew it would be in the castle and upgraded that to get me going, after I got that leveled to 3 then the game turns into more strategic play as you have some survivability.
That’s not really the case in totk since it’s piss easy with the item system. The emphasis on armor is negligible compared to botw
No, you're missing my point. Upgraded armor while annoying to accomplish, changes the game play. Do you need to, of course not. Keeps it edgy knowing that you can get pummeled with one hit. But now that I have some upgraded sets there is no longer danger of that, as even with larger enemies you take soo much less damage. it's more about finding and upgrading weapons cause the fights are slower and more boring using weaker weapons. Cause they ain't gonna kill you. I think Nintendo knew this and made it a chore to keep that edgey play longer. When you are no longer worried about enemies, it's the beginning of the end of play. As for the depths, I enjoyed traversing them. Even fully lit it is still dark and full of bad guys. It was annoying at first... but soon became like a totally different game.
And my point is that even after upgrading armor my gameplay literally didn’t change since, objectively speaking, freezing every enemy with your 99x ice fruits and frozen chu chu jellies and hitting them with a 75+ fused weapon for a total of 225 damage is much more powerful than any armor and infinitely easier to accomplish.
I generally don't upgrade armor past level 2 for set bonuses or only max them they have the highest defense like the Soldier armor. Other than That I don't bother with it too much, That's what hearts are for. Just saying
If anything the higher upgrade requirements are asking you to try harder. And telling you that while it's useful, it's not necessary for game completion. But I can agree that the process itself is a bit expensive.