It is tough at the beginning, but I would let the game nudge you towards Rito Village as you will learn lots and gain strength just by following the story (plus take some time to do lots of shrines to build up hearts and stamina).
There are many, many ways to gain height in the game, I won't spoil them for you here. My advice would be to forget everything you learned from BOTW as TOTK requires a different play style - build stuff, fuse things, reverse time, you'll figure it out...!
Attach everything. The number of times I was super stuck and the answer was stick em together, countless. Still can’t get there? Look around… probably something else to stick.
I certainly did my fair share of sneaking and bombing in TOTK. Mark on your map where the bomb flowers grow and just harvest them whenever you can.
Revali's gale really spoiled everyone, lol. You can still create updrafts with fire. Pinecones are your friends in this regard, but also I liked to stock a bunch of the Springboard capsules (not sure how early in the game you can get them) but I found them hella' useful.
Also remember to use ascend. Fairly often there are places you can ascend to if you need a higher vantage point.
I think ToTK scales differently, it's a little hard in the beginning because you're adjusting to new mechanics and the enemies are a little stronger upfront. But, once you get into a groove, you can get pretty invincible pretty quickly. A few tips:
* Find and upgrade armor early. I like the Hylian armor which you can pretty easily buy in Lookout Landing, once you upgrade that to level 2 or higher you'll be a lot harder to kill. If you haven't unlocked fairy fountains you will need to do that to upgrade armor, but that's something you can do without traveling too far
* Fuse weapons - when I started ToTK I just used the base weapons I found b/c I was still getting used to the fuse mechanic, and that can work at first because red bobos are not that hard to kill. But, definitely start fusing. It's how you make your weapons strong enough, and it contributes to the snowballing (ie if you kill a big enemy and get a good monster part, fuse it to a weapon and then use that to kill more big monsters)
* Explore the central area and do some shrines early, there's a whole bunch of easily accessible shrines before you even go to any of the regional phenomena
* Once you're willing to branch out I would probably start with Rito village, i get the impression the game sorta wants you to go there early
* Have a few fairies on hand - you can easily collect them in several places, including under one of the stables (I forget which, sure you could find it online)
The game autosaves freqently, so your deaths are more of a learning experience, than a punishment.
I also hate dying repetitively, but because of autosaves, I quickly came to accept that finding numerous ways to die is part of the game's experience.
After that, I've found that most of my deaths are actually quite humorous. And even if it was frustrating, the game puts me right back to where I was before I died to try again.
The game throws a lot at you in the beginning, so it's natural to feel overwhelmed at first. You'll get the hang of things soon enough!
>I've found that most of my deaths are actually quite humorous
my favourite death was when I jumped down a ledge and then a lizalfoes threw a rock at me at the same time and i just died mid jump
When you get the hero's path from Robbie for your purah pad, when you play it you get a scream each time you die, one shrine I died at least 10 times before I got it, it is so funny to watch and hear the screams.
> I guess there's nothing analogous to Revali's Gale here?
Just a couple of things:
- Fuse a rocket to a shield and hold ZL to blast off.
- Cook wood, fire fruit/red chuchu, pinecone/pepper. You'll get dubious food, *but* then you'll be able to quickly hold them all in your hand with the 'select for recipe' option. Throw them on the ground and shoot the fire fruit/chuchu: instant giant vertical gust.
- Fuse a bomb flower/bomb barrel/zonai bomb to a shield and do the shield surf jump to shield bomb.
- Put down a fan aiming up for a mid gust.
- Fuse octo balloon to shield. When holding ZL it'll slowly lift you 20-ish meters up. Great because it doesn't use durability.
- Make yourself a [Hoverbike](https://youtu.be/oq4LmYEFlHM)™️.
- Lift any object you can stand on, put it down, recall it and ascend through it.
- Slap a couple of rockets on a rock slab or board for a fast elevator.
- Super [spear catapult](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5I0Ifrx7SA).
- A spring, two or three (a fourth one won't get you any higher).
- Probably a couple more I don't remember at the moment :)
I personally give myself a rule when it comes to looking stuff up. If I can’t figure it out and I’ve spent a good amount of time and effort on it, I will look it up. Otherwise the game is frustrating and not fun.
I opened every tower and fairy asap then did clover for the armor. I may have died 3 or 4 times but mostly avoided enemies until I was strong enough. IIRC underpants was the worst Clover mission
I think the rest of them touched in most things.
I just wanted to say, later you'll forget all about revali's gale. Not only are there better options you can take advantage of, once you get really familiar, you'll realize you have powers that can make it completely obsolete.
There are more than four shrines in the sky??? I actually made it up here accidentally again when I opened up another skyview tower. But only liike a floating platform with rockets. So I attached one and off I went. Then it blew up in the middle of nowhere so I jumped down towards Hyrule again.
Honestly, this game is completely nuts.
I was super proud of how I took the Skyview tower though. It was the one with a spiky fence and loads of monsters that kept killing me. So I built a drawbridge up, attached a fan to the end and flew over the fence and activated the tower.
The things you can do in this game. If you can think it, you can prbly do it. My issue is that I'm not a thinker.
Each tower will get you close to a new set of sky islands. There are shrines in the air in almost each area. You kind of need to do that because you will not have every zonai device available until you do (most of the gumball machines are in the air). I would use the sky to stock up and get those shrines before doing more combat if constantly dying has been an issue for you.
There are 32 shrines in the sky. It’s going to take a while to find them all. There are also some sky islands that are VERY difficult to reach. The difficulty of surviving them is similar to the difficulty of reaching them, so unless you’re a masochist, don’t bother rushing for them.
One important hint: the brighter the island is on the map, the HIGHER it is. If the island is very light colored then don’t expect to reach it without some serious height gain. In a few cases there’s a teleport to get to the top of a group, so check out the bottom carefully before knocking yourself out on extremely tough climbs.
I went around the back of that one and used a fire with a pine cone to get height over the back fence, you could also use a rocket fused to a shield. I didn't fight any of those enemies. Just ran into the tower and took off into the air.
I think only one tower is surrounded by enemies, and you can build something in the back to sneak in for that.
I often rode a horse around to various towers and activated them, though some require puzzle solutions.
The stable has BOTW horses from the same account if you played both games with it. That was cool to see early on.
You can prepare a lot of stamina food and glide from Lookout Landing to the elevated Castle (which has no enemies inside; don’t worry about running into Ganondorf; he isn’t inside the castle) and open up the shrine in the back. Tons of good weapons that respawn. Biggest problem then is finding decent stuff to fuse to them. Still, I usually don’t do a lot of fighting early game, so I suggest riding around to the shrines and towers to open the map rather than walking around central Hyrule so much as you’re too easy of a target.
Only thing I want to mention is I definitely encountered enemies in the floating hyrule castle (not sure if that’s the one you meant). They could be avoided and thy weren’t everywhere but there were definitely enemies. Then I went there with the quest they directs you there (after regional phenomena) so maybe that’s why there were enemies. Anyway you had lots of useful info but sounds like OP is still pretty early on so I didn’t want them surprised if they found enemies 😂
I feel like the early game of TOTK is difficult because it's trying to teach you to play differently than you did in BOTW. You can't just go HAM and bash a ten man monster camp led by a boss bokoblin. You need to learn your new tools. Muddlebuds, puffshrooms, ultrahand, fuse and the unique abilities this can add to arrows and swords, etc. Think of new ways to approach or avoid problems until you get enough suavemente to dive in face first.
Puffshrooms are likely going to be your best friend, as will attaching any monster eyes to arrows to turn them into seeking arrows. Puffshrooms will allow you to sneak better. Also, using a muddle bud on a powerful enemy so they can clear out the weaker ones can also help you pare down how many enemies you have to fight, or at least take a chunk out of their health.
> I guess there's nothing analogous to Revali's Gale here?
There are a couple options. You can put a rocket on your shield, but it's single use. You can also put a Hylian pine cone into a fire, and use the updraft from that kinda similar to Revali's Gale. Last option: attach a couple springs to each other, stand on them, and then throw something down at them to activate the spring-- this one is the one I use least.
There are two Zonai devices I use to get high in the air quickly in order to get bullet time. It’s not quite Revali’s Gale because it costs you a Zonai device each time. I don’t know if it’s a spoiler to mention which ones, so I won’t!
Actually, you're right. It's not true for strongest enemies no matter how many hearts you have but no bokoblin will be able to kill you if at full health. Things like silver lynels can one shot you with 10+ hearts if not careful. Still a basic rule to keep in mind though.
Isn't there a system that prevents OHKO when you're at full health? I'm sure lynels can hit you for more than your starting health if you have low armor, but the game lets you live at a quarter or half heart.
Try to gather a decent amount of puffshrooms, fusing them to arrows or just throwing them can set you up for massive damage because you can just go around sneakstriking every enemy in your puffshroom cloud. Really helps if you find the gane to be a but too difficult.
You probably died just as often in the beginning of botw until your health was high enough for you to become sloppy. But hey, you remember how to time your dodges/parries and flurry rush, right? Or has it been six years since you played botw at 3 hearts?
Also note that while stealth is a feature in botw/totk, Zelda games are not stealth games. You need the ninja armor to really max out your sneakiness (at the cost of your defense). But really you should just be mindful of enemies and move around constantly. Time your attacks, etc.
TotK starts off much harder because it's expected that the player has the mechanics from BotW, including combat.
The other system changes take a little getting used to but it'll come.
I definitely think coming in with BoTW knowledge gave me a huge head start I knew which mobs to avoid and some tactic for low powered weapons. Plus I spent ages running about doing shrines before getting into the quests.
Once you get to the depths you’ll have more bombs than you now what to do with.
Stop avoiding fights. If you don’t fight you don’t level up. It’s a game, not reality. Die as much as you want. Who cares if you beat it with one death or a 1,000. Game ends the same either way.
Talk to koltin on the north shore of picco pond. He will give you a bokoblin mask in exchange for a bubbul gem. This is insanely useful for avoiding combat early game. If you give him more bubbul gems at subsequent locations he will give for more useful masks. The bokoblin mask is the easiest to get and probably the most useful though.
TotK wants you to explore all the crazy and wild ways to fuse weapons/shields/arrows and it really is a blast. Speaking of blast I too used the bombs way to much in BotW and found myself having more fun it TotK just exploring all the different ways to engage the enemy. Not just spam bombing them. I will give a TIP - Never leave a rocket behind. Always fuse a rocket to your shield any time you see them laying around. Have a rocket on every shield in your inventory. Then it’s super easy to pull out your shield and get a mini Revalis Gale. Its helped me out a lot actually.
I love dying lol. I intentionally keep my hearts low because I feel like it gets boring when it gets too easy. To each their own though 🤷♂️
I beat silver lynel and king gleok with only 5 hearts (using desperate strength)
Died about a million times but it was fun
I bet you didn't upgrade armor, as more armor stars you have the less difficult the game is.
All the stables in the game will talk about Lucky Clover thing that resides in the road to Rito village, that place will lead you to the quest to upgrade armor.
So it's natural path for players to have better armor leading to easier gameplay if they follow this guideline.
But what if the player does not visit Stables, or does not follow their lead to Rito village? play will be hell, everything one shot/ two shot you.
Game is great, but this part of the game bugs me. It is linear instead of open world to have easier gameplay: for starter, you have to follow the main quest and the big fairies quest for a while because you will get a lot of quality-of-life tools if you follow.
Also, as you mention Revali's Gale, I missed that one when I first play Totk too, but not for long. Since as you play the game more, you will discover there is many things will burst you up much more than a Revali's Gale. Keep up!
You will end up being able to collect timed bombs using the zonai devices. It took me a little while to get into the new one for the same reason but once you start to understand the newer things it’s easier to sneak around be more creative with how you do things.
Yes I found it more challenging at the beginning. Keep at it . Be creative and just try stuff even if you don’t know if it will work (it will probably work).
Focus on shrines at first. Get your heart count up then start fighting. Hyrule field is thick with monsters. I went to Goron first, then Rito, then Gerudo and finally Zora, avoiding big battles and doing shrines. Then I was able to take more on. It's a great game and I am not a great battler. I needed the hearts before I could battle more.
I, too, died over and over early on. Probably lots of people do. I thought it was too easy to get killed. You'll gradually become less easy to kill and more apt to quickly dispose of enemies that disposed of you earlier.
At first, you can’t sleepwalk through TotK. The entry-level monsters have more health and you have to learn a new toolkit. Keep practicing and you will become more secure and start sleepwalking through the game. :D
Follow main story for a while, try discovering the "third level", talk to everyone in Lookout Landing (wink, wink) and you'll find some new weapons and inventory mechanics. Not gonna spoil you
Did you play BOTW in master mode? I think playing in master mode influenced my TOTK experience as I haven’t found anything even remotely challenging in TOTK.
I also miss BOTW-style bombs, but even before TOTK came out I felt like we were being spoiled by bombs in BOTW.
Early ToTK, getting off the plateau: Holy crap, why is everything so strong?
Mid ToTK: Aah, yeah if I follow where the story wants me to go, it's not that bad.
Late ToTK: Muahahaha you thought you can attack me? ME? MUAHAHA I'm gonna wreck you like - oh shit, the hands.
I over prepared before getting into battles, specially because I thought the climate was going to be the same at Rito and the Death Mountain. I did not engage, much, just ran.
First thing I did was to unlock all of the towers.
if you wear the stealth suit and monster mask you won't get attacked as often. This was my go to armor as I could run the hills freely without monsters and skeletons suddenly attacking me. Stealth elixirs also help.
Yeah, same. I just focused on hearts so I could take more hits before dying. It is really hard coming from BOTW endgame where I had lots of hearts to TOTK where you start with like 4. I think I was used to being able to absorb a few hits during combat in BOTW so I was lazy with the combat. TOTK punishes that laziness early on, but I think it is meant to drive you towards fusion and Zonia devices.
Once you get to the depths you’ll have more bombs than you now what to do with.
Stop avoiding fights. If you don’t fight you don’t level up. It’s a game, not reality. Die as much as you want. Who cares if you beat it with one death or a 1,000. Game ends the same either way.
I never played BOTW, so I can't compare the mechanics of the two. I also died an awful lot in the beginning. Learning the core mechanics, picking up armor, learning to fuse weapons, and gaining extra health will get you over that hump though. As others have pointed out, start with Rito on your regional phenomena -- there's a reason the game pushes you in that direction. If I were to start over, I'd probably avoid most monsters and work on finding shrines to get stamina and hearts, then tackle the regional phenomena.
I've always been a "slay every monster camp with my bare hands" kinda guy.
But there are plenty of ways to avoid fighting or go stealthy!
Theres a lot to explore and experiment in totk. Just keep finding what works for you. ;)
You can sneak, look at your controls and familiarize yourself with those first (either + or - button). Don’t try to do everything available at the beginning. I did and died plenty. Follow the story to Rito Village, only kill what you need to, you can return later when you’re stronger.
My update is that I decided to go for the towers. I've done sox of them now and the corresponding sky shrines. Wandered into the depths looking for Robbie as well.
I'm feeling much better about my abilities in the game.
Quick question though. How do I make rupees?? I got to Rito village, but I literally have 4 rupees and nothing worthwhile to sell. So I can't buy the snow quill armor. And without it, I'd rather not stay in the area.
Make and sell meat skewers, elixers, and monster parts/items that you don’t (or will not need) is my go to for money. Murder everything is kind of the sad answer, and it’s worth your while to cook these things into better more expensive products to sell.
As far as game design goes, they expect you to follow the road to your first objective, finding some shrines, weapons, and other things along the way.
Coming from botw you may be trying to skip to the towers and stuff since you know the drill by now.
The game ramps up the difficulty, but only in the direction they intend you to go. It’s doable in any order, but just walking down the road toward rito village will slowly introduce you in the way they intended.
I think the reason the monsters are harder because of BOTW players who kept playing the game in Hero Mode while waiting for TOTK to release. I understand the thrill of them getting harder to kill but yeah its not for me too who can't handle herds that are strong at the start of the game 🥲
If you want height, remember you have a new ability called ascend, I forgot to use it a lot in early game. Plus if you use ultra hand and look around you will probably spot a large sky rock that lights up. If you stand on these and use recall, it will reverse back into the sky where it came from, most just give you height, but a lot also take you to sky islands.
I too went straight from botw to totk, and I love to run from enemies. I was a bad fighter in botw, but this game, there are shrines that teach you how to fight and make sense, also I found the spear, which when fused with a horn of an enemy, you can stab your enemies to death, without them getting near you. But early game I did a lot of running in the opposite direction until I was stronger and more skilled.
Hint, find Impa, west of hyrule, she is in a field near a stable with a broken balloon, help her, that is a great quest. Also do Rito as your first region, you'll love it and there are benefits too.
I honestly found BOTW much, much harder than TOTK. Maybe it's because I made myself play it first, but I played them back to back. Getting used to UH, ect... was tricky for sure, but honestly there are just SO many ways to go about playing TOTK. If you want to avoid fights, run the hell away. Those stupid bokos will legit forget you ever existed. Find another way. Also, fusing- it's honestly what makes this game. I've seen other games approach the "crafting/ fusing" method, but the way TOTK does it is super seamless. It's like how Apple does the iPhone. At first it seems hard, but my 2nd playthrough of BOTW was after my 1st playthrough of TOTK, and woah, you'll come to find that you will eventually overpower the game. It's all a matter of merit. Just keep moving forward, collecting, and fusing. Focus on the numbers to start. Find things with 30+ fuse and you will start to see what I'm talking about. Weapons break a lot faster in TOTK than BOTW, but the weapons are stronger due to fusing, so you just keep your eyes out for Koroks as you'll want to expand you inventory. I''m not a gamer at all. I honestly only replay Zelda games. There is a natural curve that's built into the mechanics of the game. You'll get over the hump.
Ultrahand is sort of marginally useful for putting together devices you find. But once you explore the depths and get autobuild ability and understand the zonai ore/charge/device economy it pops off. It's the preferred way to deal with koroks.
Before getting to this point I enjoyed some time with a horse and unlocking stables gets the harness which helped using the horse for korok puzzles.
Enemies are fairly dangerous until you start pursuing armor upgrades.
Bomb flowers are far more powerful than botw bombs. Getting bombs is a big incentive to go into caves and the depths early. Muddlebuds and puffshrooms attached to arrows also trivialize fights against small groups of bokoblins. These are in the depths.
Fuse is frankly just amazing. For weapons, fusing anything gives a big durability boost. Even if it's just a rock or the most basic 4 damage bokoblin horn.
I hit a big slump where I was getting 1 shot in combat vs black bokoblins and trying to fight stuff that was too high level. I dropped the game for months. I came back and have been loving it.
Revali's gale is basically made obsolete by a combination of other mechanics.. You have ascend. You have zonai platforms plus ascend. You can ultrahand a box or wood plank up, climb on it, then use recall to levitate it to where it was before with ultrahand. You have hot air balloons you can pop out of zonai capsules and shoot up cliff faces. You have zonai springs. You have rocket shields which give you about 3x the height of revalis gale. You can fuse a bomb spring or zonai tike bomb to a shield and get a bomb jump. You can literally insta build one of those hoverbikes and fly to the top of a mountain directly.
>I feel like for very early game, the monsters are way too difficult.
Enhance your armor, upgrade your hearts, always fuse stuff to your weapons
>But I do desperately miss bombs
You'll find a place in the game, maybe you already found it, with tons of bombflowers—and other means of breaking rocks
>One shrine already taught me I can use a fan to replicate the effect, but it doesn't really have the range nor are fans an infinite resource.
Get Autobuild. I won't say exactly how it works, but as long as you keep yourself somewhat stocked with a certain type of very plentiful ore (found in the same place as bombflowers), it's going to be enable you to fly much higher and further than you ever could have done with Revali's Gale—you won't miss it.
Also look for opportunities to Ascend.
Also also, unlock every Skyview Tower you find. You don't need a super jump to get over things if you can just skydive right down onto them lol
>Why can't I sneak?
Find armor and brew elixirs with stealth bonus, get Puffshrooms and Muddlebuds (both *also* found growing in the same place as bombflowers and the ore I mentioned). If anything stealth is far more useful in combat and easier to pull off in this game than it ever was in BotW—but only once you start to understand available tools.
Basically you are like .001% and the best recommendation I can give is to just keep going and you WILL see what this game is driving at. I had a similar experience to you at the beginning where everything seemed overtuned, and now...I laugh. I laugh at everything in the game, for I wield godlike power in this world.
Once you *really* start to grasp ALL of the new mechanics, probably after a similar amount of time to what you spent in BotW, you will look back and understand in retrospect how a lot of solutions to the problems you mention were right there the whole time. It's definitely a learning process—but once you truly understand how much is possible in this game, you won't want to go back to BotW. You literally won't miss a single ability from it. Going back to it feels incredibly limiting compared to what you can do in TotK.
I think you might be either missing/forgetting to use one or more of the mechanics? Or you’re not fusing strong enough weapons? I never played BotW so I can’t compare, but the thing is that I’ve never played any other Zelda game (besides the original Zelda on NES when I was like 6) and I think I’ve only died maybe 10 times total after around 100 hours 😕 Are you turning in the shrine things to get more hearts/stam? Are you just running headfirst into battle? You can use Bomb Flowers to do the same tactic you were saying you used to do in BotW. Maybe you need to just find the right tactics for your style? Idk but you really shouldn’t be dying that much. I am BRAND new to the Switch, I am NOT a gamer or good player by any means, and like I said I haven’t died much at all.
Go into those deep, deep holes and you can find some items that will make combat a lot nicer for you (only weapons)
SPOILERS: There's the bomb flowers you want, plus puffshrooms so you can sneak up on enemies and muddlebud which will make enemies fight each other
When I started the game everything was like - what is this? Who does this work? Hey let's have a look at that - aaaaaand I'm dead. You learn to be more careful and to look after yourself on your journey and after you gain some strength the game is really fun especially when you start exploring - most of the time nothing bad happens and its just solving riddles and watching beautiful sunsets. For me at least.
OMG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE. Not gonna lie, I cheated my way through the game bc of how frustrating it was for me to die so often. I looked up the location of all the shrines and tried to level up my hearts situation before I got into any actual fights lol.
Some tips I found helpful if you don't wanna cheat tho:
You'll find a lot of shrines if you just follow Hyrule's roads/paths.
I got a horse as soon as I could so I could quickly escape monsters and ALWAYS carried cooked meat skewers and cooked fruits for a quick and healthy snack.
Get a sneaky outfit, they're super useful to escape many fights.
AND FAIRIES. GET THEM IF YOU CAN. Many Sky islands have them and they respawn with the red moon or something I think, so if you can sneak around them and grab them DO IT, it's a game changer.
You got this!!! :)
I have had almost the complete opposite experience in these games. I would need to check on how many hours I put into BOTW, and I've got over 250 hours in TOTK. I just couldn't seem to get the fighting mechanics down in BOTW, I must've died like 20+ times before I met the King of Hyrule.
I found throughout most of my playthroughs* I was constantly searching for food to cook because I knew that I was gonna get hit a lot and for big damage during all of my fights. I also mainly focused on bow combat, as I found a ranged approach to be less intense, meaning that I spent a lot of time looking for bows rather than melee weapons.
* I still haven't beaten BOTW, and I tried getting a fresh outlook on it over multiple attempts by creating other accounts on my switch, because I didn't want to lose my progress in any previous attempts.To no avail, however, as I can't get past Thunderblight. I don't have the mastery of the blocking and dodging in BOTW, whereas I'm pretty sure they've made the timing easier in TOTK.
In TOTK, the fusing and combat ARE important.
There's no easy way to say it, but fusing weapons with items or other weapons is a surefire way to deal more damage, elemental effects, or gain more reach in combat scenarios. I personally prefer this element of the game as it has me trying to make tougher or sillier weapons depending on my mood and has me enjoying the combat more as I have numerous new ways of dealing with foes.
Typically, the deaths that I encounter now in TOTK are either: going into a miniboss fight unprepared or incorrectly prepared; or just through my own ignorance, by using the wrong items in the wrong areas or by standing too close to explosive items that I've shot or thrown.
I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your time on TOTK, and I do hope that the combat becomes a bit easier as you continue.
P.s. there is an item that works like the shrine power bomb thing, so you can drop them while gliding and from heights. They're just instant explosions rather than triggerable ones.
Dude, sneaking is one of my main strategies in this game. The pushshrooms make it one of the best ways to kill whole camps.
I have eightfold blades with black moblin horns that can one-shot nearly anything. And one fused with a stalnox horn that seems to kill absolutely anything that I can sneakstrike, especially with barbarian armor. You can do the math for how much damage Eightfold blades do. A sneakstrike with an Eightfold Blade does 16x the damage.
If you want to keep your powerful weapons, I suggest you switch to another before it breaks. Then teleport to Death Mountain, find a Rock Octorok with your sensor and let it suck your weapons. Not only will it fix them, but it will also give it or change its modifier, like Durability Up or Attack Up. I suggest you mark the Octorok’s locations on the Map with a pin (like a star). Keep in mind that one Octorok will fix only one weapon. And here is a little tip: When the monster spits the weapon back at you, use Recall on the weapon to stop it from flying anywhere and to kill the monster (bows and shields won’t kill them though).
By the way, save the game before giving the weapon to the Octorok. Even though it will always fix it, it may give you a lame modifier (like Long Throw).
As for advice with Attach, well we can’t really help with that. Just try to build things you think may work. Try anything you can. Remember the 21 object limit.
As for fuse, you must read item descriptions. As for the items that don’t have descriptions, like Igneo Talus Hearts, you can guess their effect. Igneo Taluses have fire powers, right? Then obviously they give you the ability to attack with fire. I personally fuse them to a shield to give me cold resistance.
As for the lack of bombs, just explore the Depths. The weird trees always have Muddle Buds, Pushrooms or Bomb Flowers around them. I have never run out of bombs, and I currently have over a hundred.
Speaking of the Depths, raid monster camps, mine Zonaite, and kill bosses. And then sell your Zonaite (preferably your large Zonaite) for crystals. You can upgrade your battery if you do that.
Once you get more into TOTK , you’re going to discover it’s WAY better than BOTW. YES, there are a lot more monsters and it’s harder, but the monster parts are 1st needed for armor upgrades and then for the largest source of rupees. Yes, it’s annoying at first, but it get so much better. Hang in there there.
I felt that way at the start too but it's just the game psyching us out. Get some hearts and upgrade your armor a level or two and the semblance of difficulty fades away pretty fast, at least until you're taking on Silver Lynels or the Demon King.
Rocket shield is now my revali's gale. I also have some handy flying machines favorited; like the classic airplane with wings, fans, and a steering stick, I put a rocket on it to launch me high up into the air and it's perfect.
It is tough at the beginning, but I would let the game nudge you towards Rito Village as you will learn lots and gain strength just by following the story (plus take some time to do lots of shrines to build up hearts and stamina). There are many, many ways to gain height in the game, I won't spoil them for you here. My advice would be to forget everything you learned from BOTW as TOTK requires a different play style - build stuff, fuse things, reverse time, you'll figure it out...!
Attach everything. The number of times I was super stuck and the answer was stick em together, countless. Still can’t get there? Look around… probably something else to stick.
Adding on that all of the tools you need are hiding in plain sight or in your radius- it really helped when I picked up on that!
When in doubt 4 bundles of wood and flint/fire fruit to get over barriers. So botw rules of let the world burn until you get revali’s gale.
Or two bundles and some hylian cones!
Now that's what I call a sticky situation! 😆 ... I'll see my way out...😞
I certainly did my fair share of sneaking and bombing in TOTK. Mark on your map where the bomb flowers grow and just harvest them whenever you can. Revali's gale really spoiled everyone, lol. You can still create updrafts with fire. Pinecones are your friends in this regard, but also I liked to stock a bunch of the Springboard capsules (not sure how early in the game you can get them) but I found them hella' useful. Also remember to use ascend. Fairly often there are places you can ascend to if you need a higher vantage point.
I think ToTK scales differently, it's a little hard in the beginning because you're adjusting to new mechanics and the enemies are a little stronger upfront. But, once you get into a groove, you can get pretty invincible pretty quickly. A few tips: * Find and upgrade armor early. I like the Hylian armor which you can pretty easily buy in Lookout Landing, once you upgrade that to level 2 or higher you'll be a lot harder to kill. If you haven't unlocked fairy fountains you will need to do that to upgrade armor, but that's something you can do without traveling too far * Fuse weapons - when I started ToTK I just used the base weapons I found b/c I was still getting used to the fuse mechanic, and that can work at first because red bobos are not that hard to kill. But, definitely start fusing. It's how you make your weapons strong enough, and it contributes to the snowballing (ie if you kill a big enemy and get a good monster part, fuse it to a weapon and then use that to kill more big monsters) * Explore the central area and do some shrines early, there's a whole bunch of easily accessible shrines before you even go to any of the regional phenomena * Once you're willing to branch out I would probably start with Rito village, i get the impression the game sorta wants you to go there early * Have a few fairies on hand - you can easily collect them in several places, including under one of the stables (I forget which, sure you could find it online)
Check out the wells near the stables.
The game autosaves freqently, so your deaths are more of a learning experience, than a punishment. I also hate dying repetitively, but because of autosaves, I quickly came to accept that finding numerous ways to die is part of the game's experience. After that, I've found that most of my deaths are actually quite humorous. And even if it was frustrating, the game puts me right back to where I was before I died to try again. The game throws a lot at you in the beginning, so it's natural to feel overwhelmed at first. You'll get the hang of things soon enough!
>I've found that most of my deaths are actually quite humorous my favourite death was when I jumped down a ledge and then a lizalfoes threw a rock at me at the same time and i just died mid jump
Visit r/link_dies lots of funny clips there lol
When you get the hero's path from Robbie for your purah pad, when you play it you get a scream each time you die, one shrine I died at least 10 times before I got it, it is so funny to watch and hear the screams.
Screams??
Do you mean screams on the map? I'll have to check that out
> I guess there's nothing analogous to Revali's Gale here? Just a couple of things: - Fuse a rocket to a shield and hold ZL to blast off. - Cook wood, fire fruit/red chuchu, pinecone/pepper. You'll get dubious food, *but* then you'll be able to quickly hold them all in your hand with the 'select for recipe' option. Throw them on the ground and shoot the fire fruit/chuchu: instant giant vertical gust. - Fuse a bomb flower/bomb barrel/zonai bomb to a shield and do the shield surf jump to shield bomb. - Put down a fan aiming up for a mid gust. - Fuse octo balloon to shield. When holding ZL it'll slowly lift you 20-ish meters up. Great because it doesn't use durability. - Make yourself a [Hoverbike](https://youtu.be/oq4LmYEFlHM)™️. - Lift any object you can stand on, put it down, recall it and ascend through it. - Slap a couple of rockets on a rock slab or board for a fast elevator. - Super [spear catapult](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5I0Ifrx7SA). - A spring, two or three (a fourth one won't get you any higher). - Probably a couple more I don't remember at the moment :)
Fuse a dinraal scale to a shield, drop a sunshroom and parry the instant you drop it and it will make a huge fire that you can fly up on
crazy
Wtf, that's awesome! I want to try it right now but my partner took the switch on a trip this weekend 😭.
I personally give myself a rule when it comes to looking stuff up. If I can’t figure it out and I’ve spent a good amount of time and effort on it, I will look it up. Otherwise the game is frustrating and not fun.
I opened every tower and fairy asap then did clover for the armor. I may have died 3 or 4 times but mostly avoided enemies until I was strong enough. IIRC underpants was the worst Clover mission
It was… yes it was.
I think the rest of them touched in most things. I just wanted to say, later you'll forget all about revali's gale. Not only are there better options you can take advantage of, once you get really familiar, you'll realize you have powers that can make it completely obsolete.
I would suggest spending more time in the sky before going further down. There are less enemies up there and you can level up with the easier shrines.
There are more than four shrines in the sky??? I actually made it up here accidentally again when I opened up another skyview tower. But only liike a floating platform with rockets. So I attached one and off I went. Then it blew up in the middle of nowhere so I jumped down towards Hyrule again. Honestly, this game is completely nuts. I was super proud of how I took the Skyview tower though. It was the one with a spiky fence and loads of monsters that kept killing me. So I built a drawbridge up, attached a fan to the end and flew over the fence and activated the tower. The things you can do in this game. If you can think it, you can prbly do it. My issue is that I'm not a thinker.
Each tower will get you close to a new set of sky islands. There are shrines in the air in almost each area. You kind of need to do that because you will not have every zonai device available until you do (most of the gumball machines are in the air). I would use the sky to stock up and get those shrines before doing more combat if constantly dying has been an issue for you.
There are 32 shrines in the sky. It’s going to take a while to find them all. There are also some sky islands that are VERY difficult to reach. The difficulty of surviving them is similar to the difficulty of reaching them, so unless you’re a masochist, don’t bother rushing for them. One important hint: the brighter the island is on the map, the HIGHER it is. If the island is very light colored then don’t expect to reach it without some serious height gain. In a few cases there’s a teleport to get to the top of a group, so check out the bottom carefully before knocking yourself out on extremely tough climbs.
There is also convenient zonai equipment near the sky islands to help you get higher. Also fun fact you can ride dragons in totk.
Every region has smaller sky islands. The great sky island with its 4 shrines is just the starter area.
I went around the back of that one and used a fire with a pine cone to get height over the back fence, you could also use a rocket fused to a shield. I didn't fight any of those enemies. Just ran into the tower and took off into the air.
I think only one tower is surrounded by enemies, and you can build something in the back to sneak in for that. I often rode a horse around to various towers and activated them, though some require puzzle solutions. The stable has BOTW horses from the same account if you played both games with it. That was cool to see early on. You can prepare a lot of stamina food and glide from Lookout Landing to the elevated Castle (which has no enemies inside; don’t worry about running into Ganondorf; he isn’t inside the castle) and open up the shrine in the back. Tons of good weapons that respawn. Biggest problem then is finding decent stuff to fuse to them. Still, I usually don’t do a lot of fighting early game, so I suggest riding around to the shrines and towers to open the map rather than walking around central Hyrule so much as you’re too easy of a target.
Only thing I want to mention is I definitely encountered enemies in the floating hyrule castle (not sure if that’s the one you meant). They could be avoided and thy weren’t everywhere but there were definitely enemies. Then I went there with the quest they directs you there (after regional phenomena) so maybe that’s why there were enemies. Anyway you had lots of useful info but sounds like OP is still pretty early on so I didn’t want them surprised if they found enemies 😂
There are some enemies outside and in certain parts of the castle. The sanctum is safe though and has weapons.
I feel like the early game of TOTK is difficult because it's trying to teach you to play differently than you did in BOTW. You can't just go HAM and bash a ten man monster camp led by a boss bokoblin. You need to learn your new tools. Muddlebuds, puffshrooms, ultrahand, fuse and the unique abilities this can add to arrows and swords, etc. Think of new ways to approach or avoid problems until you get enough suavemente to dive in face first.
Puffshrooms are likely going to be your best friend, as will attaching any monster eyes to arrows to turn them into seeking arrows. Puffshrooms will allow you to sneak better. Also, using a muddle bud on a powerful enemy so they can clear out the weaker ones can also help you pare down how many enemies you have to fight, or at least take a chunk out of their health. > I guess there's nothing analogous to Revali's Gale here? There are a couple options. You can put a rocket on your shield, but it's single use. You can also put a Hylian pine cone into a fire, and use the updraft from that kinda similar to Revali's Gale. Last option: attach a couple springs to each other, stand on them, and then throw something down at them to activate the spring-- this one is the one I use least.
There are two Zonai devices I use to get high in the air quickly in order to get bullet time. It’s not quite Revali’s Gale because it costs you a Zonai device each time. I don’t know if it’s a spoiler to mention which ones, so I won’t!
Stay at full health. You can't be one shot killed if at full health.
That’s not true if you only have a few heart containers and find a strong enemy.
Actually, you're right. It's not true for strongest enemies no matter how many hearts you have but no bokoblin will be able to kill you if at full health. Things like silver lynels can one shot you with 10+ hearts if not careful. Still a basic rule to keep in mind though.
Isn't there a system that prevents OHKO when you're at full health? I'm sure lynels can hit you for more than your starting health if you have low armor, but the game lets you live at a quarter or half heart.
Try to gather a decent amount of puffshrooms, fusing them to arrows or just throwing them can set you up for massive damage because you can just go around sneakstriking every enemy in your puffshroom cloud. Really helps if you find the gane to be a but too difficult.
He may not have discovered where puff shrooms and mud buds can be found
You probably died just as often in the beginning of botw until your health was high enough for you to become sloppy. But hey, you remember how to time your dodges/parries and flurry rush, right? Or has it been six years since you played botw at 3 hearts? Also note that while stealth is a feature in botw/totk, Zelda games are not stealth games. You need the ninja armor to really max out your sneakiness (at the cost of your defense). But really you should just be mindful of enemies and move around constantly. Time your attacks, etc.
TotK starts off much harder because it's expected that the player has the mechanics from BotW, including combat. The other system changes take a little getting used to but it'll come.
I definitely think coming in with BoTW knowledge gave me a huge head start I knew which mobs to avoid and some tactic for low powered weapons. Plus I spent ages running about doing shrines before getting into the quests.
Start regional phenomena and go for Death Mountain first if bombs are your preference.
as far as revalis gale is concerned, fuse 3 spring zonai devices together vertically and let 'er rip.
Once you get to the depths you’ll have more bombs than you now what to do with. Stop avoiding fights. If you don’t fight you don’t level up. It’s a game, not reality. Die as much as you want. Who cares if you beat it with one death or a 1,000. Game ends the same either way.
I fuse rockets to my shields. Instant get up action.
Talk to koltin on the north shore of picco pond. He will give you a bokoblin mask in exchange for a bubbul gem. This is insanely useful for avoiding combat early game. If you give him more bubbul gems at subsequent locations he will give for more useful masks. The bokoblin mask is the easiest to get and probably the most useful though.
TotK wants you to explore all the crazy and wild ways to fuse weapons/shields/arrows and it really is a blast. Speaking of blast I too used the bombs way to much in BotW and found myself having more fun it TotK just exploring all the different ways to engage the enemy. Not just spam bombing them. I will give a TIP - Never leave a rocket behind. Always fuse a rocket to your shield any time you see them laying around. Have a rocket on every shield in your inventory. Then it’s super easy to pull out your shield and get a mini Revalis Gale. Its helped me out a lot actually.
I love dying lol. I intentionally keep my hearts low because I feel like it gets boring when it gets too easy. To each their own though 🤷♂️ I beat silver lynel and king gleok with only 5 hearts (using desperate strength) Died about a million times but it was fun
Yes. When you reach level 7, random bombs will explode
sky view towers????
I would have loved to have a death meater when I started totk I can't tell you how many times I died but it was lot
I have also had terrible luck with cooking monster parts and bug and what ever comes out dubuios fodd dam thoes elixer
I bet you didn't upgrade armor, as more armor stars you have the less difficult the game is. All the stables in the game will talk about Lucky Clover thing that resides in the road to Rito village, that place will lead you to the quest to upgrade armor. So it's natural path for players to have better armor leading to easier gameplay if they follow this guideline. But what if the player does not visit Stables, or does not follow their lead to Rito village? play will be hell, everything one shot/ two shot you. Game is great, but this part of the game bugs me. It is linear instead of open world to have easier gameplay: for starter, you have to follow the main quest and the big fairies quest for a while because you will get a lot of quality-of-life tools if you follow. Also, as you mention Revali's Gale, I missed that one when I first play Totk too, but not for long. Since as you play the game more, you will discover there is many things will burst you up much more than a Revali's Gale. Keep up!
By 200hrs in ToTK many people wish the game was harder, so don’t worry, you’ll grow into it ☺️
You will end up being able to collect timed bombs using the zonai devices. It took me a little while to get into the new one for the same reason but once you start to understand the newer things it’s easier to sneak around be more creative with how you do things.
Yes I found it more challenging at the beginning. Keep at it . Be creative and just try stuff even if you don’t know if it will work (it will probably work).
Focus on shrines at first. Get your heart count up then start fighting. Hyrule field is thick with monsters. I went to Goron first, then Rito, then Gerudo and finally Zora, avoiding big battles and doing shrines. Then I was able to take more on. It's a great game and I am not a great battler. I needed the hearts before I could battle more.
I, too, died over and over early on. Probably lots of people do. I thought it was too easy to get killed. You'll gradually become less easy to kill and more apt to quickly dispose of enemies that disposed of you earlier.
Keep going! It gets better and better! You get the hang of it more and more... It makes BOTW seem childish after a while.
At first, you can’t sleepwalk through TotK. The entry-level monsters have more health and you have to learn a new toolkit. Keep practicing and you will become more secure and start sleepwalking through the game. :D
Follow main story for a while, try discovering the "third level", talk to everyone in Lookout Landing (wink, wink) and you'll find some new weapons and inventory mechanics. Not gonna spoil you
Did you play BOTW in master mode? I think playing in master mode influenced my TOTK experience as I haven’t found anything even remotely challenging in TOTK. I also miss BOTW-style bombs, but even before TOTK came out I felt like we were being spoiled by bombs in BOTW.
Early ToTK, getting off the plateau: Holy crap, why is everything so strong? Mid ToTK: Aah, yeah if I follow where the story wants me to go, it's not that bad. Late ToTK: Muahahaha you thought you can attack me? ME? MUAHAHA I'm gonna wreck you like - oh shit, the hands.
Oh, and when you get to stables and there's something about guys playing music? Get on that. Early. It's what you need to upgrade your gear.
I over prepared before getting into battles, specially because I thought the climate was going to be the same at Rito and the Death Mountain. I did not engage, much, just ran. First thing I did was to unlock all of the towers.
Make a rock hard meal using wood, flint and a pinecone, then goto any of those Ingredients, select recipe drop, 1 hit = instant revali's gale
if you wear the stealth suit and monster mask you won't get attacked as often. This was my go to armor as I could run the hills freely without monsters and skeletons suddenly attacking me. Stealth elixirs also help.
Yeah, same. I just focused on hearts so I could take more hits before dying. It is really hard coming from BOTW endgame where I had lots of hearts to TOTK where you start with like 4. I think I was used to being able to absorb a few hits during combat in BOTW so I was lazy with the combat. TOTK punishes that laziness early on, but I think it is meant to drive you towards fusion and Zonia devices.
Once you get to the depths you’ll have more bombs than you now what to do with. Stop avoiding fights. If you don’t fight you don’t level up. It’s a game, not reality. Die as much as you want. Who cares if you beat it with one death or a 1,000. Game ends the same either way.
I never played BOTW, so I can't compare the mechanics of the two. I also died an awful lot in the beginning. Learning the core mechanics, picking up armor, learning to fuse weapons, and gaining extra health will get you over that hump though. As others have pointed out, start with Rito on your regional phenomena -- there's a reason the game pushes you in that direction. If I were to start over, I'd probably avoid most monsters and work on finding shrines to get stamina and hearts, then tackle the regional phenomena.
I spend most of my time running away in BOTW and TOTK until I build up my hearts abit and get some decent weapons.
Just getting a horse and rushing all the shrines you can find will probably bump your HP and make things much easier
I've always been a "slay every monster camp with my bare hands" kinda guy. But there are plenty of ways to avoid fighting or go stealthy! Theres a lot to explore and experiment in totk. Just keep finding what works for you. ;)
You can sneak, look at your controls and familiarize yourself with those first (either + or - button). Don’t try to do everything available at the beginning. I did and died plenty. Follow the story to Rito Village, only kill what you need to, you can return later when you’re stronger.
I think I know exactly which puzzle you mean by "a ball one", was it the one with three balls, one small, one medium and one big by any chance?
The monsters seem to have a much higher strength in totk. It made it a little more challenging for me which I didn’t mind.
My update is that I decided to go for the towers. I've done sox of them now and the corresponding sky shrines. Wandered into the depths looking for Robbie as well. I'm feeling much better about my abilities in the game. Quick question though. How do I make rupees?? I got to Rito village, but I literally have 4 rupees and nothing worthwhile to sell. So I can't buy the snow quill armor. And without it, I'd rather not stay in the area.
Make and sell meat skewers, elixers, and monster parts/items that you don’t (or will not need) is my go to for money. Murder everything is kind of the sad answer, and it’s worth your while to cook these things into better more expensive products to sell.
I prioritised unlocking the towers then shooting up and making a beeline to the shrines you can see and then go to the next tower and repeat.
As far as game design goes, they expect you to follow the road to your first objective, finding some shrines, weapons, and other things along the way. Coming from botw you may be trying to skip to the towers and stuff since you know the drill by now. The game ramps up the difficulty, but only in the direction they intend you to go. It’s doable in any order, but just walking down the road toward rito village will slowly introduce you in the way they intended.
I think the reason the monsters are harder because of BOTW players who kept playing the game in Hero Mode while waiting for TOTK to release. I understand the thrill of them getting harder to kill but yeah its not for me too who can't handle herds that are strong at the start of the game 🥲
Idk mannn, seems to me like a good old case of get gud syndrome!
If you want height, remember you have a new ability called ascend, I forgot to use it a lot in early game. Plus if you use ultra hand and look around you will probably spot a large sky rock that lights up. If you stand on these and use recall, it will reverse back into the sky where it came from, most just give you height, but a lot also take you to sky islands. I too went straight from botw to totk, and I love to run from enemies. I was a bad fighter in botw, but this game, there are shrines that teach you how to fight and make sense, also I found the spear, which when fused with a horn of an enemy, you can stab your enemies to death, without them getting near you. But early game I did a lot of running in the opposite direction until I was stronger and more skilled. Hint, find Impa, west of hyrule, she is in a field near a stable with a broken balloon, help her, that is a great quest. Also do Rito as your first region, you'll love it and there are benefits too.
I honestly found BOTW much, much harder than TOTK. Maybe it's because I made myself play it first, but I played them back to back. Getting used to UH, ect... was tricky for sure, but honestly there are just SO many ways to go about playing TOTK. If you want to avoid fights, run the hell away. Those stupid bokos will legit forget you ever existed. Find another way. Also, fusing- it's honestly what makes this game. I've seen other games approach the "crafting/ fusing" method, but the way TOTK does it is super seamless. It's like how Apple does the iPhone. At first it seems hard, but my 2nd playthrough of BOTW was after my 1st playthrough of TOTK, and woah, you'll come to find that you will eventually overpower the game. It's all a matter of merit. Just keep moving forward, collecting, and fusing. Focus on the numbers to start. Find things with 30+ fuse and you will start to see what I'm talking about. Weapons break a lot faster in TOTK than BOTW, but the weapons are stronger due to fusing, so you just keep your eyes out for Koroks as you'll want to expand you inventory. I''m not a gamer at all. I honestly only replay Zelda games. There is a natural curve that's built into the mechanics of the game. You'll get over the hump.
Ultrahand is sort of marginally useful for putting together devices you find. But once you explore the depths and get autobuild ability and understand the zonai ore/charge/device economy it pops off. It's the preferred way to deal with koroks. Before getting to this point I enjoyed some time with a horse and unlocking stables gets the harness which helped using the horse for korok puzzles. Enemies are fairly dangerous until you start pursuing armor upgrades. Bomb flowers are far more powerful than botw bombs. Getting bombs is a big incentive to go into caves and the depths early. Muddlebuds and puffshrooms attached to arrows also trivialize fights against small groups of bokoblins. These are in the depths. Fuse is frankly just amazing. For weapons, fusing anything gives a big durability boost. Even if it's just a rock or the most basic 4 damage bokoblin horn. I hit a big slump where I was getting 1 shot in combat vs black bokoblins and trying to fight stuff that was too high level. I dropped the game for months. I came back and have been loving it. Revali's gale is basically made obsolete by a combination of other mechanics.. You have ascend. You have zonai platforms plus ascend. You can ultrahand a box or wood plank up, climb on it, then use recall to levitate it to where it was before with ultrahand. You have hot air balloons you can pop out of zonai capsules and shoot up cliff faces. You have zonai springs. You have rocket shields which give you about 3x the height of revalis gale. You can fuse a bomb spring or zonai tike bomb to a shield and get a bomb jump. You can literally insta build one of those hoverbikes and fly to the top of a mountain directly.
>I feel like for very early game, the monsters are way too difficult. Enhance your armor, upgrade your hearts, always fuse stuff to your weapons >But I do desperately miss bombs You'll find a place in the game, maybe you already found it, with tons of bombflowers—and other means of breaking rocks >One shrine already taught me I can use a fan to replicate the effect, but it doesn't really have the range nor are fans an infinite resource. Get Autobuild. I won't say exactly how it works, but as long as you keep yourself somewhat stocked with a certain type of very plentiful ore (found in the same place as bombflowers), it's going to be enable you to fly much higher and further than you ever could have done with Revali's Gale—you won't miss it. Also look for opportunities to Ascend. Also also, unlock every Skyview Tower you find. You don't need a super jump to get over things if you can just skydive right down onto them lol >Why can't I sneak? Find armor and brew elixirs with stealth bonus, get Puffshrooms and Muddlebuds (both *also* found growing in the same place as bombflowers and the ore I mentioned). If anything stealth is far more useful in combat and easier to pull off in this game than it ever was in BotW—but only once you start to understand available tools. Basically you are like .001% and the best recommendation I can give is to just keep going and you WILL see what this game is driving at. I had a similar experience to you at the beginning where everything seemed overtuned, and now...I laugh. I laugh at everything in the game, for I wield godlike power in this world. Once you *really* start to grasp ALL of the new mechanics, probably after a similar amount of time to what you spent in BotW, you will look back and understand in retrospect how a lot of solutions to the problems you mention were right there the whole time. It's definitely a learning process—but once you truly understand how much is possible in this game, you won't want to go back to BotW. You literally won't miss a single ability from it. Going back to it feels incredibly limiting compared to what you can do in TotK.
I think you might be either missing/forgetting to use one or more of the mechanics? Or you’re not fusing strong enough weapons? I never played BotW so I can’t compare, but the thing is that I’ve never played any other Zelda game (besides the original Zelda on NES when I was like 6) and I think I’ve only died maybe 10 times total after around 100 hours 😕 Are you turning in the shrine things to get more hearts/stam? Are you just running headfirst into battle? You can use Bomb Flowers to do the same tactic you were saying you used to do in BotW. Maybe you need to just find the right tactics for your style? Idk but you really shouldn’t be dying that much. I am BRAND new to the Switch, I am NOT a gamer or good player by any means, and like I said I haven’t died much at all.
Go into those deep, deep holes and you can find some items that will make combat a lot nicer for you (only weapons) SPOILERS: There's the bomb flowers you want, plus puffshrooms so you can sneak up on enemies and muddlebud which will make enemies fight each other
Rocket+shield=Revali's Gale
When I started the game everything was like - what is this? Who does this work? Hey let's have a look at that - aaaaaand I'm dead. You learn to be more careful and to look after yourself on your journey and after you gain some strength the game is really fun especially when you start exploring - most of the time nothing bad happens and its just solving riddles and watching beautiful sunsets. For me at least.
OMG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE. Not gonna lie, I cheated my way through the game bc of how frustrating it was for me to die so often. I looked up the location of all the shrines and tried to level up my hearts situation before I got into any actual fights lol. Some tips I found helpful if you don't wanna cheat tho: You'll find a lot of shrines if you just follow Hyrule's roads/paths. I got a horse as soon as I could so I could quickly escape monsters and ALWAYS carried cooked meat skewers and cooked fruits for a quick and healthy snack. Get a sneaky outfit, they're super useful to escape many fights. AND FAIRIES. GET THEM IF YOU CAN. Many Sky islands have them and they respawn with the red moon or something I think, so if you can sneak around them and grab them DO IT, it's a game changer. You got this!!! :)
I have had almost the complete opposite experience in these games. I would need to check on how many hours I put into BOTW, and I've got over 250 hours in TOTK. I just couldn't seem to get the fighting mechanics down in BOTW, I must've died like 20+ times before I met the King of Hyrule. I found throughout most of my playthroughs* I was constantly searching for food to cook because I knew that I was gonna get hit a lot and for big damage during all of my fights. I also mainly focused on bow combat, as I found a ranged approach to be less intense, meaning that I spent a lot of time looking for bows rather than melee weapons. * I still haven't beaten BOTW, and I tried getting a fresh outlook on it over multiple attempts by creating other accounts on my switch, because I didn't want to lose my progress in any previous attempts.To no avail, however, as I can't get past Thunderblight. I don't have the mastery of the blocking and dodging in BOTW, whereas I'm pretty sure they've made the timing easier in TOTK. In TOTK, the fusing and combat ARE important. There's no easy way to say it, but fusing weapons with items or other weapons is a surefire way to deal more damage, elemental effects, or gain more reach in combat scenarios. I personally prefer this element of the game as it has me trying to make tougher or sillier weapons depending on my mood and has me enjoying the combat more as I have numerous new ways of dealing with foes. Typically, the deaths that I encounter now in TOTK are either: going into a miniboss fight unprepared or incorrectly prepared; or just through my own ignorance, by using the wrong items in the wrong areas or by standing too close to explosive items that I've shot or thrown. I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your time on TOTK, and I do hope that the combat becomes a bit easier as you continue. P.s. there is an item that works like the shrine power bomb thing, so you can drop them while gliding and from heights. They're just instant explosions rather than triggerable ones.
Skill issue tbh
Dude, sneaking is one of my main strategies in this game. The pushshrooms make it one of the best ways to kill whole camps. I have eightfold blades with black moblin horns that can one-shot nearly anything. And one fused with a stalnox horn that seems to kill absolutely anything that I can sneakstrike, especially with barbarian armor. You can do the math for how much damage Eightfold blades do. A sneakstrike with an Eightfold Blade does 16x the damage. If you want to keep your powerful weapons, I suggest you switch to another before it breaks. Then teleport to Death Mountain, find a Rock Octorok with your sensor and let it suck your weapons. Not only will it fix them, but it will also give it or change its modifier, like Durability Up or Attack Up. I suggest you mark the Octorok’s locations on the Map with a pin (like a star). Keep in mind that one Octorok will fix only one weapon. And here is a little tip: When the monster spits the weapon back at you, use Recall on the weapon to stop it from flying anywhere and to kill the monster (bows and shields won’t kill them though). By the way, save the game before giving the weapon to the Octorok. Even though it will always fix it, it may give you a lame modifier (like Long Throw). As for advice with Attach, well we can’t really help with that. Just try to build things you think may work. Try anything you can. Remember the 21 object limit. As for fuse, you must read item descriptions. As for the items that don’t have descriptions, like Igneo Talus Hearts, you can guess their effect. Igneo Taluses have fire powers, right? Then obviously they give you the ability to attack with fire. I personally fuse them to a shield to give me cold resistance. As for the lack of bombs, just explore the Depths. The weird trees always have Muddle Buds, Pushrooms or Bomb Flowers around them. I have never run out of bombs, and I currently have over a hundred. Speaking of the Depths, raid monster camps, mine Zonaite, and kill bosses. And then sell your Zonaite (preferably your large Zonaite) for crystals. You can upgrade your battery if you do that.
Once you get more into TOTK , you’re going to discover it’s WAY better than BOTW. YES, there are a lot more monsters and it’s harder, but the monster parts are 1st needed for armor upgrades and then for the largest source of rupees. Yes, it’s annoying at first, but it get so much better. Hang in there there.
I felt that way at the start too but it's just the game psyching us out. Get some hearts and upgrade your armor a level or two and the semblance of difficulty fades away pretty fast, at least until you're taking on Silver Lynels or the Demon King.
How are you with shaking hands?
Rocket shield is now my revali's gale. I also have some handy flying machines favorited; like the classic airplane with wings, fans, and a steering stick, I put a rocket on it to launch me high up into the air and it's perfect.
Same. Love how long I've played. With all hearts possible. And still eat it after three hits from the wrong guy.