I found the entrance to the Fire Temple last night, after painstakingly mapping the NE corner of the Depths. It's all too hot there, but I managed to activate the light roots at the edges of the lava field with save/continue runs. Spint, save on a clear spot with half a heart left, continue, sprint to the next clear spot :/ I think I burned Link to death over 50 times last night mapping the NE lol. I just got close enough to the entrance of the Fire temple to trigger it's location on the map, then straight back to 'safety'.

There are 5 more light roots I spotted that are in the middle of the heat zone. I'll leave those for when I get some fire protection. It's shame it doesn't work like cold zones where you can hold up a burning stick to survive. I tried holding up swords with ice keese wings, no effect despite it clearly showing a cold cloud animation when swinging the sword. It seems all the ingredients for heat resistance or only to be found up top.

Anyway I had lot of extra time to play recently so jumped up to about 70% Depths completion (including the 5 mapped but not reached light roots on the lava field). SE corner is left but have to make my way back down first. I left it at King Gleeok. That looks like it needs a lot of prep, not 3 hearts and crappy weapons lol. Once one of those beams touches me I'm dead and I don't have any springs to easily get airborne. Will need to go up top to get those. I guess I could carry them from a build platform, but doubt it will do much good with the lack of any other equipment. (Also how far can you take items from a build platform? Guess I'm gonna test it tonight lol)

It's very obvious now it's the same map as above, NE part is too recognizable.

The most fun was fighting down into the (or a) underground fortress, causing a huge battle at the bottom with a couple muddle buds :) Fighting a Stalnox in its lair after blasting a way in was great as well. It looks like there is a way out / up from its lair, kinda mean to have that as entrance and land right on top of the waiting beast lol. But that's a lot of Zelda nowadays, feels borderline trollish at points... I mean, the game could have the decency to hold the random spawns at bay when already engaged in a fight. Maybe this high random spawn rate is just in the Depths, but it does get kinda boring. Enough so I resort to a simple quick save load to get rid of them when I'm trying to focused on finding the next way to go. (Can't save load in a fight since that resets all that has dropped as well. You can, but any loot not picked up yet is permanently gone)

No persistence has its advantages too I guess. Especially for backtracking and accidentally triggering a camp too soon. Faster way to reset agro than running out of range. If a game gives you melons, turn it into lemonade! Save load continue to explore, backtrack without having to avoid bosses, get rid of random spawns, and reset enemies back to their starting spot. (Save only takes on a safe spot though, nothing easy about using it to explore in the heat, 5 second sprints at a time)

Why am I resorting to skipping fights? I already have over 6,000 Zonaite, 130+ light blooms, 600+ arrows yet weapons and bows are hard to keep. So I rather preserve those instead of getting more of what I don't need more of :) 30% or maybe 35% to go, I wonder if I'll get out of the Depths with over 10K Zonaite and Poes lol.

I had decided to keep myself in the dark until I beat the game and it wasn't until yesterday that I finally did it. Not with the best ending though; at least I expect that there could be more. I managed not to look up anything for the seven weeks since release, including the extended breaks I took from the game because it pissed me off so much with its constant "one hit and you are dead" design. The difficulty sure is different than in Breath of the Wild where it scaled up linearily while in Tears of the Kingdom you come across blue and black enemies quite frequently early on. I was going at a rather good pace, but it still felt like I hardly made any progress. So I had played the game for six days, took a one-week-break, played another day, took another one-week-break because it annoyed me so much that regular enemies could still hit so hard, played another day and then moved on to Etrian Odyssey (which I managed to complete 100% unlike its original version, thanks to picnic mode and the hard quick save feature; random rare item drops from superbosses is some of the biggest bullshit ever).

Anyway, two weeks ago I decided to give Tears of the Kingdom another chance in hopes that the experience would be more pleasant the second time around. I started all over again, because that was going to motivate more than a save file that was all over the place and where I had forgotten for the most part what I should be doing next. This time the game clicked and a lot of the frustrating things were mitigated or eliminated.

I finished the game with ~49% map completion despite each thing added to the map accounting for only 0.04%. I am now above 52%, have activated all roots in the underground, completed 117 shrines, finished half of the sidequests and two thirds of the episodes. What still annoys me are shrines hidden within mountains because finding all those cave entrances is an ordeal with no clear idea for where to look. Mountains can be huge and caves can be expansive, spanning several hundred meters from the entrance to the shrine inside. I am now close to the point where I'll just say "screw it all" and then look up an interactive map and a guide to find the remaining shrines. Korok seeds will require a map anyway.

The good:

- Nintendo didn't mess this up. It looks like word of mouth is good and the game keeps selling beyond its initial hype tsunami.

The bad:

- For a direct sequel it's not as good as it should have been. The reused overworld map and shrine formula, the bland underworld and the barren sky make the game too reliant on its new mechanics.

The ugly:

- Where's the money? The vast majority of treasure chests in this game contain low-level rubbish. The same holds true for a lot of the rewards for sidequests. This is really the biggest obstacle for progression, because you can't feel comfortable about selling items that you possess in the low double digits. You can clear a path to the main quests on the world map, but buying the necessary armor is a real roadblock that forces you to spend a lot of hours on looking for sidequests, caves and everything else that has the potential to make you richer. This is where TotK falls far short of a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 where you can spend dozens of hours on optional content, but still always feel that you are making actual progress.

So for the next Zelda game it wouldn't be a bad idea to add something like an affinity chart to make interactions with NPCs more meaningful. It also wouldn't hurt to take a cue from Xenoblade Chronicles X with its hexagons on the giant maps. Breaking down a huge open world game into digestable segments that tell you about your completion rate is a lot more motivating than hoping that you randomly stumble upon something in an area that you've visited before.

In conclusion I'd say that open world games bug me, because there's so much time spent on running from point of interest to the next one. These games may be fun in the beginning, but they can drag and drag and drag as time passes. Replayability gets also damaged with this approach to game design. But hey, at least it sells and creates a market for other games to sell. Zelda doesn't need to be the quintessential masterpiece if it brings so many other action-adventure and RPG games to the Nintendo platform. I don't need a replayable Zelda when it's tough enough to play everything else there is.

There is a specific mechanic that prevents one hit deaths in most scenarios if your health is full. Complaining about one hit deaths in this game is dumb.

I'm glad you gave it a second chance, and ended up enjoying it more!

It will be interesting to see where The Legend of Zelda goes from here. The open-world sandbox approach clearly has huge sales potential -- and I'd argue extraordinary capacity for greatness -- but I don't know how Nintendo adds to the BotW/TotK formula without overloading the experience. Maybe the right call is to pare back for the sequel. 

I've been wondering about that. I've heard a few complaints about that yet I've literally never died in one hit at any point in the game aside from falling. Even then of course the strongest enemies are going to do a lot more damage at the start when you have low hearts and weak armour. Once you upgrade almost any armour a couple of times you can tank hits pretty easily from strong enemies or use potions and food to increase defence. It's a complaint that just makes zero sense to me, what do people expect silver Lynels to do little damage? It would be like complaining in elden ring that some bosses can kill you in 1 or 2 hits when you first find them, that's the point, you're meant to go off get stronger then come back and beat the enemy that gave you trouble before.

I got one hit killed by a thunder gleeok early on when I had 5 hearts and my armor wasn't upgraded at all. I ate electricity resistant food and couldn't get one hit killed anymore.

That was the only time that happened. Otherwise I wouldn't know this even existed.

TotK was the best-selling game in the US in May, and is already the second best selling video game of 2023:

Too late for that, it's already way overloaded. I'm still in the Depths lol. There is a lot, a lot, a lot of repetition. How come Nintendo gets away with all these copy paste strong holds, mines, bosses and repetitive random encounters. It does make it easy to figure out what's what in the dark without using light roots. A flickering reddish light in the distance, bokoblin/moblin camp. A steady white light, mine ahead. White lights stacked above each other, an elevator (ascend pillar). Orange ish light, Yiga base. Rotating red light, flux construct, a camp fire, Yiga fanatic dressed as researcher and so on.

All but the gatorfrogs one hit kill me, yet I walk around with 1 heart of health for the desperate strength bonus on weapons. Double dmg means they also last twice as long (need half the hits) which reduces the need for weapon management a lot. Just those pesky rock hammers break all the time. Zelda: Tears of the heavily damaged rock hammer ;)

Anyway exploring with light blooms is addictive, mapping out the terrain in my head while strategically placing light blooms, following the walls and leaving a bread crumb trail behind. The random encounters can get annoying but an quick save load gets rid of those. Combat is close to nonsense but always fun to watch them (ineffectively) fight each other, like watch slapstick. Then a puff shroom plus one hit kill sneak attacks to clean up the rest. With the desperate strength bonus, 92 dmg sneak attack can take out black with one hit, silver with two (or one after they deplete each other a bit with muddle buds)

Homing arrows make things very easy, Yiga bases are a joke, at least in the depths. Often only defended by 1 enemy, 2 at most?! I tried to sneak attack a Hinox and Stalnox, swing and miss. Bosses are as always heavily scripted in when you are allowed to do damage. Thus spam with bomb flowers and hit the thingie when allowed. But why fight them, I guess the only reason is for parts needed to upgrade armor. I mark em on the map, live and let live for now.

It's all about the journey as the rewards simply aren't there. Which is good for me as the journey is the reward for me. But it does give me a chuckle after reaching a difficult chest for it to only contain some useless piece of clothing from a previous game. They all have the same stat, as in nothing but 3 armor. Really not worth the effort, unless you really enjoy exploring and mapping things out like I do.

Btw those dragon things come down in the depths as well. I saw one go right up and out through a chasm I assume. I marked the spot, place where I can exit with a boosted balloon. They don't last long enough just on fire. But maybe I can ride the dragon to the top! The one I saw exiting didn't seem dangerous, but who knows.

I also found all those clothes from past games meh. I don't get why people are so nostalgic to every useless reference of old Games, movies or comics. A big yawn for me 

I disagree with the repetitive structure. The problem is that you are only on the depths, I believe the idea of the game is that you will explore the depths, the overworld and the skies at the same time, which removes a bit the feeling of repetition. The repetition that annoyed me the much was the shrine quests, they all look the same, find and move a green crystal to activate the shrine, a let down compared to the often interesting shrine quests from BOTW.

One of the reasons for that is those shrines quests do not appears organically, I only found my first after beating my 70th shrine. Unlike in BOTW where you could always hear Kass playing a song and know there was a quest around him

Most of the shrines quests in TOTK are hidden in caverns that you cannot really find without the sensor (which by itself has the most obnoxious questline of the game to unlock)

Or in sky areas, that you cannot access without upgrading a lot stamina or your battery

In either case, it's likely half of the ~50 final shrines you have to find are shrines from quests. If those shrines quests were more spread out trough the game maybe they wouldn't feel so repetitive

I'm starting to agree the game is maybe a little too bloated. Like, I'm 155 hours in, trying to beat all shrines and finding the caves to find some hidden ones are making me run around in circles for a good 20-30 minutes trying to find a cavern entrance. This is simply not fun...

If you want to make some shrines to be hard to access, I prefer you make harder bosses and lock some shrines behind them. Or create some sections that are hard to get trough, but still straightforward. Sometimes I die in a boss 20 times playing Elden Ring or Hollow Knight, but once I get trough it I have a great feeling of accomplishment, much bigger than thr feeling of accomplishment for running around 30 minutes finding a cavern...

The dragons are very cool enemies to fight, my favorite semi bosses by far. They are hard, although there are some ways to mitigate a bit their difficulty they are limited and require some farming

I think I also agree with Rols comment about the lack of money. I'm not bothering, because I'm not upgrading my gears, but really asking 500 rupees for every piece of clothing upgrade in the last level is evil. You will need 80k rupees to upgrade them all. Many of those gears need your most reliable resource of money, which are gems like diamonds and rubies

I don't even think I have reached 15k even if I've played for more than 150 hours, and that was selling tons of opals, amber, sapphires, etc 

I remember in BOTW I bought all the gear I wanted without troubling much with rupees. Here the only armor I have fully bought is the Gerudo Voe set, because Link looks cool wearing them 

Be a completionist in this game might be a nightmare...