I'm stuck. I was exploring beneath Hyrule castle and now I'm so far down I have no clue how to get back out (without fast travel). I ran into the Demon King's Army which is total BS. Muddle buds don't work, puff shrooms only stuns them, doesn't prevent all the others from still throwing rocks. There are far too many anyway and I just looked it up, it's part of the end fight lol. Open world failure. I'll stop trying since I guess it will just trigger the end boss, plus the dive down and part unskippable cut scene is annoying as hell.

This whole underground part of Hyrule castle is nothing but an ugly mess. You can hardly see anything, very low contrast with grey fog layer on top and the map is completely useless. It's the worst designed area by far. Knowing this is how the game ends I don't really feel like playing anymore :/

Oh well, climb back out, do the temples and check out the sky islands, there are still good bits to be had. I just don't think I'll ever finish the game, don't want to go back here again. Ugly badly designed mess. Come on Nintendo, you can do better. It's not connected either, can't fly back out from the Demon King's Lair, the ledge is gone and you simply hit the ceiling high up.

A Zonaite sword plus beam emitter is fun though, not very effective but light saber!

Hmm, it seems the point where you enter the imprisoning chamber is gone as well. I've lit the whole place up with giant bright blooms and looked over every part of the walls and ceiling, the ledge you enter on is gone. I guess it makes sense since it's an imprisoning chamber :/ Only option now is to revert to an old auto save. Fast travel ruined Zelda sigh. Lazy crutch.



Update: You can back track out of the imprisoning chamber, the exit is just impossible to see. My oldest auto save was already in the imprisoning chamber so that didn't work. I had to use fast travel to the light root as I could not spot the exit no matter what. However I went back in to the imprisoning chamber, luckily the mobs were still gone. There I took a screenshot of the exact location on the map (which shows nothing relevant) to then reload an auto save from before using fast travel. I flew back up with the 4 fan + stick craft (thanks for that suggestion!) which is still very tricky since you can't look straight up, can't see where you are going.

I got back up to the top, landed on one of the spikes then compared my position with the screenshot, lined up the camera in the right direction and shot bright blooms that way until I could finally spot the entrance. In this case, graphics do matter, mean everything. Anyway from there still a struggle to get back out but with rocket shields and the flying thing I made it back to the bottom of the chasm. Using the light root as a rest stop to recharge the battery I made it out the top, well almost. First I thought the game locked up but it was a 25 second loading pause getting back to the top, to be greeted by a thunderstorm and then the blood moon cut scene interruption screwed up my flight landing me in the moat where I drowned, send back to the light root. I'll get out again but wow worst dungeon design ever. And everything reset down there so never to be visited again.

Back to the hopefully fun stuff. Good navigation challenge, terrible map and color palette design.

I frequently use them as hood ornaments, but can't say I've ever put one on a cross.

Note done that, but not unusual to drag them behind the horse attached to the yoke

Willow them ;) Onto a board send down the river.
I wonder what happens if you 'Temple of doom' them, do they burn?
Turn them into fireworks, couple rockets and a delayed explosive ;)

I'm happily back above ground, got launched to some small Sky Islands which is pretty fun. The reason Hyrule castle was so disappointing is because it was a highlight to explore early in BotW. That magic has completely gone and while the castle is broken up, it's still too familiar and at the same time the underground part is a big mess. Shrines and Sky Islands then. Plus all the charm is still there along the way. Hyrule is all familiar but still nice to talk to all the NPCs again. I don't feel any sense in fighting anything in Hyrule, I already had 2 blood moons now so what's the point lol, but that makes it faster to do Shrines and talk to people. And occasionally gawk at the scenery. It can be absolutely gorgeous at times as well. Caves not so much, yet the overworld and the view from sky islands is very pretty.

I'm curious, how did you get out of the Depths without fast travel? Just saw you mentioned it in your previous post that I had skipped because you started mentionning end-game stuff.

The way you lot are going on about the treatment of Koroks leads me to not be surprised if in future Nintendo implements a feature where they fight back Cuckoo style.

Right just watched a speedrun of TOTK where the category was to kill all Gleeoks, just when you thought you were aware of a number of the tricks in game someone comes along and blows things open again.

The worst I've done is stick one on a vehicle to keep it from falling off while transporting him.

Don't worry, I won't be near the endgame stuff again now I know where it is :)

But yeah, getting out wasn't easy since I still only had 1 battery cell. Adding rockets mid flight to a balloon finally worked to get high enough before the balloon timer ran out. Now it's no problem anymore after upgrading the battery, stand on a bunch of fans is plenty. However it seems the developers didn't anticipate leaving the Depths by balloon as wherever I fly back up to the surface the game hangs for 20 seconds, loading the surface. It hangs as well if you fall back down, only when you glide down the game streams fast enough.

I mapped all the light roots and copied the icons on the surface to visit the Shrines, but I see there are more Shrines in the sky. The two towers I did so far both launched me up to near a Shrine in the sky. I'm not sure yet how to go about exploring the Sky, it's all different levels, bigger islands mixed with tiny ones you can hardly stand on. I guess I should mark where I have been as the map isn't very helpful. Question is, is there anything good on these tiny islands. So far I've only found a treasure map for a treasure in the Depths that I already recovered on my tour.

Anyway, the Sky is a good place to mess around with flying machines.

Last night I ran into the Water temple, access denied :/ So I explored the area, messed with some of the outdoor puzzles. I actually managed to get a door open with a whater wheel behind it but that stayed unresponsive while pointed a fire hydrant at it. So started the quest to find the quest :/ Meanwhile playing Super Mario Sunshine while I was trying to find the quest NPC that will open the door. Carrying a fire hydrant around with ultra-hand to clean the goop. (Which is also pointless, all back after doing a shrine). I did restore some water source on an island, must be for something, no info.

I finally backtracked the whole path far enough to run into Sidon, but he just told me to go find his wife further back. And she finally told me to go find Sidon again. Why do these NPC's keep sending me back and forth, reminds me of Asterix and Obelix getting the run around trying to navigate the Roman bureaucracy. (The twelve tasks of Asterix) Someone cut the red tape and let me in lol. Anyway after meeting the wife I back tracked further to get more fire hydrants as they seem important here.

Zora's domain does look like quite an upgrade from BotW graphics wise, however it comes at a price. Lot of frame rate drops there. Holding a fire hydrant at the water temple area had the fps drop in the low teens and constant stutters around the Zora city. I never had any framerate issues in the Depths so it stands out now. The water temple 'bubble' also suffers from massive pop in and loading stutters while traveling around on a hover platform.

It seems to be a theme in TotK, find the destination first, then go look for the start doh. Much easier to spot a temple than the person to start the quest! It's a bit of a shame the quests are rigidly linear affairs as that doesn't work with the freedom of travel. But I guess at least I got to see the path to the temple (in reverse) which would otherwise be far too easy to skip in its entirety. 3 temples located so far, plus a construct factory, mazes and other places that are all closed / access denied. I guess I need to visit the towns to collect quests, as in just go to the dots from the regional phenomena.

Zelda TotK: You can do what you want, but if you don't do it in the order we want you to do it in, you'll spoil half the game and end op backtracking most of the time! BotW had this problem far less since you can't simply fly anywhere and the map was still new making it rewarding to explore the land and find the cities. Naturally in TotK I'm drawn to exploring the unknown, yet the quests are apparently all in the old bits.

I left the game at the fire hydrant gacha machine, tonight back to Sidon to see if he can spare a minute to let me in the water temple.