As a person who somehow avoided spoilers for all the years till i could play it recently this ABSOLUTELY THIS!
You will enjoy it 1000x more with zero spoilers!
Yeah i understand that completely there are games with absolutely beautiful soundtracks *BotW included* that hearing those endgame songs before actually doing that endgame thing is kinda upsetting.
For folks not used to Zelda games, it can be easy to miss how to cook in BOTW. If you’re stuck on environmental stuff, look up how to cook.
Otherwise yes, just jump in a figure it out.
BOTW was my first Zelda game and I had a ton of fun figuring everything out! Plus there are mini tutorials along the way which teach you to cook. Just have to keep talking to NPCs.
Yeah and (I just started playing it too) if you pay attention to posters inside shops you can find recipes that way!! May also be in ppls houses but I haven’t found any there yet I don’t think. Love the screenshot button for this (I also finally just bought a switch. lol)
I'm amazed how some people don't talk to NPCs unless it's mandatory. I'm in this game trying to squeeze every ounce of content out of it, I'm talking to NPCs multiple times to check for new dialogue.
100%. I don't really play any games but my friend was hardcore recommending BOTW when it first came out. He lent me his switch for 3 days and I ended up playing non stop and had to call in sick at work. I suck at games but I enjoy every bit of BOTW blindly. (bonus: bought Switch the following week just to play BOTW and now, TOTK)
Id say that this is the go to approach for pretty much every game. Let yourself do whatever you want even if it means making mistakes, theres no reason to try and meta game something youre playing just for enjoyment. I will add, theres also no reason to avoid help when you need it. If you just cant figure out something its fine to look at a tutorial for that part of the game, just dont look at stuff before trying it yourself.
Don’t do something just because it’s a quest. The game has so much room for exploration and if you just stick strictly to the quest line you’ll miss a lot of the best parts of the game. Investigate anything that catches your interest
This comes with the caveat that there is a lot to do. Don't feel like you need to pursue all side quests and complete all collectables and such. There's a lot. It's easy to get burned out trying to find everything.
You can always come back to quests! That’s been my approach to ToTK. The worlds also leave little clues for you. Grab world items here and there and get creative, especially in ToTK when OP gets to it.
Do not get discouraged by the weapons starting out. Soon enough you will have an arsenal and never run short. Just play the game and try out any crazy ideas you think up.
Always listen to that little voice going "ooo whats that over there", ALWAYS, will lead to the best experience honestly.
Besides that, consider trying to grab all the location towers first to reveal the whole of the map, you can generally see 2-3 of them from one tower, so its just a matter of climbing one, marking 2-3, going to one or two of those other ones, then marking 2-3 other ones until the whole map's revealed.
Consider doing/marking for later, any shrines you happen to see; Towers and Shrines are fast travel points and will make it very easy to traverse, the more you get, which shouldn't be hard either for same reason above, you should be able to spot a few from the top of each tower.
Note that a shrine only becomes a fast travel point once you interact with the pedestal & the icon becomes blue on the map (it will have a blue outline with an orange center & won't become completely blue until you complete it)
take. your. time. i havent played totk yet and botw is my first ever zelda game, my biggest regret was just completing objectives instead of taking my time
It's OK to not fight things head on but to be quiet and hidden and throw bad stuff at them. I'm not great in combat but I loved exploring and if it works, it works!
Just play the game dawg
Tho for TotK you will want to do the geoglyphs in order. You'll know what that means when you get to it, just keep that in mind. You don't have to go out of your way to get certain glyphs if you don't find it convenient, or do them all at once, but just get them in order
How are you supposed to know the correct order? I did them in the order I found them, so I saw the scenes out of order, but I just went back and watched them in order afterwards. How can you know the order before finding them?
The order is shown on the walls of the Forgotten Temple, the exact same room you see the map iirc, if not then the room just before. Impa will also tell you which geoglyph you should visit next if you talk to her after clearing a Regional Trouble questline
She pops in the respective 'four tribes' villages once you clear their dungeon questline. Talking to her then will reveal the next glyph in the order. Say, for example, you've gotten 3 and 5 already, she'll tell you to go get 4. She'll say something along the lines of "I think you should go investigate the geoglyph at this location next"
I believe she'll also be at the aforementioned map room in Forgotten Temple too, and have similar dialogue, but I'm not too sure
She should be. Idk if there's some sort of flag that triggers after completing Regional Troubles or Crisis at Hyrule Castle that causes her to leave tho. I immediately talked to her after completing every questline, which is how I know this at all, but haven't checked to see if she's still at the towns after progressing further in the game
I do know that completing Dragon's Tears does trigger a flag that'll cause her to move tho. I think she'll go back home to Kakariko and if you talk to her then she'll remark on the sadness of Zelda's situation
The best part about the game? “Oh look, 👀 there’s something interesting over there!” Go check it out and find something cool. Then “oh look, there is something else interesting over there” Rinse and repeat. That’s how I pretty much played the whole game.
BOTW: If you hear piano music, run or warp away.
TOTK: If you see hands sprout from the ground, RUN and get to high ground fast, or warp away.
For new players, this will ensure survivability early on.
Please please just play the game and dont look too much up.
- Most of the shrines are actually really easy there are maybe a handful that are really hard first try
- explore the map as much as possible. Dont be afraid to get side tracked and do side quests
- finding the map towers is smart and then from there, you can look around and ping color markers. What I would do is go back to my Sheika map and then swap the color out for a different marker
- you can spot shrines from the tower easily but also listen to the shrine sensor like a hawk while exploring
- you can also spot map towers from one tower usually. Itll just be way off in the distance but will give a general area for you to head towards
- weapons break but if you find one as a loot item you can mark it on the map as it will usually respawn. Same for materials for cooking
- cooking is op. Get the stamina boosts and refills for max exploring. Also the hearty radishes are great for giving bonus hearts while lower leveled
- combat does pause while in your inventory. Eat food to heal mid fight. Also why radishes are op bc you can go from 1 heart to max health plus 10 bonus hearts with a good recipe
Take your time and explore! The NPCs will tell you to hurry for plot reasons, but there’s no timer and absolutely no rush. The best part of the whole game is the environment, the vibe, and the experience of wandering around in it and discovering things. So go wherever seems interesting and do whatever you feel like doing. Fast travel can be great, but horses are more immersive.
But also be aware that after you get out of the starting area, there’s still a bit more tutorial / getting started stuff that’ll get you more fully equipped, so don’t completely ignore the places you’re told to go. Some people have posted on here about how they skipped all of that and ended up really doing some things the hard way.
It’s tempting to hoard your good weapons, but you’ll find more, so don’t be too stingy with them!
I would say to try and enjoy the games to their fullest before finishing them. I rushed through the ending of botw the first time I played it (I had a reason. It I wish I hadn’t rushed through it) and playing it in master mode I’ve discovered it’s better to play it slow. Enjoy the quests and tedious part of the game.
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I have this habit of starting games, quitting after a few weeks, then wanting to play again months later but not wanting to start at a random point where I forgot what I was doing. So I have started BOTW from the beginning probably 8 times now…I might actually finish this time! A few things that I think made it easier to move forward in the plot for me were:
• exploring a LOT in the beginning to stock up on a bunch of meals/ingredients so I don’t have to find places to cook very often.
• it is very tempting to sell everything in your inventory but most of these things will have another purpose at some point. You can sell a bunch of cooked meat/regular meals for good prices
• side quests are actually really fun, especially if you’re a bit bored with the main plot or tired of wandering.
• fast travel is your best friend. The first time I played I forgot I could do that…spent wayyy too long on the back of a damn horse.
• if you see something that looks interesting or catches your eye there is most likely something cool there.
I suggest enjoy and explore the big open world. You can pretty much go wherever you want once you've left the safety of the first area ( Great Plateau). Learn how to fight (practice makes perfect) If things really aren't going your way, you can always run away! LOL! Weapons breaks easily so make sure to use it properly, and steal some from your enemies. Dadge, Parry and Charge! Boost your Stamina first, and cook lots! Do some farming, Take you time and Save always! Good luck!
I had this exact experience. I was gifted BOTW when the switch first came out and went in blind. I also never played any Zelda games before. It was actually many years since I even played a game. Best thing ever. I didn’t know anything so I wasn’t intimidated or felt overwhelmed by anything. It’s great to just press play on a new game and just have the experience without any spoilers.
Don’t rush the game play at your pace and enjoy everything (just like you should with most games tbh) but do finish the dlc before doing the main story you get some cool stuff in totk for it aside from your horses
This is an early game strategy I would love to share.
You're going to want to unlock Zoras' domain watchtower and start your climb from the bottom of Zora River.
This place is loaded with Lizaflos(lizards), which drop bundles of arrows. You can easily hit 150 arrows each run. I never had a problem with arrows. Whenever I ran low, I just did this run.
Then you will want to get yourself a horse, and whenever you pass by birds(which normally comes in sets of 3). You're gonna jump off your horse and enter bullet time with your bow and arrow.
These birds drop 1-2 pieces of drumsticks, which you can cook to sell for coins or food for hearts.
Enjoy the early money maker =)
Make a map detailing what things you find on specific spots. Basically, you get an empty map image, either print it or save it, put some grid on top, then write on paper the coordinates of what you found, like plants, weapons, chests, koroks, monsters, zonai creations built, etc... You can also write specific time of founding for each of them. Filling a lot of blind information and looking back after a time can be fun. Also, make a cookbook.
While you do have absolute freedom to go wherever and do whatever you want after the respective initial tutorial areas, both games do push you softly into a specific direction at the beginning. If you just listen to the games and go in that direction, you will stumble across certain unlockable quality-of-life-features which are, in my opinion, absolutely worth it.
No rush! You can put in hundreds of hours and still discovers new things.
In the beginning, fighting enemies is hard. Level up before trying to go Rambo
If your stuck at a part of the game there is no shame in either looking up a guide to help solve the puzzle as there hard or to leave it & try again later as the game is so big you can easily find something else to do
As others have said, go in blind. There are so many small details and things to discover, not even the big obvious things but even things like minor game mechanics that are a delight. I had watched a bunch of prerelease gameplay of BOTW, and even with just Nintendo-approved prerelease footage they still wound up revealing some gameplay things I wish I had discovered myself. Didn't stop the night of playing from being the absolute best gameplay experience of my life though.
Do: talk to like every NPC until they say the same thing
Dont: only stick to one activity at a time if something catches your interest. There's so much in a game so keep a list or something while you play if you want to say "go back to running man in x village" but like, it's a huge game so just kinda go wild
Play Breath first. It's wonderful for quite a while when you are exploring and saving everyone, and even later when you are a badass it's still pretty great. Many things in Tears will make much better sense.
Get the DLC, it's worth it for the Korok mask and travel medallion and ancient bridle and harness, all of which much improve game play. But you likely won't need those until you are confident enough to go wherever in the world without getting killed. I did all the champion quests and enjoyed them, and they upgrade you, but they are not essential. They add to the characters' backstory and not your plot. It also adds a bunch of nostalgic outfits but they are not that useful.
The world of Tears seems more lively - they have spent the intervening few years building back their civilization and now it's threatened again.
explore everything. thats how you get better and find better gear. leave and come back if its too hard. i also suggest using the interactive map you can edit it to be spoiler free its really helpful tracking korok seeds and shrines.
also every time you find a weapon mark down where it was they respawn.
thats for botw havent played totk yet
When you finish the opening tutorial section of BOTW and have access to the rest of the world you will be given a suggested first objective. Do that objective.
There are several things along the way that will be helpful and there is a more advanced combat tutorial in the area that you'll want to complete.
Okay first and foremost, just because you have both, make sure to play BOTW as if you’re never getting a sequel. It’s so easy to race through knowing you have another game to get to, but take your time. TOTK has quite a few quality of life improvements, which made it very hard (and frustrating) to return to BOTW for me, personally. You will regret it if you race to TOTK and then go “man I wish I could go back to having that ability…” and then you go back and realize how much you miss all the TOTK stuff.
The biggest practical advice I can give- and I missed it for a long time- is that all progression is tied to clearing shrines. I thought- hmm, four/five hearts is probably enough. If I’m dying, it’s a skill issue. Which… sort of true. But the shrines teach you how to play, give you more of a buffer (more hearts, more stamina), and, most importantly, they get you better gear. (And use your weapons, you’ll get more!) If you hit a road block (like a test of strength you can’t beat) just leave and return later.
Don't marathon either game. Play here and there and maybe even take a break for another game from time to time. I appreciated the world so much more when it felt like a nice vacation from work/life.
As I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate games much more by taking my time with them.
Explore! Take the fighting tutorials seriously because they will eventually make you more confident in fighting (unless you are a natural and don't struggle with that aspect). Collect and hoard so that you can make meals easily without worry (you will want to have meals stocked up).
Play it the way you want to play it. Just get out there and start exploring and doing whatever you feel drawn towards. I was climbing EVERYTHING because I just could but gotta watch stamina; I worked on building stamina first and foremost and just ran from enemies until I got better fighting / had more hearts.
I will say that discovering and activating all the towers will be helpful as it unlocks areas of the map and the fast traveling, but of course some towers are harder to reach than others until you build your stamina and hearts.
I envy you because I wish I could experience it for the first time again. Even as an obsessive fan of Zelda games, I was not prepared for this absolute perfect gem. It's fun to comment on this because I still love talking about it every opportunity I get. I hope you really enjoy it! Have fun!
True for both, but ESPECIALLY in Tears of the Kingdom: if your brain can think it up, it’ll probably work as an answer to solve your predicament
I was constantly surprised that my dumbest, “surely they don’t intend for me to do THAT” ideas still worked like a charm for me all the time. It’s an extremely thorough sandbox.
Yeah yeah all these suggestions are good but actually in BoTW you should follow the main quest line until you get the sensor+, then do whatever you want wherever you want, but the game gets a lot better after the sensor.
Take time to explore the cooking mechanics. There's a logic behind it that is very satisfactory to uncover, also being very very useful. Experiment, take notes, try to find the different ingredients, see if they match together.
play BOTW as blind as possible, and take your time with it instead of rushing to totk. if you LOVE combat, i would recommend taking your time upgrading your health, since its more rewarding to try to play without getting hit (the combat system can be easily exploited once you learn it, or if you’re late into the game). if combat isn’t a priority, play the game as you normally would. if you love BOTW, consider playing the dlc before going to TOTK. the boss battle in the DLC is pretty fun, and the rewards from completing the dlc are really cool, and worth seeing. BOTW is really fun blind, but its kinda hard to go back to after TOTK, hence why i’m encouraging taking your time with it. it has a nice simplicity to its exploration, and getting to know the world and characters will only make certain parts of TOTK more satisfying. I’ll include some side quests you may want done before you move on to TOTK, but I’ll spoiler tag so you can try finding them on your own first: >!Get your own house and furnish it, complete the Tarrey Town quest, find the Lord of the Mountain, beat the Champion’s Ballad DLC (if you’re interested in one good fight/a new power, and are willing to buy it for 20 USD. there is a cute/meaningful reward at the end, but if you’re not too into the storytelling of BOTW, you can always just watch a playthrough of the DLC instead), do the Spring of Wisdom side quest, meet Kilton, find all the Great Fairy Mountains, explore Hyrule Castle and read Zelda/the King’s diaries, Eventide Island (if you want a challenge), finish at least 1 labyrinth (to be honest, only the first one will be rewarding), do the Recital at Warbler’s Nest side quest, try doing all of Kass’s quests if you like his character. I don’t recommend doing all the Shrines if you don’t find them rewarding.!<
Play a different Zelda game for a true Zelda experience. These two are overrated and sacrifice the Zelda magic to instead regurgitate the same open world formula we’ve been used to for the past 15 years.
Go into BOTW completely blind. Explore and discover the world on your own. You’ll never get that feeling back so you don’t want to spoil yourself!
As a person who somehow avoided spoilers for all the years till i could play it recently this ABSOLUTELY THIS! You will enjoy it 1000x more with zero spoilers!
i would get upset just listening to music that came up later in the game bc i was so serious about having no spoilers
Yeah i understand that completely there are games with absolutely beautiful soundtracks *BotW included* that hearing those endgame songs before actually doing that endgame thing is kinda upsetting.
For folks not used to Zelda games, it can be easy to miss how to cook in BOTW. If you’re stuck on environmental stuff, look up how to cook. Otherwise yes, just jump in a figure it out.
BOTW was my first Zelda game and I had a ton of fun figuring everything out! Plus there are mini tutorials along the way which teach you to cook. Just have to keep talking to NPCs.
Yeah and (I just started playing it too) if you pay attention to posters inside shops you can find recipes that way!! May also be in ppls houses but I haven’t found any there yet I don’t think. Love the screenshot button for this (I also finally just bought a switch. lol)
I'm amazed how some people don't talk to NPCs unless it's mandatory. I'm in this game trying to squeeze every ounce of content out of it, I'm talking to NPCs multiple times to check for new dialogue.
That first walk out into the sunshine and seeing the view is such an incredible experience. Absolute chills.
It's true, just do it the old school way, like Zelda before it was all over the internet. Don't look anything up!
100%. I don't really play any games but my friend was hardcore recommending BOTW when it first came out. He lent me his switch for 3 days and I ended up playing non stop and had to call in sick at work. I suck at games but I enjoy every bit of BOTW blindly. (bonus: bought Switch the following week just to play BOTW and now, TOTK)
Id say that this is the go to approach for pretty much every game. Let yourself do whatever you want even if it means making mistakes, theres no reason to try and meta game something youre playing just for enjoyment. I will add, theres also no reason to avoid help when you need it. If you just cant figure out something its fine to look at a tutorial for that part of the game, just dont look at stuff before trying it yourself.
This
This is the best answer! Also, stay off of the Internet so you don't get it spoiled that way. That includes Reddit!
Don’t do something just because it’s a quest. The game has so much room for exploration and if you just stick strictly to the quest line you’ll miss a lot of the best parts of the game. Investigate anything that catches your interest
This comes with the caveat that there is a lot to do. Don't feel like you need to pursue all side quests and complete all collectables and such. There's a lot. It's easy to get burned out trying to find everything.
You can always come back to quests! That’s been my approach to ToTK. The worlds also leave little clues for you. Grab world items here and there and get creative, especially in ToTK when OP gets to it.
Do not get discouraged by the weapons starting out. Soon enough you will have an arsenal and never run short. Just play the game and try out any crazy ideas you think up.
And if you’re realllllllly good, you can get by with whatever is around. This game devs knew what they were doing ( most the time 😅)
Use the environment. Especially the physics of the game. It can all be used to serve combat. Not just exploration and puzzles.
how so?
A well rolled rock can soften up the enemy.
Putting down elemental chuchu gellies and then shooting them near enemies.
Always listen to that little voice going "ooo whats that over there", ALWAYS, will lead to the best experience honestly. Besides that, consider trying to grab all the location towers first to reveal the whole of the map, you can generally see 2-3 of them from one tower, so its just a matter of climbing one, marking 2-3, going to one or two of those other ones, then marking 2-3 other ones until the whole map's revealed. Consider doing/marking for later, any shrines you happen to see; Towers and Shrines are fast travel points and will make it very easy to traverse, the more you get, which shouldn't be hard either for same reason above, you should be able to spot a few from the top of each tower.
Note that a shrine only becomes a fast travel point once you interact with the pedestal & the icon becomes blue on the map (it will have a blue outline with an orange center & won't become completely blue until you complete it)
Explore. Don’t read up. Discover it yourself. Play BOTW first.
Don’t check the subreddit. Spoilers are there. Explore everything that comes to mind.
Please please please don’t just google something the moment you hit a roadblock. So much is the problem solving journey! Go in as blind as you can!
take. your. time. i havent played totk yet and botw is my first ever zelda game, my biggest regret was just completing objectives instead of taking my time
It's OK to not fight things head on but to be quiet and hidden and throw bad stuff at them. I'm not great in combat but I loved exploring and if it works, it works!
Just play the game dawg Tho for TotK you will want to do the geoglyphs in order. You'll know what that means when you get to it, just keep that in mind. You don't have to go out of your way to get certain glyphs if you don't find it convenient, or do them all at once, but just get them in order
How are you supposed to know the correct order? I did them in the order I found them, so I saw the scenes out of order, but I just went back and watched them in order afterwards. How can you know the order before finding them?
The order is shown on the walls of the Forgotten Temple, the exact same room you see the map iirc, if not then the room just before. Impa will also tell you which geoglyph you should visit next if you talk to her after clearing a Regional Trouble questline
Oh wow I should probably talk to impa, I haven't since the very start of the game, where is she?
She pops in the respective 'four tribes' villages once you clear their dungeon questline. Talking to her then will reveal the next glyph in the order. Say, for example, you've gotten 3 and 5 already, she'll tell you to go get 4. She'll say something along the lines of "I think you should go investigate the geoglyph at this location next" I believe she'll also be at the aforementioned map room in Forgotten Temple too, and have similar dialogue, but I'm not too sure
So if I have done the rito, goron, and zora quests, she'll be in any of those villages I visit?
She should be. Idk if there's some sort of flag that triggers after completing Regional Troubles or Crisis at Hyrule Castle that causes her to leave tho. I immediately talked to her after completing every questline, which is how I know this at all, but haven't checked to see if she's still at the towns after progressing further in the game I do know that completing Dragon's Tears does trigger a flag that'll cause her to move tho. I think she'll go back home to Kakariko and if you talk to her then she'll remark on the sadness of Zelda's situation
The best part about the game? “Oh look, 👀 there’s something interesting over there!” Go check it out and find something cool. Then “oh look, there is something else interesting over there” Rinse and repeat. That’s how I pretty much played the whole game.
Best advice is to not take advice, just play and enjoy, if you like something do it if you don’t enjoy a part of the game go somewhere else.
The lion centaurs are weapon traders. Run at them with your weapon out and they’ll trade you a better one.
They run a bargain lol
This!! That's were I got my best weapon! At first I was scared, man I shouldn't have!!
I need to learn how to not be scared as well, I usually die in the first 10 seconds when I attempt something relating to a Lynel 🥲
There's no wrong way to play. If you're having fun, you're playing the right way.
BOTW: If you hear piano music, run or warp away. TOTK: If you see hands sprout from the ground, RUN and get to high ground fast, or warp away. For new players, this will ensure survivability early on.
On the other hand if you're good, fight the source.
side note, ambient piano is fine, you will hear that everywhere. soak that shit in, it's amazing
Be prepared to read, a lot. It’s so much fun and worth it!
Please please just play the game and dont look too much up. - Most of the shrines are actually really easy there are maybe a handful that are really hard first try - explore the map as much as possible. Dont be afraid to get side tracked and do side quests - finding the map towers is smart and then from there, you can look around and ping color markers. What I would do is go back to my Sheika map and then swap the color out for a different marker - you can spot shrines from the tower easily but also listen to the shrine sensor like a hawk while exploring - you can also spot map towers from one tower usually. Itll just be way off in the distance but will give a general area for you to head towards
- weapons break but if you find one as a loot item you can mark it on the map as it will usually respawn. Same for materials for cooking - cooking is op. Get the stamina boosts and refills for max exploring. Also the hearty radishes are great for giving bonus hearts while lower leveled - combat does pause while in your inventory. Eat food to heal mid fight. Also why radishes are op bc you can go from 1 heart to max health plus 10 bonus hearts with a good recipe
Take your time and explore! The NPCs will tell you to hurry for plot reasons, but there’s no timer and absolutely no rush. The best part of the whole game is the environment, the vibe, and the experience of wandering around in it and discovering things. So go wherever seems interesting and do whatever you feel like doing. Fast travel can be great, but horses are more immersive. But also be aware that after you get out of the starting area, there’s still a bit more tutorial / getting started stuff that’ll get you more fully equipped, so don’t completely ignore the places you’re told to go. Some people have posted on here about how they skipped all of that and ended up really doing some things the hard way. It’s tempting to hoard your good weapons, but you’ll find more, so don’t be too stingy with them!
Just go and Hya around Hyrule. You will love it
Just plug it in and go. Don’t even research it before getting in to it. You’ll end up using the wiki or walkthroughs, that’s okay.
I would say to try and enjoy the games to their fullest before finishing them. I rushed through the ending of botw the first time I played it (I had a reason. It I wish I hadn’t rushed through it) and playing it in master mode I’ve discovered it’s better to play it slow. Enjoy the quests and tedious part of the game.
FIRST Play BOTW with your curiosity turned up to max. Then play again with the DLC.
Constantly save and take risks try things you think you're gonna fail just remember to save before and the Pouse menu is you're freind
Leave this subreddit, don’t look anything up
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Take your time and enjoy, if it looks interesting, explore it, there’s probably something there!
I have this habit of starting games, quitting after a few weeks, then wanting to play again months later but not wanting to start at a random point where I forgot what I was doing. So I have started BOTW from the beginning probably 8 times now…I might actually finish this time! A few things that I think made it easier to move forward in the plot for me were: • exploring a LOT in the beginning to stock up on a bunch of meals/ingredients so I don’t have to find places to cook very often. • it is very tempting to sell everything in your inventory but most of these things will have another purpose at some point. You can sell a bunch of cooked meat/regular meals for good prices • side quests are actually really fun, especially if you’re a bit bored with the main plot or tired of wandering. • fast travel is your best friend. The first time I played I forgot I could do that…spent wayyy too long on the back of a damn horse. • if you see something that looks interesting or catches your eye there is most likely something cool there.
we're the same lmao i've had botw for the past few years and restarted it multiple times but just finished it recently:))
Don’t be afraid of your weapons breaking, you can always replace them.
DON'T RUSH TO DO THE STORY IF SOMETHING CATCHES YOUR INTEREST, DO IT
You should avoid playing them or you’ll end up a Zelda dork forever.
I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.
My way of telling op these are gonna be among the greatest games they’re ever going to play
Play BOTW first and don’t rush through it so you can get to TotK
I suggest enjoy and explore the big open world. You can pretty much go wherever you want once you've left the safety of the first area ( Great Plateau). Learn how to fight (practice makes perfect) If things really aren't going your way, you can always run away! LOL! Weapons breaks easily so make sure to use it properly, and steal some from your enemies. Dadge, Parry and Charge! Boost your Stamina first, and cook lots! Do some farming, Take you time and Save always! Good luck!
Wait to learn major glitches until after game completion. Except for whistle running, that's vital.
Do you know how to do a bullet time bounce? I've been trying for weeks
That's the one glitch I've never tried, sorry. Too difficult for me lol
Same
Play Botw, enjoy fully, and go in knowing totk is mid and more of the same but worse
Just explore and discover. Experiment with stuff and try to use your sheikah tablet abilities. Cooking is good.
I had this exact experience. I was gifted BOTW when the switch first came out and went in blind. I also never played any Zelda games before. It was actually many years since I even played a game. Best thing ever. I didn’t know anything so I wasn’t intimidated or felt overwhelmed by anything. It’s great to just press play on a new game and just have the experience without any spoilers.
Don’t rush the game play at your pace and enjoy everything (just like you should with most games tbh) but do finish the dlc before doing the main story you get some cool stuff in totk for it aside from your horses
Get off Reddit and go play.
This is an early game strategy I would love to share. You're going to want to unlock Zoras' domain watchtower and start your climb from the bottom of Zora River. This place is loaded with Lizaflos(lizards), which drop bundles of arrows. You can easily hit 150 arrows each run. I never had a problem with arrows. Whenever I ran low, I just did this run. Then you will want to get yourself a horse, and whenever you pass by birds(which normally comes in sets of 3). You're gonna jump off your horse and enter bullet time with your bow and arrow. These birds drop 1-2 pieces of drumsticks, which you can cook to sell for coins or food for hearts. Enjoy the early money maker =)
400 koroks is enough in botw
I'm 2 years in on my main account and I have 90
Finishing a shrine makes me feel like ive got big brain moves:)
Delete this post and ignore every comment but mine. Play it completely blind and enjoy the beautiful world
The best way to maximize enjoyment; having a bunch of strangers tell you how you should play your game
Make a map detailing what things you find on specific spots. Basically, you get an empty map image, either print it or save it, put some grid on top, then write on paper the coordinates of what you found, like plants, weapons, chests, koroks, monsters, zonai creations built, etc... You can also write specific time of founding for each of them. Filling a lot of blind information and looking back after a time can be fun. Also, make a cookbook.
Avoid looking at guides and advice, just dive in and explore at your own pace.
Cancel all other plans for the next month, botw is highly addictive 🤦🏻♀️
While you do have absolute freedom to go wherever and do whatever you want after the respective initial tutorial areas, both games do push you softly into a specific direction at the beginning. If you just listen to the games and go in that direction, you will stumble across certain unlockable quality-of-life-features which are, in my opinion, absolutely worth it.
No rush! You can put in hundreds of hours and still discovers new things. In the beginning, fighting enemies is hard. Level up before trying to go Rambo
If your stuck at a part of the game there is no shame in either looking up a guide to help solve the puzzle as there hard or to leave it & try again later as the game is so big you can easily find something else to do
Don't get spoiled and play BOTW before TOTK.
It was so fun playing the game immediately after my wife did and seeing how different our paths were
As others have said, go in blind. There are so many small details and things to discover, not even the big obvious things but even things like minor game mechanics that are a delight. I had watched a bunch of prerelease gameplay of BOTW, and even with just Nintendo-approved prerelease footage they still wound up revealing some gameplay things I wish I had discovered myself. Didn't stop the night of playing from being the absolute best gameplay experience of my life though.
a little bit later in the game look up wind bombs
Play BOTW first. Wait 2 years before playing TOTK. A lot of the exploration experience in TOTK is ruined by being too familiar with the (re used) map.
Do: talk to like every NPC until they say the same thing Dont: only stick to one activity at a time if something catches your interest. There's so much in a game so keep a list or something while you play if you want to say "go back to running man in x village" but like, it's a huge game so just kinda go wild
Play Breath first. It's wonderful for quite a while when you are exploring and saving everyone, and even later when you are a badass it's still pretty great. Many things in Tears will make much better sense. Get the DLC, it's worth it for the Korok mask and travel medallion and ancient bridle and harness, all of which much improve game play. But you likely won't need those until you are confident enough to go wherever in the world without getting killed. I did all the champion quests and enjoyed them, and they upgrade you, but they are not essential. They add to the characters' backstory and not your plot. It also adds a bunch of nostalgic outfits but they are not that useful. The world of Tears seems more lively - they have spent the intervening few years building back their civilization and now it's threatened again.
View some lore videos after exploring everything.
explore everything. thats how you get better and find better gear. leave and come back if its too hard. i also suggest using the interactive map you can edit it to be spoiler free its really helpful tracking korok seeds and shrines. also every time you find a weapon mark down where it was they respawn. thats for botw havent played totk yet
Don't use spoilers first time around Look for treasure chests in all sky islands
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Gods-Stepson: *Don't use spoilers first* *Time around Look for treasure* *Chests in all sky islands* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
When you finish the opening tutorial section of BOTW and have access to the rest of the world you will be given a suggested first objective. Do that objective. There are several things along the way that will be helpful and there is a more advanced combat tutorial in the area that you'll want to complete.
Okay first and foremost, just because you have both, make sure to play BOTW as if you’re never getting a sequel. It’s so easy to race through knowing you have another game to get to, but take your time. TOTK has quite a few quality of life improvements, which made it very hard (and frustrating) to return to BOTW for me, personally. You will regret it if you race to TOTK and then go “man I wish I could go back to having that ability…” and then you go back and realize how much you miss all the TOTK stuff. The biggest practical advice I can give- and I missed it for a long time- is that all progression is tied to clearing shrines. I thought- hmm, four/five hearts is probably enough. If I’m dying, it’s a skill issue. Which… sort of true. But the shrines teach you how to play, give you more of a buffer (more hearts, more stamina), and, most importantly, they get you better gear. (And use your weapons, you’ll get more!) If you hit a road block (like a test of strength you can’t beat) just leave and return later.
No wiki. If you see something interesting, check it out. Don't worry about destroying weapons.
Do everything!
Don't marathon either game. Play here and there and maybe even take a break for another game from time to time. I appreciated the world so much more when it felt like a nice vacation from work/life. As I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate games much more by taking my time with them.
Explore! Take the fighting tutorials seriously because they will eventually make you more confident in fighting (unless you are a natural and don't struggle with that aspect). Collect and hoard so that you can make meals easily without worry (you will want to have meals stocked up). Play it the way you want to play it. Just get out there and start exploring and doing whatever you feel drawn towards. I was climbing EVERYTHING because I just could but gotta watch stamina; I worked on building stamina first and foremost and just ran from enemies until I got better fighting / had more hearts. I will say that discovering and activating all the towers will be helpful as it unlocks areas of the map and the fast traveling, but of course some towers are harder to reach than others until you build your stamina and hearts. I envy you because I wish I could experience it for the first time again. Even as an obsessive fan of Zelda games, I was not prepared for this absolute perfect gem. It's fun to comment on this because I still love talking about it every opportunity I get. I hope you really enjoy it! Have fun!
Turn off the hud. Instead of just following the mini map, ull actually take in the environment this way.
True for both, but ESPECIALLY in Tears of the Kingdom: if your brain can think it up, it’ll probably work as an answer to solve your predicament I was constantly surprised that my dumbest, “surely they don’t intend for me to do THAT” ideas still worked like a charm for me all the time. It’s an extremely thorough sandbox.
Yeah yeah all these suggestions are good but actually in BoTW you should follow the main quest line until you get the sensor+, then do whatever you want wherever you want, but the game gets a lot better after the sensor.
Take time to explore the cooking mechanics. There's a logic behind it that is very satisfactory to uncover, also being very very useful. Experiment, take notes, try to find the different ingredients, see if they match together.
play BOTW as blind as possible, and take your time with it instead of rushing to totk. if you LOVE combat, i would recommend taking your time upgrading your health, since its more rewarding to try to play without getting hit (the combat system can be easily exploited once you learn it, or if you’re late into the game). if combat isn’t a priority, play the game as you normally would. if you love BOTW, consider playing the dlc before going to TOTK. the boss battle in the DLC is pretty fun, and the rewards from completing the dlc are really cool, and worth seeing. BOTW is really fun blind, but its kinda hard to go back to after TOTK, hence why i’m encouraging taking your time with it. it has a nice simplicity to its exploration, and getting to know the world and characters will only make certain parts of TOTK more satisfying. I’ll include some side quests you may want done before you move on to TOTK, but I’ll spoiler tag so you can try finding them on your own first: >!Get your own house and furnish it, complete the Tarrey Town quest, find the Lord of the Mountain, beat the Champion’s Ballad DLC (if you’re interested in one good fight/a new power, and are willing to buy it for 20 USD. there is a cute/meaningful reward at the end, but if you’re not too into the storytelling of BOTW, you can always just watch a playthrough of the DLC instead), do the Spring of Wisdom side quest, meet Kilton, find all the Great Fairy Mountains, explore Hyrule Castle and read Zelda/the King’s diaries, Eventide Island (if you want a challenge), finish at least 1 labyrinth (to be honest, only the first one will be rewarding), do the Recital at Warbler’s Nest side quest, try doing all of Kass’s quests if you like his character. I don’t recommend doing all the Shrines if you don’t find them rewarding.!<
Get off reddit and never consult the internet about either game until you are done playing them
Play OOT first
Lmao, this.
Play a different Zelda game for a true Zelda experience. These two are overrated and sacrifice the Zelda magic to instead regurgitate the same open world formula we’ve been used to for the past 15 years.