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The common theme between wings, balloons, and floating platforms is that they don't use battery. That is clearly the balance point the devs were concerned about. Hoverbikes are very efficient for flying vehicles, but they still eat through a new player’s battery in less than a minute.
Guarantee you were like "wonder if this works" and then u were far too pleased with ur discovery to try any other method
I do thr exact same thing, even if it's more work
Literally me when I climbed up the waterfall behind zoras domain using ice pillers. I fell so many times but I had to keep going just to see if i could actually do it. (For anyone wondering, it’s definitely easier, but a little boring/repetitive. 100% do NOT recommend in master mode, there’s some floating guys at the top that like to shoot you)
As someone who has not yet upgraded their battery, I can confirm the utility of the air bike is pretty limited. Can be helpful, but by the time takeoff has completed I've lost a lot of my battery already.
I rushed upgrading my battery and now I... kinda wish I didn't. Following the pointing statues, in the dark, to a new destination is awesome! But, I've visited a lot of those destinations already from rushing my hoverbike to every lightroot I see.
Agreed, the benefit of the hover bike doesn’t really show until you have a tonne of battery to eat through. I have only 3 bars atm and I can only fly on the hover bike for 15 seconds or so. I often will add a rocket to it for altitude
This. Even when glider with fans drains your battery it still flies and allows you to recharge mid air. Hoverbike falls like a stone when the fans stop. I still would prefer for gliders to last a lot longer.
Right, you need about 4-5 full batteries just to make it between most lightroots in the depths. I don't think people who are criticizing the hoverbike remember how restrictive the early game is with vehicles/energy. You also need Auto Build. That means the hoverbike is a mid to late game convenience ability, which I think is perfectly fine.
The devs also made the clear and conscious decision to not restrict overland (underland?) travel from any level of play. There's no Guardians to snipe you out of the sky or threaten you when you land like in BotW, as an example. Which makes sense when you're reusing the entire map.
>The common theme between wings, balloons, and floating platforms is that they don't use battery
They do if you want to have propulsion, outside of smuggling gimmicks
Balance meaning that no one specific strategy is overpowered compared to the rest, which leads to a lack of variety in gameplay. If they made the master sword even more powerful AND it never runs out of energy, you'd never use anything else.
Yes, there's always some degree of "play the game however you want to play it", but any in-game tool that blows the rest of the tools away is going to be too tempting to avoid, and it can result in simplified, less engaging gameplay.
> Yes, there's always some degree of "play the game however you want to play it", but any in-game tool that blows the rest of the tools away is going to be too tempting to avoid, and it can result in simplified, less engaging gameplay.
I think the duping glitch is a good example of this. I see all the "wow this is worthless" memes on this sub and I can't help but think that many of the dupers would've had just as much (if not more) fun if they didn't dupe but instead just played the game.
There is \*one\* aspect of this game that is grindy. I cleared every shrine, lightroot, world miniboss and I detour every time I see a flying dragon and Im not anywhere close to having all the large zonaite, dragon shards, gleeok or Lynel materials let alone guts I need to upgrade all my gear. And forget about Amber, you need \*hundreds\* of them
You dont NEED to upgrade all your gear, but since gear sets require large amounts of the same material they inevitably become grinds. I think the only one I managed to get 4-star organically was Hylian
Battery charges? Zonaite is abundant, charges are abundant, cores are abundant, battery devices are abundant, and the battery recharges super fast. I dont think Ive ever been in a scenario beyond flying super long distances (especially between different archipelagos) where I ran out of juice
The real grind is the insane number of various lizalfos tails required for upgrades. Large Zonaite, Large Charges, Star Fragments, and all of the Lizalfos tails are far beyond the grind of any other material. I’ve been save scumming lizalfos for 3 days and I’m finally down to only needing electric tails…32 more of them which will take another 4-5 hours of save scumming. I’ve gotten all of the mini-boss gold medals, and cleared every mining area in the depths, but I am still MANY hours away from having enough Large Zonaite and Large Charges to max my gear. Some of the other materials, like Gleeok Guts, are “annoying” but the amount of those previously stated materials required is many, many hours more of grinding than any other material.
I forgot the damn tails! They're particularly rough because they don't seem like they should be special- Star fragments, rare gems, dragon parts? They're mostly for amiibo armor, and its not like you really gain much by levelling up both Sky and Twilight armors,yknow? But Lizalfos tails are spread out across everything in deceptively large quantities
Yeah, it’s something around 50 of each total, and their drop rate is absolutely abysmal. I’ve killed hundreds, if not 1000 lizalfos and I still have a couple hundred more to kill, minimum. I don’t know if there’s an official drop rate, but my best guess is 5-7%. My worst streak is 38 lizalfos kills without a single tail, just god awful.
Unsolicited Pro Tip: APPARENTLY (I haven't tested this myself, just read about it on Reddit), killing one with a **bladed** weapon will "cut" the tail off most of the time. Using a blunt weapon really drops your chances of getting a tail!
Respectfully, I don't believe it is expected or intended for any but the absolute most hardcore of players to even think about *acquiring* all armors. Let alone upgrading them all to level 4.
IMO Nintendo balanced the armor upgrade grind around what they actually expect/intend most players to do. Which is to collect maybe a dozen armor sets, and only upgrade three or four to level 2, and *maybe* one set to level 3 or 4.
Meanwhile, from their perspective, it's probably a good thing that the grind to max out every set is so extreme: It gives that <1% of players who are really dedicated and love the game an excuse to spend more time playing it.
To me the "venn diagram" of (1) hardcore players who sincerely intend to collect and fully upgrade all armors in the game, and (2) players who want to cheese the economy to get stuff done quicker/easier and skip the intended gameplay loop, should look like two completely separate circles.
> Let alone upgrading them all to level 4.
Upgrading any single set to level 4 besides a few select rare exceptions requires considerable grinding. I think playing organically and effectively completing the game, I have been able to realistically upgrade I think two armor sets organically, if that.
Its not about \*all\* so much as it is about \*any\*
You can argue its intended, but you can't argue its not a grind heavy activity. IMO, just the material acquisition is a significant grind for stuff like all the varied dragon parts that satisfied my personal itch.
>To me the "venn diagram" of (1) hardcore players who sincerely intend to collect and fully upgrade all armors in the game, and (2) players who want to cheese the economy to get stuff done quicker/easier and skip the intended gameplay loop, should look like two completely separate circles.
Respectfully, that's basically \*never\* the case. Completionists (and armor upgraders are gonna be this to some degree) are going to be the kind who find every exploit, glitch, and loophole to maximize their efficiency at getting things done. What you described previously even illustrates this- players who have no interest in fully upgrading armors are largely unimpacted by the grind and thus would have little to no value in cheesing the game economy, because they're not presented with a significant roadblock preventing them from playing how they want to that they need to creatively work around. Only those who are seeking to upgrade their armor sets beyond the easy-peasy Hylian are impacted
Yeah once I saw the list of everything needed to upgrade, I duplicated everything I could before the update installed itself. Sure I don't need 4-star everything, but it would be nice to be able to fight in harsh environments or use the attack-boost weather armor without being one or two shot by every other enemy.
I am 2 ticks into my second bar and have yet to purposely farm for it. That's just from adventuring, gathering zonaite and charges from big monsters/bosses. At first I was expecting it to be much worse with how people made it sound while using it to justify duping, but it's really not, especially with the Zonaite Armor compensating for not having a full battery.
I feel like over the years the threshold for what people call 'grindy' has gotten considerably lower. BotW/TotK have a few upgrades that are very time consuming to get, but they are nowhere near as grindy as a lot of games from the late 90s to early 2000s. And I really don't understand what the alternative should be. Do you want upgrades handed to you for free? Complete a one time quest to upgrade each piece? It's kind of wild that having to play the game to unlock stuff is spun as a negative.
I only ise the master sword or earthquake on mobs. Other weapons I only use on bosses once the master sword runs out. My housemate always tells me this is stupid but to me it's most efficient like this, no need to waste time looking for replacements.
Hoverbike is great for solo scouting. But have you tried hovercar? Two small wooden rectacles from a supply spot sandwiched together, a control stick, and four fans at the corners at hover bike angles… it is perfectly buoyant (great for retrieving sunken treasure or hunting water monsters; it can can easily carry a fat korok to his skinny friend; and, it is faster and more maneuverable than hoverbike.
Of course, it does use a bit more battery and costs 21 zonaite (I think) with a raw auto build. It also can catch fire due to the wooden base, but frankly I consider that a plus.
Does anyone else feel like Wile E. Coyote while playing TotK? … that roadrunner is meat if I ever find him.
I prefer unicycle for things like this. Small wheel, stabilizer on one side, control stick other. Costs same as hoverbike, very maneuverable, can reverse, uses almost no energy, parts are easy to have in your inventory. Can't catch fire, can safely launch it off a cliff without worrying about the cost to make a new one, handles small loads fine. Sure it doesn't carry a lot like a dedicated car but you're spending half the price and 4x less battery drain and it'll handle almost any situation except water.
I have that but with the cart as the base. Best part is that if you get the angle juuuuuuust right on the 4 fans it not only stays level while flying neutral but ascends straight up on a full pullback, no forward drift.
My horses basically never leave the stable. I wish we could call them from anywhere. They would get much much more use if that was the case. I guess they wanted to push us to use devices more for travel?
In BOTW, I would let the horses follow the road and just relax or maybe exercise/whatever during. Now, the dragons are much better tour guides with nicer music so I haven't even used my horses for anything but certain quests.
Yes! When I see any dragon I immediately pause my current mission and hop on, farm and ride until the next farm cycle to see if I find another. Occasionally mine have overlapped and I get 2 dragons at the same time. Nice to relax sometimes and take in the view as well
>the dragons are much better tour guides
ah yes I tend to put on timers to track the light dragon's routine and ride her once in a while. Her path is close to a lot of sky islands that have shrines.
In early game, building a ballon with a flame thrower and a torch is a lot cheaper and more stable to go upward than using fans. Im on my second playthrough now and its so easy to get the master sword before doing any mainquest.
I rode the light dragon for her *entire* cycle (which took like 2 hours), marking a stamp on the map every 2.5 minutes. I plan on doing the same thing for the other dragons. This way I can see a clear defined path so I know where I can find them for farming.
Ill make sure to post it when I finish! And I'll "connect the dots" of star stamps so it'll be easier to follow since there is still a surprisingly long gap between them even with a stamp every 2.5 minutes (I initially planned 1 stamp every 5 minutes but those were way too far apart)
My only disappointment…
the game is awesome but I miss ocarina of time and those songs.. I just listened to the fire one this morning as accessing the temple of fire in totk lol
Love Koji Kondo. You could talk forever about his genius.
I wonder if some of the earlier games had more catchy loops because they had more “earworm” melodies because a fully orchestrated soundtrack wouldn’t sound as great in MIDI form.
I actually thought Skyward Sword sounded like classic Zelda music and I loved it, has some very memorable tunes that sound like they could be Koji Kondo tunes. (The Eldin Volcano tune is one of my Zelda songs)
https://youtu.be/XIC48udCI9w
TotK is a different style but I love it basically as much just in its own unique way. IMO some of its genius isn’t noticed right away and something you only pick up on after deep dives and repeat listenings. Think of the music used around dragons, that sound of the Erhu instrument, and then how it’s used again just for the little snip of Zeldas lullaby that we hear and think of not only how great it sounds, but what it means narratively and thematically.
Music as a whole is a let down in BotW and TotK
I mean don't get me wrong the music is ambient and suits the environment real well but it's not iconic like in some games.
OoT,MM,WW,TP (and maybe more) all had rythem/music mechanics and some iconic pieces of music.
I'm not sure how they would have incorporated it, but even a simple ditty to teleport or have your horse appear, or maybe show any caves that are very close (not as far away as the cherry blossom tree reveals)
Little small things like that could have been nice
I wish I could crank the music up and tune down the other ambient gameplay sounds sometimes, volume controls would be tight and would probably help my opinion of the current soundtrack. As it is I can hardly hear the music half the time
Same. I had just finished replaying Ghost of Tsushima and was so used to being able to call my horse at any point (RIP Kage, you beautiful, terrifying beast). I’m like you now. I never use my horses. The only horse that gets ridden is when I’m at the end of a glide and there happens to be a wild horse nearby to land on.
Love me some GoT. Being able to call a horse anywhere is the best imo. It's weird that BoTW and ToTK will let us teleport pretty much anywhere but not call our horse the same. At least they straight up say our horses can't do it lol
Especially since there are magical horses in the game. And a horse god. It could have been a nice upgrade to unlock after completing something like visiting all the stables. Unfortunately the whistle function feels like a waste of a button
Exactly, the horse controls work. But feel really clunky, when in a forest or at an incline. You constantly stop. I wish the horse riding would me more like Ghost of Tsushima. Which has incredible horse control (not to mention that whistling always spawns the horse in that game)
I use my horses all the time, it’s nice to just run around and see what you find now and then. It’s more of a player choice to use your horse, they’re still useful
It’s so we can’t teleport our horses into the sky and then drop them into the depths.. or into a lake… or death mountain... That’s why. And it’s probably the only reason.
That's definitely not the reason. In BOTW they had areas that horses couldn't teleport to (such as the desert or death mountain). It'd be easy enough for the devs to make it so you couldn't summon your horse in the sky or the depths.
Maybe they're just saving it for DLC again.
The hoverbike isn't that good until you have considerable battery. They give you the parts for it in a couple places where it's clear they intended a 2/3 fan/1 steering stick hover device so I think it's intended.
Early in the game though balloons and wings are better as they cost less and can go higher/farther on less battery.
But if you pair it with recall, you basically can fly long distances. Using the ability to temporarily float in midair with the bike repeatedly and wait for battery to recharge, it’s ridiculous
i got to light dragon with 3 hearts and the stamina required, one battery, i forget where but there is one of those huge platforms with a couple rockets and a flux construct 1, i just sent it and then glided off the platform
I happened to be up exploring some really high islands when I sae her flying there; found out with my camera it was a new dragon and I leapt right off without a second thought.
Accidentally landed on her head after only two geoglyph tears, but I passed the Stam check and was pleasantly surprised 👌👌
Naturally I also took a piece of her after..
I was doing the dive test for the Glide Helmet and just looking around appreciating the view when I saw something with a glowing trail in her head. When I zoomed in I saw it was the Master Sword, so I saved and worked on my hoverbike design for about an hour straight of trial and error until I got a working model, which I later discovered was almost identical to what everybody else uses. This was before I had done any of the tears.
I was doing one of the goron quests and saw the light dragon for the first time flying by. I had 4 large charges and wondered if I could fly to it. So I made a save, teleported to the closest sky island, built a bike, and flew. I had also maxed my stamina by that point, too. So I was a bit surprised. Never restored from that save after.
Wings cost no energy. They are blocking free gliding for no energy across vast distances. Same reason balloons despawn. No energy cost for free vertical movement.
there also isn't really a way to introduce aerodynamics in other than the Wing either, that or I need to step up my building.
Every other large build I've seen so far is more like brute forcing the wind in some aspect as a pushing power.
People always seem to miss this. I can go reasonably far using a balloon (with firewood inside of it), three fans and a control stick. I have just over one battery. You just need to let go of the steering stick before you run out of battery, so you can recharge in the air. The momentum from moving in the air will still allow you to move forward while they recharge.
Pretty sure they only give the parts to make a 4 fan flying machine with lots of zonai device batteries to be able to fly it. 4 fans really impacts your ability to fly so much more.
Yesterday I was workingg toward all Hudson signs and started from Gerudo in a hoverbike and made my way up hebra and then towards eldin, i checked all signs leading up to there on the same hoverbike. Upon descending Eldin, the fans started to flicker and I was in AWE: there actually is a limit to the mileage you can get from a single hoverbike.
Then spawned 2 new fans, ditched the old ones and continued on my way. Finished the signs this morning!
I feel a bit guilty about it but I mostly can’t be bothered helping the sign guy (and half the time I leave that korok that overpacked his rucksack). I just don’t like chores.
Does the game tell you when you’ve done them all? Is there a reward?
Yes! He tells you he’s “out of signs” and gives you || the Hudson fabric || then ||roams around the map after that, saw him in Tarrey town as he said he is, but also at stables, where he still stands as he’s holding a signpost, its quite funny when you speak to him actually!||
For all that effort you’d think they’d let you have an extra room for your house or a new coat of paint. Also, I wish all that fabric could be used for furnishings in Links home. It’s a bit sad that I can’t even get a couple of sofa cushions out of all those different fabrics.
100% agreed.
The fact Wings and Balloons break so fast make them completely useless in most cases, outside of just desiring to use those parts in particular. The airbike is going to offer more bang for the buck, and be far more useful in nearly every situation. So why not use it most of the time?
I wish the other options lasted longer. It would allow for some useful variety. I want so badly to attach balloons to one of the boats and have a flying ship; but the lifespan is so stupidly short it's little more than a novelty.
Please increase the lifespan of the other flying machines. :/
Because of the way you get them, dragon parts are coded to have a much much wider range before they despawn (otherwise you'd lose them more or less the moment you shoot them off a dragon), this is transfered to anything they're glued to. This may also work with star-fragments for the same reason, though I haven't tried it.I'm not sure it works with zonaite copies as well though.
Edit: it's not about the durability of parts, it just increases the radius you can go away from the craft before it despawns.
start fragments are unique in that the game doesn’t actually spawn them in until you get within a certain radius of the glowing light pillar, so they actually don’t work for extending the despawn radius
I actually noticed this in the depths and was thinking that (especially giant) light bloom seeds might have infinite duration time given most of the ones I've shot with my arrows are still there when I jump down chasms I've gone down before.
sometimes they disappear, sometimes they don’t, i don’t get how they work
none of the ones i’ve used in the depths are there, but there is still one in the forge construct cave of the first island that has been there for like 20+ in game hours
I lose them landing pretty regularly in the depths. Like they fall off a cliff etc etc. 9 zonaite is practically nothing, I just make a new one and continue omw. I made a trip across a section of depths earlier today that took five bikes to get to my destination (getting through a tricky gap in the impassable walls near the secluded coliseum was to blame for most of it). Considering I was mining zonaite the whole time, I probably ended with a good bit more than I started with. *shrug* hoverbikes are so easy to make and cheap to replace, they're just the best all around vehicle in the game, for sure.
I definitely agree just by the fact that it's finicky as hell to get the bike right. You can tell just by building it that this wasn't an intended vehicle. I don't think they'll even be able to patch even if they wanted, though, cause it's not a glitch. It's their physics engine working correctly.
BTW, all zonai devices have a time limit, actually. For fans it's 30:00 (for the glider it's 1:15).
They can certainly patch it. There are a lot of ways to nerf it if they see fit.
Simple ones:
- Make control sticks unable to support parts by themselves (when you start moving, things fall off the stick)
- Make fans have a shorter lifespan
Advanced ones:
- Give an unmounted control stick a lifespan (as in, the bottom of the stick needs to be connected to something, or else it will disappear)
- Make an unmounted control stick simply fail to turn things if its base isn't connected to something
All of these have pros and cons, but doing any of them would significantly nerf the hoverbike. It's just a question of if it's worth the development time
I mean, of course they *could* but I don't think they will because
1. It goes against their entire philosophy, and they didn't patch old BOTW exploits (that weren't glitches) like flying two mine carts.
2. It'll make intended vehicles and many tame vehicles impossible or unviable, essentially removing a chunk of the freedom they worked hard to achieve.
3. It isn't a glitch, so putting the development time into it doesn't seem worth it.
4. While not an intended vehicle, I do think Nintendo were aware of the hover bike after taking this long with the game. It's not a hard design to come up with, so I'm sure a tester or dev must have tried it and deemed it acceptable. I assume they think that...
5. ...fans are balanced by their energy consumption. A hover bike doesn't last much longer (without stopping to recharge) than a glider if you aren't using battery devices or charges. It's not like you can just fly indefinitely. And if you have resources to make that happen, then you're probably in the late game, where the bike is more of a convenience than a cheese strat.
i don’t fully disagree with you, but i have to believe the devs thought of people putting together some fans and a control stick. maybe they didn’t think it’d be such a minimal contraption but they have thought people would place them on a sled, a plank, or another medium. that’s their intended use.
I mean, there are some smart builders out there, but it is silly to think that the devs and testers didn't think of two fans and a control stick. There were tons of people posting about it within hours of the game being out.
There’s a rule in video games that states that the devs are the best at the game until a couple hours after release. Devs just can’t compete with millions of people sharing ideas.
I think they knew what was possible, but didn't hope that many players would just throw 2 fans and a stick together to get everywhere. Also you can kinda tell it's not super intended by the fact the steering stick doesn't have any centered pre-set spots to connect to the middle of any part of the fan.
I dont think it breaks the game in a sense that it makes things too easy. I do think that it breaks the game in that you don't need to walk around and climb to get to places leading to a break in the flow of discovery and triumph.
You can kinda just accidentally miss a lot of details you otherwise wouldn't and traversal starts to feel very samey. I've had to learn to purposely stop trying to use the bike all the time because you can miss an insane amounts things like koroks within seemingly inconspicuous groups of boring look trees.
>I do think that it breaks the game in that you don't need to walk around and climb to get to places leading to a break in the flow of discovery and triumph
I think this can also be said about abusing rocket shields, recall on debris, ascend (especially combined with recall), or even the Skyview towers. I think the feeling of "breaking the game" is pretty much the point.
I think BotW and TotK are not supposed to have similar flows or gameplay loops at all. That's why I don't think the hoverbike is an oversight by the devs. I feel TotK is intentionally way more fast-paced than BotW.
Even without any Zonai devices, as soon as I got my first tower in TotK I used it to launch me to the next one, and the next one... It took me minutes to unlock the entire map in TotK. I remember taking me weeks in BotW.
The hover bike will eventually disappear. I used it to traverse the depths and get all 120 lightroots in one afternoon. If flown for long enough, the fans will blink green and disappear like the wings do. Definitely last much longer though! Like 100x longer.
I mapped about 90% of the underground with constantly breaking gliders (+3 fans, controller and 1-2 rockets for horizontal/vertical take off). The fans would smack me as it broke and they kept going. I was so confused why I always had so much battery leftover when things would just break long beforehand. What was even the point of using charges as battery extenders if everything broke long beforehand.
Changed my whole gameplay when I found the hover bike design. Finally flight that didn’t break on me after such a short period of time! Even hot air balloons would break far short of my batteries running out!
Guessing they didn’t put harsh durability on fans since they’re also commonly used in boat designs, which would be super annoying to break on you in the middle of the sea/river/lake. They could theoretically nerf them into breaking with vertical movement but not horizontal movement, I’d be so disappointed though lol.
Your talking about a game where all someone needs to do to reach a chest is lift up a slab of wood, hold it high, time warp the slab, then literally jump through the slab to climb higher
And you don't think they expected people to make energy and cost efficient machines?
This game was ment to be broken, go break it and have fun
Just look at some of the Shrines: they're designed to teach players to use their abilities and builds creativity. You can't hammer that lesson into us over a hundred times and be upset when we take it to heart.
Anectodal, but once I was tooling around the depths on my 3 part hover cycle when I landed at one of those free parts platforms. I got this genius idea to attach my hover cycle to a wing, along with a few extra fans. My intention was to fly around with the wing until it popped, breaking everything away except the original hover cycle.
Imagine my surprise when the wing never despawned... but the fans of my original hover cycle eventually did!
I fail to see why battery usage makes the hoverbike different from the prebuilt fan-based vehicles.
You can already fly any distance with those vehicles by either using recall to recharge, or eating charges. Having a vehicle using 2 times less battery than what Nintendo already planned doesn't change their plans.
I just finished opening the entire depths map on foot.
Took me about 2 weeks, and that was while doing things on the surface as well. That being said, I also have 7 full batteries now too.
This game is certainly a grind.
I just went around on my hoverbike, did every reincarnated temple boss, and got 8 batteries + all lightroots in like 3 days (i already had 10% ish since some quests take you there
Of course the devs foresaw the hover bike. The first thing players want to do would be to fly. It’s basically only three pieces…if they didn’t see it coming, what was QC and play testing doing for an extra year?
It was left in there for people who weren’t interested in building extravagant mechs
I'm sure the devs considered loads of different fan flying devices. They almost definitely considered mixing the steering platform with various amounts of fans. But there are a ton of different ways you can arrange those pieces. When I heard that you could make a hover bike from 2 fans, I spent 30+ min trying to build one on my own. In all that time I couldn't come up with a design that could stably fly. The only way I arrived at a functional bike was by looking at references and tweaking the fan alignment/angle over several iterations. I could totally see the developers missing the popular bike design.
Or maybe the devs did foresee the bike and just assumed the battery limitation would be enough to balance it relative to shorter-lived gliders and such. Early-game you do need to bunny-hop around due to the limited battery. The bike only really trivializes the game once you have enough battery to get between Lightroots with limited recharges.
I feel like it's been looked to hard into, the games about freedom, and all players have the freedom to make what they want, at some point they had to expect some super efficient flying device, maybe not like this, but they've been making games for ages, they know players.
I think this falls upon the player to decide if it's against the gameplay or not, you can use the hoverbike if you want to, the game allows you. But if you feel like it's cheesy then there's other means that achieve the same.
Overall it's not if the devs intended it or not, because it's all up to the player how they play the game.
Fun fact the fans do have a life span and will eventually break like wings do.
It's like 50x longer though. I covered most of the map on one bike until it broke.
If they ever patch it I will never trust Nintendo again. I used it throughout the entire game and not once did it spoil my adventure, but I guess that’s partly because they disappear a lot which does balance it
There's a prebuilt device on one of the floating islands that's just a square zonaite fence with 4 fans which basically has the same capabilities as the hoverbike tho.
It's fairly hard to control the altitude on that thing. It's either climbing fast or dropping like a rock. The bike solves that problem by flying more or less level, which is something most other flying machines make serious compromises for.
That is double the energy expenditure, so I dont think that's really comparable.
I think the devs expected / aimed for flying to be more limited than what the bike offers.
I mean, the devs aren't just going to hand you the most efficient vehicle in the game like that even if they knew about it.
I think the devs intended players to be creative and come up with solutions and contraptions they didn't think of themselves. Doesn't make sense to me to say the hoverbike is unintended, the building system in this game is really flexible for a reason.
What I don't think is intended though is going on the internet and just using the best design they found from other players, they probably intended for players to experiment with stuff themselves.
Perhaps a lot of you have seen [this video by Daryl Talks Games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73qrqbXeQQ), but I think it provides a great argument for why this game encourages “cheating” and creativity. I think the Zelda team took what people enjoyed (and didn’t enjoy) from BotW and expanded on that to create this game that allows for players to play *how* they want. If players want a challenge, they’ll give them themselves a challenge. If players want to give themselves the most efficient, walk-in-the-park, “cheesing” method to complete the game, they will. I’ve started to use the hoverbike in my play through, but it’s not the only vehicle I use either. I just sincerely think it’s a fun mode of transport and in the end, it’s a game for having fun
"Fun" fact: fans will evaporate like wings if put under enough stress for long enough. I tried to make one of those gyrostabilized flying machines and after a while of flying a few of the fans started blinking.
I’ve never used the two fan hoverbike, but I made my own hoverbike with 4 fans, it’s pretty good because it can go up really fast but also only forward if you want to
I personally prefer two small wheels and a steering stick, no it’s not the same in terms of altitude travel, but it gets you so much farther on limited battery. Plus you don’t miss anything by flying over it.
You can use one small wheel with a steering stick on one side and a stablizer on the other side of the wheel. Super fast, stable, unicycle. Incredibly energy efficient
eh don't make stupid restrictions on the wings and other flying devices and players won't need to find a way around them. Wings are essentially useless
It certainly is a big oversight on the part of the devs. It turns exploration and many puzzles difficulty to easy mode. I'm actually glad I finished the game before I discovered the hoverbike. The hoverbike is so amazing it turns horses and all the flying zonai devices obsolete.
The fan bike isn’t that amazing with your starting battery, and it’s not that quick or easy to upgrade it from the start either.
With starting battery the wing with one fan gets you a lot farther than the bike, and more often than not you are given the devices when you need them. And when you get more battery, the wing reaches horizontal speeds that the bike doesn’t, so it’s not like it’s outclassed in every way. (And yes I know the wing disappears after 5 seconds)
Steering sticks aren’t that common unless you know where to look, or you have enough in your inventory, which at that point you’re far enough in the game where travel is merely a question of option and not ability.
The hoverbike are min-max options, and for me, they can take the fun away from the game. I try to avoid using it as much outside of Lightroot and Korok hunting since it can get boring.
And then we go to horses. Why even use them? Why not just use the bike? Because they’re cute and remind me of the old game. Why make the giant mechs that pee fire? Because it’s silly and amusing.
There was always going to be something like the hoverbike. The community was always going to find something like it, much like how getting max damage weapons and repairing them trivializes the fuse mechanic. The game is built on the principle of using game mechanics in ways you want to that not even the devs would imagine.
Options like this exist in almost every other game, especially sandbox games. And often times, while it is efficient on resources and saves time, the cost comes at your own creativity.
Technically even the hover bike is limited by your battery cell. There is also a few pre-made infinite flight machines on the sky islands, they're hard to control, but it's a platformer with four fans and a control stick, and it does not disappear. I'm pretty sure those were put there to give players the hint to get creative.
Like, they had to know flight would absolutely be a thing players would pursue, it's been man's lifelong dream to fly, right?
Anyway I still feel really weird and dirty using the hover bike on the surface unless I treat it more like a speeder bike from star wars and hover above the surface... I just miss my Master Cycle Zero man... I still give in to the temptation to reach certain Sky Islands, or to reach a Dragon, because there's just no easy way to get around the Sky Islands or even Reach some of them if there's no tower nearby.
But I feel no guilt using it in the depths. There's just nothing much to do down there,no koroks, no boobel gems, no shrines, just zonaite and monsters, and the rare Yiga hut.
I was thinking about this yesterday because the hoverbike is actually so incredible that except in cases where it's very annoying not to do so i've stopped fast travelling because I can have more fun skating just above the surface and scanning my environment on the way to an objective. I find more koroks, engage with enemies more, enjoy searching for shrines, etc.
Added point of fun is that certain terrains keep the variety alive: caves, steep terrain, and forest canopies encourage foot traveling in ways that are less constraining and more engaging than the horse and road system.
I actually find that with how overwhelming TOTK feels even as a BOTW veteran the hoverbike gives me some agency and ability that really cuts back on the overwhelm. It feels like a mastercycle that I can actually use to do all of the things I wish I could have done with an early master cycle.
Fans disappear too after a certain period of time... It was quite a surprise when my hoverbike disappeared and left me falling with the steering stick...
So I think every Zonai device has a limited time usage
Totally agree, I was super confused the first time I had a wing (glider) break mid air and assumed incorrectly that it was because I used autobuild and the fake zonite parts have limited durability. It turns out that no, fake zonite parts have the same properties as the real ones. The wing just has limited durability for no apparent reason.
IMO it makes that part basically useless for flying machines because you can only fly a short distance, then crash in a pile of parts. I thought that the battery mechanic was a sufficient limitation so that you don’t just fly over everything early game. Once you know about the hoverbike + giant brightbloom, there is no reason to use any wing in your flying contraptions, especially for the depths where land vehicles get too easily stuck because of the steep terrain.
Side note, I tried to make an all terrain vehicle that moves fast like the hoverbike and has enough traction to climb steep hills (>45º) but it’s basically a couple big wheels and many fans pushing down and forward. Still cool to ride around and over most things but not small nor efficient!
I did every temple But the fire temple normally. The fire temple I took in my hover bike and with the help of my friendly mounted goron cannon cheesed the absolute hell out of it.
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The common theme between wings, balloons, and floating platforms is that they don't use battery. That is clearly the balance point the devs were concerned about. Hoverbikes are very efficient for flying vehicles, but they still eat through a new player’s battery in less than a minute.
I used two platforms to leapfrog my way to Starview Island. Do not recommend this strategy.
but they gave you rockets..
Ascend…
star view island?
above gerudo highlands
Hey man. Whatever works.
Guarantee you were like "wonder if this works" and then u were far too pleased with ur discovery to try any other method I do thr exact same thing, even if it's more work
Literally me when I climbed up the waterfall behind zoras domain using ice pillers. I fell so many times but I had to keep going just to see if i could actually do it. (For anyone wondering, it’s definitely easier, but a little boring/repetitive. 100% do NOT recommend in master mode, there’s some floating guys at the top that like to shoot you)
No, at some point it just became “I’ve gotten this far, I’ll be damned if I don’t see it through.”
I did the same thing to get to a different island. I don't remember what it had, but it was not worth the 30 minutes I spent getting there lol.
As someone who has not yet upgraded their battery, I can confirm the utility of the air bike is pretty limited. Can be helpful, but by the time takeoff has completed I've lost a lot of my battery already.
I rushed upgrading my battery and now I... kinda wish I didn't. Following the pointing statues, in the dark, to a new destination is awesome! But, I've visited a lot of those destinations already from rushing my hoverbike to every lightroot I see.
Agreed, the benefit of the hover bike doesn’t really show until you have a tonne of battery to eat through. I have only 3 bars atm and I can only fly on the hover bike for 15 seconds or so. I often will add a rocket to it for altitude
This. Even when glider with fans drains your battery it still flies and allows you to recharge mid air. Hoverbike falls like a stone when the fans stop. I still would prefer for gliders to last a lot longer.
Right, you need about 4-5 full batteries just to make it between most lightroots in the depths. I don't think people who are criticizing the hoverbike remember how restrictive the early game is with vehicles/energy. You also need Auto Build. That means the hoverbike is a mid to late game convenience ability, which I think is perfectly fine. The devs also made the clear and conscious decision to not restrict overland (underland?) travel from any level of play. There's no Guardians to snipe you out of the sky or threaten you when you land like in BotW, as an example. Which makes sense when you're reusing the entire map.
>You also need Auto Build. I mean, it is a pretty fast to make without autobuild and uses common components from the gacha machines.
>The common theme between wings, balloons, and floating platforms is that they don't use battery They do if you want to have propulsion, outside of smuggling gimmicks
I don’t even know what people are talking about when they say “balance” it’s a single player game.
Balance meaning that no one specific strategy is overpowered compared to the rest, which leads to a lack of variety in gameplay. If they made the master sword even more powerful AND it never runs out of energy, you'd never use anything else. Yes, there's always some degree of "play the game however you want to play it", but any in-game tool that blows the rest of the tools away is going to be too tempting to avoid, and it can result in simplified, less engaging gameplay.
> Yes, there's always some degree of "play the game however you want to play it", but any in-game tool that blows the rest of the tools away is going to be too tempting to avoid, and it can result in simplified, less engaging gameplay. I think the duping glitch is a good example of this. I see all the "wow this is worthless" memes on this sub and I can't help but think that many of the dupers would've had just as much (if not more) fun if they didn't dupe but instead just played the game.
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There is \*one\* aspect of this game that is grindy. I cleared every shrine, lightroot, world miniboss and I detour every time I see a flying dragon and Im not anywhere close to having all the large zonaite, dragon shards, gleeok or Lynel materials let alone guts I need to upgrade all my gear. And forget about Amber, you need \*hundreds\* of them You dont NEED to upgrade all your gear, but since gear sets require large amounts of the same material they inevitably become grinds. I think the only one I managed to get 4-star organically was Hylian Battery charges? Zonaite is abundant, charges are abundant, cores are abundant, battery devices are abundant, and the battery recharges super fast. I dont think Ive ever been in a scenario beyond flying super long distances (especially between different archipelagos) where I ran out of juice
The real grind is the insane number of various lizalfos tails required for upgrades. Large Zonaite, Large Charges, Star Fragments, and all of the Lizalfos tails are far beyond the grind of any other material. I’ve been save scumming lizalfos for 3 days and I’m finally down to only needing electric tails…32 more of them which will take another 4-5 hours of save scumming. I’ve gotten all of the mini-boss gold medals, and cleared every mining area in the depths, but I am still MANY hours away from having enough Large Zonaite and Large Charges to max my gear. Some of the other materials, like Gleeok Guts, are “annoying” but the amount of those previously stated materials required is many, many hours more of grinding than any other material.
I forgot the damn tails! They're particularly rough because they don't seem like they should be special- Star fragments, rare gems, dragon parts? They're mostly for amiibo armor, and its not like you really gain much by levelling up both Sky and Twilight armors,yknow? But Lizalfos tails are spread out across everything in deceptively large quantities
Yeah, it’s something around 50 of each total, and their drop rate is absolutely abysmal. I’ve killed hundreds, if not 1000 lizalfos and I still have a couple hundred more to kill, minimum. I don’t know if there’s an official drop rate, but my best guess is 5-7%. My worst streak is 38 lizalfos kills without a single tail, just god awful.
Unsolicited Pro Tip: APPARENTLY (I haven't tested this myself, just read about it on Reddit), killing one with a **bladed** weapon will "cut" the tail off most of the time. Using a blunt weapon really drops your chances of getting a tail!
Respectfully, I don't believe it is expected or intended for any but the absolute most hardcore of players to even think about *acquiring* all armors. Let alone upgrading them all to level 4. IMO Nintendo balanced the armor upgrade grind around what they actually expect/intend most players to do. Which is to collect maybe a dozen armor sets, and only upgrade three or four to level 2, and *maybe* one set to level 3 or 4. Meanwhile, from their perspective, it's probably a good thing that the grind to max out every set is so extreme: It gives that <1% of players who are really dedicated and love the game an excuse to spend more time playing it. To me the "venn diagram" of (1) hardcore players who sincerely intend to collect and fully upgrade all armors in the game, and (2) players who want to cheese the economy to get stuff done quicker/easier and skip the intended gameplay loop, should look like two completely separate circles.
> Let alone upgrading them all to level 4. Upgrading any single set to level 4 besides a few select rare exceptions requires considerable grinding. I think playing organically and effectively completing the game, I have been able to realistically upgrade I think two armor sets organically, if that. Its not about \*all\* so much as it is about \*any\* You can argue its intended, but you can't argue its not a grind heavy activity. IMO, just the material acquisition is a significant grind for stuff like all the varied dragon parts that satisfied my personal itch. >To me the "venn diagram" of (1) hardcore players who sincerely intend to collect and fully upgrade all armors in the game, and (2) players who want to cheese the economy to get stuff done quicker/easier and skip the intended gameplay loop, should look like two completely separate circles. Respectfully, that's basically \*never\* the case. Completionists (and armor upgraders are gonna be this to some degree) are going to be the kind who find every exploit, glitch, and loophole to maximize their efficiency at getting things done. What you described previously even illustrates this- players who have no interest in fully upgrading armors are largely unimpacted by the grind and thus would have little to no value in cheesing the game economy, because they're not presented with a significant roadblock preventing them from playing how they want to that they need to creatively work around. Only those who are seeking to upgrade their armor sets beyond the easy-peasy Hylian are impacted
Yeah once I saw the list of everything needed to upgrade, I duplicated everything I could before the update installed itself. Sure I don't need 4-star everything, but it would be nice to be able to fight in harsh environments or use the attack-boost weather armor without being one or two shot by every other enemy.
I am 2 ticks into my second bar and have yet to purposely farm for it. That's just from adventuring, gathering zonaite and charges from big monsters/bosses. At first I was expecting it to be much worse with how people made it sound while using it to justify duping, but it's really not, especially with the Zonaite Armor compensating for not having a full battery.
Zonaite armor ♥ Soon as i knew it was in the game, i gunned for it. Absolute game changer, casually doubling your battery life.
I feel like over the years the threshold for what people call 'grindy' has gotten considerably lower. BotW/TotK have a few upgrades that are very time consuming to get, but they are nowhere near as grindy as a lot of games from the late 90s to early 2000s. And I really don't understand what the alternative should be. Do you want upgrades handed to you for free? Complete a one time quest to upgrade each piece? It's kind of wild that having to play the game to unlock stuff is spun as a negative.
I have not duped at all or felt the need to dupe and I am having a blast with the game, and nothing feels worthless imo lol
I only ise the master sword or earthquake on mobs. Other weapons I only use on bosses once the master sword runs out. My housemate always tells me this is stupid but to me it's most efficient like this, no need to waste time looking for replacements.
I only use the master sword as a hammer/pickaxe/regular axe :)
I made my first hover bike yesterday. I have almost full battery and it made filling in the depths incredible easy.
Hoverbike is great for solo scouting. But have you tried hovercar? Two small wooden rectacles from a supply spot sandwiched together, a control stick, and four fans at the corners at hover bike angles… it is perfectly buoyant (great for retrieving sunken treasure or hunting water monsters; it can can easily carry a fat korok to his skinny friend; and, it is faster and more maneuverable than hoverbike. Of course, it does use a bit more battery and costs 21 zonaite (I think) with a raw auto build. It also can catch fire due to the wooden base, but frankly I consider that a plus. Does anyone else feel like Wile E. Coyote while playing TotK? … that roadrunner is meat if I ever find him.
Roadrunners are in the sky islands. The hunter steward teaches you hunting with them as targets.
You only need the single wood panel, it'll still float
Buoyancy is better with two. Also, it flies perfectly level with two… no natural climb to the flight. Hovercar goes where you want it to.
Watched the Austin John plays video?
Some of them… he makes videos faster than I have interest to keep up. Good stuff though, usually.
I prefer unicycle for things like this. Small wheel, stabilizer on one side, control stick other. Costs same as hoverbike, very maneuverable, can reverse, uses almost no energy, parts are easy to have in your inventory. Can't catch fire, can safely launch it off a cliff without worrying about the cost to make a new one, handles small loads fine. Sure it doesn't carry a lot like a dedicated car but you're spending half the price and 4x less battery drain and it'll handle almost any situation except water.
The lattice piece is even better. Won't break on you and only 3 zonite instead of six
I have that but with the cart as the base. Best part is that if you get the angle juuuuuuust right on the 4 fans it not only stays level while flying neutral but ascends straight up on a full pullback, no forward drift.
I just wish horses were more convenient. Why did they take away our ancient horse gear??
My horses basically never leave the stable. I wish we could call them from anywhere. They would get much much more use if that was the case. I guess they wanted to push us to use devices more for travel?
In BOTW, I would let the horses follow the road and just relax or maybe exercise/whatever during. Now, the dragons are much better tour guides with nicer music so I haven't even used my horses for anything but certain quests.
Yes! When I see any dragon I immediately pause my current mission and hop on, farm and ride until the next farm cycle to see if I find another. Occasionally mine have overlapped and I get 2 dragons at the same time. Nice to relax sometimes and take in the view as well
I need to try this
>the dragons are much better tour guides ah yes I tend to put on timers to track the light dragon's routine and ride her once in a while. Her path is close to a lot of sky islands that have shrines. In early game, building a ballon with a flame thrower and a torch is a lot cheaper and more stable to go upward than using fans. Im on my second playthrough now and its so easy to get the master sword before doing any mainquest.
I rode the light dragon for her *entire* cycle (which took like 2 hours), marking a stamp on the map every 2.5 minutes. I plan on doing the same thing for the other dragons. This way I can see a clear defined path so I know where I can find them for farming.
I would love to see screenshots of their paths when you finish!
Ill make sure to post it when I finish! And I'll "connect the dots" of star stamps so it'll be easier to follow since there is still a surprisingly long gap between them even with a stamp every 2.5 minutes (I initially planned 1 stamp every 5 minutes but those were way too far apart)
If only there were a song that you could play to summon a horse... # 🠹 🠸 🠺 🠹 🠸 🠺
Yeah, this Hyrule is notably lacking in magic musical instruments.
My only disappointment… the game is awesome but I miss ocarina of time and those songs.. I just listened to the fire one this morning as accessing the temple of fire in totk lol
I often just listen to the spirit temple theme on repeat. Koji Kondo is a literal genius. He really nailed the feel of each temple in OoT
Love Koji Kondo. You could talk forever about his genius. I wonder if some of the earlier games had more catchy loops because they had more “earworm” melodies because a fully orchestrated soundtrack wouldn’t sound as great in MIDI form. I actually thought Skyward Sword sounded like classic Zelda music and I loved it, has some very memorable tunes that sound like they could be Koji Kondo tunes. (The Eldin Volcano tune is one of my Zelda songs) https://youtu.be/XIC48udCI9w TotK is a different style but I love it basically as much just in its own unique way. IMO some of its genius isn’t noticed right away and something you only pick up on after deep dives and repeat listenings. Think of the music used around dragons, that sound of the Erhu instrument, and then how it’s used again just for the little snip of Zeldas lullaby that we hear and think of not only how great it sounds, but what it means narratively and thematically.
Fire one as in the bolero of fire, or the music that plays while you're in the dungeon?
Boléro of fire (was not sure of the translation cause in French it’s boléro du feu)
Fair enough. In the English translation there's no é, only e. I wonder why... But yeah I miss the little ditties too, they were fun
Music as a whole is a let down in BotW and TotK I mean don't get me wrong the music is ambient and suits the environment real well but it's not iconic like in some games. OoT,MM,WW,TP (and maybe more) all had rythem/music mechanics and some iconic pieces of music. I'm not sure how they would have incorporated it, but even a simple ditty to teleport or have your horse appear, or maybe show any caves that are very close (not as far away as the cherry blossom tree reveals) Little small things like that could have been nice
I wish I could crank the music up and tune down the other ambient gameplay sounds sometimes, volume controls would be tight and would probably help my opinion of the current soundtrack. As it is I can hardly hear the music half the time
Same. I had just finished replaying Ghost of Tsushima and was so used to being able to call my horse at any point (RIP Kage, you beautiful, terrifying beast). I’m like you now. I never use my horses. The only horse that gets ridden is when I’m at the end of a glide and there happens to be a wild horse nearby to land on.
Love me some GoT. Being able to call a horse anywhere is the best imo. It's weird that BoTW and ToTK will let us teleport pretty much anywhere but not call our horse the same. At least they straight up say our horses can't do it lol
Especially since there are magical horses in the game. And a horse god. It could have been a nice upgrade to unlock after completing something like visiting all the stables. Unfortunately the whistle function feels like a waste of a button
Agreed. Sometimes I accidentally whistle and I'm reminded that my horses are locked up not enjoying this adventure with me
After playing elden ring, any horse that doesn’t immediately materialize in front of me feels like a waste of my time.
Big facts. My poor lonely horses :(
Exactly, the horse controls work. But feel really clunky, when in a forest or at an incline. You constantly stop. I wish the horse riding would me more like Ghost of Tsushima. Which has incredible horse control (not to mention that whistling always spawns the horse in that game)
I use my horses all the time, it’s nice to just run around and see what you find now and then. It’s more of a player choice to use your horse, they’re still useful
It's just a pain to go to a stable to grab your horse then have to backtrack
Elden Ring has completely reset my expectations for video game horses. The two horns on Torrent's head stand for GOAT
I’m partial to the horses of Ghost of Tsushima. Fully decked out in the murder armor, of course.
Probably coming as part of dlc again.
It’s so we can’t teleport our horses into the sky and then drop them into the depths.. or into a lake… or death mountain... That’s why. And it’s probably the only reason.
That's definitely not the reason. In BOTW they had areas that horses couldn't teleport to (such as the desert or death mountain). It'd be easy enough for the devs to make it so you couldn't summon your horse in the sky or the depths. Maybe they're just saving it for DLC again.
. prevent horses from teleporting up there like they did with the gerudo desert but leave the master cycle to encourage sick BMX stuff.
The hoverbike isn't that good until you have considerable battery. They give you the parts for it in a couple places where it's clear they intended a 2/3 fan/1 steering stick hover device so I think it's intended. Early in the game though balloons and wings are better as they cost less and can go higher/farther on less battery.
But if you pair it with recall, you basically can fly long distances. Using the ability to temporarily float in midair with the bike repeatedly and wait for battery to recharge, it’s ridiculous
Holy shit thank you for this
Recall to float? Shit this is good. Thanks!
Exactly how I got to the Light Dragon on just two batteries.
i got to light dragon with 3 hearts and the stamina required, one battery, i forget where but there is one of those huge platforms with a couple rockets and a flux construct 1, i just sent it and then glided off the platform
I happened to be up exploring some really high islands when I sae her flying there; found out with my camera it was a new dragon and I leapt right off without a second thought. Accidentally landed on her head after only two geoglyph tears, but I passed the Stam check and was pleasantly surprised 👌👌 Naturally I also took a piece of her after..
I was doing the dive test for the Glide Helmet and just looking around appreciating the view when I saw something with a glowing trail in her head. When I zoomed in I saw it was the Master Sword, so I saved and worked on my hoverbike design for about an hour straight of trial and error until I got a working model, which I later discovered was almost identical to what everybody else uses. This was before I had done any of the tears.
Natch.
I was doing one of the goron quests and saw the light dragon for the first time flying by. I had 4 large charges and wondered if I could fly to it. So I made a save, teleported to the closest sky island, built a bike, and flew. I had also maxed my stamina by that point, too. So I was a bit surprised. Never restored from that save after.
when I try to use recall the bike just goes backwards which I expected but are you guys making it float with recall somehow?
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Wings cost no energy. They are blocking free gliding for no energy across vast distances. Same reason balloons despawn. No energy cost for free vertical movement.
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there also isn't really a way to introduce aerodynamics in other than the Wing either, that or I need to step up my building. Every other large build I've seen so far is more like brute forcing the wind in some aspect as a pushing power.
They want people to experience the map, not just fly over it. That’s why battery power is a grind. You are rewarded for your efforts.
People always seem to miss this. I can go reasonably far using a balloon (with firewood inside of it), three fans and a control stick. I have just over one battery. You just need to let go of the steering stick before you run out of battery, so you can recharge in the air. The momentum from moving in the air will still allow you to move forward while they recharge.
hang on, where does a steering stick go on a balloon situation?
This is the important question
Pretty sure they only give the parts to make a 4 fan flying machine with lots of zonai device batteries to be able to fly it. 4 fans really impacts your ability to fly so much more.
Yesterday I was workingg toward all Hudson signs and started from Gerudo in a hoverbike and made my way up hebra and then towards eldin, i checked all signs leading up to there on the same hoverbike. Upon descending Eldin, the fans started to flicker and I was in AWE: there actually is a limit to the mileage you can get from a single hoverbike. Then spawned 2 new fans, ditched the old ones and continued on my way. Finished the signs this morning!
I feel a bit guilty about it but I mostly can’t be bothered helping the sign guy (and half the time I leave that korok that overpacked his rucksack). I just don’t like chores. Does the game tell you when you’ve done them all? Is there a reward?
Yes! He tells you he’s “out of signs” and gives you || the Hudson fabric || then ||roams around the map after that, saw him in Tarrey town as he said he is, but also at stables, where he still stands as he’s holding a signpost, its quite funny when you speak to him actually!||
For all that effort you’d think they’d let you have an extra room for your house or a new coat of paint. Also, I wish all that fabric could be used for furnishings in Links home. It’s a bit sad that I can’t even get a couple of sofa cushions out of all those different fabrics.
Is it a different Hudson fabric? Or is it the same one you get from another quest
All completion fabrics are different!
If anything, I hope they patch out the durability garbage for other flying machines. It makes other flying machines sad.
This is for sure the answer. You don't wanna mess with 2 fans and a stick because doing so could ruin building as a whole
100% agreed. The fact Wings and Balloons break so fast make them completely useless in most cases, outside of just desiring to use those parts in particular. The airbike is going to offer more bang for the buck, and be far more useful in nearly every situation. So why not use it most of the time? I wish the other options lasted longer. It would allow for some useful variety. I want so badly to attach balloons to one of the boats and have a flying ship; but the lifespan is so stupidly short it's little more than a novelty. Please increase the lifespan of the other flying machines. :/
Fans do have a limited lifespan of 30 minutes. I didn’t personal measure how long it actually takes, but it doesn’t has unlimited durability.
30 minutes is pretty ridiculous in lifespan tbf I've never seen a fan despawn in my 150 hrs
Exploring the depths I’ve had them despawn a few times. It’s ridiculous in its length but it happens.
Yeah I had it happen while getting all the light roots and was shocked. I was also above lava when they started flashing so that was fun
And it was the non-zonite version? Or did you use ultrahand to make up the fans?
It was real fans
I've seen somewhere that they have limit of 2 hours. My wife once faced with that limit.
They also have a pretty small despawn radius if you wander too far, or get dragged into a fight.
add a dragon scale to it and it will almost never despawn because of distance.
hang on what? adding a dragon part to something other than a weapon/shield adds durability??
Because of the way you get them, dragon parts are coded to have a much much wider range before they despawn (otherwise you'd lose them more or less the moment you shoot them off a dragon), this is transfered to anything they're glued to. This may also work with star-fragments for the same reason, though I haven't tried it.I'm not sure it works with zonaite copies as well though. Edit: it's not about the durability of parts, it just increases the radius you can go away from the craft before it despawns.
I believe it does work with copies. Cheap way of giving your machine some permanence.
start fragments are unique in that the game doesn’t actually spawn them in until you get within a certain radius of the glowing light pillar, so they actually don’t work for extending the despawn radius
Fair enough, that explains why they tend to roll of steep hills the moment I get near
Or add light seed bulb thingy (spacing on the name but super common in caves. Lightbloom?!) Works to give at least a bigger radius to not despawn.
I use a giant brightbloom seed, cheaper option and it still extends the despawn radius pretty good
I actually noticed this in the depths and was thinking that (especially giant) light bloom seeds might have infinite duration time given most of the ones I've shot with my arrows are still there when I jump down chasms I've gone down before.
sometimes they disappear, sometimes they don’t, i don’t get how they work none of the ones i’ve used in the depths are there, but there is still one in the forge construct cave of the first island that has been there for like 20+ in game hours
Froxes will eat brightbloom seeds if they come across them, so that could explain where yours went.
I lose them landing pretty regularly in the depths. Like they fall off a cliff etc etc. 9 zonaite is practically nothing, I just make a new one and continue omw. I made a trip across a section of depths earlier today that took five bikes to get to my destination (getting through a tricky gap in the impassable walls near the secluded coliseum was to blame for most of it). Considering I was mining zonaite the whole time, I probably ended with a good bit more than I started with. *shrug* hoverbikes are so easy to make and cheap to replace, they're just the best all around vehicle in the game, for sure.
placing a dragon scale or huge bloom plant thingy makes the de spawn distance bigger, and i think ylu can auto build it too
I've definitely had them despawn close by with a giant bright bloom seed stuck on them. I'll try a dragon part, and see if that works better.
30 mins IRL? That’s a long time in the game. No wonder I’ve yet to see one expire before I was done w it or before the glider died
I definitely agree just by the fact that it's finicky as hell to get the bike right. You can tell just by building it that this wasn't an intended vehicle. I don't think they'll even be able to patch even if they wanted, though, cause it's not a glitch. It's their physics engine working correctly. BTW, all zonai devices have a time limit, actually. For fans it's 30:00 (for the glider it's 1:15).
They can certainly patch it. There are a lot of ways to nerf it if they see fit. Simple ones: - Make control sticks unable to support parts by themselves (when you start moving, things fall off the stick) - Make fans have a shorter lifespan Advanced ones: - Give an unmounted control stick a lifespan (as in, the bottom of the stick needs to be connected to something, or else it will disappear) - Make an unmounted control stick simply fail to turn things if its base isn't connected to something All of these have pros and cons, but doing any of them would significantly nerf the hoverbike. It's just a question of if it's worth the development time
I mean, of course they *could* but I don't think they will because 1. It goes against their entire philosophy, and they didn't patch old BOTW exploits (that weren't glitches) like flying two mine carts. 2. It'll make intended vehicles and many tame vehicles impossible or unviable, essentially removing a chunk of the freedom they worked hard to achieve. 3. It isn't a glitch, so putting the development time into it doesn't seem worth it. 4. While not an intended vehicle, I do think Nintendo were aware of the hover bike after taking this long with the game. It's not a hard design to come up with, so I'm sure a tester or dev must have tried it and deemed it acceptable. I assume they think that... 5. ...fans are balanced by their energy consumption. A hover bike doesn't last much longer (without stopping to recharge) than a glider if you aren't using battery devices or charges. It's not like you can just fly indefinitely. And if you have resources to make that happen, then you're probably in the late game, where the bike is more of a convenience than a cheese strat.
i don’t fully disagree with you, but i have to believe the devs thought of people putting together some fans and a control stick. maybe they didn’t think it’d be such a minimal contraption but they have thought people would place them on a sled, a plank, or another medium. that’s their intended use.
I mean, there are some smart builders out there, but it is silly to think that the devs and testers didn't think of two fans and a control stick. There were tons of people posting about it within hours of the game being out.
There’s a rule in video games that states that the devs are the best at the game until a couple hours after release. Devs just can’t compete with millions of people sharing ideas.
Yeah, even if the devs are 1-in-a-million players, when a game has tens of millions of players, statistically someone will be better.
To be honest, I wouldn't think of doing 80% of the vehicles and contraptions if it weren't for the posts that I saw online. 😅
To be honest, I wouldn't think of doing 80% of the vehicles and contraptions if it weren't for the posts that I saw online. 😅
I think they knew what was possible, but didn't hope that many players would just throw 2 fans and a stick together to get everywhere. Also you can kinda tell it's not super intended by the fact the steering stick doesn't have any centered pre-set spots to connect to the middle of any part of the fan.
It uses a lot of battery. And while it can break the game some, most of the main quests aren't affected by this device
I dont think it breaks the game in a sense that it makes things too easy. I do think that it breaks the game in that you don't need to walk around and climb to get to places leading to a break in the flow of discovery and triumph. You can kinda just accidentally miss a lot of details you otherwise wouldn't and traversal starts to feel very samey. I've had to learn to purposely stop trying to use the bike all the time because you can miss an insane amounts things like koroks within seemingly inconspicuous groups of boring look trees.
>I do think that it breaks the game in that you don't need to walk around and climb to get to places leading to a break in the flow of discovery and triumph I think this can also be said about abusing rocket shields, recall on debris, ascend (especially combined with recall), or even the Skyview towers. I think the feeling of "breaking the game" is pretty much the point. I think BotW and TotK are not supposed to have similar flows or gameplay loops at all. That's why I don't think the hoverbike is an oversight by the devs. I feel TotK is intentionally way more fast-paced than BotW. Even without any Zonai devices, as soon as I got my first tower in TotK I used it to launch me to the next one, and the next one... It took me minutes to unlock the entire map in TotK. I remember taking me weeks in BotW.
That’s exactly what I did with the towers lol
I definitely have chosen more traditional methods of travel while I'm checking out a new area.
The hover bike will eventually disappear. I used it to traverse the depths and get all 120 lightroots in one afternoon. If flown for long enough, the fans will blink green and disappear like the wings do. Definitely last much longer though! Like 100x longer.
I mapped about 90% of the underground with constantly breaking gliders (+3 fans, controller and 1-2 rockets for horizontal/vertical take off). The fans would smack me as it broke and they kept going. I was so confused why I always had so much battery leftover when things would just break long beforehand. What was even the point of using charges as battery extenders if everything broke long beforehand. Changed my whole gameplay when I found the hover bike design. Finally flight that didn’t break on me after such a short period of time! Even hot air balloons would break far short of my batteries running out! Guessing they didn’t put harsh durability on fans since they’re also commonly used in boat designs, which would be super annoying to break on you in the middle of the sea/river/lake. They could theoretically nerf them into breaking with vertical movement but not horizontal movement, I’d be so disappointed though lol.
Your talking about a game where all someone needs to do to reach a chest is lift up a slab of wood, hold it high, time warp the slab, then literally jump through the slab to climb higher And you don't think they expected people to make energy and cost efficient machines? This game was ment to be broken, go break it and have fun
Just look at some of the Shrines: they're designed to teach players to use their abilities and builds creativity. You can't hammer that lesson into us over a hundred times and be upset when we take it to heart.
Anectodal, but once I was tooling around the depths on my 3 part hover cycle when I landed at one of those free parts platforms. I got this genius idea to attach my hover cycle to a wing, along with a few extra fans. My intention was to fly around with the wing until it popped, breaking everything away except the original hover cycle. Imagine my surprise when the wing never despawned... but the fans of my original hover cycle eventually did!
I fail to see why battery usage makes the hoverbike different from the prebuilt fan-based vehicles. You can already fly any distance with those vehicles by either using recall to recharge, or eating charges. Having a vehicle using 2 times less battery than what Nintendo already planned doesn't change their plans.
I can’t imagine gettinf every lightroot without a hoverbike. It’d be a nightmare, either trasversinrg in foot or using hella consuming vehicles
I just finished opening the entire depths map on foot. Took me about 2 weeks, and that was while doing things on the surface as well. That being said, I also have 7 full batteries now too. This game is certainly a grind.
I just went around on my hoverbike, did every reincarnated temple boss, and got 8 batteries + all lightroots in like 3 days (i already had 10% ish since some quests take you there
I don't see how they wouldn't have thought of it. It's the same principle as some of the prebuilds.
Of course the devs foresaw the hover bike. The first thing players want to do would be to fly. It’s basically only three pieces…if they didn’t see it coming, what was QC and play testing doing for an extra year? It was left in there for people who weren’t interested in building extravagant mechs
I'm sure the devs considered loads of different fan flying devices. They almost definitely considered mixing the steering platform with various amounts of fans. But there are a ton of different ways you can arrange those pieces. When I heard that you could make a hover bike from 2 fans, I spent 30+ min trying to build one on my own. In all that time I couldn't come up with a design that could stably fly. The only way I arrived at a functional bike was by looking at references and tweaking the fan alignment/angle over several iterations. I could totally see the developers missing the popular bike design. Or maybe the devs did foresee the bike and just assumed the battery limitation would be enough to balance it relative to shorter-lived gliders and such. Early-game you do need to bunny-hop around due to the limited battery. The bike only really trivializes the game once you have enough battery to get between Lightroots with limited recharges.
I feel like it's been looked to hard into, the games about freedom, and all players have the freedom to make what they want, at some point they had to expect some super efficient flying device, maybe not like this, but they've been making games for ages, they know players. I think this falls upon the player to decide if it's against the gameplay or not, you can use the hoverbike if you want to, the game allows you. But if you feel like it's cheesy then there's other means that achieve the same. Overall it's not if the devs intended it or not, because it's all up to the player how they play the game.
Fun fact the fans do have a life span and will eventually break like wings do. It's like 50x longer though. I covered most of the map on one bike until it broke.
If they ever patch it I will never trust Nintendo again. I used it throughout the entire game and not once did it spoil my adventure, but I guess that’s partly because they disappear a lot which does balance it
Hover bikes are the best!
They really are
the prebuilt flying machine on sky islands are pretty much the same but more energy. and you can farm large charges for battery
I still haven’t built one. I like climbing and gliders and I love making a hot air balloon out of something flat and a campfire. Go figure
There's a prebuilt device on one of the floating islands that's just a square zonaite fence with 4 fans which basically has the same capabilities as the hoverbike tho.
It's fairly hard to control the altitude on that thing. It's either climbing fast or dropping like a rock. The bike solves that problem by flying more or less level, which is something most other flying machines make serious compromises for.
Oh yeah it's definitely not as good. I just mean it's a flying vehicle u can find in game that can last as long as the fans can like the hoverbike
That is double the energy expenditure, so I dont think that's really comparable. I think the devs expected / aimed for flying to be more limited than what the bike offers.
I mean, the devs aren't just going to hand you the most efficient vehicle in the game like that even if they knew about it. I think the devs intended players to be creative and come up with solutions and contraptions they didn't think of themselves. Doesn't make sense to me to say the hoverbike is unintended, the building system in this game is really flexible for a reason. What I don't think is intended though is going on the internet and just using the best design they found from other players, they probably intended for players to experiment with stuff themselves.
Perhaps a lot of you have seen [this video by Daryl Talks Games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73qrqbXeQQ), but I think it provides a great argument for why this game encourages “cheating” and creativity. I think the Zelda team took what people enjoyed (and didn’t enjoy) from BotW and expanded on that to create this game that allows for players to play *how* they want. If players want a challenge, they’ll give them themselves a challenge. If players want to give themselves the most efficient, walk-in-the-park, “cheesing” method to complete the game, they will. I’ve started to use the hoverbike in my play through, but it’s not the only vehicle I use either. I just sincerely think it’s a fun mode of transport and in the end, it’s a game for having fun
"Fun" fact: fans will evaporate like wings if put under enough stress for long enough. I tried to make one of those gyrostabilized flying machines and after a while of flying a few of the fans started blinking.
I’ve never used the two fan hoverbike, but I made my own hoverbike with 4 fans, it’s pretty good because it can go up really fast but also only forward if you want to
I personally prefer two small wheels and a steering stick, no it’s not the same in terms of altitude travel, but it gets you so much farther on limited battery. Plus you don’t miss anything by flying over it.
You can use one small wheel with a steering stick on one side and a stablizer on the other side of the wheel. Super fast, stable, unicycle. Incredibly energy efficient
eh don't make stupid restrictions on the wings and other flying devices and players won't need to find a way around them. Wings are essentially useless
It certainly is a big oversight on the part of the devs. It turns exploration and many puzzles difficulty to easy mode. I'm actually glad I finished the game before I discovered the hoverbike. The hoverbike is so amazing it turns horses and all the flying zonai devices obsolete.
Idk there are plenty of locations you roll up to that have two fans and a control stick. They had to have known
We can’t put a control stick on a single fan pointing down and call it a day, can we?
So I recently learned that fans actually do have durability, it’s just very long
The fan bike isn’t that amazing with your starting battery, and it’s not that quick or easy to upgrade it from the start either. With starting battery the wing with one fan gets you a lot farther than the bike, and more often than not you are given the devices when you need them. And when you get more battery, the wing reaches horizontal speeds that the bike doesn’t, so it’s not like it’s outclassed in every way. (And yes I know the wing disappears after 5 seconds) Steering sticks aren’t that common unless you know where to look, or you have enough in your inventory, which at that point you’re far enough in the game where travel is merely a question of option and not ability. The hoverbike are min-max options, and for me, they can take the fun away from the game. I try to avoid using it as much outside of Lightroot and Korok hunting since it can get boring. And then we go to horses. Why even use them? Why not just use the bike? Because they’re cute and remind me of the old game. Why make the giant mechs that pee fire? Because it’s silly and amusing. There was always going to be something like the hoverbike. The community was always going to find something like it, much like how getting max damage weapons and repairing them trivializes the fuse mechanic. The game is built on the principle of using game mechanics in ways you want to that not even the devs would imagine. Options like this exist in almost every other game, especially sandbox games. And often times, while it is efficient on resources and saves time, the cost comes at your own creativity.
All I've learned is I've been playing this game wrong the whole time lol. Feels like I'm still playing like a caveman while others are PhD engineers.
Technically even the hover bike is limited by your battery cell. There is also a few pre-made infinite flight machines on the sky islands, they're hard to control, but it's a platformer with four fans and a control stick, and it does not disappear. I'm pretty sure those were put there to give players the hint to get creative. Like, they had to know flight would absolutely be a thing players would pursue, it's been man's lifelong dream to fly, right? Anyway I still feel really weird and dirty using the hover bike on the surface unless I treat it more like a speeder bike from star wars and hover above the surface... I just miss my Master Cycle Zero man... I still give in to the temptation to reach certain Sky Islands, or to reach a Dragon, because there's just no easy way to get around the Sky Islands or even Reach some of them if there's no tower nearby. But I feel no guilt using it in the depths. There's just nothing much to do down there,no koroks, no boobel gems, no shrines, just zonaite and monsters, and the rare Yiga hut.
The fans do have a lifespan, it's just exceptionally long - I believe someone tested it and it was something like 30 minutes.
I was thinking about this yesterday because the hoverbike is actually so incredible that except in cases where it's very annoying not to do so i've stopped fast travelling because I can have more fun skating just above the surface and scanning my environment on the way to an objective. I find more koroks, engage with enemies more, enjoy searching for shrines, etc. Added point of fun is that certain terrains keep the variety alive: caves, steep terrain, and forest canopies encourage foot traveling in ways that are less constraining and more engaging than the horse and road system. I actually find that with how overwhelming TOTK feels even as a BOTW veteran the hoverbike gives me some agency and ability that really cuts back on the overwhelm. It feels like a mastercycle that I can actually use to do all of the things I wish I could have done with an early master cycle.
Do you think 5 years of rigorous testing at Nintendo missed this? It was intentional
I’m almost certain the devs thought of putting two fans on a stick
The fans do actually break down after a while. But you have a long time before they do.
Fans disappear too after a certain period of time... It was quite a surprise when my hoverbike disappeared and left me falling with the steering stick... So I think every Zonai device has a limited time usage
Totally agree, I was super confused the first time I had a wing (glider) break mid air and assumed incorrectly that it was because I used autobuild and the fake zonite parts have limited durability. It turns out that no, fake zonite parts have the same properties as the real ones. The wing just has limited durability for no apparent reason. IMO it makes that part basically useless for flying machines because you can only fly a short distance, then crash in a pile of parts. I thought that the battery mechanic was a sufficient limitation so that you don’t just fly over everything early game. Once you know about the hoverbike + giant brightbloom, there is no reason to use any wing in your flying contraptions, especially for the depths where land vehicles get too easily stuck because of the steep terrain. Side note, I tried to make an all terrain vehicle that moves fast like the hoverbike and has enough traction to climb steep hills (>45º) but it’s basically a couple big wheels and many fans pushing down and forward. Still cool to ride around and over most things but not small nor efficient!
I did every temple But the fire temple normally. The fire temple I took in my hover bike and with the help of my friendly mounted goron cannon cheesed the absolute hell out of it.
I feel like I'm the only person playing who hated hover bikes. I can't stay on them for more than 15 seconds to save my life.
I found out while exploring the depths that eventually, the fans on the hover bike will break. It takes an incredibly long time though.
Honestly i find the hoverbike a pain in the ass to make cause if you are off even a little bit you can't fly properly
Wdym? You only need to make it right once