If I finish the main quest, will that ruin any side quests I haven't finished or block me from getting all 150 (really, 150???) shrines?
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Zelda : Breath of the Wild. (WARNING! There will be Spoilers)
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120 shrines. To my knowledge, there are no missable shrines, since continuing after beating the game returns you to your last save prior to defeating Ganon. All NPC/side quest-driven content and shrines should still be available.
Actually, it turns out there are plenty of missable shrines (the only shrines that are mandatory are only the first few on that first island that give you all the runes before you get the sailcloth) but once you have the sailcloth in hand, you can even skip totally to the final boss if you want. (he would be hard to defeat that way though, as you wouldn't have much stamina or heart pieces built up, which is largely what all the other shrines are for). Personally I wouldn't recommend skipping all the shrines (unless you're just that skilled of a player that you don't even need the heart pieces). some people have actually achieved this though, so it is indeed possible (I'm just not one of them, and this tends to be the exception, not the rule) So personally I wouldn't recommend that for most people unless you wait to spend the whole game dying over and over again on the same boss in a monotonous loop (for me that would take all the fun out of it) . But don't worry if you just want to skip some of the shrines though if that's the bit you're finding tedious. While the more heart pieces you have, the easier time you will have defeating the boss, how many you choose to get before you go in there is entirely up to you.
As for your question about the sidequests, I actually initially wondered that too (as ideally I am trying to fully 100% the game, so I have been saving up the final boss until the grand finale) but I have asked around on forums, and apparently all the sidequests are still available even after defeating the final boss, so don't sweat it if ever you wanna go in early. Apparently you won't miss out on anything. (and you can always just reload an earlier save point if the final boss gets too hard, and then grab a few more hearts, weapons, or whatever else you might need before going back in to have another shot at him, so how and when you choose to do that is entirely up to you!
Actually, it turns out there are plenty of missable shrines (the only shrines that are mandatory are only the first few on that first island that give you all the runes before you get the sailcloth) but once you have the sailcloth in hand, you can even skip totally to the final boss if you want. (he would be hard to defeat that way though, as you wouldn't have much stamina or heart pieces built up, which is largely what all the other shrines are for). Personally I wouldn't recommend skipping all the shrines (unless you're just that skilled of a player that you don't even need the heart pieces). some people have actually achieved this though, so it is indeed possible (I'm just not one of them, and this tends to be the exception, not the rule) So personally I wouldn't recommend that for most people unless you wait to spend the whole game dying over and over again on the same boss in a monotonous loop (for me that would take all the fun out of it) . But don't worry if you just want to skip some of the shrines though if that's the bit you're finding tedious. While the more heart pieces you have, the easier time you will have defeating the boss, how many you choose to get before you go in there is entirely up to you.
As for your question about the sidequests, I actually initially wondered that too (as ideally I am trying to fully 100% the game, so I have been saving up the final boss until the grand finale) but I have asked around on forums, and apparently all the sidequests are still available even after defeating the final boss, so don't sweat it if ever you wanna go in early. Apparently you won't miss out on anything. (and you can always just reload an earlier save point if the final boss gets too hard, and then grab a few more hearts, weapons, or whatever else you might need before going back in to have another shot at him, so how and when you choose to do that is entirely up to you!
I think you've mistakenly conflated 'missable' with 'skippable'. Missable means that progressing through the story actually locks the trigger conditions for in-game content, meaning that content will not be accessible on any subsequent play on that particular playthrough; one would be forced to started a new game from scratch to access that content. An example from Wind Waker is that if you sell more than eight blue chu jellies to Beedle, you can't ever unlock blue potions in the shop unless you start a new game. Conversely, skippable just means that accessing particular content is not part of a game's win condition. In that case, you're correct: 116 of the 120 in-game shrines are skippable.
Yeah, I totally see where you're coming from in that context. One thing on Breath of the Wild that's like that where you can't ever get the triggers back (without starting all over again) to make them available again if you miss them, are the photos of the various shadow ganons. (at least, not as far as I know). The rest of the pics for the Hyrule compendium you can actually purchase from the guy in the library at the lab above Haeteno village. However, the shadow ganon ones he just tells you that you're still missing them and that he doesn't have any more to sell you. You can't get them by going back to the divine beasts either, as once you complete one it locks you out completely for the rest of the game.
That said, I am not 100% sure whether they are completely missable or not, because one thing that makes me wonder is that the Haeteno Tech Lab guy tells you is that there may be a way to get them still, just he doesn't know how. So either there is another way to get them no matter what, or he just means there may be a way to get them if you haven't already competed the divine beast for them yet. (I'm hoping that there is a way, because I did forget to photograph a couple of them, and it would totally suck given all the trouble I've gone to to 100% it, which I am very close to doing). If I can't, then I'll just have to 100% it on the switch version when I play that. (most of my progress so far has been on the WiiU version, but I was kinda hoping to do a more laid back minimalist playthrough when I play it properly on the switch version).
Not that I mind most of the things so much, but my god, those star fragments were tedious as hell to get. (more tedious I'd say than even the koroks) - at least with the koroks there are puzzles and exploration involved. Star fragments though are just endless days of monotony and waiting. There so needs to be a better way of getting those!
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I've been playing Zelda lately, maybe a couple of hours every couple of days, and i'm just astounded with the scale of content in this game. I hope they reuse the engine, maybe just tweak&optimize it to iron out any issues, and just reuse it for the next Zelda game.
So should I break down and buy a switch just for this game? I'm not really into games anymore but have played all the Zeldas going back to 8bit.
If you like Zelda games, exploring games, long games, and handheld games; go for it. Ha. It's a great game and is definitely worth the money. It's not my favorite (A Link to the Past is) but it's my preference over any that have come out this century.
Hadn't played Zelda on switch in ages bar a few hours upon release so I decided to re-invest my time and start over from scratch and now a good few hours in I am enjoying it more than I did previously. I think the new mechanics, control scheme and lack of signposting originally put me off a little as it meant spending more time adjusting and trying to learn its new mechanics than actually enjoying the game.
If you aren't interested in the hard mode, I wouldn't bother. The Trial of the Sword is a greedy pay wall for functionality, i.e. unbreakable Master Sword, that ought to have been tied to conquering the Divine Beasts. The only DLC gear that's remotely useful is the Travel Medallion (marginally useful) and the Korok Mask (only useful if you care about expanding inventory or you're one of those masochist completionists).
Totally disagree - Trials is great fun and can be approached from so many different angles - worth it on its own let alone with "hard" story mode which certainly shows me up for the amateur I am (I have finished "easy" mode with 150 hours play) plus you're getting a lot more DLC later in the year, seems a bit of a bargain to me.
I wasn't commenting on the value of the Trial of the Sword itself; that value is purely subjective in terms of its worth, and it's really a dialled-to-eleven extension of Eventide's 'git-gud' posturing. If you enjoy that sort of challenge, it might well be worth it, but the appeal is limited a particular subset of gamers. My objection to the Trial of the Sword is not the nature of the trial itself, it's that the point of the trial ought not to be an unbreakable Master Sword. The purification of the blade itself is analogous to, and mirrored by, the Hero's quest to restore the fallen Hyrule and defeat Ganon. To that end, both the narrative and mechanical thrust behooves that that restoration be a part of the story, tied to story progression. As I had previously stated, the most logical choice would be to tie it to the liberation of the Divine Beasts. Rather than merely providing the equivalent of OP cheats (Urbosa's Fury AoE, Mipha's Grace auto-heal) and a set HP reduction for the Calamity, each liberation should have resulted in a visible reduction in the damage to the Master Sword and an increase in its durability; the Ganon HP reduction could have, and probably should have, been tied to a secondary and more difficult-to-achieve victory condition like liberating a beast in under a certain time limit or defeating one of the blights without taking a hit. This would have done much to fix the hilariously simple final fight; consider that, in liberating all four beasts, Calamity's HP stands at 4000 HP, which is a mere two-thirds of a silver lynel at full health. Consider that for a moment. A silver lynel, probably one of the most farmed enemies in the game, in any relatively complete playthrough, that is all four beasts liberated, is 50% stronger than the incarnate evil which destroyed Hyrule.
The sad fact about the Trial of the Sword is that, even more than a disgusting paywall to functionality that should have been part of the game from day one, it represents the decision to put a bullet in the head of BotW's absurdly broken level and enemy balancing to put it out of its misery.
If someone buys it and they enjoy it, brilliant. I'm glad they're please with the purchase, because as a consumer I sympathise with anyone that doesn't feel as though they got their money's worth. That said, I have to call a greedy practice, one that pushes one of the great failings of what could have been a masterpiece to its final painful conclusion, for what I perceive it to be.
Christ its a game mate - I got over 165 hours from the DLC plus main game - I fail to see how that can represent anything but fair value for money....
If anyone can help with this:
When I first played the game, it seemed like a blood moon happened like every three nights or so. Now, I'm down to one last shrine in which I need a blood moon. It's only come once in the last few days of play (and I played A LOT) and it went away as soon as I fast traveled to a shrine close to that last one (Who knew?). So now, I'm running around, just waiting for a blood moon, trying to stay close to that last shrine since I can't just teleport close to it. I've looked online to see how to trigger a blood moon, but I found nothing except for just keep killing monsters, which I've been doing. Any advice?
When I first played the game, it seemed like a blood moon happened like every three nights or so. Now, I'm down to one last shrine in which I need a blood moon. It's only come once in the last few days of play (and I played A LOT) and it went away as soon as I fast traveled to a shrine close to that last one (Who knew?). So now, I'm running around, just waiting for a blood moon, trying to stay close to that last shrine since I can't just teleport close to it. I've looked online to see how to trigger a blood moon, but I found nothing except for just keep killing monsters, which I've been doing. Any advice?
I set up a camp fire on the tree closest to that shrine and just kept time jumping to the next evening until the blood moon showed up. Also, the shrine is only accessable while the blood moon rises, once you get the movie with Zelda say the blood moon rises, it's too late.
Thank you. I'll give it a try when the power comes back on!
There is but you have to complete a mission to get it.
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Oh gosh blood moons and THAT shrine. Right. I camped out and waited day in day out for a blood moon but it never happened. What I eventually did was kill a load of enemies and it appeared, I warped to Satori [sp] mountain and glided to the right spot from there.
I didn't know that once the animation of the blood moon starts, it's too late. So I warped there, took off my clothes and looked up, lucky me, the moon was red! So I got lucky. I also got pretty lucky with that blue rabbit like side quest. I warped to the area where it lives and put on all my stealth clothes, turned around and the sucker was right there waiting for me.
I'm now wondering how people ever 100% these quests without help. Sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time just to start a quest. I don't see how someone can just stumble on these on their own. That and the seeds! How do you know to just go up to once place and shoot an apple off a tree without help? Seems impossible.
Are there any where you have to shoot apples? I’ve never done that! There’s the acorn ones if that’s what you mean. And if you do I find them easy-ish because they stand out. I really enjoy the seed quest though. I’ve currently found 400 of them without using any guides or the Korok Mask. What helped immeasurably was the map function that traces where you’ve visited. I just go to areas I haven’t fully explored and usually find a few Koroks in such places.
That said I think I’m exhausting that method now. I’ve almost been everywhere (250 hours) and I’m not even half way to getting them all!
Right because some of them are impossible to just see. Sure if there is a rock formation, no problem. But the apple one! Give me a break. It was in the beach village and you have to shoot an apple in a tree between two other things (can't remember if they were other fruits or nuts).
Edit it might be the other way around, shoot an acorn between two apples. Do they have a lot of acorn type ones? You mentioned they stand out....
Oh I don’t think I’ve done that! Considering how much I go over the details in this game I think maybe it’s buried a little too much
Help please! I haven't been able to solve the riddles side quest because I was never able to kill a lynel and get his hoof. Well, I finally did and I didn't get a hoof! I did it again just to make sure and yup! No hoof!!! What am I doing wrong?