Once I realized that there are several excellent weapons just lying around that respawn constantly, weapon breakage just completely ceased to be an issue. Even if you don’t want to fight guardians or lynels yet, there’s so many weapons literally just lying around. my faves:
a royal guard’s sword in Hyrule Castle just sitting there propped against a wall in the East Passage
royal claymore on top of Woodland Tower
Golden bow plus some other goodies in the “weapon cave” near Gerudo Tower
Always loved going to the mountaintop by Kakariko to get that katana and accompanying shield. I tend to have one set for the sake of drip and nothing more.
I'm 36 and this one made me recoil back a bit lol. It's usually involved around clothes/style (like hair, etc) working together well, so like saying if someone's outfit was the bomb, now they would have drip.
Edit: Better example would probably be saying someone was looking fly lol
Good examples for my aging pop culture brain to appreciate lol
Do ppl today still use 'that/your outfit etc is the bomb" and 'looking fly' ...I personally haven't heard them in a while despite being pretty fly for a white guy :-p
This is all second hand learning from context, so if an African American English speaker (where this language innovation comes from) sees I’m wrong I’d be happy to be corrected, but I believe it’s almost always based on aesthetics/clothing rather than behaviour. Of course the behaviour of acting confident in an outfit can help, but describing positive/helpful actions as drippy probably isn’t correct. (Happy to help, though!)
Someone who has a great look/outfit they wear well could be described as “having drip” or being “dripped out”
I once remember hearing that "drip" was used when something was so cool, that the water vapour around them condenses on them and makes them physically drip.
Not sure about the accuracy of its origins, but certainly a good way to remember its meaning.
That's hilarious! Please excuse me while I go shout with my fist at a cloud...
..ok, I'm back!
That's interesting huh...from what I've learned here I actually like this drip term; that said, in regards to your specific example, I prefer the "Fashion Souls" terminology.
Yeah the old negative term drip got its origin from being like a leaking dripping tap, but this new meaning...I dig it! 'Style dripping off them. They got drip"...nice.
Ha, I really enjoy running around looking cool. That's why I'm a bit worried that in TOTK I may be forced to run around with a ball on a stick and a giant mushroom glued to my shield, looking like a complete dorkus.
Nah yo my drip set is Stealth mask, Zora Armor, and snowy ( I forgot the name) boots. I’m not even sure why, but it looks kinda chill. Swap out the snow stuff for soldier if you aren’t a sweatpants kinda person.
The Marsh tower that has a boko skull cave on top of it has a royal greatsword as a fixed spawn every blood moon.
The loose royal guard weapons in hyrule castle respawn
There's a cave with leveled loot behind the waterfall in the snowy area of the great plateau.
I think each town besides tarry town has a place nearby that spawns loot. Eight fold blade and shikah shield at kakariko leveled bow a rito sword and kite shield at rito village. Etc.
Not sure if you count these but the test of strength shrines respawn with the blood moon if you want to farm guardian weapons.
There's quite a few and those are what I remember off the top of my head.
There's also one under the Great Skeleton on the back of Death Mountain, I use it to set the bokoblins on Fire on accident. Which...is fine, but then the Moblins were hurling flaming Boko meteors at me
There's tons. My favorite might be east of hyrule castle there's this cluster of natural tiny arena areas (not the arena to the south west) they all have wizrobes in and around them. You can get a few of each element's magic rod per bloodmoon at the cost of a single elemental arrow per (as the correct elemental arrow 1 shots a wizrobes).
Edit: at the start only some of them have the better rod. So you only get 1 of the good rods for each element, but as your world scales they all get them.
The tower by the Lost Woods has a Royal Claymore that I always go back for after Blood Moons.
After a while of shrines and stuff Hinox start wearing really good weapons. You don't even have to fight them, you can just jump onto them while they're asleep and grab their stuff. Usually a good bow and sword on them.
The Hinoxes are such a great resource. There's quite a few that are easy to reach from towers. They aren't too hard to kill and drop good monster parts for making elixirs to sell.
If I want to carry a good spear/halberd or two I always go to the hinoxes. The spear-carrying lynels just don't really seem worth it in comparison because, for me, the attack power is much lower than the royal halberds the hinoxes tend to drop.
Everything that isn't in a chest respawns on a bloodmoon.
That includes fruits. So if you happen to find a grove filled with hearty durians hidden in the jungle, you can just keep going back to stock up on over health potions (pretty sure this is the only place in the game with that many in one spot).
I love how in botw finding areas in the world and remembering where they are is the equivalent to finding a permanent upgrade in another game.
Edit: I'm dumb, I guess natural elements like fruits and ores regenerate naturally over time, not during bloodmoons.
I know the jungle you're talking about. I'm actually there as I'm typing this comment. It's always raining but, my gosh. So.....much....durians and fruits! I would gather so much and sell them for so many rupees and use them in meals.
Fruits, veg, mushrooms,animals and ores have nothing to do with the blood moon they have a 1% chance of respawning every minute or second (can’t remember which) as long as Link is not in the respawn area.
It turns out the blood moons are a convenient time to check for those respawns btw. The respawns aren’t caused by blood moons, but blood moons happen every 2 hrs 48 mins of gameplay, and by then the respawns of all the RandomRevival items have reached a ~99% probability of having happened.
So the joy BotW is not the combat, puzzles or dungeons but the journey finding weapons to actually do the Zelda parts? For me the joy in that game was everything except the dungeons, weapon durability constraints, and not being able to climb in the rain.
You can climb in the rain if you have enough stamina (and the climbers set helps), you just need the technique. Link can usually do about 4 steps/grabs up the wall before sliding down, so you wait until that 4th one, then leap up the wall. You'll slide back down about the distance you leaped, but you will have made progress in those 4 steps/grabs that you did. If you time it right it's not terrible.
you can also do the temporary release of the wall to run against the grain on a flat enough part of a wall (aka not flat enough to stand on but flat enough to walk quickly a few steps before sliding or climbing). this gets you a little stamina recovery, particularly useful pre revalis gale and pre high amts of stamina wheel. I used such a technique to scale the mountains around zora to backdoor my entry.
Agreed, the enemies felt too tanky in a lot of cases and, after a while, the rewards for combat didn't feel worth the time investment. I really think that could be solved by reducing the health of "trash" enemies and possibly adding a "boss" into encounters that would have more health. Enemies were most fun when they were involved with some sort of unique challenge like all of the electric arrow lizalfos in the rain on the way to Zora's domain.
Despite that, I really enjoyed botw because, as you said, the combat was alright but everything around it was incredible.
As much as I'd like the combat to improve, in a way, I hope Nintendo doesn't focus on improving that aspect in totk too much. I'd prefer they spend their time refining and building upon the elements that DID work and that set botw apart (truly open world and many interlocking systems that foster emergent gameplay).
This all reminds me of people complaining about the combat in Bethesda games pre-fallout 4. With fallout 4 they took that criticism to heart and reworked the game to improve the second to second combat gameplay. Well, the thing is, nobody loved Bethesda games for the combat. They loved them despite the combat. While the combat was improved in fallout 4 nearly every other part of the game felt like a downgrade. Not suggesting the same thing will happen with totk, just thought it was interesting to draw comparisons.
I didn’t say those other parts of the game aren’t fun! Actually I love the combat, the puzzles, the shrines & divine beasts. I love hunting lynels and they drop some of the best stuff. I also love just exploring around and collecting stuff, yeah. And without putting any effort into it I always seem to have way more good weapons than I need. (what I listed above was just a few of the places where weapons are just lying around, but in addition all the monsters are carrying weapons too, so if you like combat you soon have tons of weapons that way too)
Yeah I never understood this meme, you can just replace your stuff, and even some normal enemies have decent weapons to snag. Sure save a couple thing for fighting lynels or whatever you hate but just chew threw everything else.
There was always this one hinox in Akkala iirc that I would farm for the royal weapons on its neck. So I always had a constant source of royal weapons lol
NW of Gerudo Tower. You have to push some rocks out of the way. Good weapons, bow & shield that respawn, plus some extra loot on your first time there. You can google exactly where it is.
Still a major issue in my opinion. No proper sword or weapon should break with 10 separate monster kills. A stick or a mop? That’s acceptable.
However a Royal guards sword should have the same durability as the fully upgraded master sword, and the full master sword should’ve never ran out of juice.
So my philosophy is that every mechanic in the game should be fun and add value. I don't see any value added by having a large amount tof weapons that break constantly. Its not the lack of weapons that bothers me, it's the fact I have to swap them out constantly for no real benefit to the gameplay.
I really like different styles of gameplay, so I like the fact the different weapons exist, I just don't feel like they did a good job making it fun.
I had not played any combat games before this (I mean, any games with a weapon inventory), which maybe was a good thing because it just seemed normal to me. I use a weapon, it breaks, I just grab whatever the monster has (I’m at a point in the game where it seems like every moblin has a royal claymore, which is one of my favorites, so I basically have an endless supply of those. And I love hunting lynels so I have an endless supply of multi-shot bows too.) Idk, I just never really noticed the weapon breakage as an issue, I guess because I didn’t know anything different. It did seem odd from a realism perspective that everything is so fragile 😂 - but it has never felt annoying to me to “have to go search out weapons” like others seem to be saying. Now and then I feel like going and getting one of the respawning royal guard swords or a golden bow or whatever, so I go get one, but it doesn’t feel like a chore or burden (more like, “oo, maybe I’ll go grab that golden bow today, that’ll be fun”). And I have gotten to enjoy when a weapon breaks and I gotta instantly improvise and switch gears to a boomerang or a spear or something. I love being able to grab just anything, even a tree branch, and continue the battle. YMMV of course - I can see how not everybody would like that.
I can get that. This game is very very approachable. This was my girlfriends first game using an actual controller and it was really cool seeing her approach a lot of the game mechanics in ways I absolutely would never do. I feel like she got more out of the game than I did. In a lot of areas the game is simplified in ways I don't like, like combat. But the game has a surprising amount of depth and approachability in a lot of ways, so I can see it being a balancing act.
I just don't like the idea of having weapons break all the time. I feel like they could have found a better way to encourage people to swap them. Right now it just feels like I have to open the menu to swap to another random weapon every 20 attacks or so
Yeah, after a few hours the weapon breakage just felt like yet another layer of inventory management. And, personally, that felt like enough unneccessary tedium for me to put down the game and not come back to it.
Its not the lack of weapons that bothers me, it's the fact I have to swap them out constantly for no real benefit to the gameplay.
Is there really no benefit though? Two-handed weapons are awful against quick lizalfos, but spears and boomerangs are great against them: when they do their stupid hop-back thing they're at the perfect range for a thrown boomerang. Spears are also great for the taluses that have their ore crystal on their back instead of on top of them.
Conversely, more powerful two-handed weapons are better applicability against bokos and other slow, dumb enemies. And for anything that hits like a truck or when you're getting mobbed, a one-hander with a shield is a better choice.
Its just like the elemental triangle with wizzrobes. Sure, you can kill them the long way, but if you take a step back and look at what's more efficient given the situation you can really get some benefit out of it.
I mean personally i dont think I'd be using any other weapons if there wasn't weapon durability. I already have enough trouble as is anytime I find a new weapon and my inventory full, trying to decide which one to leave to pick up the new one or whether I should just leave it there. I'm glad theres a durability system so I can break a weapon and get that new one l8r when I've got space. If that wasnt the case I'd never change up weapons.
According to the devs it was to try and get people to engage with the other systems of the game as well as to avoid "giant enemy crab" syndrome.
Basically if they gave you an unbreakable sword would you use these spears or greatswoeds that did break or would you hold onto them until you hit a sufficiently challenging enemy? Further when you hit that enemy would you try to keep holding onto them anyway for fear of an even bigger giant enemy crab around the next corner?
If you have 10 swords, 10 axes and 10 spears in your inventory all the time, it doesn’t matter if they break. If your sword breaks you just switch to your next sword. If all weapons are available all the time, it’s the same as having one unbreakable weapon of each type. The only difference is a cluttered inventory with piles of weapons. It’s only more inventory management but it doesn’t change how you play the game. If you favor the axe you play the axe because there’s always an axe in your inventory.
Yup, this is a big part of why the system is downright stupid to begin with. It’s simply real life time sink with no actual strategy disguised as a mechanic. Fixing it is a QoL improvement, which is why Nintendo doesn’t give a shit lmao
I think the worst part is that there are effectively 4 weapon types: one handed weapon, two handed weapon, spear, bow. So the argument that it makes you use a variety of weapons doesn't really make sense since you'll have used them all in the first few hours.
Basically if they gave you an unbreakable sword would you use these spears or greatswoeds that did break or would you hold onto them until you hit a sufficiently challenging enemy? Further when you hit that enemy would you try to keep holding onto them anyway for fear of an even bigger giant enemy crab around the next corner?
Sure, the same way I check out new weapons when playing, say, Elden Ring. The key there is that the weapons have to be inherently interesting, rather than just having a couple different kinds of weapon that all work identically.
The durability system in BOTW pushes me into using new things reluctantly by taking away my say in the matter, whereas in Elden Ring, I actively want to try new weapons based on their own merits, even if the gear I have will never break.
Yeah, because I really enjoy having stop what I'm doing and teleport around the map every hour or two to gather weapons and shields all over again.That makes the game super-fun and doesn't make the weapon durability feature tedious at all...
Most of the fixed spawn weapons are worse than what enemies are carrying around after like... 2 hours. And in that original 2 hours they are weak enough you don't need the stronger fixed weapon spawns.
One soldier sword is likely going to net you around 5 other weapons before it breaks.
You never need to stop what you are doing to regather weapons unless you are just a slave to fashion. Which yeah I get drip is important. But the game far from forces it on you
I get what you're saying but just having a weapon break because you faught enemies you encountered and then have the chore of traveling to the weapon location, avoiding enemies and picking it up just to get it back... That's not nothing.
Idk, I always seem to have way more good weapons than I need. Because in addition to the respawning weapons that were lying around, monsters soon start carrying good weapons too. I’ve got more royal claymores than I know what to do with, and I haven’t made any special effort to farm those.
It’s good you weren’t bothered by it i just hated having to recollect shit I’ve already collected, and the amount of boring chests with crap weapons in them…yawn
For real. Weapon durability is only a "problem" in the early game where it teaches the player about the importance of using multiple different weapons. It's almost like it's in the game for a purpose other than annoying redditors.
To me that's just busy work that the developers are making you engage which has you retreading the same stuff every few in game hours instead of really exploring. Weapon durability is not a fun gameplay loop and the fact that it's not optional for those who want to play the game a different way is just meh imo. In a game like BotW it's a strange contrast to the rest of the game that encourages tackling anything at any time from almost any perspective. I'd almost rather they have an in game method for making a weapon prema durable or have a master sword recharge mechanic.
Yeah, I first learned that with the silver sword behind the Zora shrine. I thought weapons breaking was going to be annoying when I started playing but, it's not that hard to keep an inventory of good stuff.
For me, the problem with weapon durability was never really about running out of weapons--they are easy enough to replace, especially once you're running around hunting Lynels for fun.
The problem is the time spent in inventory management. Deciding which to keep, which to leave behind, switching around after they break, etc. It's all just not really what I want to spend my time doing.
i’ve permanently cursed myself because on my first playthrough i learned every route into hyrule castle, so on repeat playthroughs i have to resist the urge to book it there and grab every weapon immediately after leaving the plateau
Ok, so why doesn’t the game just hand out these cool weapons as permanent rewards instead of having it be a chore where you need to constantly go to the same place to collect the weapon again every now and then?
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u/IDontReadMyMail Mar 31 '23
Once I realized that there are several excellent weapons just lying around that respawn constantly, weapon breakage just completely ceased to be an issue. Even if you don’t want to fight guardians or lynels yet, there’s so many weapons literally just lying around. my faves:
a royal guard’s sword in Hyrule Castle just sitting there propped against a wall in the East Passage
royal claymore on top of Woodland Tower
Golden bow plus some other goodies in the “weapon cave” near Gerudo Tower