Current Events > What route did you go in TOTK?

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Hearts first or stamina?

Curious what other people did. I'm up to 8 Light of Blessing so I can get one of each or two of the same. In BOTW I got two wheels of stamina first and then 14 hearts before maxing out the rest of my stamina.

I was focused on exploring + getting shrines but now I'm thinking I should get my stealth armor and I also really want to unlock my player house again.

No point in being able to fight stronger monsters if you can't get to them in the first place. Fill out the 2nd stamina wheel first, then load up on hearts.

Earlygame you can avoid tough monsters pretty easily but your options for frequent long climbs/swims/parasails are more limited.

I did two stamina for every one heart.

Where's a decent place to buy arrows? I don't have much rupees but I need a spot for when I do more hunting.

Going to see if I can get my house before I go to bed in an hour.

skullmagic2 posted...

Fill out the 2nd stamina wheel first, then load up on hearts.

i'll probably do that.

K181 posted...

I did two stamina for every one heart.

I was going to do this but I'm already stocking up on meat so cooking should fix my hearts issue.

I was gonna prioritize stamina cuz I remembered needing a ton in botw, but then I kept getting murdered, so I went hard on hearts for a while. With zonai vehicles, stamina isn't super important anyway. Well, there are some important parts where you'll want a nice reserve of stamina, but you can cross that bridge when you come to it.

I went in the depths and got out, spoke to Impa and saw Zelda after investigating the dragon tear. So she's stuck in the past? I figured she was in an alternate dimension.

I'm trying to get the Sensor so I have an easier time finding sundelions. But Robbie is saying he's not going back to Hateno Village any time soon.

Hambo posted...

With zonai vehicles, stamina isn't super important anyway.

I haven't really messed around with vehicles yet. I don't even like using horses. I prefer to walking so I don't miss out on koroks or ingredients.

Definitely stamina. Having more hearts doesn't actually reduce the damage you take (and therefore doesn't reduce the amount that eventually needs recovering), whereas having more max stamina increases the rate at which your stamina regenerates (it always takes the same amount of time for stamina to go from empty to full, regardless of how much you have)

Due to the system in place that protects you from being 1-shotted by most things if you're at full health (present in both BotW and this game, but not in BotW's master mode), it's arguably beneficial early on to have fewer hearts so that you need less healing after something chonks you to 1 hp.

With the sheer amount of raw damage output enemies can have, your defense matters far more in these games than your number of hearts. If your defense sucks, it doesn't really matter how many hearts you have; anything of remotely decent power is still gonna basically 1-shot you unless your health is full. Therefore, the easier it is to reach full health, the better.

If you're getting bodied too hard in these games, it's always been better to look into armor upgrades than it is to try to get more hearts.

If you ever notice a blood moon coming, take the time to cook simple foods between 11:30pm and 12:15am. Stuff you cook during this time will always be a "critical" cook, meaning that if you cook something without any status enhancement, it will gain 3 hearts worth of healing. Cooking a single apple (for example) during this time will produce a food that heals 4 hearts, making it a crazy simple, economical, and effective full heal -- assuming you don't go over 4 hearts of course. Works in either game.

I focused on hearts until I learned that you need two full stamina wheels to get the Master Sword, then I blitzed through a bunch of shrines to get it.

@Philip027 great write up thank you for that. A lot of stuff I kind of knew from playing BOTW. I havent gotten any armor upgrades yet because I havent found the fairies. But once I get a few more pieces of armor Ill start doing that. Last time I got the upgrades kind of late.

for now Im going to focus on finding the stealth and climbing gear and then barbarian. Hopefully its not too tough to get early on.

and I had no idea about cooking during the blood moon. Ill remember that next time Im planning on cooking a bunch of meats.

Heartomaton posted...

I focused on hearts until I learned that you need two full stamina wheels to get the Master Sword, then I blitzed through a bunch of shrines to get it.

I got my second wheel already!

Bit more info about critical cooks:

They bestow one of the following three effects, at random:

+3 hearts restored (if it is a "hearty" food, it will already be a full heal food anyway, and instead this effect will be +1 bonus heart)
+5 minutes to the buff bestowed (capped at 30 minutes)
+1 tier to the potency of the buff (for example, if it would have given a +2 "moderate" attack boost, it will instead be a +3 "high" attack boost. If the food already would have produced a maximum tier buff, this effect does nothing; it does not allow you to reach an even higher tier than normally possible)

If the food has no status buff at all, the second and third effects listed above cannot be chosen, so the additional hearts will always be chosen.

It's always worthwhile to keep foods on hand that just restore health without granting a status buff, because only one buff from food can be active at a time, so if you're making use of a status buff you'll want to have foods you can use to heal that won't potentially overwrite your buff with something else.

Cooking during a blood moon (between 11:30pm and 12:15am specifically) is the most reliable way to get critical cooks; normally it's something around a 10% chance to get one, but there's also certain ingredients that influence the chances. For instance, the golden apple in TOTK will also guarantee a critical cook if you throw that in as a food ingredient.

Critical cooks kinda lose their potential value the later in the game you get, but if you're using a low-heart approach, being able to make full heal foods out of things like a single apple or Hylian shroom is really handy for the early going. Having 3-4 max hearts also means that if something does get through your 1-shot protection (most common culprits being tumble damage, fire damage, or getting blasted by a Guardian in the first game) and you get saved by a fairy, the fairy itself will give enough hearts for you to be at full health when it activates, so you usually won't need additional healing on top of it in order to be at full health again.