Jeff's Gaming Blog

BOTW #18 – The Wedding

Over the past few days, I’ve picked up Breath of the Wild for the first time since beating Calamity Ganon in October. I started out by cutting down some trees, since I still needed more wood for Tarrey Town. When I had enough, I headed there and spoke to Hudson. He informed me that he got engaged…to Rhondson the Gerudo!

Before they could get married, he asked me to find someone priest-like to officiate the wedding. He suggested that maybe one of the Zoras would be willing to help.

After making a stop at the Great Fairy Fountain to upgrade some clothes, I made my way to Zora’s Domain. There, I found Kapson, who is a retired priest. He was actually looking to marry a couple before he dies, so he was clearly the right guy for the job.

Kapson: If during your travels you meet any engaged couples, I would like you to introduce them to me. — That’s an odd request. It sounds fishy.

He set off for Tarrey Town, while I went to go take a picture of a Lynel for a side quest. Once I finished, I returned to Tarrey Town. Hudson thanked me for finding Kapson, but now he needed me to invite Bolson and Karson to the wedding. So I went back to Hateno Village, and told them about the wedding in Tarrey Town.

Bolson: Karson, we're headed out! — They went straight there.

Before long, Kapson began the wedding. Congrats to the new couple! Although, Rhondson didn’t seem very happy about a part of the wedding vows that said they had to name their kids names that end in -son. 😛

Hudson and Rhondson get married in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

I spoke with Hudson, and he gave me three diamonds that he found inside the boulders in town. This completed the side quest, and Tarrey Town is officially done.

Next, I headed for the desert, where I recovered one of Link’s memories and then defeated a Molduga in the Toruma Dunes for a side quest.

Fighting a Molduga in BOTW. — Why can’t I cut this guy up into, like, 1,000 steaks?

After the fight, I unlocked a shrine at the same location. I went off exploring after completing it, and I saw some statues of swordswomen pointing their swords. As I followed in the direction they were pointing, a sandstorm rendered my radar and map unusable.

Static on my map screen, making it unusable. — Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…

But the pointing swords led me to a shrine; completing it restored my radar and map.

The next day, I teleported to the Tabantha area to recover another memory in the Ancient Columns area. I have now recovered six of the 12 photo memories.

After browsing through my list of open side quests, I returned to the desert to trade 55 rushrooms to Pirou, for a diamond. I explored further, and soon arrived in the East Gerudo Ruins, where seven huge statues stood in a circle. Solving a puzzle here opened up another shrine.

Huge statues in the East Gerudo Ruins.

I completed it, and then found another shrine nearby. But I couldn’t get into this one just yet. A sick Gerudo was collapsed on the activation portal. I’ll have to heal her before I can get inside. But at this point, I ended my game for now.

Just to provide an update on my status, I’ve completed 77 shrines and my overall game completion percentage now sits at 23.49%. If I counted right, my Hyrule Compendium completion is now 292/385. I still have much to do in Hyrule.

Here is my latest Breath of the Wild video, Messing Around #2. It shows me playing with fire, zapping some sleeping enemies, sneaking around in a barrel, and more. Hope you enjoy!

Christmas Haul 2017

I received several gaming-related gifts this Christmas, and I thought I’d talk a bit about each one.

Doom

Doom for Nintendo Switch was the only actual game I received for Christmas. I’ve been a big fan of the Doom series, and I thoroughly enjoyed the old Jaguar/PlayStation/N64 games. But admittedly, it has been a very long time since I’ve tried a new one.

I haven’t played much of it yet much, so it’s too early even to post my first impressions. I was a bit turned off by the fact that I needed to download an hour-long update before I could even play it–despite the fact that I was playing the physical (cartridge) version.

And then once that was done, I found that it doesn’t allow you to invert the controller’s horizontal axis (only vertical). So without a control method I like, it’s going to take me a while just to get the hang of moving around. 😛

Pixel Pals – Raccoon Mario

This thing is really cool. It’s a pixelated figure of raccoon Mario (from Super Mario Bros. 3). It’s about 5 inches (13cm) tall, and it lights up (using two AAA batteries). It looks great, especially in a dark room. It makes me want to buy more of these Pixel Pals.

64 GB MicroSDXC Memory Card

This provides me with some storage for my Nintendo Switch. Even though I almost always buy physical games when possible, it’s always good to have some extra storage available for pics, videos, or digital-only games like Stardew Valley.

Now that I can get these files off of my Switch (without posting to social media), here are a few pictures I’ve taken this year.

There's no X in Expresso. — “There’s no X in Expresso.”

Splatted in Splatoon 2. — Accidental picture I took after being splatted in Splatoon 2.

Splatoon Amiibos

I got the Splatoon Amiibo 3-pack, with the inkling girl, boy, and squid. Amiibos aren’t something I would normally buy with my own money, but they’re not a bad thing to receive as a gift. I can use them to unlock features in Splatoon and Splatoon 2, and I can also use them to get Splatoon-themed items in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. There’s even a Splatoon-based villager named Inkwell I could get to move into my town. I might not do that right away, but it’s a possibility for the future.

Tanooki Mario Figure

This one is just a small collectible figure that doesn’t really do anything, but it would look nice on a shelf with other Nintendo items and figures. The interesting thing (to me, at least) is that I got two gifts based on power-ups from Super Mario Bros. 3, from two different people! And neither of them knew about the other gift. 😛

Did you get any good games, accessories, or merch for Christmas? Feel free to comment what you got, and how you like it! 🙂

Stardew Valley – Evil Morris

It’s been a while since I’ve played Stardew Valley. That’s not to say the game isn’t fun, because it definitely is. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you just know that’s how I am. 😛 I often get distracted with other things, and I don’t always return to games promptly. My backlog is embarrassingly large. 😛

But I made sure to play some Stardew Valley last night, to at least provide an update before the holidays arrive (when I’m likely to have even more distractions). 😛 So, let’s get into it.

Day 14

I knew exactly what I wanted to do, so I made a beeline for Pierre’s. Once the shop opened, I went inside and spent my 2,000g on a backpack upgrade. I now have 24 slots to hold things, which gives me a little room to work with. The default 12 slots are mostly taken up by tools, and a few basic materials I didn’t want to completely discard. So now I have some breathing room.

I wanted to buy some new seeds while I was at the shop, but I only had enough money for a couple. One thing I don’t like about this game, is that a seed is literally just one seed. In Harvest Moon games, one seed purchase actually gave you enough for 9 spaces. But here, buying (and planting) seeds is a slower, less convenient process.

I then headed over to the mine, where I spent most of the day. It’s nice to be able to actually keep the things I find, now that I have space to hold them all. Once night fell, I stopped at the saloon before heading home.

Day 15

Today, I went over the museum and donated a topaz and quartz. For donating a total of five items, I earned some cauliflower seeds as a reward. After the blacksmith processed two geodes of mine, I also donated a petrified slime and some limestone.

Seven items on display in the Stardew Valley museum. — Am I making progress, ore what?

I again went to the mine and stayed until night. When I returned home, I planted some seeds and then went to bed.

Day 16

I made a point to finally figure out something that had been bothering me in this game: I didn’t know how to separate stacks of items! If I wanted to ship an item, I shipped the full quantity. If I discarded an item, I discarded all I had!

But the answer is to press the Y button while a stacked item is highlighted. It separates it into a separate spot in your inventory, and you can keep pressing Y to use the new spot as a new stack of that item. The controls in Stardew Valley aren’t always intuitive, but I’m glad I finally figured that out. 😛

I got a letter in the mail from Pierre today, telling me that he now sells fertilizer at his shop. He told me to swing by to see if I can afford a few dozen boxes. Ha! He clearly doesn’t know how broke I am, especially after buying that rucksack upgrade.

My first stop of the day was at the museum, where I donated an amethyst. Then I headed over to Pierre’s and saw an unexpected cut scene. Morris came in, and offered all of Pierre’s customers 50% off coupons for JojaMart! How rude.

All the customers rushed over to him, took the coupons, and left Pierre’s. This dude is stealing customers and trying to put Pierre’s out of business. Apparently Morris is the villain of the game. But after he left, I noticed the back door was open, so I went through. Several women were gathering in a room, but a smaller room off to the side caught my attention…the altar of Yoba?!

I’m not sure what that’s all about, but the women were apparently having an exercise class. They were jogging in place, stretching, jumping rope, and so on.

I walked around town a bit before returning home.

Day 17

I spent much of today working on clearing up my property. I need 300 pieces of wood to repair a bridge on the beach, so I started chopping away. But once my energy started getting low, I went into town. After chatting with some people, I went over to the community center.

I donated some items and completed the spring foraging bundle. My reward was 30 assorted spring seeds. Also, two new scrolls in other parts of the community center were unlocked. So now I have even more work to do. Fixing up this community center is going to take a long time.

It was getting late by this time, so I headed home.

Just a note about my Stardew Valley coverage: While I will continue to post blog entries (although they may not be frequent), I’ve decided to stop posting Stardew Valley videos–for now, at least. There didn’t seem to be as much interest in them as I hoped. I may reconsider once multiplayer is added to the game in 2018.

But for now, I really don’t have a clue how the online play will work. For example, will time still advance as it normally does, or will time freeze when you’re playing with friends? Will it have USB keyboard support for chatting? Will there be multiplayer mini-games? If it ends up being anything like online play of Animal Crossing, it could be fun. We’ll see.

In case you’re interested, Amazon has a bunch of Stardew Valley merch, like this T-shirt and a Junimo plush toy. I don’t have any of the merch myself, but it looks cool.

Happy holidays, and I’ll see you next time! 🙂