u/cheat-master30

In the last few years, it seems Discord has become the default means of communication for just about every speedrunning community under the sun. It's where discoveries are shared, where people talk about runs in progress, where the rules for a game are often decided, and often the only real place available to discuss said game in question.

However, this leads to a major problem. That being, far too many discoveries and resources get posted on Discord, and absolutely nowhere else.

As a result, said discoveries are usually almost invisible to the internet at large. Google doesn't index Discord servers for obvious reasons, so finding info about the latest strats for many speedgames is an absolute nightmare now. They'll be in some Google Doc linked via Discord at best, or a clip directly posted on Discord itself at worst.

And while Speedrun.com has the ability to add resources for would be runners, it seems most communities are terrible at keeping that side of things up to date. They'll have the most basic resources from about 10 years ago there at best, while keeping 90% of useful info on some Discord channel or Doc.

So, can we try and fix this please? I know it's a bit more effort to setup a wiki or other public website than exclusively stick to social media, but the current Discord focused situation means even finding the right communities is harder than it used to be, let alone finding information you might want for a speedrun.

Unlike The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the main dungeons in Tears of the Kingdom do not take place on separate maps. Instead, they're part of the main overworld, with the game dynamically loading their content in like any other town, stable or major landmark.

However, dataminers found that this wasn't always the case. No, the game actually has a bunch of unused maps named 'LargeDungeon_[term]', which correlate to the game's temples.

• LargeDungeon_Wind: Wind Temple/Stormwind Ark
• LargeDungeon_Fire: Fire Temple/Gorondia
• LargeDungeon_Water: Water Temple/The Great Wellspring of Hyrule
• LargeDungeon_Thunder: Lightning Temple
• LargeDungeon_HyruleCastle: Hyrule Castle
• LargeDungeon_Soul: Spirit Temple (Early Unused Version)

And these places are kinda interesting. Put simply, they've got a bunch of minor differences from the final versions, most of which imply they were cut pretty early in development.

For example, the lighting is all manner of screwed up. The Lightning Temple is lit up like its full daylight, letting you see the dungeon as if the lights were on. Meanwhile, the Fire Temple doesn't have the glow effects from the lava, meaning the lower floors are almost pitch black.

There are also no real climate effects. The Wind Temple only requires one level of cold resistance rather than two, while the Fire Temple doesn't have a scorching climate at all.

And the enemy weapons and types are all over the place. Most have only weak weapons, like wooden sticks and rusty gear, while others are their basic types rather than more powerful ones (the enemies in the Hyrule Castle Monster Forces are all level 1 variants). Some enemies are gone entirely (like the Horriblins in Hyrule Castle), while most chests contain basic items like Opals rather than the things they're meant to have in them.

Then there's the Spirit Temple. This one is the most interesting of all.

Since well, it was clearly meant to be a dungeon here. There aren't any real rooms per se, but there are a bunch of connected platforms with Constructs and objects you can fuse to the arms of Mineru's Construct, and it provides what was presumably meant to be an obstacle course for the now finished Construct.

So, at some point in development, it's clear the plan for the 5th Sage quest was more like:

1. Collect the Construct parts from the storehouses in the Construct Factory
2. Build Mineru's Construct
3. Walk to the Spirit Temple
4. Clear a bunch of obstacles based on the Construct's abilities
5. Defeat the Seized Construct to finish the temple

Presumably, someone at Nintendo thought this was expecting a bit much of the player, so scrapped step four in favour of just having the boss fight.

Still, it does explain why the Spirit Temple has so little in it. It was going to be a proper dungeon at some point before being cut back.

Either way, just thought this would be interesting to some folks here. If you want to learn more about what changed, I wrote my findings on The Cutting Room Floor Wiki about a year ago:

Unused Dungeons in Tears of the Kingdom (TCRF

And made a video exploring them about the same time:

The Unused Dungeons Hidden in Tears of the Kingdom (YouTube)

They're also documented pretty well on the Object Map too, where you can filter by Temples (LargeDungeon) in settings to find enemies and objects located in them:

Tears of the Kingdom Object Map

As anyone who's beat the game knows, the sages will join Link in fighting the Demon King's Army, any unfought bosses and the first form of Demon King Ganondorf in this game. And, if you find a way to escape any of those fights through glitches or mods, will happily follow Link for the rest of the game.

But, did you know there's a ton of... interesting behaviour that's only noticeable in this vanishingly unlikely situation?

For example, if you go and play the main quest in this state, you can recruit any sages you didn't already awaken before starting the battle. If you do this, they'll then appear on the ledge above the pit leading to the army battle.

Presumably, the game loads their models there prior to the cutscene at the start of the fight, and moves them into position when said cutscene starts.

So, if you get a new sage mid-battle, going there lets you recruit them, sorta like in an RPG.

The sages are also surprisingly decent at navigating locations they're really not supposed to be in. They won't enter Link's House in Akkala due to the weird way that location is handled, but they'll be pretty good at navigating Hateno Village or Tarrey Town, and will (for the smaller characters) even be able to do things like enter buildings.

Other interesting effects include sage abilities being disabled if you beat certain main quests with them (they'll still follow Link and attack enemies, but he can't use their abilities with the A button), Mineru's Construct moving during cutscenes (and the camera going wild as a result), and the enemies in the Demon King's Army fight sitting in a strange formation if you visit the fight from the direction of Ganondorf's room during this state.

Honestly, it's worth trying to escape these battles just to see the sort of shenanigans that occur when you have proper sages following you around rather than those avatars. Give it a go if you can set it up.

Near what was previously the Gerudo Canyon Stable, you can find an NPC called Malena that wants you to collect Gleeok Guts to cure her husband's illness. It's a follow up to a similar quest in Breath of the Wild where Molduga Guts were required to do the same thing.

However, there's one difference between the two bosses that you may or may not have noticed. Molduga Guts are a guaranteed drop when you defeat a Molduga, while there's only a 10% chance any slain Gleeok will drop Gleeok Guts.

But the developers actually thought of this, and tweaked the game to make sure the quest was always possible. How?

By making it so the Flame Gleeok on top of Spectacle Rock will be guaranteed to drop Gleeok Guts when first defeated. So, by fighting the Gleeok the game points you to, this quest will always be possible, no matter how unlucky you might be.

Just thought that was a neat bit of developer foresight in this game.

Here's something I found and documented a while ago that folks here may be interested. Basically, some of the Yiga Clan actually count as inventory materials in the game, and can be hacked into your inventory with save editing.

Indeed, the entire population of the Yiga Clan Hideout are actually classified as materials rather than NPCs, and can be added to your inventory in bulk by modding in items with names like:

• Npc_Assassin_Junior
• Npc_Assassin_Junior_Azito002
• Npc_Assassin_Middle
• Npc_Assassin_Middle_Azito003

Npc_Asssassin_Junior is what a Yiga Footsoldier is called internally, while Npc_Assassin_Middle is a Yiga Blademaster.

And these guys are weird. They act like an NPC and a material at the same time.

On the one hand, they're NPCs you can talk to, buy items from or use as a way to immediately warp to the Yiga Clan Hideout from across the map. So, by having them as items, you can just summon a shopkeeper in the middle of a shrine or boss battle, and do things like buy arrows there and then.

At the same time though, they also fall under the same rules that materials do as well. Once 21 or so are on screen the older ones start disappearing, you can sorta sell them to shopkeepers like they were gemstones, and even cook them into meals. Yeah, they don't have any internal properties when cooked (so they won't restore hearts on their own), but you could technically use for them for seasoning on meals. And perhaps scare the hell out of Master Kohga by eating a meal made from his troops.

You can also break a lot of the game with Npc_Assassin_Middle_Azito001 in particular, since it's the Blademaster which hosts the Yiga Clan Training mini game. Speaking to him lets you teleport to said mini game regardless of where you are in the game, and hence do things like escape boss battles and other mini games. It's technically the easiest method to get permanent sages, the Awakened Master Sword glitch etc, though it's not doable without a modded console or save transfer, since it's unlikely the item is allowed through Zelda Notes.

That said, they are a tad glitchy in one way. If you try to hold them in the inventory the game will likely crash, since they don't have inventory models. So, you'll probably have to summon them while gliding, falling or shield surfing for the most part. And one-off NPCs like the mini game Blademaster can only be used once without warping or reloading the game, since creating multiple copies also crashes to the home menu.

Regardless, it's a strange inclusion, since no other NPCs act this way. You can't summon or cook Ganondorf or Master Kohga by adding them to your inventory. Gleeoks, Lynels and Colgera aren't valid inventory items, and there's no way to get an army of Purah clones by modding them in.

The Yiga Clan Hideout staff are just internally materials for some reason, and there's no apparent reason for it whatsoever.

Either way, just thought this was kinda crazy, and needed to be brought to more people's attention. And hey, if you want to try them out, they're included in this save editor, along with other unused items like shrine beam emitters and house parts. I got the creator to add those back in 2023 or so:

https://www.marcrobledo.com/savegame-editors/zelda-totk/

If you've played this title for a while, you've likely tried the shield surfing mini game at Selmie's Spot in Hebra. This rewards you with rare shields like the Kite Shield if you clear the courses with a certain time, making it a neat way to finish up your collection or Hyrule Compendium.

But did you know that the shields on display in the house aren't actually the ones you win? Or indeed, even the same actor as the shields normally used in-game at all?

Yeah, the shields displayed on the wall in Selmie's Spot are all actually variants of their respective shield type with '_NoBurned' as part of the actor name. And this 'NoBurned' effect is surprisingly interesting in of its own right.

Since it doesn't really stop the shield being burned. It stops the shield being destroyed by fire.

As a result, while these shield variants can be set on fire, that doesn't actually reduce their durability. You can just run around with them on fire for hours on end without any ill effects.

But why was this done? Why do these even exist at all?

Presumably, it's so a reckless player can't destroy Selmie's entire shield collection with a barrage of bombs or elemental attacks. If you actually try that in-game, the modified shield properties stop the flames doing any damage, and the resulting conversation resets them back to normal.

However, this system is completely absent in Breath of the Wild. In that game, all the shields are just the usual actor, with a few extra parameters added on. So instead of using separate actors, they've just got the parameter 'IsPlayerPut' set to false to indicate they don't belong to the player/can't be interacted with, and the 'Life' parameter set to -1 to give them infinite durability.

I'm not sure why they changed this for Tears of the Kingdom. Presumably they thought it was more efficient to just clone every actor in the game if it was meant to be displayed in a shop/used by someone other than Link.

Still, I thought that was pretty neat, and a detail you'd never even notice unless you messed around with save editing or the object map.

Saw this somewhat horrifying anecdote on LinkedIn, and I thought it has to be breaking some sort of law somewhere. Basically, a company had a web development agency build them a website, and presumably the latter managed the hosting for it.

However, the company later on wanted to 'test' their AI tooling and development process, so redesigned and rebuilt said company's website without permission using that process. This redesign ended up leaving incorrect information on the site, like outdated contact info and branding.

So, assuming an agency did actually do this, what laws would they have broken? Could the agency have had a contract that would allow them to do this?

Here's something I thought was interesting. In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, there's a secret room in the Great Deku Tree that you can only reach using Ascend, which has a sidequest involving a Korok needing 4 blue nightshades and 2 brightbloom seeds.

It's an interesting area, and a fun extra place to explore in Korok Forest.

But did you know this area was originally planned for Breath of the Wild instead? Or that the secret room was present in that game all along?

Yeah, if you use a mod to bring the camera out of bounds inside the Great Deku Tree, you'll see that room has been there all along. It's not got anything in it mind you, but it's got the exact same layout and setup as the Tears of the Kingdom one, to the point you could explore it with Link if you managed to clip in.

So, yeah. Nintendo came up with a room for Breath of the Wild, realised there was no way to access it in that game, and repurposed it for a sidequest in Tears of the Kingdom. That's pretty cool if you ask me.

And it's not the only example of Nintendo doing this. In Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, you get items called Zonaite Steel for completing missions.

But again, this item was originally planned for Tears of the Kingdom. It's got the internal name of item_ore_n in that game, but the same MsgNotFound name associated with the prologue Master Sword and armour.

So, yeah. Nintendo took an unused idea from Breath of the Wild and repurposed it in Tears of the Kingdom, then took an unused idea from the latter and repurposed it for Age of Imprisonment.