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[ywkls]

Part 32

 

Maybe I should make what you need to do with the fairies more obvious?

The idea of using the wand does make a little sense,

 

The wallet upgrade is a choice of placing things which may or may not be useful.

The raft is 100 percent a joke.

Nevertheless, I hid quite a few things in there.

There's even a secret developer's room which opens up after you beat the secret final dungeon.

 

I should clarify on the ring glitch.

The double ring power only stays in effect until you switch what ring you have equipped.

Just in case you wanted to know.

[ywkls]

Part 33
 
You definitely need all of the keys.
Just not necessarily when you find them.
 
Softlocking yourself is something which I try to prevent when at all possible.
Of course, it isn't foolproof. Because fools are so inventive.

There's not a lot I can do to alleviate the issues with the turnstyle puzzles.

I could perhaps add some more shortcuts.

 

That one spot which is easy to miss almost needs its own giant arrow pointing towards it.

I did forget to include it when originally designing the dungeon.

 

I did try to make the requisite backtracking after getting the Nightmare Key as painless as possible.

After getting so far in the dungeon, making it where that you can reach the item easily is a plus.

 

I don't know why that Death Knight could walk into the door.

At a guess, it was because it wasn't entirely solid.

 

You will notice that evil Marin has all of your powers.

This is a recurring theme from Destiny of the Oracles.

Thankfully she doesn't have sword of song powers.

Having Marin's Shadow as the mini-boss also helps you to see that there are larger forces at play.

 

There was a glitch with the explosive boomerang which was never resolved. 

It would disappear from the inventory for inexplicable reasons.

My solution was to make it check if you had it after you acquired it and give it to you if you didn't.

[ywkls]

Part 34

 

The Explosive Boomerang was actually added after the quest was released.

Originally, the item was the Mirror Shield equivalent.

However, i wasn't satisfied with it as the item since I couldn't figure out a way to use it against the boss.

When I decided to revise the post-game dungeon, I changed what item you got in level 9.

This also made it where I could make a lot of items which weren't available until the end game.

 

Making the money cache room was a lot of work.

It wasn't easy at all and is a tad glitchy.

 

In many ways, the Seashell Mansion is like a 9th Siren's Keep.

It's not very large and doesn't have a high level of combat challenge.

The two new bosses also aren't very hard.

The entire dungeon is pretty minimalist, really.

 

Acquiring the Fierce Diety's Sword is another requirement for accessing the post game.

It also happens to look really cool.

I'd actually designed it first, but couldn't think of anything more powerful and switched it out with the Shadow Splitter.

 

Getting the 10 Shadows Shards is another requirement for accessing the post game.

And the final one is visiting all five fairies and lighting the torches.

Then you must beat level 9.

[ywkls]

Part 35

 

I do love my very long dungeons.

There were times when I designed rooms without necessarily knowing how they would eventually be used.

The choice to have the overlay of the shadow was mostly because I thought it looked cool.

 

The shovel killing Mirrorrobes is due to how the system of generating weapons to attack with works.

There's a limit to how many there are available to use.

This is also true with enemy defenses.

So I sort of ran out. Whoops.

 

I actually didn't know that those permanent statues could be move after being placed on a switch.

That's actually a glitch with the script which I will fix as soon as possible.

 

That one puzzle where you have to use enemies to blow up blocks is due to another glitch I was unable to solve.

Basically, the bomberang (yes, I do call it that) wouldn't explode with these scripted triggers.

It's actually a lot easier than the older version of the puzzle.

 

I've actually gone back very recently and added even more shortcuts to areas of level 9.

It's just so huge that it needs them.

It is almost implicitly designed with the Song of Soaring in mind.

 

Evil Zelda plot twist! The lore behind this boss is of course, that she's an alternate version twisted by the darkness.

With the reality altering powers of the Instruments of the Sirens at their disposal, the bad guys can literally pluck anyone from the multiverse.

And they've been tricking you all along to do their will! Who saw that one coming?

The entire switch to the bomberang was to make this fight a much more memorable one.

 

I wanted that ending to be long specifically to trick the player.

Maybe I did make it a tad too long.

There's an extra bit of cutscene which you missed as a result, but it's not that important.

Edited by ywkls, 29 January 2024 - 07:24 PM.

[ywkls]

Part 36

 

The Owl appearances are at each warp point.

These were added recently because there weren't any clues about the locations of the Goddess' Towers.

There are four in the north and four in the south.

I decided that I wanted these fairly late in the quest's development and chose to make them very small to minimize the amount of time they required.

Instead of making them hard, I hid their locations so you would have to look for them.

They are actually made to appear by walking onto the screen while you have the Royal Crest in your inventory.

The background of each tower reflects the screen where you enter it.

 

Part of the point of these dungeons is to show just how much you've advanced since the quest began.

So many of these enemies are a cakewalk.

I chose screens where you aren't likely to go on your own for the locations of the Goddess' Towers.

The Goddess' Towers take down the final barrier to entering the Secret Corridor and also give you the final ring.

They're also in order from left to right and first to last dungeon.

It would be fairly hard to have the game tell you when you have all eight because it doesn't know what order you're going to visit them in.

After careful consideration I decided that you're right and the lights should be visible from the outside. Working to add that now.

[ywkls]

Part 37

 

That one puzzle technically softlocking you wasn't intended.

It will be fixed post-haste.

 

Most of the scripts for my quests are my own these days.

Any that aren't are acknowledged in the credits.

 

You're right that I should have made it plain that the magic is needed to light the bomb flowers.

Added a clue to that effect. While there's a clue about that before the mini-boss, having one earlier also makes sense.

 

This dungeon has a ton of backtracking.

The whole issue with going through walls or not is related to how the engine handles collisions,

The bomb system was very difficult to set up.

Be glad I didn't make it fall down all pits.

 

Originally the Secret Corridor was much smaller.

But I wasn't quite satisfied with it.

I expanded it after the quest was released and added the bomb flower mechanic.

[ywkls]

Part 38

 

Should I have a message explaining the levers you pull?

Or is that sufficiently obvious to anyone who's played Link's Awakening?

Getting them to work right was an interesting challenge.

Those pits reset you to the entrance as a safety measure.

 

That refill room in the middle of the dungeon exists because it is just so huge.

This way you don't have to return to the beginning to restock.

 

Those blocks changing color is due to an oddity with the process.

You can change the color when placing them, but not when they change after changing directions.

This results in this weird glitch.

 

The block by that one hookshot target is to keep you from accidentally pulling yourself into the pit.

This also might prevent you from falling eternally. You're welcome. 

 

I think that I may have made some parts of the Secret Corridor too confusing.

It's more of a navigation puzzle than a combat challenge or puzzle room dungeon.

The bomb pits are very sensitive. You can just get a bomb barely to the edge and they will fall.

There's actually a known bug with one of them I've never been able to resolve.

One person says that they dropped a bomb down a pit and it didn't appear where it should.

I'm not sure why this happened or how to fix it.

The bomb timer is made long due to the many positioning puzzles.

The bombs will also set off if they hit what they're supposed to explode.

 

I think that bug with the exploding sound happens because you were throwing the boomerang as you left the screen.

The quest didn't know what to do and kept playing the sound.

The ability to use items shouldn't be possible while a menu is open. I will investigate.

[ywkls]

Part 39

 

Fortunately, it shouldn't be possible to softlock yourself by using keys in the wrong place.

But I could be wrong. There's always a first time for everything. 

 

Each of the eight elephant statues lowers one of the eight barriers at the beginning.

Removing all of these allows you to reach the true final boss.

 

I agree with a lot of the complaints about the bomb flower puzzles.

I'm adjusting the rooms as the LP progresses to compensate.

 

I think that part of the problem with the dungeon is the fact that you can't tell which bombs have yet to be dropped.

There's not really a lot I can do to fix that.

[ywkls]

Part 40

 

I would like for there to be a better way to show how many elephant statues that you have done.

Sadly, the order you will take them out in is somewhat random.

So, doing that is basically impossible.

 

Taking advantages of the strange quirks of the system is always encouraged.

I always think that if the game allows it, then it is fine.

 

I'm not entirely sure how I can make the dungeon more straightforward now.

I tend to design these sort of things organically as I go and they sometimes end up to be far too convoluted.

[ywkls]

Part 41

 

I think that part of the problem with this dungeon is figuring out just where you need to backtrack to.

Even with a Song of Soaring spot, you wouldn't always be able to shorten your visit.

 

I actually had an idea for a way to further improve the Song of Soaring. 

Add the ability to create more than one warp point in dungeons!

And overworld warp points at will!

I am not quite sure how hard that will be, but it shouldn't be impossible.

 

At the very least, you can't say that this area isn't less complex than the Wind Fish's Egg.

Whether that is a good thing or not is up to you.

[ywkls]

Part 42

 

When I decided to make the secret final boss, there could be only one choice.

Up to this point you have faced the entirety of the bad guy lineup in the Oracle series as well as other unique villains.

Onox in Balance of Nature.

Vaati in Passage Through Time.

Veran, Dark Link and the new Tri-Rova in Destiny of the Oracles.

In Destiny. the connection between Onox, Vaati and Hilda is revealed.

So I knew that an evil version of this dark twin of Zelda was in order.

But this is an older and more powerful foe, perfect for this adventure.

 

The defenses of this boss shift randomly during the course of the battle.

If you play any song and hit her with the note, you get a clue to her current weakness.

Or you can just spam the sword and hope for the best.

 

New ending sequence for this version! 

I always felt that just transitioning to the teaser for the next quest was a bit abrupt, so I added that little scene with Zelda and Marin.