DAY 1
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
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Location: Death Mountain
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 0
Skulltulas: 5
Status: Just beat King Dodongo. Cavern was harder than I remember. Not doing so badly yet. This is my first attempt to do the 3-Heart challenge in Master Quest mode. Went to go see Great Fairy on Death Mountain but had no slingshot ammo to kill the skulltulas with.
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I don't have Master Quest... :( (though having to play OoT on a GC controller is one reason to not bother...)
Right now, I'm still playing Chrono Trigger. Once I finish it (which shouldn't be too long) then I'll begin OoT.
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Tomorrow night when I get home from Umass, I'll begin my efforts at going through OoT for the 9th time. I'm going to do it on the original, golden N64 cartridge, too.
DAY 2
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
▲▲[/size][size=2]▲[/size]
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Location: Forest Temple
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 4 (God damn fucking re-deads and stalfos)
Skulltulas: 13
Status: Blew through Jabu in no time, got big, grew up, and immediately got distracted. I decided to go right for the Biggoron sword, so I got Epona and started right away. I needed Blue Fire to have King Zora give me the Eyeball Frog, so while I was at it, I just did the whole Ice Cavern and got the Iron Boots. On the way back from getting the sword I stopped to bomb Darunia's kid and get my red tunic, so before I even stepped foot into the Forest Temple, I had all three tunics, Biggoron's sword and the iron boots (which allows you to actually go down the well without draining it, but you can't open the chest that's down there. [/size][/size]
Well, there's the controller, and that the disk is rare... I don't think I've seen a copy in quite some time. The four-game collection with the NES and N64 games I have seen more recently (for like $40 or $50), but the OoT/MQ disk? Nope...
Seeing as I don't have MQ, I'll also be playing on the original N64 cartridge, though mine is gray. (I didn't get my N64 until Christmas of '98 and so I rented OoT around New Year's Eve. I remember stopping very briefly to see the fireworks on New Year's Day 1999.) I finally got the game for my birthday in '99, so I didn't get one of the preordered gold carts. Oh well, it's the same game.
MQ appears to be different than the N64 OoT though, if the well is still full of water when you're an adult and there's a treasure chest down there.
Day One
Location: Kakariko Village
Hearts: 4
Deaths: 0
Skulltulas: 5
Status: Nothing special to report.
Geno Wrote:MQ appears to be different than the N64 OoT though, if the well is still full of water when you're an adult and there's a treasure chest down there.
I'm talking about the well in the Forest Temple, not the one in Kakariko.
DAY 3
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
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[size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size]
[size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size]
[size=2][size=4]-[/size][/size]
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[size=2][size=4]--
Location: Lake Hylia
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 5 (YOU try killing three Stalfos at once on two seperate occasions with three hearts and making it out with only one death :D)
Skulltulas: 17
Status: Forest Temple wasn't so bad, but when I went to the Fire Temple, I was absolutely stunned. I couldn't remember the trick to one of the first puzzles and it was driving me crazy. So I decided to ditch out and tackle the Water Temple instead. Until I remembered that you had to shoot the bas-reliefs with your hookshot, I was mighty stuck. Once I rememebered that (Navi actually came in handy for once), it was all smooth sailing from there. Beat Morpha with a quarter of a heart left :D. So I got the Fire Arrows, and that's where I called Day 3. I still have to go back to the Fire Temple, but the puzzle that stumped me might be done easier with fire arrows. Lord knows I never did bother to figure out how to drain the well at the Forest Temple. And, I still never got the Song of Storms. [/size][/size]
Oh, that well! Yeah, it'd be interesting to venture to the bottom of that well while it's still filled with water.
I didn't even know that you could do the temples out of order, I've never tried to before... that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities.
Day Two (still in motion):
So far,
Location: Dodongo's Cavern
Hearts: 4
Deaths: 0
Skulltulas: 5
Status: Just entered the Dodongo's Cavern, but I'm taking a lot more time to do side-quests that I usually don't bother to do... putting more effort into the Happy Masks, Pieces of Heart and Skulltulas especially.
If you play far enough into the Forest Temple to get the bow, you can complete the first three in any order you wish, as that's the only item absolutely necessary.
I personally am not doing many side quests, since most of them lead to heart pieces.
I finally beat the water temple. I'm so happy.
The only side quests I really care to do are the ones to get Epona and the Biggoron's Sword, and maybe also the bottles. (The Big Poe bottle quest is long and tedious, and difficult if you don't use an online map, so I often skip that particular bottle and just go with the first three.) I'm not big on the Heart Pieces and the Gold Skulltulas. I'll take 'em as I see 'em, but I won't go to great lengths for 'em. I don't usually bother with the fishing game either. (Of course, that's also mainly to get a Heart Piece.) I'll do all the Great Fairy side quests. (Farore's Wind isn't that useful, but what the hell? It's right there. I use Din's Fire quite often though, and Nayru's Love can prove handy from time to time. The other Great Fairies are more important though; the ones that give you your magic meter, improve your magic meter, and double your defense.) I also do the Happy Mask side quest even though there's no real point to that since you get the Mask of Truth just before becoming an adult and it's not even that useful anyway. Something cool to note, however, is that Stalchildren won't appear on the field at night if you're wearing the Bunny Hood, and Keese won't bother you if you're wearing the Skull Mask.
As for Chrono Trigger, I'm now in the Black Omen. I trained until I learned all the Single Techs. Now I just need to learn all the Dual and Triple Techs, which is a simple matter of using the appropriate characters in a battle. I have four of the five rocks; the White Rock will come later in the Black Omen. Once I have the White Rock, I'll have every Tech available in the game. I'll begin Ocarina of Time very soon now... just need to finish the Black Omen and defeat Lavos.
DAY 4
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
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Location: Shadow Temple
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 7 (Ran out of faeries in the Shadow Temple, then went right back in and forgot to get more :D)
Skulltulas: 23
Status: Went back to the Fire Temple, found that the stumping puzzle was much easier with Fire arrows. Also found out that you can skip whole sections of the temple in MQ, as you find the hammer and the boss key very early on. Once you get to that huge room, all you need to do is slam the pillar down and you don't have to go a step farther, skipping several large areas.
Went under the well, got my Lens of Truth (and incidentally, the Song of Storms finally). I found that in the room with all the Gibdos, you can very easily kill them by just standing in the coffin and whacking away, as they can freeze you but they can't touch you there. I also found that in MQ, that room is completely unnecessary to even go inside, save for the Gold skulltula in the corner :/
So now I'm in the Shadow Temple, and the difficulty's ramping up. I hate this temple, it's my least favorite of them all.
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Day Three
Location: Post-apocalypse Hyrule Castle Town
Hearts: 8
Deaths: 0
Skulltulas: 23
Status: I've been taking the time to do the mask-trading for the first time ever... and really taking the time to do more of the games and side-puzzles.
DAY 5
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
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[size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size][size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size][size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size][size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size][size=2][size=4]-[/size][/size][size=2][size=4]♦[/size][/size][size=2]
Location: Gerudo Fortress
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 9 (Bongo-Bongo got me once, and then again in the Gerudo Training course. Iron Knuckles have no mercy on the three-hearted.)
Skulltulas: 29
Status: I finally got through the Shadow Temple. I forgot how tough Bongo-Bongo was... mostly because I forgot the trick to nailing him. I lost all of my fairies the second time, THEN figured it out, and won :D
So then it was on to the desert. I got the four carpenters free, then I decided to tackle the Traning Ground, since I never did it in MQ before. It's quite the challenge, to be sure, but I did it, and got the Ice Arrows. Then I hit the Archery Range and got my Biggest Quiver. That's where I called it a day.
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DAY 6: THE FINAL DAY
[size=2]MASTER QUEST
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Location: The End
Hearts: 3
Deaths: 9 (Ganon's two forms hit me a total of once. Damn, I'm good. Had three faires at the end.)
Skulltulas: 34
Status: I spent a lot of time playing today. The first thing I did was the Big Poe sidequest, which I've never done before. Then I finally got the Giant's Wallet, which was kind of a waste since I didn't buy a single thing since I got it.
Onto the Spirit Temple. That's definitely the most confusing one of the entire Master Quest, especially considering how many worthless distractions there are within. It took me about three hours. Twinrova went down with no trouble at all.
So I have all six sages awakened. Time to take out the king of evil. Five of the six barrier rooms are pretty easy. The Fire Barrier room is insanely irritating as you have to restart the whole thing if you fall into the lava... not hard to do. I eventually got that done, and decided to hit Ganon right away.
Two rounds. That's all it took. I jump-cut him three times the first time I shot him, and then twice the second. Done. Then it's the long runaway, which I dislike. Stalfos almost got me again.
Ganon... man, how easy can you get? I'd have escaped completely unscathed if I hadn't been so careless. I got hit once (which is an instant kill), but I dominated the rest. It was a fun dance.
So I beat Master Quest in six days with three hearts.
[size=6]THE END
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D...Damn. Holy shit, man. You're insane.
I certainly wouldn't do that well... and that's normal OoT, not MQ...
hehe i beat MQ in two day with 3 hearts and zero deaths (cuz i cheated and pushed reset each time I died which was like a total of ten times :D), but unlike rtangs I went for a 100% run and got everything minus the heart pieces or containers which i actually had to use the Gameshark for to circumvent some the 'heart piece first, then item' prizes though i cant remember the specific times i had to do this... maybe i'm thinking of MM...
MM is a totally different story, out of all 3-Heart quests, it is the most challenging by far. It's even worse than sequence breaking in Metroid Prime or echoes.
Hint for the fire chamber of Ganon's Castle: put on your Hover Boots. They will keep the main platform from sinking. VERY helpful, and it makes the room quite easy.
I finished CT, but because of work and school, I haven't had time to start on OoT yet, but I will... eventually. You'll probably be able to make a second playthrough before I start, but I'll start up eventually.
How is resetting when you die, "cheating"? That's what I've always done! The only time I couldn't do that was when playing LTTP on SNES. To get a zero death game there, I had to do it all in one sitting. I couldn't even save the game. Took a few tries, but once I got to the point where I had a couple bottles and the ability to buy blue potions, the game was pretty easy from then on. The main thing is not getting killed by some stupid mistake during the light world part of the game.
Well, it's cheating since it avoids recording your deaths, and thus helps you look better in the end. I didn't reset any of my deaths, since I was using it as an indication of how well I did.
It's not if you're going for a no-deaths-recorded game, but is kind of cheap if you're doing a normal game, where I'd expect the deaths counter to be a gauge of how well you are doing, or at least how good you are.
Well there is a penalty if you reset. All progress up to that point is not saved and you have to do it all again. So it's not like it's something unbalanced. It does tell me how well I did in the data kept track of. Resetting is like going back in time, it NEVER HAPPENED! :D
Are you saying that HAD you died in that 3 heart game, you would have saved that? No, I suppose you would have actually deleted the game and started over if you truly didn't even want it to have had happened.
It's like trying to achieve a perfect season in a football game by simply replaying every game you lose until you win them all. You have a perfect record at the end of it, but you didn't really earn it.
How so? Maybe I'm not getting it as I don't play football games, but isn't that the whole idea of the save system? The ability to do things the way you wanted to in case you failed? I mean, when they want you to actually have to do a whole part in one go or keep track of ALL failures, they design the game to do that. They did it in Zelda 2 and LTTP, which recorded both your deaths and your saves as the same thing. If they want to force you to go through a huge challenge in one go, they simply deprive you of save points for a while. Heck, there's that Steel Battallion game for XBox that actually deletes your save file if you die. Animal Crossing actually yells at you if you "reset", pretty much telling you it's fine in other games but don't do it in THAT one, and so no, I don't reset in Animal Crossing no matter how many things I manage to screw up.
I'm pretty sure the designers fully intended us to do this, or they wouldn't let us.
So then, did you truly play the game so that, if you died, you would delete the old file and just start a new game to complete the challenge? If that is the case, impressive, but a little frustrating. I find it hard to see how that's exactly proving too much except your will to do things over and over again.
No, what I mean is, when I died, I saved, and my tally of losses was correct, so I have an accurate display of my level of skill. My feat would have seemed much more impressive if I had a death counter of 0, and I could have made it so that was the case, but it would be dishonest to an observer and denying myself an accurate self-appraisal. After all, if you do an extra challenge like this, why would you not want to know exactly how good you are at it?
I'm just not so sure it is inaccurate. After all, as I said, you do have to do everything you did up to that point all over again. So in the end, it's just LIKE you did everything you did up to that point again without needing to actually do it. After all, if I reached that point feeling as though I did it all perfectly, I would most assuredly do it all the same way again anyway. I'd say it's an accurate appraisal of skill in that it says you can get through any single part of the game without dying. A step above that is showing you can get through the ENTIRE game without dying in a single run. LTTP provided me that challenge, and it was fun (though pretty easy after getting a few bottles). Zelda 2 will also provide that challenge when I finally take up that cup. One of these days, I will go ahead and get my death/save counter in that game down from 11 to 0...
Anyway, that is impressive. I just disagree that in games where I can simply reset and it doesn't record saves, it's somehow cheating.
Well, the whole point of doing a three-heart challenge is to see how adept you are at not getting hit. Avoiding being hit, and therefore, avoiding getting killed, is the point of the challenge, and that's it. I already know how to do the puzzles and where to find particular items, and I know how to kill any enemy I face. What I'm trying to do is go from the beginning to the end with the bare minimum of health and dying as rarely as I can manage, as that's the only challenge left for me If I can go from start to finish without a single death, than I rock. I haven't yet managed it.
Thus, avoiding a recorded death pretty much makes a waste out of the whole challenge.
But the thing about that is, resetting won't let you skip challenges. You still have to get past everything in the game with only 3 hearts and it's just as hard to kill an armos knight whether or not you reset. It's not as though my resetting the game somehow made the battles any easier, and I still need to do them without getting hit.
The single life spree is certainly an addition to that challenge, but doing it with resets doesn't destroy the whole point of the 3 heart part of things.
'three hearts no deaths' is a challenge too, but it's a different one, and should be identified as such...
DJ, you have to admit this: when comparing how you did to others, saying "I beat it with three hearts and zero deaths by rewinding each time I died" tells them very little about how good you are. "I beat it with three hearts and ten deaths" tells them a whole lot more. And that's one of the two main reasons to do something like a three-heart challenge... either showing yourself how good you are, or comparing how good you are to others...
I suppose so, but I'm just saying a 3 heart challenge can be done without worrying about that. And, again, it does say at least that you CAN get through every part of the game without dying, just that you can't do it all in one go without dying. I suppose in a game where you only have one life, that still doesn't say that much.
However, in a game where you have like 30 lives and continue points in levels, it can say something. Like, Yoshi's Island. There, even using resets, beating the game without dying will say a lot about you, as normally you would be using lives just to continue from reset points.
It can be done, yes, but then it just becomes a test of attrition, not one of actual skill, where at the end, the only thing you proved is that you can finish the game with three hearts, which I think most people can do if they try hard enough. But by not recording deaths, you have no idea how efficient you were in going about it.
And besides, the only reason you'd reset after a death is to artificially keep the death count low, so no matter how I look at it, it's either cheating to seem better than you are, or a complete waste of time (what do you gain by not saving and continuing?)
In regards to your lost progress up to that point when you reset: SAVE OFTEN!
I save over every little thing I do. I just refilled my arrow count to the max! *saves* I just solved a minor puzzle in a dungeon! *saves*
I finally beat Ocarina of Time...for the first time. Yes, I know I'm a horrible person for taking 7 years to finally get to the end but gosh darnit that water temple was evil!!
Geno Wrote:In regards to your lost progress up to that point when you reset: SAVE OFTEN!
I save over every little thing I do. I just refilled my arrow count to the max! *saves* I just solved a minor puzzle in a dungeon! *saves*
I'm just the opposite, I usually don't save until I'm ready to stop playing, a habit that has, on more than one occasion, cost me a lot of play time. I once played Resident Evil for two hours straight, a big thunderstorm rolled in quickly, and a power failure knocked away all of my progress before I could make it to a typewriter. Another time I played Final Fantasy X and was strolling around the Omega Dungeon looking for Mimics. I found a ton of rare monsters, lots of gil, and my characters leveled up a lot, then I got attacked by a Great Malboro (which ambushes every time in Omega) and lost it all. To this day, I never go to the Omega Dungeon without a First Strike weapon or armor to protect from it's deleterious effects :D.
I haven't been playing because I got a great GC baseball game for my birthday, but now that the novelty of it has worn off, I'm going to resume now. I should be at least as far as the Fire Temple by tonight.
Gretz,
--Barry
I'm playing Majora's Mask now, for the first time.
I've beaten the first two temples so far.