Just finished the game at 150hrs and here are some of the things I learned along the way. Apologies ahead of time if some of these are obvious, I’m kind of slow sometimes.
• Hoverbike https://game8.co/games/Zelda-Tears-of-the-Kingdom/archives/413708
• If you have a plane but no way to get it in the air, hold it as high as you can for a couple seconds and lower it to the ground. Get on, rewind time, and launch when you’re in the air. Be prepared for a dip downwards when you start off.
• If you’re awful at Lionel’s, spam them with puffshrooms or muddlebuds.
• Roasting foods: ingredients that can be roasted will have gray smoke, unroastable ingredients will make black smoke (probably obvious but helpful when filling out the recipe book)
• Gleeoks: Use ascend, jump and shoot arrows in slow time. Repeat until it’s down and you can melee. Also helpful: muddlebuds will keep it from targeting you too much and snowquill armor at level 2 makes you unfreezable.
Depths
• The depths are mostly the opposite topography of the middle map. If there’s a hill in the middle map it will be a valley in the depths. Water will be unclimbable walls. This isn’t 100% but it’s close enough to help navigate.
• Lightroots are the roots of shrines in the middle map. You can switch between maps to fill out your shrines/lightroot locations.
• If you select the middle map in your menu then exit, your mini-map will stay the middle map. Great for discovering new areas or trying to find a Lightroot.
• Know where a lightroot should be but can’t find it? Look at the ceiling. Lightroots have a distinctive thin pillar shape. Sometimes you can see the outline then follow it down.
• Riju’s power or ultrahand can help you see around if you’re out of brightblooms.
• If you wear the Lionel mask to the depths coliseum the Lionel will target your companions. I use dodges to take down Lionels so I only wear it for the last guy to bomb his armor in peace. You need to put it on before their door opens.
• If you attach a gloom weapon to another weapon, there is no gloom toll.
• Attaching a gloom sword to a gerudo scimitar is 90 damage. I think this is because of strong fusion. There are stronger weapons out there but I liked this combo.
Hope this is helpful! I had a blast playing it. Good gaming, friends!
I laughed at the idea of running out of brightblooms.
That said, you can throw a brightbloom on your vehicle and you never need a zonai light.
The weapons that your companions carry are all craftable through quests, but they’re not great. However, I attached a silver Lynel sabre horn to the gerudo sword and it’s like 156 damage
To be honest, I didn’t use brightblooms very often. I liked exploring the depths in darkness with the middle map on to see the landscape. Kinda psycho but I had fun running from one light in the darkness to the next.