The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is officially upon us! We’ve been hyped for this Breath of the Wild sequel for a while now, and are excited about the return of classic Zelda elements like the iconic villain, Ganondorf; dungeons to explore; and quality views of Link’s underpants.
But here are the truly big questions:
- Will there be Korok seeds to collect?
- How many will we need to collect to be awarded with poop this time? Oh, excuse me, Hestu’s Gift (of poop). And …
- … are you actually going to troll us with a poop reward again? Or will you troll completionists even harder this time?
Here’s what we know so far.
Spoilers ahead for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and gameplay info for Tears of the Kingdom
Last month, IGN reported that, among other returning elements, Korok quests would indeed be back. The gameplay will be pretty much the same, though there are some enhancements. The puzzles are more complex and will have larger rewards. As IGN‘s Rebekah Valentine reveals, “At one point, we had to reunite two separated Koroks, which rewarded us with two Korok seeds instead of one. Yes, the little golden turds are back.”
How many will we need to collect?
If you played BotW and used game guides, you know that in that game, there were a total of 900 Korok seeds to be found on the map. The more you found, the more you’d be able to increase your inventory, which is a pretty great reward in and of itself.
However, once you collected 441 Korok seeds, you reached the limit of how large your inventory could be. So, what about the other 459 seeds? Well, for the very determined completionists, collecting every seed led you to a reward called Hestu’s Gift.
And what was Hestu’s Gift? Poop. To quote Stacey Henley at The Gamer, “[It’s] made of gold, but it looks like poop and it stinks. It’s poop.”
No ifs, ands, or (heh) butts about it. A poop by any other name still smells like poop. But as of right now, even reviewers who’ve played TotK have remained tight-lipped about the Korok seed situation, so no hard number’s been released yet.
With regard to Tears of the Kingdom, Henley speculates that it won’t reward completionists with poop, but up the troll factor with something worse. After all, she says, the original Korok quest seemed to be all about, um, giving completionists sh*t:
“But this is not a reward that went wrong. 900 seeds didn’t get you a bow that turned out to be underpowered, nor an outfit that ended up having buffs that were pointless by the time you’d unlocked all 900. The devs knew exactly what they were doing. They gave you some golden poop. It was a joke.
If your reaction is ‘I hope I get something worthwhile for collecting all the Korok Seeds this time’ then you have missed the punchline. The reward was bad on purpose. That was the point. You wasted your time. The reward is in doing the thing, so don’t expect anything else.”
Now, the question is: Will Nintendo double-down on poop humor? Go the opposite way and actually give you something useful? Or will there only be, like, five Korok seeds on the map, but they’ll all be really hard to get?
Actually, it could be that the reward is related more to the game’s narrative.
Where’s Hestu?
Judging by the trailers for Tears of the Kingdom, Link’s adventure seems like it will be a lot more populous! There’s a bunch of villagers and friends old and new. However, we haven’t caught a glimpse of Hestu, the Korok we encountered in BotW, playing his maracas and carrying his little messenger bag.
That would bring a bit more mystery to the Korok seeds this time, in that they could be leading Link to find Hestu. In her IGN piece, Valentine speculates, “While the first game had Hestu fairly prominent in Link’s journey, this time around he might be missing, and the Koroks encourage us to track him down. Hope he’s okay.”
Oh, man! Now I’m worried. Scan the landscape for dropped maracas!
(featured image: Nintendo)
