#this game has a lot of nerve making me cry when its gameplay is literally just press A

[petorahs]

environmental storytelling.

[todonintendos]

Top 5 Best and Worst Shrine Quests in Breath of the Wild

A few days ago I listed my favourite and least favourite shrines from Breath of the Wild, however I focused on what was inside of each shrine itself rather than what players must do in order to get to them, and this is where Shrine Quests become important. There are 42 of those in the game, and they’re missions that need to be completed in order to reach or unlock a shrine. For this list, I will be excluding all quests in which the shrine is already accessible before triggering the mission, as I’ve found a lot of those by just randomly exploring, so here it begins!

Also, spoiler alert, just sayin’ you may want to complete all of these quests by yourself before.

#5 (Best) - Shrouded Shrine

To kick off this list I could have picked any of the three mazes, but instead I went for that dark forest north of the Great Hyrule Forest because it’s more original and better designed than any of the three labyrinths. The gimmick is pretty much using whatever you find or is in your inventory to light up your way to the shrine in a completely dark forest. There are many treasures spread around, but nothing too interesting on the chests except a ruby. As you advance, you’ll begin to hear growls that become louder and louder, and when you get to the end the mystery unravels: someone at Nintendo decided it would be cool to put a Hinox right there, but you can just skip it and enter the shrine. 

This shrine adds a sense of mystery and, why not, fear to the game, which you won’t see anywhere else in the vast wilderness of Hyrule, which is mainly why I like this quest.

#5 (Worst) - The Ceremonial Song

I know most of you actually don’t find this quest to be that bad, but it straight up confused me to the point I had to give up and come back way later in the game. The quest triggers when you talk to a Zora girl, and she sings a song containing all the clues you need to solve the quest. I was a bit early into the game so when I read “scale of light” I immediately thought of one of the three dragons, but which one? The question answered itself when I tried putting all three scales on the pedestal without success, only to find out later “scale” referred to the weapon, so I began looking for it when that old Zora told me he dropped it off a bridge... but what bridge? I looked under every bridge on the way to Zora’s Domain, didn’t find anything. He was actually talking about the “bridge” he was standing on, which I don’t even consider a bridge in the first place. 

But this doesn’t end here, the final step was going to the pedestal and doing what the Mipha statue was doing. I don’t think I have to mention how much time it took me to figure out what she was actually doing and what I had to replicate... and that I had to do it from a certain height. As soon as I saw the shrine pop up... ugh... screw this quest.

#4 (Best) - Recital at Warbler’s Nest

Despite the urge to talk about how terribly cute the small Rito are, I’m gonna have to focus on the quest. It triggers when you talk to one of the five sisters at Warbler’s Nest. She will tell you that her four sisters met up to sing with her, but didn’t come, so you’ve got to look for them. All of the missing Rito are in Rito Village (shoutouts to the one sitting on the cliff that literally took me ages to find) and each of them will give you an ingredient, as the green bird won’t go sing unless you prepare her favourite meal: salmon meunière, which you do by mixing the three ingredients you get from the other sisters.

Once this is done, the five sisters will be finally reunited at Warbler’s Nest and they’ll play their song. Now the player must memorize the order in which they sing, and use a Korok Leaf to enter that pattern using the numbered rocks as a reference to reveal the shrine. This quest mixes two of the main attractions of any Zelda game: exploration and puzzles, and the shrine you get is not a blessing one... but it has a huge staircase.

Now that I’m done talking about the quest... please take a minute to appreciate the cuteness of the five sisters, specially during the cutscene in which they fly back to Rito Village. Also my apologies to the blue one for being an unhatched egg, never forget.

#4 (Worst) - Watch Out for the Flowers

The fact that this is one of the first shrines you’ll encounter after exiting the Plateau doesn’t save it from being among the worst. I’m talking about that infamous quest featuring the mad flower woman, who literally takes away part of your health is you step on her flowers too much. And by stepping, I mean just touching one single flower a little bit. Or you can also wait until you get Revali’s Gale and screw all the process up, but that still makes it too cheap. Get frustrated or skip everything, you decide what to do. 

And don’t forget to burn all of the flowers from a certain distance when you leave using bomb arrows. She somehow won’t notice and you’ll feel like you’ve recovered all of the time you may have wasted with this one.

#3 (Best) - The Stolen Heirloom

Unlocking this one takes some time, as you don’t just need to defeat Master Kohga in order to trigger it, but also complete every secondary quest in Kakariko Village. Once you do, you’ll notice something strange at Impa’s house: that big fat orange ball is missing and that girl that gets shipped with Link way to much called Paya will tell you, sobbing, that someone stole it. After falsely incriminating a random woman who just wanted to cry the death of someone he loved (this is your fault Nintendo), if you head to the pedestal that’s next to the Great Fairy Fountain, everything gets suddenly real. Even more if you consider the lore of Kakariko Village.

Basically, the big fat ball was stolen by a big fat Yiga who is suspiciously stronger than the other big fat Yigas. I could talk about the fact that you just have to defeat him in order to unlock the shrine, but it’s the lore what gives the bronze medal to this quest on my list. Dorian, one of the guards in Impa’s House, is a former Yiga member who left the organization to look after his family, so the Yigas killed her wife as a revenge, and as they weren’t done yet they came back to steal the big fat ball which the game likes to call heirloom.

After kicking the Yiga’s butt, the first thing that came to my mind was that boy who was seemingly playing hide and seek with her mother for like, forever. You could think it’s just another NPC cliché, but everything changes when you find out that’s one of Dorian’s children. Then you’ll come across the game’s lore silently cutting onions in a distant corner.

#3 (Worst) - The Lost Pilgrimage

If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about. All Koroks are cute, I must admit, but this one gets on my nerves, Scolting missions in videogames are generally bad, and this one is no exception. This mission is one of the three trials in the Korok Forest, and you have to follow a Korok without letting it notice you and, of course, trying not to lose track of it as he knows the way. And you don’t. The way becomes more and more dangerous as you progress, to the point where he runs back after getting scared without even telling you, and there’s a wolf ready to make things harder. And it’s not a short way.

The first time I did this quest I somehow managed to get to the shrine, but not complete the quest because I didn’t talk to the Korok once I was there. All I can tell you is that I tried again like 100 hours of gameplay later.

#2 (Best) - The Spring of Wisdom

Though you don’t really need to trigger an actual shrine quest in order to unlock the shrine, I just couldn’t miss this one. You’ve probably already seen Dinraal and Farosh flying around Hyrule, but what about Naydra? All the pieces of the puzzle put themselves on its place when you get to the summit of Mount Lanayru: the big blue dragon is possessed by that purple goo thing with eyes. And suddenly, a boss battle appears!

To defeat the evil forces taking over Naydra, you just have to fly next to him and shoot the malicious eyes with any arrows you have. Not too hard, yet not too easy, as Naydra moves and turns pretty fast and you can’t touch its freezing body. Despite the apparent simplicity of the battle, the setting is what makes it unique and different of anything we’ve played so far in any Zelda game. Once Naydra is defeated, you have to take a scale from its body and put it on the fountain to reveal the shrine. Make sure to say hi to Naydra whenever you find it while exploring!

#2 (Worst) - Test of Will

The main attraction of this shrine is three Gorons that don’t even know who you are and aren’t aware of you possessing either Fire Elixir or an entire suit that protects you from extreme heat in your inventory. This quest requires a bit of exploring to find, so you may already have any of the stuff required in your inventory... or you can rely of food, as it somehow prevents you from burning to death.

Now, just stand still for way too long until the Gorons notice you can handle heat better than they do. Don’t worry, they won’t notice you’re technically cheating, but they won’t give you back the five minutes you wasted by simply waiting.

#1 (Best) - Stranded on Eventide

Like if there were any doubts. Stranded on Eventide is the only quest where it just doesn’t matter what weapons or what enemies you’ve killed during your adventure (only hearts and stamina do), so it doesn’t really matter when you do this quest. This quest begins right when you step on Eventide Island for the first time, and the game takes away all of your clothes and weapons so you’ve got to start from zero, using anything you find as a weapon. The aim is to find three orange balls and bring each one to any of the three pedestals.

This is a challenge known for its rather hard difficulty, as it’s not about killing enemies as you’re probably used to do, but about avoiding them. You don’t want to face them though the balls are in the most dangerous locations possible. Heck, there’s even one on a Hinox, and the only alternatives are either climbing to his belly using his hand, or throwing something at his eye when he wakes up. But you can’t deny that the satisfaction of beating this is certainly worth it.

#1 (Worst) - Under a Red Moon

If the main problem with the previous worst quest was waiting, then you’re instantly going to understand why this is the worst quest in the game. You can be lucky and be able to unlock this shrine right away, or be like me and talk to Kass the night after the blood moon happened.

As you might have guessed, all you have to do is stand on the pedestal during a blood moon. And you have to do it naked. Unneeded detail that I bet at least someone missed and got even more frustrated... as unneeded as the quest itself, gotta be honest here.

And that was it! Those were my five most and least favourite shrine quests in Breath of the Wild... hope y’all agree! (probably not, though)

NEXT LIST: TOP 10 HARDEST KOROKS