#totk gloomhands

[shishuri]

This is attention to details man

Ganon holds a bow straight while Link holds it at an angle.

Ganon also draws the bow like a samurai, (since this Ganon is more samurai like) he positions/aim the bow then draws.

(Not shown here) Even if Link uses a long bow like Ganon he will still aim at an angle since he is a soldier. He positions/aim the bow and draws at the same time.

The bow Ganon uses will recoil meaning this is a heavy bow. (They didnt need to add that detail in, but they did man)

[julisartori]

💥gloom💥

[somer-writes]

ugh ok ok ok i am running wild with this gloom infection concept so i wrote a bunch of stuff down before i forget. subject to change bc im kind of just spitballing as of rn

CW for horror/gore/outbreaks of illness/discussion of violence

Twilight

19

Comes from Ordon. Ordon was one of the last places for the gloom to reach. Twilight’s not sure if he’s the only one left, but he’s searching for the others despite the village being more or less destroyed.

Was infected with gloom, was “cured” in Faron Spring (read died and resurrected via light spirit shenanigans)

Instead of Twili markings he has gloom scars. He keeps his left arm in wraps where the gloom left his bone exposed at his wrist and upper arm. The wounds are just kind of there and don’t seem to get better but aren’t getting worse. They no longer give him pain and don't bleed. He also has scars on his cheeks/forehead. The whites of his eyes are a little dull

Gloom did weird shit to him! He doesn’t see well but he has sharp smelling and hearing. He’s very slow to bleed so can sustain more damage but is also very slow to heal. Sunlight’s not great for him and he's pyrophobic

Gloom infected people don’t come after him anymore

Around large groups of infected he sort of joins the mob but can be brought out of it with distance

Somewhat forgetful

Brawler - will use improvised weapons or just go fully barehanded against infected

Wild

17

Comes from Hateno

Got trapped in a house fire set by a neighbor, managed to survive through divine intervention

Lost his memory, covered in scars. The scars cause him mobility issues

Selective mute as a trauma response

Long hair :D but more like TotK length and not LU length

Agile - good at climbing, uses a compound bow and hunting arrows (or makes his own in a pinch)

Wanders aimlessly without a home to attach himself to or people to look for

Makes elixirs/good cook

pretty reckless, enjoys looting to find Good Ingredients XD

Wars

23

From Castle Town

Military background - one of the few survivors of the initial outbreaks

Had to put down a lot of his own men and civilians

Very outwardly aloof and avoidant of his trauma

Control issues, compulsive need to be "hygienic" (sometimes to the point of harm)

Adept with firearms and will use improvised weapons to spare ammo

Left Castle Town to go to Outset Island

Wind

14

Outset is mostly untouched by the gloom, but the island is quarantined

Mainlanders tried to flee to the islands and it caused chaos leading to riots

In the chaos of the riots, Aryll was mistakenly taken to the mainland and Wind went after her

Really good at making and setting traps

Terrified of the infected

Gloom

Outbreak caused by Ganon’s tomb being unsealed and his curse being unleashed

The gloom is spread through bodily fluids like blood or spit. Most commonly it’s spread through biting and scratching

Gloomhands can also spread the infection and expedite it into hours rather than days

Infected wounds can be treated with brightbloom seeds which only grow in the very gloom infested depths under Hyrule which makes the medicine hard to come by

Gloom slowly rots the infected while they’re alive. It also degrades mental capability such as cognitive function and sanity. Progresses very similar to dementia except it causes aggression and violence

Gloomhands are borne from several infected corpses piling in one place

Gloom scars are called “gloom burn” because they resemble burn scars. A lot of times the flesh doesn’t entirely heal with successful treatment

The Chain

They converge at Lon-Lon through coincidence

Tasked by Hylia to beat Ganon and end the curse

The Zelda’s all wield light magic which can cure gloom infection and with enough strength (usually through multiple of them gathered) can reverse the effects of gloom and create safe oases

Aside from needing to mull over the rest of the chain, i'm also considering appearances from Midna, the resistance, ravio & hilda, and phantom ganon

the map will be mostly based on totk with some adjustments. modern contemporary setting with fantasy elements.

[andyee-haw]

Gloomhands or Guardians?

Warning, some spoilers for TOTK (no major story spoilers)

The gloomhands/floormasters are the new 'Guardians' of TOTK, but are they better or worse? More terrifying or less?

Most players can remember the dread of hearing the iconic piano cords followed by the red laser of botw's guardians. The sheer speed and size of the guardians is intimidating enough early game for players to entirely avoid them. Of course, eventually most players will hunt guardians for sport and they lose all fear and power. This goes the same for all of hyrule's nastier monsters...Lynels, Gleeoks, etc...

With guardians notable lack of appearance in totk, the question is, are gloomhands more or less effective?

Gloomhands spawn in seemingly random (but scripted) locations within the depths and hyrule. They typically appear in the corner of the screen or otherwise off center, having an entirely silent entrance until they inevitably spot you. They unleash a hallowing screech as they begin to chase after you. The music becomes inverted, the sky turns red...there is no blood moon. You begin running to learn that they can run just as fast as you.

There is no hope.

If you stick around long enough without dying, eventually they'll leave...dropping dark matter.

The player is left confused, perhaps thinking it was daylight that "killed" them? There are no definite answers. It does not even have a hyrule compendium entry.

If you truly uphold the triforce of courage and decide to take them down, if successful, your reward comes as a punishment.

Guardians meanwhile are far more predictable, you know where they're concentrated and where to avoid. You can typically spot them from quite a distance. The battle is straight forward and you get a instant reward.

OR basically:

Guardians: visible, predictable, more like a mini-boss.

Gloomhands: mythical, unpredictable, fucking terrifying.

I mean people have already learned how to cheese the gloomhands (ledge + dazzle fruit and bomb arrows) but i don't think the follow up is quite understood. Eventually, they might be like the guardians in the "hunting for sport" sense. But maybe. Just maybe. they'll hold the same type of fear and unease like that enveloping Oot's Deadhand.

[emcandon]

this week in adventures with my dnd character, Fancy Uncle Chucklefuck:

(previously on fancy uncle chucklefuck: 1, 2, 3 (look at the reblog for the update))

knows jack and shit about necromancy but is going to propose that if the weird wizard twink they met wants to eat any more magical bones, they should try and feed him non-magical bones first to see if he bites. for science and also for leverage.

offered a contract to the dragonborn herbo of protection for room and board that included the clause "btw if you decide i am an asshole, just let me get stabbed; it will be funny"

she crossed that out and added "even assholes get to live" which was GENUINELY. BEWILDERING. TO HIM. FOR A MINUTE. he signed it though.

we had a truly terrible time crossing an old bridge until friggin' negative dex fancy uncle chucklefuck swanned across with a nat20, which i interpreted as the Slowest Imaginable Inching Along

we have concluded that his mage hand manifests kind of like the totk gloomhands but made of eldritch starlight IT'S FINE IT'S NORMAL DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT

post-bridge fiasco he cleaned up the dragonborn herbo with starlight-hued prestidigitation and for a moment stared at his fingers to murmur "oh my god it IS useful...." while fantasizing about all the laundry he is now capable of doing with this horrible stupid magic curse.

has not yet clocked that he has some brand-spankin'-new and truly absurd darkvision (300 ft. bayBEEEEE) so is just wandering around the farmhouse they're staying at tonight, staring at things without a lantern.

admitted that strahd flirted with him a little. he did not SAY IT OUT LOUD but i imagine he communicated with his face that in his esteemed opinion the dread lord strahd has NEGATIVE GAME.

[bloobluebloo]

Ganon in every other game: hyrule is mine. Nobody is gonna stop me- *gets bonked* Ganon in ToTK/BoTW: What is that caveman up to *deploys gloomhand/malice eyeball* oh… he’s burning koroks and eating lynels. Welp… I need to rehydrate fast.

This makes me think, I killed an ungodly amount of wolves for meat. TP Link must be cringing so hard.

[sketchingchaosart]

So let me tell you guys the story of my 1st experience with these bastards. And I should also note before I tell this story that I avoided ALL news or media related to TotK until I cleared it, so no guides, tips etc. Not even fanart or videos. I had no idea these were in the game So I was trying to clear on of the labyrinths in the game, the one in Hebra to be more specific. After following a trail of pinecones for a long while, losing my sanity a bit from the trek I finally got to the center only for the game to tell me "good job, now do the one in the sky" annoying but honestly the labyrinth on the ground was easy. Just follow the trail of pinecones, that's it. There's weren't even any enemies in the maze itself, just a bunch of gloom. That's what I thought until one of these bastards came by, snuck up and grabbed me from behind. I shit you not I relived years of childhood trauma of going thru the earth temple in Wind Waker as a kid in that one moment and I fucking screamed FLOORMASTERS, FLOORMASTERS FUCKING FLOORMASTERS!!! If you played Wind Waker then you know how freaky those things are. If you don't know what a floormaster is think of a Wallmaster that comes out of the ground and drags you into an infinite lightless pit never to be seen again....or until to chucks out of the dungeon to the 1st room. If you don't know what a Floormaster or a Wallmaster are.....then it's kinda like a Gloomhand that throws you out of dungeons.

[thisbelongsto-nohbodys]

I think the scariest thing I’ve dealt with so far in TotK (besides the Gloomhands) has been this moment when I was going to the movies with my family and I forgot that the Switch’s gyro controls are affected by not just by my movements but the car’s movements so when the car was turning my bow’s aim was moving along with it. I thought my joy con had Joycon Drift and that I’d have to buy replacements.

Truly nothing (besides the Gloomhands) could be more scary than that in this game.

[longroadstonowhere]

okay on the one hand i definitely played too long today, like i was telling myself to stop for several hours at the end there

but on the other hand i wanted to finish one particular quest and, well, it took a while to do

so, uh, i’ve finished nearly all the main quests i think? so spoilers below

yeah, today i finished up the gerudo quest, as well as saving and rebuilding lurelin, lots of exploration trying to get into the kokiri forest before realizing you have to go down to go up (or at least that’s what i ended up doing and it seemed intentional), saving the deku tree (in what felt like an absolutely dogshit fight), finally went to hateno village and tarrey town (didn’t actually do much there but i visited them), finished all the geoglyphs, got the final memory, tried like five times to pull the master sword cuz i had to go get stamina vessels in between each try, which meant i had to do random shrines for a while, and finally did manage to pull it out

....

so like

zelda’s actually a dragon

like they really fucking did that

no last minute switcheroo of ‘oh mineru is the dragon and zelda’s actually totally fine’, which is what i was expecting - on screen she eats the stone and becomes a dragon

so uh botw/totk zelda wins the ‘most tragic zelda’ competition i think - oot zelda and... i think aol zelda were top competitors, but you just can’t compete with ‘struggle for years with the very concept of using the light force, then finally figure it out only to spend a hundred years doing nothing but holding back the calamity, and then on a fun archaeology trip you accidentally wake up the demon king and get sent ten thousand years into the past where you eventually choose to give up your entire sense of self and wait ten thousand years to give link a fighting chance’

geez, i’m really comparing this in my head to ruby’s half-suicide in rwby this past volume... like, i can’t even articulate much right now except that i’m sad for her

so i guess evil zelda is probably mineru? because like she hasn’t factored into most of the story at all, except for the bit where she mentions her power is to separate her soul from her body - only i guess she might also be in the purah pad? or in that construct that was holding the purah pad? zelda said something to her when she gave the purah pad up so like, who even knows anymore

well, anyway, that’s a whole thing i get to wrestle with, and we’ll see how the story plays out with the final battle

everything else i did today was unequivocally a good time - loved that they brought the gibdos back, but like they’re some kind of weird insect? great choice, totally bizarre in the best way possible, and i had a funny moment in the lightning temple where i was trying to figure out how to get to one of the batteries with rizu, and i kept popping up to the seventh floor cuz i knew i had to get her there somehow but i thought i had to get her there to open the door for the boss room, and then literally just before i got the last battery i realized ‘oh the entire point of the temple is to get rizu into that room’

i was also pretty proud of figuring out that you had to get to the deku tree by going into the depths, that was pretty cool (mildly terrifying cuz of enemies on the way but cool nonetheless)

however, the fight to save the deku tree? that was the first time i looked anything up, because i was getting mauled by the floormasters (or gloommasters or gloomhands or whatever their name is, like hell i’m stopping in the middle of a fight to take a picture of them), and i figured i was missing some essential point to the fight, like there was some easy way to counteract gloom that i just didn’t know about, but no, turns out the way to fight them is to know they’re coming, set yourself up in a bit of the room without gloom, and just shoot like eight bomb arrows into the center of their formation

the phantom ganon fight was also difficult, but that at least felt more reasonable to be as hard as it was, and i eventually made it through by upgrading some of my armor and eating a really good defense up food item - the items he dropped are sweet, too, although i’ll probably never use the sword unless i absolutely have to cuz uh slowly dying does not sound fun

so right now i have a full extra ring of stamina (thanks zelda) and i believe fifteen hearts, though it’s honestly hard to count, which feels like a decent amount to try fighting the final boss with, although i might wanna make another good armor up thing if possible, and also who knows what’s in store once i finally go into hyrule castle

but that’s for tomorrow, because i do need to sleep now and we’ll see when i wake up what i’m feeling like doing

[shishuri]

Ok, i wanted to know if it will follow me to the water, but got a bit scared when it did follow up until the actual edge of the island.

[shishuri]

Look at that, arent they sweet, they came to say hello

[shishuri]

Did ya know, that this dude at the gates of Hyrule Castle will actually warn you about the Gloom Hands.

[shishuri]

Ok, who wants to see the underside of the gloom hands

It somehow looked liked the calamity ganon cocoon.

[shishuri]

First time finding Gloom hand - run.. run for your lives

Now: takes a picture for compendium (that doesnt exist) and "lets do this bitch!!"

[bloobluebloo]

Imagine if the guardians were rebuilt in ToTK. Like I know they were scrapped in order to make the skyview towers, but imagine if Ganon rebuilt them and they were piloted by the gloomhands. Bro i’d be done

I still hold the opinion that the guardians were a much more terrifying presence than gloom hands, and the gloom hands are not a not-scary presence, so to combine them together would be like what? The blood moon appears, out of the gloom a possessed guardian rises, gloom hands sprouting out of its sides, it runs after you aiming its lasers at you as the hands grab at you to keep you still.

Ahahahaha 😳

Oh I did have a dream that in the final battle against Ganondorf in TotK when Ganondorf jumps off his gloom tree there is a pause where both Link and Ganondorf turn to the entrance and right above it, two (or three?) guardians suddenly sprout from the wall in a very grotesque manner and fall to the ground. The battle proceeds as usual but the guardians are there and target both Link and Ganondorf and let me tell ya I woke up in a sweat because what the fuck.

[bloobluebloo]

ToTK Ganondorf surveying Hyrule with the gloomhands: alright, so a lot a changed, I can work with- IS THAT TWINK CRUCIFYING A KOROK?!

Ganondorf: *observing carefully as Link sends koroks to their doom, burning them and mincing them and shooting them into space* "It seems like, if the Gods had not somehow made the dwellers of light invulnerable to the hero's weapons, that he would be every bit as demonic as me. What the hell was Rauru talking about?" *brief pause* Ganondorf: "HOW DARE HE ATTEMPT TO USURP MY POSITION HE MUST DIE!!!!"