Sauron

That depends entirely on which armor you're trying to focus on upgrading. Some sets, like the Hylian armor, were extremely easy to upgrade to four stars, which I was able to do pretty early on. Others, like the Flamebreaker set, seem impossible to upgrade to max unless you just spend ungodly amounts of time hanging around certain areas in Eldin. Personally, my favorite set has turned out to be the Fierce Deity armor, as it's attack bonus fully upgrade lets you deal out insane levels of damage with each hit, and upgrading it to max wasn't very difficult. The Miner's Armor is something you'll definitely want to upgrade as quickly as you can, as the full glow effect will be helpful when exploring dark areas in the chasms. The Rubber Armor will be a must later on in the main quest, so finding it early and upgrading it as quickly as you can would be a good idea. Also, for some sets like the Climber's Armor, you don't really need to upgrade it fully in order to take advantage of its special effect. Just getting all three pieces upgraded to two stars will do it, and will be fine if you just want to use it for climbing and not fighting. Anyways, here's a list of all of the armor in the game and the materials needed for upgrades. Oh, as far as Swift Violets are concerned, you can buy them at the general store in Zora's Domain (yes, they're a pain to farm, so it's worth buying out the stock every day if you don't want to spend a whole week collecting enough).

Damn, this is really sad news to hear. Jimmy Hotz was a pretty big deal in the music industry, even though a lot of people hadn't ever really heard of him. The guy was obviously very gifted and extremely intelligent. The world is a little worse off with him no longer in it. I think a lot of us are grateful towards what he contributed to both the Atari scene and to music in general. and I personally am grateful to hear that you and others were able to preserve some of what he left behind.

You haven't done much exploring of the underground? You should, you're missing out on a LOT, especially when it comes to mining zonaite. If you're map isn't appearing in the underground, make sure you've gone through the initial underground exploring quest. Also make sure you're activating every lightroot that you come across. It really is a pain to explore at first, but once you get the hang of it and start activating more and more lightroots, it'll get easier. On top of that, mining zonaite and exchanging zonaite for crystallized charges will add battery power, which in turn will make exploring with vehicles much easier. That will help A LOT with the sky islands, which are tons of fun. Of course, to get to many of them you don't even need any vehicles, just jumping from sky towers will get you to most places that you need to go. Oh, and regarding disassembled parts, you should be able to easily rebuild anything that disassembled via the autobuild ability.

Might want to put up an epilepsy warning for that.

Fully upgraded Hylian armor is usually good enough for me, and what's more, it's not a pain to upgrade as long as you're not selling off all of the required items. You don't get any special status effects with it, but it's armor rating is pretty good.

There's no practical purpose to it, as it provides no combat benefits. There's a few other pieces of armor here and there that are like that as well, as well as quite a few armor sets that have high upgrade costs while providing minimal benefits (namely the ones based on prior Zelda games). Certain armor sets, on the other hand, can give you huge advantages in certain situations. Upgrading these sets to max is worth the time and effort spent to do so as well, especially up to four stars as the armor increase from 3 to 4 stars on some sets is pretty big.

I'm at 35 hearts, 3 full stamina wheels, and haven't counted my bow or shield slots but definitely more than you listed. I'm on the fifth sage quest but right now all I'm doing is farming lizalfos tails for upgrading some armor sets. It's like this game doesn't want to let you finish, there's always something more to do.

The two systems that Atari had with VME weren't marketed at consumers, but rather at similar or the same types of customers that bought Sun workstations or other 68K-based workstations that used VME. As for why they didn't do a full implementation, that's because it was Atari, and they probably cheaped out on it somehow in order to save a few pennies on production costs.

Someone already mentioned the autobuild, that'll come in quite handy later. Regarding cooking though, it's actually much easier than in BotW. Stand next to a lit cooking pot, go to your inventory and select the ingredients, and you'll have an option to drop them in the pot instead of having to aim for it.

There are tons of guides out there. The IGN one has been pretty good, but keep in mind that these walkthroughs only focus on the main story quest, which you can pretty much follow along without needing to use a guide. Personally, I think guides are more useful for things that are off the beaten path.

Yeah, that was certainly an issue for me as well. There are some helpful tips I can offer, though. And no, I don't take credit for all of these, as I found some of them looking through Youtube videos. - Do the four regions in the order mentioned by Purah, which means hitting Rito Village first, then Goron City, etc. You'll find the difficulty scales better that way. - Tackle some of the side quests, you'll find useful items that way. - Try to kill enemies instead of avoiding them. You get some pretty useful items that way, and many that you will need if you want to upgrade armor. - Fusing rocks to sticks or weapons can work well at first for breaking ore and rocks, but once you start getting some hammer-like horns from enemies, you'll find those to be more useful (and longer lasting). - Speaking of fusing, any bare weapon you get will need to be fused with stronger materials, especially horns from enemies that you've killed. Trust me, the massive jump in damage output will make fights a lot less frustrating. - If you're short on time, dedicate yourself to working on side quests. After all, there's no hurry. I'm probably closing in to 200 hours in the game and I still haven't beaten it yet, as there's still more stuff that I can do. - Don't forget you can save anywhere. - The single biggest time sinks in the game are the temple runs (as in getting to them). Most other side quests can be completed pretty quickly. - Get used to your powers, including the sages and the abilities that you unlocked throughout the tutorial. You'll find that pretty much any puzzle can be solved with those. Also, most puzzles have multiple ways to solve them.

Not sure why you're having so much trouble with bosses, I've found them all to be pretty easy just as long as you know how to beat them. And on top of that, most of them seem to boil down to what is pretty much the same pattern: hit weak spot, then wail on them when they're stunned/down/whatever. Are you maximizing your weapons by fusing high damage materials? Have you upgraded your armor? Are you attaching keese eyeballs to arrows when fighting bosses to make sure you're hitting their weak spots accurately? I have a lot more trouble fighting Lynels than I've had with most bosses, and even Lynels aren't that bad just as long as I'm not being retarded when fighting them.

Ahh yes, ok, that makes sense. I have the quest, just haven't finished it yet.

The best way to get there is to glide. If you go up to the very top of the building at Kara Kara Bazaar, you can see where Gerudo Town is over the sandstorm. Alternately, there's a dust devil just outside the main gate facing towards the town that you can catch some air on, but I found it better to just glide from the top of the building. Even though you'll reach the ground well before the town, just continue in a straight line and you can't miss it. BTW, what's that sword you have in the first pic? I'm a bit further along than you but I haven't encountered it yet.

When you're heading towards Gerudo:

Weapons are plentiful. If you're running out, you're doing something really wrong. If you're in dire need of a weapon, though, you can always go to Lookout Landing and grab a couple of weapons in the emergency shelter. As far as arrows go, you can buy them at any general store in town, or from Beedle at every stable. Having said that, I've rarely needed to buy any in TotK, as I get plenty from defeating enemies.

I also loved the Advance Wars games, and have been eyeing the Switch release. I'll definitely be picking this one up eventually.

Exactly, you have tons more options of ways to accomplish things than there were in BotW.

Yeah, don't even try to turn this around on me, you're the one who jumped in here with your snide comment to me first. And as to why I'm here, I've been involved in the community since the very beginning. Old habits die hard. This argument is well over a decade past its expiration date. There are no "two camps" in the Jag community, the JS2 days ended a long time ago.

Not sure how you came to the conclusion that I'm the reason for the Jag attracting such crazies, but you do you.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a weirdo. But this community attracts those that make me seem quite normal in comparison.

Very nice! I wish something like this existed when I had a Falcon. I'll have to download it and try all of the software anyway to see how good Hatari's Falcon emulation is.

I imagine there are plenty of reasons why people wouldn't be a fan of AI-generated artwork, ranging from the ethical to the practical. However, if I were doing a Jag game on my own, and considering my own lack of artistic talent, I would at the very least be tempted to use it myself. Actually, scratch that. I would definitely use it if I didn't have a capable artist assisting me. Ultimately, the decision as to whether or not you want to use it is up to you, everyone else's opinions on it be damned.

This, folks, is the Jaguar community.

Yeah, some of those puzzles are easy, while there are some that are totally kicking my ass right now.