EDU 6319: How People Learn | Case Study
Navigating "The Lost Woods"
It is a Sunday evening, around 10:30pm. We have just come home from a camping trip and ate a delicious late night snack of PB&J sandwiches. Rob asks if I am ready to take notes, and then he is off!
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He starts his journey to "The Lost Woods" by fast traveling (teleporting) to the closest shrine location he has discovered. In this case, it is the Ekochiu Shrine. Along the way he stops to visit one of the Great Fairies. The Great Fairies allow players to upgrade armor. He decides to upgrade as much of his armor as he can since he isn't sure what he will encounter in this game and wants to be prepared.
The Great Fairy, Tera, enhancing Link's armor.
Then he jumps and pulls out a shield to surf down a hill. Shield surfing in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is almost like a sport; there are games in world just using this ability. "The only thing that would make this more fun is if I had a horse." With that, Rob turns around and backtracks to the nearest stable to pick up his horse. He stops to talk to a few NPCs who appear to have quests he could take on.
Link talking to the stable owner. Text in red highlights areas of interest or quest related locations.
He ignores the quests in favor of getting his horse and talking to the inn keeper. He sleeps the night at the stable and hears a message in a dream from the horse god, Malanya. "He gave me a message before, but I completely forget what he said." Sleeping completely heals him and gives him some extra health. Then, he's back on the path to "The Lost Woods" again.
He still doesn't have a complete bond with his horse; it tries to fight his directions and shakes its head often. When he is able to get the horse back on track, he gives it a few pats and their bond increases. Combat music starts as he is riding up the hill, and he fights a few monsters with a bow. Unfortunately, he knocks down a beehive and gets attacked by bees. Once he deals with the angry bees, he starts to look around again, distracted; he actually tells himself to "stay on task"
​Halfway up the path to the woods, he runs into a chasm–a giant hole in the ground with dark red ooze coming out of it. This ooze is called gloom and is tied to the BBEG, Ganondorf. If players stand on gloom for too long, it reduces their maximum health. He walks over to it "just out of curiosity." He comments that he didn't even know that it was there. Then he turns around and gets back on the horse to go to the woods.
This process takes about 10 minutes. When he finds "the Lost Woods," the same music from Breath of the Wild starts to play. His once relaxed position sitting on the couch becomes one of interest. He is now leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and controller in his hands.
The Tears of the Kingdom soundtrack for "The Lost Woods."
The once sunny area is now covered in a mysterious grey mist. He steps through an archway on his horse: "Not sure if doing this on a horse is the best idea." The moment he gets off the horse, the fog immediately pushes him out and he cannot enter. He tries this another 10 times, with torches, without torches, on a horse, on foot, and he still gets kicked out. At this point, he starts apologizing to me. He picked this task because he thought it would be something he could accomplish with a defined goal. With one last apology, one I tried to wave off, he gets back on his horse and heads back to the chasm.
Like watching a lightbulb go off as he approaches the chasm: "If I can't get to it on the surface, maybe I could try coming at it from below?" He dives into the chasm and lands in darkness.
Where Rob landed after diving into the chasm.
"The Depths" have areas called "light roots." Once activated, they dispel some of the darkness and record area to the map. The moment he lands, the first thing he does is look around for a light root to head towards. After finding one, he puts a marker on his map and starts his exploration. Since the area is so dark, he changes Link into armor that emits light. As he goes, he throws small "bright bloom seeds" that when disturbed create little, light emitting flowers. Between throwing them and attaching them to arrows to hit spots further away, he is able to create a small, light-filled path towards his goal.
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As he explores, he finds some building and equipment pieces he could use to create a transportation device. He leaves them be for now. As he approaches the area that is directly under "The Lost Woods," familiar trees start appearing: trees with faces on them. This is how they appeared in Breath of the Wild. Deeper in this grove of trees lies pools of gloom. At this point, he comments that he might need to go back to the building blocks to build a vehicle if he wants to make it deeper into the woods because of all this gloom.
The trees with faces. Plus, the helpful spirit of one of Link's friends (more on that later).
Before he can get much farther, however, the music changes to a foreboding tune he recognizes: he runs into "Gloom Hands," what he describes as the "spookiest" enemy in the game so far. At this point, his relaxed and interested posture disappears immediately and he scrambles back into the couch. He hears them before he sees them. As their name might suggest, they are hands made out of the dark read gloom, with a single yellow eye in its palm, that chase after Link as he runs away. They are incredibly fast and hard to fight–they can grab link and quite literally squeeze the life out of him. I asked him for a screenshot; and he does get one but replies "I hope it was worth it, I was terrified."
The gloom hands stealing health from Link.
The musical theme of the gloom hands.
He immediately continues to run away and build a vehicle. He uses a winged glider, some rockets, some fans, and some external batteries to essentially create a small plane. He successfully avoids the "Gloom Hands" and makes it to a light root. Enterring the chasm to finding the light root took about 15 minutes.
Link and his flying contraption, along with the spirit of one of his friends (again, more on that late).
Next to this light root appears a tower. Another lightbulb moment: with an exclamation of "ooooohhhhh," he uses one of links new abilities, "ascend", to go right through the tower and successfully enter "Korok Forest" within the "Lost Woods." He did it! Or so we both thought.
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The forest is covered in a different kind of fog than usual, and there is gloom in some places. The music also does not sound like we expected. The Deku Tree, a magical talking tree at the center of "Korok Forest," is here but he has gloom coming out of his mouth. Rob tries to talk to the other small forest dwellers, little plant-like creatures called "koroks" but they don't respond and appear almost frozen in place. Rob makes a sad sound. "Oh no! Little buddies!"
What it sounded like.
What we expected.
He goes into the trunk of the Deku Tree and all the koroks here are also stuck. He found a blessing statue, and before investigating further he turns in his shrine rewards to get increase his health and stamina (health determining how many hits until you die, and stamina determining how much physical exertion Link can do before becoming exhausted).
A sickly looking Deku Tree.
Then he finds it: a pit in the back that is coated in gloom. He jumps down it, and the music changes again: there are gloom hands, and he comments"this is not going to go well." His strategy to stay alive is to use a sword that has frozen items stuck to it. This successfully freezes the hands, but they do get a few good hits on him. His maximum health begins to decrease, and he repeatedly has to pause the game to use food and potions to get his health back. And then, by the skin of his teeth, he defeats the gloom hands.
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But that's not all. Going into the fight with the gloom hands, he knew what would come next: there is a second stage to fighting the gloom hands. The gloom reshapes and takes the form of the BBEG, Ganondorf, though ghost like and gloom covered in appearance.
The music for battling Phantom Ganon.
This form is called "Phantom Ganon." He tries to use the same strategy as before, freezing the enemy, but it turns out that Phantom Ganon is immune to this. As Rob tries to run away, he also needs to avoid patches of gloom. He tries the freezing strategy again with a different weapon, and it still doesn't work. He runs away again, muttering why?" repeatedly under his breath.
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At this point, his max health is low and he is unsuccessful in using flurry rushes, an attack that can happen if you dodge at just the right moment. I've seen him successfully use these repeatedly in other portions of this game, but he was struggling with timing on this. As he lands a few hits on Phantom Ganon, he finds a different strategy to use.
Link battling Phantom Ganon with the spirit of one of his friends (I promise, there is more on this later).
Phantom Ganon exudes gloom, which means players can't get too close or they will lose health. Rob discovers a game changing strategy: "the gloom around him goes down as he gets hit, so I can actually approach as I do damage!" He also has Link eat a few foods and potions that give him gloom resistance. This means that instead of Link's maximum health decreasing, a set number of extra hearts from the food/potion will be affected first. Rob commented that he found that to be a really cool way of showing that. Similarly, Rob also discovered that you can add temporary health even if you have been affected by gloom. "Now is not the time to be experimenting with this," he mutters as he continues with this fight.
He does finally beat Phantom Ganon! Or, well..."my allies did most of it." During the course of the game, the player can add various abilities, four of which give Link the ability to summon the spirit of his friends to help him. Rob currently has two of them, and they did indeed really help him in that fight. The whole fight took nearly ten minutes.
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Once he can finally breath easy again, Rob realizes that he was so tense he pressed his leg into the coffee table and it left a mark. Before moving on and heading back to the forest, he comments on the differences between the two parts of the fight. "I think the phase one part of the fight is harder than the second. The hands are too fast and it is nearly impossible to escape. The second phase deals more damage in each hit but it is easier to avoid."
When Rob returns to "Korok Forest," the music is as it should be, the gloom is gone, the music is back to normal, and the Deku Tree and koroks are no longer frozen in time!
The restored Deku Tree!