Breath of the Wild – Page 5

Once upon a time, during the Awesome Games Done Quick January event, my husband told me he watched someone speedrun Arkham City. First of all, I had no idea what AGDQ was. But more importantly, I had no idea what speedrunning was.

“What?! Speedrunning?” you say. “But, Teri Mae, speedrunning has been around forever. How could you possibly have not heard of it until January? And not just any January, but January of 2017?!” And maybe, you say to yourself, she’s just an exaggerator and she knew about it but had never looked into it. To that I respond no, I had literally never heard of speedrunning until exactly 6 months ago. How does a serious gamer go this long without knowing about something so integral and awesome as speedrunning, you may wonder? I’m not really a social media kind of girl. I wasn’t interested in Twitch and I was pretty limited to my online multi-player gaming. And by limited I mean sometimes, when my husband has to go do something, I’ll take over his Uncharted or Battlefront match. But other than that I stuck to what I knew and loved – Legend of Zelda and Mario.

But the idea of speedrunning opened up an entirely new and exciting vista of possibilities to me! I decided to see how fast I could play my very favorite, Ocarina of Time. After all, I thought, I am pretty good at Zelda games. I have every puzzle memorized and had, what I thought at the time, a pretty good algorithm for time management. So, without knowing anything about what actual speedrunning looks like, I timed myself playing it. Wanna know what my time was? 8 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds. I thought that was decent. With only one major mistake while beating Ganondorf I was impressed with myself and I bragged to the only person who really knew what was going on, my little brother. So he, in true little brother fashion, decided to break my heart and crush my soul.

He sent me a YouTube video of the twitch stream in which DannyB21892 makes his world record-breaking glitchless run. 3 hours something minutes (he has since broken that record so I’m unsure of the exact minutes). I was stunned when I saw the time. And then I started actually watching it. I had no idea how much effort and thought had gone into figuring out work-arounds, precise paths, and which items to skip and which were necessary. I learned that I was WAY out of my league. But it just made me that much more determined to learn speedrunning. To get into the muck and be the very best. Like no one ever was. Despite this new enthusiasm and wanting to dive in headfirst, I hesitated.

While I think it would be the coolest thing ever to beat every single glitchless OoT world record and be a serious contender to DannyB21892’s obvious dominance in that arena, I am nervous about playing my favorite game to the point where it becomes a bit passé. I still loved taking my time and pausing to hear the music. But the longer I think about it the more I realize that I don’t exactly enjoy wandering and exploring anymore. Maybe speedrunning is the next step to leveling up my game. And I still might do it. Just not right now… Because right when I had decided to make that commitment and jump in Breath of the Wild was released.

Now, I still maintain that OoT is my absolute favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild is stunning. I have had WAY more fun playing that game than I originally anticipated. I’ve always been a pretty thorough person so I explore every single new tower area 100% before I move on to the next one. And the only quests I leave undone are the ones that require me to go to an unexplored area. I’ve only been playing for about 210+ hours so I’ve only explored about 60% of the map. The thing that just keeps blowing me away is that I have 250 korok seeds. What am I missing that, having explored half the map, I don’t even have half the korok seeds possible? How does that even work? When the DLC releases the new mask am I really going to go back and re-explore every area to find them all? You bet I am. I even considered using the official guide to find them all but I’m an independent woman who wants to figure things out herself… while using perfectly legitimate add-ons like masks…

But back on topic. Where were we anyway? Oh, right! Breath of the Wild and why I won’t start speedrunning until much later in the year. Or maybe starting next year. It’s really hard to find time to do much of anything when all you want to do is bake and play Breath of the Wild. So will I be starting a speedrunning twitch? Definitely. Will it be soon? Definitely not. Will I probably start streaming Breath of the Wild and cooking tutorials for this blog? More than likely. Is that something people would be interested in? I sure hope so! Leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

Welcome to Sheikah Plate, where we believe in 100% Switch to table eating!

It was 2 a.m. and I couldn’t sleep. I mentioned to my husband, who was being unbelievably patient with me, that I wish I could find something I was passionate about that I could share with the world. He, after barely a pause, turned to me and told me I should make a Zelda cooking blog.

It was like lightening had struck my brain. In a flash I knew that I could take the recipes Link utilizes in Breath of the Wild (BotW) and create actual, real food from them. It took less than 30 minutes for me to flesh out the idea to the point that I knew it was what I wanted to do. And so here we are. This is Sheikah Plate.

For the next forever I am going to work my way through each recipe variation in the official Breath of the Wild guide. I plan to post at least one recipe per week, hopefully on Tuesdays, complete with Link’s actual recipe, and create delicious dishes. Thursdays will become thoughtful as I post something amazing I learned during the week, something new I tried in Zelda (currently BotW), or whatever else happens to be on my mind. I hope you join me as I work my way through this quest and gain a few skills yourself as you do!

And now, without further ado, a little about me. My name is Teri Mae. I am currently a microbiologist, which, for those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with the different -ologies, is the study of microorganisms and their systems. I work in public health and am currently a subject matter expert in Mycobacterium tuberculosis control. And yes, that is THE tuberculosis, otherwise known as consumption, otherwise known as one of the oldest diseases identified by mankind. Sadly, despite how old it sounds, TB is still at large in the world and affects a significant portion of the population.

By night I am a gamer, both tabletop and video games. I tend to stick with Nintendo franchises but I understand the storytelling and advances made by PlayStation and Xbox franchises. I have loved Legend of Zelda ever since I started on Ocarina of Time as a child, spending my Saturdays, as Owl City so aptly put it, blowing on Nintendo games. My passion for the Zelda series has never faded and now, as an adult, I still enjoy the games just as much as I did then. And yes, in answer to your unasked question, I have gone back to play the NES and SNES Zelda games!

My parents taught me to cook. They are both very good at it, with moms Chinese difficult to beat (she lived in Taiwan for a while) and dad creating new dishes out of whatever may be in the fridge at the time. I learned to bake after my marriage. My mother could never figure out how to make yeast work but my mother-in-law is incredible and taught me. I have since taken that passion and run with it. I now typically spend at least one day in my weekend creating something new. Yesterday’s project was kolaches. They were amazing! So I got lucky. I am the rare breed that gets to learn both cooking and baking.

I hope you enjoy this exploration of my passions as much as I know I will! Please join me on twitter and instagram @sheikahplate and get ready to level up your meals!

Tag: Breath of the Wild

Speedrunning and Distractions From It

Welcome to Sheikah Plate

Welcome to Sheikah Plate, where we believe in 100% Switch to table eating!