I can't wait for you to get to A Link Between Worlds' dungeons. Some of my favorites in the series, especially the Lorulian dungeons and _especially_ especially the Dark Palace, with the Thieves' Hideout being a fairly close second.
I love this dungeon. I’m… not sure why… but I really love it. I especially really liked the colour scheme of this place- it was always memorable to me. On top of this, I felt like this dungeon has a lot more memorable rooms like the fishbone one and the strange bridges across the void! The cane is just a cool item too; strange it’s utilised far more in the next dungeon. Vitreous… vitreous who? Ah right… lacklustre for sure. Sad this place ends on a mediocre note
Misery Mire used to be the most confusing ALttP dungeon for me because you had access to multiple locked doors at the same time, so I was always worried about wasting keys on dead ends. Also the rooms with the spiky floors are a pain to navigate if you didn't obtain the Magic Cape.
Considering that one of the keys is in a pot in the middle of a spike floor hazard, I think the game expects you to find the Magic Cape by the time you reach Misery Mire.
I actually thought BotW / TotK missed a huge opportunity - Vitreous could have been brought back as a world boss made of Malice Eyes. Would have been a cool redemption and glowup for the most mid boss in the series not named Facade or Angler.
How I would fix Vitreous: Link enters a room with two floor switches next to two beam shooter statues. Vitreous appears completely covered in impenetrable slime. It's attacks include launching smaller eyeballs that bounce across the room before returning to the slime, and the lightning strikes that aim in a spot where Link is standing. To defeat it, Link must create a block on one of the switches and stand on the other. The combined beams melt the slime, leaving the central eye vulnerable to attack.
Your idea, while interesting, sounds too easy to pull off in practice for a late-game boss. I'd like to suggest an alteration. So, the boss as it is in the game, the big eye is normally completely covered by the slime during the first phase. However, the slime retracts, exposing the eye when it's readying its lightning attack. I think it'd be more interesting if, instead of using lasers to melt the slime, you instead had to make the lasers fire when the boss was exposed, to damage the boss. Perhaps the boss could even retaliate to this damage by shooting lighting at the positions of both switches, the intent being to destroy the Cane of Somaria block. To go along with this suggested alteration, since it involves timing and some people are bad at that, I'd have it so that casting Ether freezes the boss temporarily, in whatever state it's in when the magic is cast. This would be a means of making the boss easier in exchange for higher magic cost, similar to how you can use Bombos to one-shot the first phase of Kholdstare. Mind you you'd still have to wait for it to expose itself, and casting it too early or too late would be a waste of magic as a trade-off to this trick, but using it right would make it easier to attack the boss and you wouldn't have to work around the boss' lightning attack while doing so.
@@devonm042690 To add to your suggestion, should the lightning cause Link to be knocked off of his switch? Or will it simply rack up damage on him? I'd imagine both beams would have to be fired at the same time to do any real damage, making the Cane of Samaria necessary. If that were the case, Link wouldn't need to be knocked off since the lightning would destroy the Samaria block.
The thing that always seemed weird about Vitreous (at least as a kid when this game first came out) was that the goop on the floor hurt. Until you beat the eyeball and it stopped hurting.
Can’t wait for Turtle Rock.. misery mire was an okay dungeon. It reminded me of the legion of doom headquarters. I was hoping to fight like an alpha wizzarobe or aginiham as a boss.
I noticed there is a lot of nitpicks when it comes to what Zelda things are called or named, but two important things to notice, why are ropes not called snakes for example, or why other things don’t follow an obvious naming convention? The second is why doesn’t something that fits in every Zelda game not fit in one specific game. Personally, being raised in a country different from my parents, it’s lead me to understand that many things are seen the same or named similar, but the understanding of the thing both cultures is the same, but that only works if the person knows that, everyone who doesn’t know of the others existence would call it a mystery. Consider “baking cookies and cooking bacon” or feet smell and noses run” if you told someone not from an English country that your nose is running, they would imagine you are speaking colloquially or that you don’t understand the language properly. Zelda feels that it has a lot of this from the translation of the designers mind, to the players mouth, which then goes to listeners ears. I hope this all makes sense to you readers, since what is going on in my mind might not make sense in your mind.
@@CaptBurgerson calling the ocarina a flute, just like how in the first Zelda they called the recorder a recorder but the same instrument in Mario 3 was called a whistle. I’m not trying to complain it’s something I’ve noticed since I happen to speak English as my second language.
@@CaptBurgerson I totally get you, one of our favorite things to do as dual language speakers is make jokes about differences in words and language. I respect you and your work, my comment is simply a comment. The nitpick that I notice is people trying to force pieces of puzzles together to try to make a clear image, I’m sure in English, legend means story or tail, in my root language it is a myth, sort of like an explanation of reality. However in English you can call someone a “legend” but in my root language you can’t.
I’m never sure when you talk about back tracking and dead ends when you think it becomes “bad dungeon design” because a lot of the more labyrinthine dungeons you often talk about having dead ends almost as though it’s a good thing and part of the puzzle, but in other dungeons you praise them for looping you back to a central hub or to the next section via other means to prevent back tracking. Anyway, all good, thanks for these awesome vids 🫡❤
Admittedly it is a very fine line. I think dead ends and back tracking are not inherently bad elements, it's always down to how they're used, and how engaging that use is. I like being looped back almost as a reward or a way for the dungeon to say "you're done with this task", while being faced with dead ends as being part of the task as something to navigate around. I hope that explanation makes sense! Some things are hard to articulate 😅
@@CaptBurgerson makes a lot of sense, there’s definitely a sense that bad backtracking can sometimes lead to a loss of engagement whereas I guess that that’s harder when what you’re engaging isn’t “moving forward” but “searching a labyrinth”. For example, I expect you would’ve criticised it more if they forced you to refight a room full of 20 iron knuckles you’d already defeated 😂😂😂
Cane of Somaria usage can be used for utility, granted that it costs MP. I can be sure that it can manipulate the Blade Trap in one of the dark rooms to allow for getting around that if you don't have quick movement down. I also have to check if it affects Winders and/or Anti-Fairies, but if it does, that could help against those things that are right before Vitreous. I will say that I agree that the pit to the Big Key could have stood to be more clear about leading to a safe location. I actually call out about it in my Effective Minimalist/No Damage Run of this place, which by the way has those blasted Medusas as a consistent threat. It's as you say: either a newbie gets confused about opening up the way to a pit that seems to be just a damage taking void, or a veteran will not necessarily realize that the pit was made accessible by lighting the 4 torches. As for Vitreous, standing in one corner eventually gets you hit. I tried that in practice. The fight is bad enough with the RNG lightning that can actually trail off to the side VERY quickly to the point of hitting you even when you're in the non-damaging part of the slime, which is particularly alarming when the stakes for a No Damage Run of this dungeon is having to deal with the Nayru forsaken Medusas all over again. By the way, I haven't checked if the Cane of Somaria's attack does anything to the smaller eyes, but if it does, I suppose it could help in devising a trap or splash damage attack against them without having to throw about Bombs. Of course, you'd be using resources at that point. But hey, you bring up your own points and we can see how we can compare notes. And yeah, the 2nd phase? What's that?
Huh...okay. So I was about to make a comment that eyes are basically fluid-filled sacs and that vitreous is the name of that fluid. I was right in a way, but I'm still glad I looked it up as there's more to it than that. So the word vitreous relates to the nature of glass. Specifically, it's a synonym for 'glassy'. What I was originally thinking of is what's called 'vitreous humor', though aside from my erroneous thought that it was the sole definition of 'vitreous', I was otherwise right. The 'vitreous humor' makes up about 80% of an eye's mass, and while definitely a fluid, it's so viscous that it's physically a thick gel. I guess the vitreous humor (and other 'vitreous' named areas of the eye like the 'vitreous membrane' and 'vitreous cortex') got their names because the vitreous humor is right behind the lens, and the vitreous membrane is its housing. Not sure what 'vitreous cortex' is, I just read it alongside 'vitreous membrane' in the blurb Google gave me from a link when I searched for 'vitreous humor'. So yeah, the boss Vitreous. Is it the big eyeball? All of the eyeballs that attack you? The four little eyeballs that stay in the toxic puddle? The toxic puddle itself?
Here’s my concept to make Vitrius a more skill based fight First change, make the lightning in the first phase target your character, instead of it always targeting the middle of the room, make it attack the area in which link is located when the lighting is shot. Second change, make the boss do it’s lightning attack every 2 hits during the second phase Third change, make the boss every few hits do an attack that covers the entire screen that can only be blocked by the cane of somaria blocks, (maybe an attack where the boss spreads the poison liquid in his arena that the canes block impedes on its path therefore leaving the area behind the block safe) (This attack is also only in phase 2)
This is my favorite dungeon in ALTTP. I like how the walls are teal and how confusing it is. I even like how it is sort of a water dungeon but it only has one room of water.
The hole in the floor that looks like a death trap is one of the funnier things in the dungeons of this series, pretty sure like you said almost everyone knows to light the fires and to generally avoid black pits lol.
I literally don't even remember Vitreous, having played this game twice, the second time within the last few years even. It's kinda weird, just dropped out of my brain, doesn't even seem familiar. Pretty much agree with your whole assessment of the dungeon, as well.
despite some odd design choices such as two small keys in the same room where one is gated off by floor spikes and that one optional locked door that leads to 9 blue rupees after you get the big key, i really like how this dungeon is laid out. it is how to handle a non linear dungeon in a proper manner. only 2 small keys are needed out of the 6 locks and you can see how locked doors do lead to shortcuts.
the gba version fixed the drop hole visual oversight. this dungeon probably has the weakest dark world boss because it is just a damage sponge. in fact, it is the only boss other than ganon that can survive one hit from the silver arrows (which is only possible through glitching and hacking).
Been watching this whole series as I am a Game Development Major and I am currently making a puzzle game for one of my classes and this series has been super freaking helpful in terms of thinking through puzzles ❤ Are you going to do Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks as well? I see you just started Link's Awakening so you probably wont get to either of these two anytime soon but I would love to see them in the future ❤️
I probably remember this one as the greatest struggle of all them for me when I was 12, but part of that's due to the circumstances. I didn't own the game yet so I was trying to beat it over a weekend rental session. I always had to start over because somebody would erase the game since the last time I rented it. On the try I finally reached this dungeon, I was absolutely stopped dead by that incorrectly represented hole you point out. I had NO idea you could drop down there, and ran out of time on the rental before I could figure it out. The next time I rented the game, I borrowed my friend's Game Genie so I could blast myself back to where I left off. Vitreous is the other boss that I had problems with back then also. I guess I just tried to charge in gung-ho and got owned - the eyeballs do gang up on you if you don't really spam the sword, and of course I didn't even expect the lightning attack the first time in, oof :V
I find this way more fun on randomizer runs then normal. To be honest I have no clue what chests unlock normally other than one or two key/map/cane chests. I'm more into some superfluous chest giving me the golden sword or hookshot (after having used the peg boots to actually enter)
You don't need the Hookshot to get the chest. I posted a video on RUclips on how you can do that. It basically involves the way the Pegasus Boots work where if you press a directional key in a different direction from where you're dashing, Link will immediately stop dashing and start walking in that new direction. But yeah, I've long loved Misery Mire. Even just the name is memorable for me. I didn't think too much about the boss, but I think your ideas regarding how it can be improved are interesting. It can help prepare you for Turtle Rock, which you need the dungeon item in Misery Mire for.
I can't wait for you to get to A Link Between Worlds' dungeons. Some of my favorites in the series, especially the Lorulian dungeons and _especially_ especially the Dark Palace, with the Thieves' Hideout being a fairly close second.
I love this dungeon. I’m… not sure why… but I really love it. I especially really liked the colour scheme of this place- it was always memorable to me. On top of this, I felt like this dungeon has a lot more memorable rooms like the fishbone one and the strange bridges across the void! The cane is just a cool item too; strange it’s utilised far more in the next dungeon. Vitreous… vitreous who? Ah right… lacklustre for sure. Sad this place ends on a mediocre note
I loved how the dichotomy of the desert and the mire worked in the game
Fun fact the Bow and arrow is the best way to deal with Vitrious, same with silvers too. That's the speedrun strategy if memory serves correctly.
Misery Mire used to be the most confusing ALttP dungeon for me because you had access to multiple locked doors at the same time, so I was always worried about wasting keys on dead ends. Also the rooms with the spiky floors are a pain to navigate if you didn't obtain the Magic Cape.
Considering that one of the keys is in a pot in the middle of a spike floor hazard, I think the game expects you to find the Magic Cape by the time you reach Misery Mire.
I actually thought BotW / TotK missed a huge opportunity - Vitreous could have been brought back as a world boss made of Malice Eyes. Would have been a cool redemption and glowup for the most mid boss in the series not named Facade or Angler.
I think Facade is pretty cool...
Do wish Misery Mire had a bit more swamp elements in it. Like puddles of water as if the swamp has been leaking into it
I fourth this
How I would fix Vitreous:
Link enters a room with two floor switches next to two beam shooter statues. Vitreous appears completely covered in impenetrable slime. It's attacks include launching smaller eyeballs that bounce across the room before returning to the slime, and the lightning strikes that aim in a spot where Link is standing.
To defeat it, Link must create a block on one of the switches and stand on the other. The combined beams melt the slime, leaving the central eye vulnerable to attack.
Your idea, while interesting, sounds too easy to pull off in practice for a late-game boss. I'd like to suggest an alteration. So, the boss as it is in the game, the big eye is normally completely covered by the slime during the first phase. However, the slime retracts, exposing the eye when it's readying its lightning attack. I think it'd be more interesting if, instead of using lasers to melt the slime, you instead had to make the lasers fire when the boss was exposed, to damage the boss. Perhaps the boss could even retaliate to this damage by shooting lighting at the positions of both switches, the intent being to destroy the Cane of Somaria block.
To go along with this suggested alteration, since it involves timing and some people are bad at that, I'd have it so that casting Ether freezes the boss temporarily, in whatever state it's in when the magic is cast. This would be a means of making the boss easier in exchange for higher magic cost, similar to how you can use Bombos to one-shot the first phase of Kholdstare. Mind you you'd still have to wait for it to expose itself, and casting it too early or too late would be a waste of magic as a trade-off to this trick, but using it right would make it easier to attack the boss and you wouldn't have to work around the boss' lightning attack while doing so.
@@devonm042690 To add to your suggestion, should the lightning cause Link to be knocked off of his switch? Or will it simply rack up damage on him? I'd imagine both beams would have to be fired at the same time to do any real damage, making the Cane of Samaria necessary. If that were the case, Link wouldn't need to be knocked off since the lightning would destroy the Samaria block.
Fantastic work as usual... Your "fixes" are always so on-point! This series is epic, thank you so much for the thorough research!
3:38 - At least the dungeon lived up to its name
9:13 I could be wrong, but that feels like a development error. Probably forgot to make sure the texture was right.
The thing that always seemed weird about Vitreous (at least as a kid when this game first came out) was that the goop on the floor hurt. Until you beat the eyeball and it stopped hurting.
Can’t wait for Turtle Rock.. misery mire was an okay dungeon. It reminded me of the legion of doom headquarters. I was hoping to fight like an alpha wizzarobe or aginiham as a boss.
I noticed there is a lot of nitpicks when it comes to what Zelda things are called or named, but two important things to notice, why are ropes not called snakes for example, or why other things don’t follow an obvious naming convention? The second is why doesn’t something that fits in every Zelda game not fit in one specific game. Personally, being raised in a country different from my parents, it’s lead me to understand that many things are seen the same or named similar, but the understanding of the thing both cultures is the same, but that only works if the person knows that, everyone who doesn’t know of the others existence would call it a mystery. Consider “baking cookies and cooking bacon” or feet smell and noses run” if you told someone not from an English country that your nose is running, they would imagine you are speaking colloquially or that you don’t understand the language properly. Zelda feels that it has a lot of this from the translation of the designers mind, to the players mouth, which then goes to listeners ears. I hope this all makes sense to you readers, since what is going on in my mind might not make sense in your mind.
I understand what you’re saying but I’m confused about what I said in the video that made you think of this
@@CaptBurgerson calling the ocarina a flute, just like how in the first Zelda they called the recorder a recorder but the same instrument in Mario 3 was called a whistle. I’m not trying to complain it’s something I’ve noticed since I happen to speak English as my second language.
@@Cyclingismywholelife ah I gotchu. I will clarify that I wasn’t making a nitpick or complaint about that so much as I was making a cheap joke
@@CaptBurgerson I totally get you, one of our favorite things to do as dual language speakers is make jokes about differences in words and language. I respect you and your work, my comment is simply a comment. The nitpick that I notice is people trying to force pieces of puzzles together to try to make a clear image, I’m sure in English, legend means story or tail, in my root language it is a myth, sort of like an explanation of reality. However in English you can call someone a “legend” but in my root language you can’t.
I’m never sure when you talk about back tracking and dead ends when you think it becomes “bad dungeon design” because a lot of the more labyrinthine dungeons you often talk about having dead ends almost as though it’s a good thing and part of the puzzle, but in other dungeons you praise them for looping you back to a central hub or to the next section via other means to prevent back tracking.
Anyway, all good, thanks for these awesome vids 🫡❤
Admittedly it is a very fine line. I think dead ends and back tracking are not inherently bad elements, it's always down to how they're used, and how engaging that use is.
I like being looped back almost as a reward or a way for the dungeon to say "you're done with this task", while being faced with dead ends as being part of the task as something to navigate around. I hope that explanation makes sense! Some things are hard to articulate 😅
@@CaptBurgerson makes a lot of sense, there’s definitely a sense that bad backtracking can sometimes lead to a loss of engagement whereas I guess that that’s harder when what you’re engaging isn’t “moving forward” but “searching a labyrinth”. For example, I expect you would’ve criticised it more if they forced you to refight a room full of 20 iron knuckles you’d already defeated 😂😂😂
Cane of Somaria usage can be used for utility, granted that it costs MP. I can be sure that it can manipulate the Blade Trap in one of the dark rooms to allow for getting around that if you don't have quick movement down. I also have to check if it affects Winders and/or Anti-Fairies, but if it does, that could help against those things that are right before Vitreous.
I will say that I agree that the pit to the Big Key could have stood to be more clear about leading to a safe location. I actually call out about it in my Effective Minimalist/No Damage Run of this place, which by the way has those blasted Medusas as a consistent threat. It's as you say: either a newbie gets confused about opening up the way to a pit that seems to be just a damage taking void, or a veteran will not necessarily realize that the pit was made accessible by lighting the 4 torches.
As for Vitreous, standing in one corner eventually gets you hit. I tried that in practice. The fight is bad enough with the RNG lightning that can actually trail off to the side VERY quickly to the point of hitting you even when you're in the non-damaging part of the slime, which is particularly alarming when the stakes for a No Damage Run of this dungeon is having to deal with the Nayru forsaken Medusas all over again. By the way, I haven't checked if the Cane of Somaria's attack does anything to the smaller eyes, but if it does, I suppose it could help in devising a trap or splash damage attack against them without having to throw about Bombs. Of course, you'd be using resources at that point. But hey, you bring up your own points and we can see how we can compare notes.
And yeah, the 2nd phase? What's that?
Huh...okay. So I was about to make a comment that eyes are basically fluid-filled sacs and that vitreous is the name of that fluid. I was right in a way, but I'm still glad I looked it up as there's more to it than that. So the word vitreous relates to the nature of glass. Specifically, it's a synonym for 'glassy'. What I was originally thinking of is what's called 'vitreous humor', though aside from my erroneous thought that it was the sole definition of 'vitreous', I was otherwise right. The 'vitreous humor' makes up about 80% of an eye's mass, and while definitely a fluid, it's so viscous that it's physically a thick gel. I guess the vitreous humor (and other 'vitreous' named areas of the eye like the 'vitreous membrane' and 'vitreous cortex') got their names because the vitreous humor is right behind the lens, and the vitreous membrane is its housing. Not sure what 'vitreous cortex' is, I just read it alongside 'vitreous membrane' in the blurb Google gave me from a link when I searched for 'vitreous humor'.
So yeah, the boss Vitreous. Is it the big eyeball? All of the eyeballs that attack you? The four little eyeballs that stay in the toxic puddle? The toxic puddle itself?
Here’s my concept to make Vitrius a more skill based fight
First change, make the lightning in the first phase target your character, instead of it always targeting the middle of the room, make it attack the area in which link is located when the lighting is shot.
Second change, make the boss do it’s lightning attack every 2 hits during the second phase
Third change, make the boss every few hits do an attack that covers the entire screen that can only be blocked by the cane of somaria blocks, (maybe an attack where the boss spreads the poison liquid in his arena that the canes block impedes on its path therefore leaving the area behind the block safe) (This attack is also only in phase 2)
The Cane Of Bryna Makes this dungeon's boss your B!tch. I just wasted him today!
UGH I never thought of using the hookshot to get there faster! SMH. I just hauled @ss! LMAO
This is my favorite dungeon in ALTTP. I like how the walls are teal and how confusing it is. I even like how it is sort of a water dungeon but it only has one room of water.
Another day, another Dungeon Design in Zelda BANGER! 🙌
🥲🥲🥲
The hole in the floor that looks like a death trap is one of the funnier things in the dungeons of this series, pretty sure like you said almost everyone knows to light the fires and to generally avoid black pits lol.
I literally don't even remember Vitreous, having played this game twice, the second time within the last few years even. It's kinda weird, just dropped out of my brain, doesn't even seem familiar. Pretty much agree with your whole assessment of the dungeon, as well.
He isn’t really worth remembering 😂
despite some odd design choices such as two small keys in the same room where one is gated off by floor spikes and that one optional locked door that leads to 9 blue rupees after you get the big key, i really like how this dungeon is laid out. it is how to handle a non linear dungeon in a proper manner. only 2 small keys are needed out of the 6 locks and you can see how locked doors do lead to shortcuts.
the gba version fixed the drop hole visual oversight. this dungeon probably has the weakest dark world boss because it is just a damage sponge. in fact, it is the only boss other than ganon that can survive one hit from the silver arrows (which is only possible through glitching and hacking).
Cool, cool, I beat this dungeon last week.
Usually the bosses are so memorable visually, what a shame.
Poor boss, is just a glorified flying tiles room.
Been watching this whole series as I am a Game Development Major and I am currently making a puzzle game for one of my classes and this series has been super freaking helpful in terms of thinking through puzzles ❤ Are you going to do Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks as well? I see you just started Link's Awakening so you probably wont get to either of these two anytime soon but I would love to see them in the future ❤️
Thanks so much!
And yes, the plan is to do em all haha
@@CaptBurgerson awesome! I can't wait, I loved the dungeons in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, I can't wait to see you go through those! ❤️
I probably remember this one as the greatest struggle of all them for me when I was 12, but part of that's due to the circumstances. I didn't own the game yet so I was trying to beat it over a weekend rental session. I always had to start over because somebody would erase the game since the last time I rented it. On the try I finally reached this dungeon, I was absolutely stopped dead by that incorrectly represented hole you point out. I had NO idea you could drop down there, and ran out of time on the rental before I could figure it out. The next time I rented the game, I borrowed my friend's Game Genie so I could blast myself back to where I left off. Vitreous is the other boss that I had problems with back then also. I guess I just tried to charge in gung-ho and got owned - the eyeballs do gang up on you if you don't really spam the sword, and of course I didn't even expect the lightning attack the first time in, oof :V
I find this way more fun on randomizer runs then normal. To be honest I have no clue what chests unlock normally other than one or two key/map/cane chests. I'm more into some superfluous chest giving me the golden sword or hookshot (after having used the peg boots to actually enter)
You don't need the Hookshot to get the chest. I posted a video on RUclips on how you can do that. It basically involves the way the Pegasus Boots work where if you press a directional key in a different direction from where you're dashing, Link will immediately stop dashing and start walking in that new direction.
But yeah, I've long loved Misery Mire. Even just the name is memorable for me. I didn't think too much about the boss, but I think your ideas regarding how it can be improved are interesting. It can help prepare you for Turtle Rock, which you need the dungeon item in Misery Mire for.
Which chest are you even talking about tho
@@CaptBurgerson The big chest. Sorry for not making it clearer.
@@erikabutler6893 Ah gotcha. I’m aware you don’t *need* it, I just use it because I had it and it’s easier lol
The Pitt in 9:00 I think is absolutely fine. It’s just a red herring. And there is nothing else in the room so it should stir suspicion!
Funny enough, in the gba port of the game they actually did change the pit as I proposed here
@@CaptBurgerson in links awakening they have the same puzzle though and it’s even more confusing than this as it’s not the only pit.
Thanks your community post reminder reminded me to check this out before bed, you are awesome.
Nice
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