@@MrDrBoi At least when Kirby does it, the RNG is actively rigged in your favor, and the chance of getting a duplicate in any given Kirby game gacha are much lower than they should be
@@morrius0757 It doesn't matter what you play on a roulette wheel, unless your goal is something very specific like "I want to leave with X amount of money, with X being more than I started with and less than the maximum payout of a single bet". If the casino is giving you standard odds, the expected value of literally any bet is the same. For example, if there's 18 red and 18 black spaces plus a 0 space, and the casino offers 1:1 payouts for calling a color, you have an expected value of 36/37 of your bet on a color. On the same wheel, calling a single number normally gives you 35:1 payouts, and your expected value is again 36/37 of your bet.
I knew it was going to be this one. The scariest part: My late mother was a crazy completionist and loved all of the Zelda games. She completed Minish cap multiple times - and fully completed this crazy side quest each and every time she played.
Out of curiosity, I looked up a 100% speedrun of this game to see how they handle this side quest.They do some kind of RNG manipulation to seemingly get new figurines with every pull, and they complete the whole collection in around 35 minutes. Crazy!
I am part of the speedrunning community, but don’t do hundo. I do have knowledge of thd manip though. There is currently only a manip for the Japanese version, although we could make on for european to. Unfortunately it is slmost impossible for the US version. Because Ezlo talks whenever you restart you game file in the US version, it basically progresses RNG an indeterminate number of times and makes any manip impossible.
@@HandheldGamer1991 This is true on a statistic level (I assume), though it's actually very mind numbing with how long each pull takes and the small chance for a new figure. Even if you're playing the game in a way where you can speed it up at will, it's just so mind numbing, I can't blame anyone for going for the method described in the video. Might be more time-consuming (I think?), but a bit less boring and being able to assure yourself a figure feels nice.
Nice! I got it once, but this was also my first Zelda game and the only one I had at the time. It was magical so this one tail end part was not super tedious to me.
@@trollface7622 That is like saying getting one green rupee while having 99 to get to 100 is the same as getting a 100 rupee while having 0 to get to 100. Not only did you needed 3 other heart pieces for that one last piece to give you a heart, but getting a whole container is more valuable.
Actually, the way the math works out, it’s essentially never worth it to spend more than one shell on the gacha. Sub 50% is still a coin flip essentially, so spending 2 or more shells to get the odds over 50% is less efficient than just flipping. When you get down to 30%, you can spend 20 shells to raise your rate, or keep rolling 1s and get a new figurine 1/3 times. In the 20s it’s 1 of every 5 shells spent vs 30 just to get back to 50/50 odds. That works out all the way down to 2%, you’re almost guaranteed to hit a new figure in less shells than you’d spend on a sure thing. obviously that’s insanely time consuming, but even as low as 5% you should be rolling one every 20 tries, roughly. Which is still less time than you’re likely to spend going out and grinding for shells. The best strategy is to just grind it while watching TV or something and save your shells to make the last few 1% figures a sure thing, because that’s the only point where you’re spending as much on rolls as the odds boost. The rewind feature on the new switch port also helps quite a bit
Wow, looks like no matter how you complete this it's still horrible lol Not sure if I could handle the monotony of betting 1 shell at a time, even if it's marginally faster. Same as with rupee grinding outside Link's house.
Rewind is really helpfull but feels like cheating. But for this awful 100% I went full on with it. Went to the Gamble house to fill up my wallet with the help of the rewind tool, went in buying all the shells and got all figuriens with a 80% chance.
If this were true, the probability distribution of figurines would show for it. It does not. I mean it's somewhat true, but only when you reach near the endgame. Carlov lets you know when you go in at various points in the game that he has new stuff to win. The "probability" gets fairer later on, but based on my recent playthrough (last week), 33% does not come out to 1/3 chances of winning. More like 1/4 or 2/5.
fun fact: When I first played, I grinded every single figurine except for number 22. Every time I entered carlov's shop, he said he doesn't have any more figurines. It wasn't until a freak accident when I noticed the area just south of the goron merchant in hyrule town and how it made a dusty patting noise under link's feet. I used my gust jar to finding beetle and sure enough, he was the last figurine I needed. I basically did the entire quest without picolyte because I mainly resorted to the coucoo minigame.
While still not perfect, I liked the design of the Wind Waker figurine side quest a lot more. You take pictures of the subjects to get figurines of them. Not only does this eliminate the randomness, but it means you're actually interacting with the subject in some way to get their figurine. Pulling a lever from a gacahpon machine just feels so disconnected from what the figurines are about. Also, there's no significant reward for getting every figurine in Wind Waker, so if collecting them stops being fun...you can just stop doing it.
Totally agree with these points. Even though I've never gotten them all, I can say that taking pictures in Wind Waker with interesting angles/framing is exponentially more engaging than pulling a lever on a RNG machine. And because there is no reward attached as you said, the focus is on the quest itself, and not its prize like it is in MC. Definitely the better figurine quest.
@@MrDrBoi The reward for getting all of the figurines is the final figurine with a letter saying congrats for getting all of the figurines. Truly something optional
Hell, even in the Wind Waker HD it's impossible to complete the Figurine Collection on the first quest unless you got lucky getting rare pictographs on Miiverse by other players.
@@thiccbubble I am aware that you can buy Legendary Pictographs from Lorenzo. What I was trying to say was that it is impossible to finish the Nintendo Gallery on a first playthrough because you will miss out on important NPCs before getting the Picto Box on Windfall Island; mainly Tetra's Pirate crew while you are on your way to the Forsaken Fortress. You must begin a second playthrough to start with the Picto Box to take pictures of the crew. The only other way to obtain them was via Miiverse posts which were honestly very generous in passing rare pictures around.
Yeah, I was confused too, the only Zelda game I've seen gameplay of other than BoTW and the only one I played, ToTK was TP. So I was a bit curious as to what heart container in TP it would be, not this game lol
@@prdproductions I have seen clips, but I watched my bro play through Twilight Princess as a kid, and I played ToTK as an adult. Botw I have seen videos on. So I never watched a play through of OoT or MM
@@halinaqi2194if you want to get into Zelda, do yourself a favor and at least check out Ocarina of Time. It’s an absolute classic, and it’s influence is still plastered all over the series today.
@@halinaqi2194 Play OoT and when you're done play MM then go back to Twilight Princess, it's the best Zelda experience you can have !I made my fiancée play Oot when she never played a Zelda game before, she loved it even in 2022.
I think the worst part about the Minitendo heartpiece is that not all figurines are available at the start; more get unlocked as the game processes. Naturally, every time that happens, the chance of for a new figure increases, so you want to start collecting near the end of the game. But Link can only carry 999 rupees and shells each. That means you have to actively ignore opening treasure chests until the endgame to make things slightly more bearable.
@@metayoshi1712 Hey, as per this video I replayed a 100% save of Minish Cap and can confirm that no fusion is truly missable You can fuse with NPCs like the King, but what it actually is is a group of about 20 or so fusions that get shared for a bunch of NPCs all over the game, they can just be fickle about wanting to fuse with you Edit: The EU version has a glitch that can make a kinstone fusion missable, but this isn't due to the 20 shared fusions I talked about above
Light arrows I can recall being missable considering the ghost with the gust jar, which is a kinstone unlock, to which is a requirement for 100%. Library can't be backtracked once finished. Certain castle shenanigans also play a role along within changes to the hyrule shop. And when ya miss at least 6 kinstone reactions ya can't backtrack to or have no way of completing them due to the NPCs in question not existing anymore or being blocked off, Tingle just tells gives ya the finger and calls it a day, where the game has been critiqued numerous times beforehand outing the kinstone system needing refinement.
What’s insane to me about this video is that when I was young I got this heart piece. I never even knew it lead to a heart piece, I just collected the shells and gave them in until I got the whole collection just because I wanted too. I don’t even think I grinder for it, I must’ve been so lucky cause I don’t remember struggling as much as it sounds it does.
I definitely did this too. I actually got this heartpiece earlier than some others I couldn't find. I do remember the figurine grind, but I did enjoy it. What I remember more, is the search for the other heartpieces that ended up taking way longer, and it was more frustrating, since I was endlessly combing the map for heartpiece locations. At least the figures weren't hard for me back then, it just took long.
I vaguely remember getting every figurine as a kid, and that the way I did it was entering and exiting a room in the final dungeon to kill the enemies, who dropped shells. I don't remember it being _this_ terrible. But maybe I'm not remembering right, I'm not sure.
The heart piece? 100% not worth it. The jukebox that could play any song in the game as a kid who didn't have an ipod or mp3 player yet? *_THAT_* was the true reward of kings.
The most offensive part about this quest to me is that even ignoring it doesn't lessen the impact it has on the game design. This quest is the ENTIRE reason for the shells to exist as a secondary form of currency, so a ton of minish cap's reward structure is rendered completely worthless, on top of the kinstone stuff. It's funny. If the shells and kinstones were removed from this game's rewards and replaced with more that was tangibly helpful, minish cap would probably be one of the best, most beloved games in the series. The dungeons, items, puzzles, graphics, and music are all top notch, but the charm doesn't outweigh the immense tedium and disappointment that you frequently run into if you're trying to engage with more than the bare minimum content the game has to offer.
Those are some seriously great points! I knew I forgot to talk about the Kinstones, but it is so true that if you choose not to participate in this quest it has a negative ripple effect throughout the rest of the game. There needed to be a rupee/mysterious shell exchange because you're right that so many of the game's rewards are disappointing if you decide to ignore this game mechanic. If the video wasn't already long enough, I probably could have added a few more minutes just talking about those two points.
I actually really like the kinstones. That's one of my favorite parts of Minish Cap. It's always exciting when you keep unlocking new secrets in areas you've been to. The seashells/figurines however are garbage.
@@hist150project5 I can kinda get the appeal of the kinstones, but the fact that there's no way to track fusions you have and haven't done, the RNG of having the right shapes, and the reward being opened up forcing you to trek across the map for something that probably ends up being worthless, like one of the two types of currency, really makes the system tiring. I much prefer when you can unlock things in old areas when you've made a mental note of something you can't do yet and come back when you realize you now have an item or ability you can use. That, to me, is more exciting since you're having a realization that you can do something due to your abilities progressing, whereas something opening from a kinstone fusion feels more arbitrary, like "Oh, I know where that is. I guess I can do that now."
@@RedPandaSmash While many of the rewards were just rupees and stuff, some of them were good stuff like pieces of heart. Personally when I fuse a kinstone and I see a cave opening I get excited to find out what's in that cave. The kinstones as well as the shrinking mechanic really makes Minish Cap feel like the densest overworld in the series.
@Paradox I hated the Kinstones because sometimes your reward for fusing kinstones is more kinstones making it seem like one of those long trade quests where you go to different people with different items, to get more items to trade to get your reward at the end of the thread except the only item was kinstones. Kinstones that can be found literally everywhere. At least with long trade quests you get different items and your solving problems that the people in the quest have making it narrativly rewarding, but with kinstones you're finding a random NPC to smash kinstones together with no help on where they could be to open a secret, to get a kinstone, to mash together with a different NPC and rinse and repeat at nauseum until finally you get a reward. I would much rather have kinstones not exist and there be clues to get into secret areas or even just limit the kinstones to a smaller amount because at a certain point, it just feels like tedious padding. Not to mention, it seems like kinstones were a substitute for side quests. There are still side quests here and there, but most of them revolve around kinstones. Fusing them for the solutions rather than finding specific items or beating certain enemies. I like sidequests, especially if they have a plot to them. I feel like kinstones robbed us of interesting sidequests, but that's just my opinion.
As someone who grew up with The Minish Cap, this heart piece was the ONE thing that kept me from 100%ing. It wasn't until years later that I realized how to get, and as I still have my original physical copy and a GBA SP, but no charger, my file is stuck at 99% until further notice. Thank you for this video for highlighting the absolute torture that is this Heart Piece
@@MrDrBoi And it would make finding shells in chests or in grass still valuable because it means you get more rupees to spend on other things. Or, if you are a person who values their sanity, still not do the quest because it would problably still be EXTREMELY tedious, just more economically stabalized.
I love features like this because personally I like to make sure I don't take too much advantage of it and beat something I should have lost to, but when it's stuff like this that is mind numbingly RNG based I feel no remorse for rewinding or loading a save on. Also I have no animosity whatsoever on people who reload saves where they lost in a fight or used too many resources, games are supposed to be fun and if that helps save their enjoyment then that's all that matters no point in being the CEO of fun gatekeeping lol
Honestly, the thing with this heart piece, is that I always found the figurines so cute and was wondering what each new one was going to be and the little blurb that went along with it, so I would end up grinding those all out regardless. When the point of the grind is the figurines themselves, then the heart piece becomes a nice surprise, rather than an arduous task. Like, "Oh, that was how!" and you don't really remember the grind much because you were getting that boost of enjoyment every figurine rather than just draaaaaagging oooooooon for the thing at the end.
Exactly this. I beat this quest, before beating the game, too, because I just love to collect and complete things. The figurines were adorable, and I loved the feeling of getting a new one by chance. It was very exciting to me. Plus I relished in reading all the descriptions for the lore and just the cuteness of it all. The heart piece wasn’t even really part of it for me. Lol It was just like, “oh yeah, right… oooh, what does this music box do!?!” I really didn’t need the extra piece of heart anyway, like he said. :P If I ever make a game like I’ve been thinking to do for YEARS, I’m definitely going to include something like this. Just, you know… maybe not make it RNG based. More like in Wario Land where you just find hidden areas and chests, and the collectibles aren’t integral to anything; they’re just for people who like fun little secrets, like me.😊
I feel like even with that mentality, the Heart Piece being part of the reward is still a problem. It'd be better if there was no Heat Piece along with the Music Box. The music box fits as being the same type of reward as the figurines themselves: bonus content. Like modern legacy collections with unlockable galleries. Heart Pieces, on the other hand, are core game content.
I assume that this was the idea behind it. Honestly, if there wasn't a heart piece locked behind it, I'd probably really enjoy doing this just to get all the cool figurines. At least when I was younger and had more time... Growing up sucks.
I think also you're supposed to space out your figurine splurges between the main storyline, as you will frequently max out your shell count just from exploring and going into dungeons. Do a few Stockwell circuits between main story quests and you should fulfil the figurine sidequest by the time you're ready for Vaati.
I feel like you've finally found justice for childhood me. I never completed the quest and felt like I had to be missing something; there's no way it's this bad! But no, it is that bad. Thank you for calling it out
I didn’t know that music room heart piece was tied to… this… No wonder I never 100% Minish Cap back as a kid. Think I got 18-19 heart containers but I assumed the figurines were it’s own thing not tied to HP.
It's probably worth mentioning that the probability and number of figurines available aren't constant either. Clearing a dungeon or major area expands the available figurines, which can also bump up the probability of getting a new one.
@@bartdudley8597 True, though strangely the game lets you claim the reward even if you don't unlock those last 6 or so so long as you haven't beaten the game yet. It's bizarre because the guy congratulates you for getting the Carlov medal and lets you into the house, yet you only get the medal if you get the last few later.
Thankfully the source code for Minish Cap is almost done so when I play it again I will increase shop shells to 100 and maybe tweak the probability a little
I've been doing some testing for this Piece of Heart with the rewind feature on NSO. The figurine you get is *sort of* determined when you place your bid. Assuming you go directly from the bidding window to the lever, then you will always get the same figurine you have unless you've put in enough shells to tip the scale to a figurine you don't have, which I tested by rewinding and upping the bet by a few shells every time. However! If you can advance the RNG after placing that bid, you will get a different figurine. The way I've found is rolling, as the dust particles seem to use random checks of their own. Place a bid, pull the lever, and if it isn't a new one, rewind, roll, and do it again. It's still a lengthy process, but by spacing this out throughout the game, I've gotten that Piece of Heart before entering the final dungeon. (edit: *without* purchasing a single shell, just picking up chests and going back to town regularly) As someone who loves Minish Cap, has 100%'d it without save states, and has played it at least ten times by now: if you have the option, absolutely use the tools at your disposal to expedite this Piece of Heart. Rewinds, save states, whatever. You don't have to prove anything to anyone and your time is more valuable than this. Games should be fun-do what it takes to make it so!
As a completionist who's also a big fan of minish cap I feel your pain...I hate it when I've got everything else there is to get but have to run around for hours while having 19 and 3/4 hearts it just feels off
I never got this heart piece, but even still, Minish Cap was definitely one of my favorite Zelda games growing up. The 600 rupees as part of the reward give me BOTW golden poop vibes lmao.
Personally I prefer this to the korok turds. I thought it was fun collecting the little figures and seeing what was included, but the korok seeds are dead weight and boring once the inventory can no longer be upgraded.
I played something worse as a kid. I had a Minecraft mod. I don’t remember what it was, just that I saw it looked cool, made sure I got it from a safe site, and played it. I never saw anyone else play it, and it only had a couple hundred downloads, which was small at the time. I was maybe 6 or 7 at the time. This mod, along with the new mobs, world, materials and such it added, added something that I’m sure was inspired by this exact game, for it was almost exactly the same. You collected a shard of some kind off of a new mob the mod added, at a 0.1% drop rate, and then you went to a special kind of villager in the mod dimension that would trade you a figurine for 1 or more shards. The chance scaled almost exactly the same as the one in this game does, and of course this was already frustrating, because the mob had this annoying gimmick that made fighting it take forever, and it only dropped 1 shard at a 0.1% chance, or 2 at a 0.01% chance. The mob’s spawn rate wasn’t so bad, and they usually spawned in groups of 3-5, but man, it was annoying. And the worst part was that there wasn’t 130 figures. No. There were over 930. The item you got for completing the collection was necessary to unlock the boss of the mod dimension. NECESSARY. (It was this special pickaxe that you had to break a vine obsidian thing with to get into this hollow tree where you spawned the boss using a different item that was only a little annoying to get.) I swear it must have been coded by a sadist because what the fuck. I did end up finishing the grind when I was 8, but then my parents moved me across computers and the website the mod was initially hosted on got taken down (it was a private website, they had a page on curseforge or something like it but you couldn’t download it from there). I remember I posted a screenshot of me beating the boss in the “review” section of their website and it got removed for profanity or something. Fun times.
If you're playing this game with access to save states, you can use the chest mini game in Town to cheese large amounts of rupees. Otherwise, the method shown is the most efficient way to get this heart piece on an original cartridge.
@@MrDrBoi That didn’t work for me, it kept giving me the same duplicate figurine unless I put the probability up to 100%. But if you exit Carlov’s house and come back in after reloading the save state it will change the figuring
@@MrDrBoi While that is true, tbh it's likely just faster to keep abusing the minigame to just brute force the gacha mechanic to be 100% on every pull. that's how I did the completion, anyhow.
I’m also pretty sure that figurines become available as you encounter their bases in the game. Including the final boss. On top of the grind, the heart piece is unobtainable until after you’ve already beaten the game.
You're not entirely wrong Figurines are only obtainable after seeing the character or enemy in the game and beating vaati unlocks 6 more, but if you get the 130 before defeating vaati it still counts as complete
It'd also be on par with OoT making you have to do the Biggoron's Sword side quest just to get a heart piece as well. There's a reason you don't, and I'm glad that's the case as well since it would be quite annoying in terms of heart piece collection. As much as that side quest is worth the time to get that sword just because if you get it before the Water Temple, it makes Dark Link a really easy mini boss fight.
For me, the most annoying thing is the amount of time it takes to do a single pull. The most efficient way to spend shells, probability wise, is to spend them one at a time. Without exception. Even at a low base probability, let's say 5%, spending two shells individually will get you a 0.95^2 chance of failure, or about 90.25% chance you won't get a new figure with the two shells. But spending those the two shells at once gets you a 94% chance of failure, because each shell gets you an additional 1% chance ish. If you could do like, 10 individual single shell pulls at once or something, this quest wouldn't be nearly as painful. Using that same 5% base success chance as an example, doing 10 individual pulls with 10 shells will have about a 60% chance to not get a new figurine. If they made the most efficient shell spending procedure less tedious by letting you pull multiple at once, the amount of shells you get would likely be sufficient and there'd be no need to grind them at all.
Yup. There should’ve been a counter mechanism that holds a set amount of shells on it, where every time you pull it spends the amount of shells on the counter, with varying odds based on what you already own. It could even further save time by letting you choose to watch the animation and see the item. All it needs to do is say “NEW” or “duplicate” and let you press a button to see what it is.
Game theory wise, you do want to spend more shells once you get down to the last few figurines because the shell currency becomes worthless at 0 figurines. For instance, if you have 5 figures left and 600 shells, you're better off maxing out your odds.
I consider the figurines to be a reward on their own, it's just that a heart piece isn't a satisfying reward for how extensive the quest is. It warrants at least a sword upgrade which would also validate locking the completion of the quest until later in the game since a major facet of the story revolves around making the picori blade stronger. If the reward was just a final optional sword upgrade that you could only obtain after getting every other upgrade then it would be completely acceptable.
I'd agree with that if Minish Cap had more stuff for you to do in the post game. Honestly, I dont know if there is any end reward that could justify this quest the more I think about it. The figurines should be the reward, but at least to me, they are just not satisfying enough in MC.
Honestly, I don't know why I do this quest on every playthrough. Especially since I always wait until the end of the game to start the grind. Sure, it takes a few hours, but I never had to grind for shells more than twice, and even then my wallet would be maxed out from Carlov's refunds, meaning I would only have to grind for maybe 300 at a time. I feel like the only thing that makes the quest unbearable is how hard it is to remember to go back there frequently.
One of the best parts of making this video has been seeing all the love for Minish Cap that I didn't know was out there. Definitely my favorite GBA game!
@@MrDrBoi Botw graphics spoiled me but Im glad Im playing all the zelda games for the first time, some of these older games are really challegning but fun.
You know it’s funny because the other day I rolled a figure for the first time and then the 2nd had a 98% chance of it being something else, but I still ended up getting the exact same one as the first time 🙃
I'm sitting here racking my brain thinking of what heart piece is the worst and nothing is coming to mind and then I see the video swap to Minish Cap footage and I'm like "OH YEAH!"
There's like a million Koroks in BotW too lol. It's one of the main reasons people never usually do 100% runs of either BotW or TotK, because you just know just the Korok hunting is gonna take over a whole day (24h) on top of the other stuff you have to do. 😛
A few things I recently discovered... You'll need to get extra 6 figurines if you go there after beating the game... also! I played this with the wiiU meaning you can save state. This allows you to play the treasure game and get rupees faster, but still took almost 3 full streams to get this heart piece. You can also use save state to redo figurine pulls. And this still barely helps... this for sure is the worse heart piece
Very true, I forgot to mention you have to get those extra 6 after the game is done! Which obviously just makes things worse lol And I agree save states help, but it's definitely a band-aid for a bullet wound type situation. I played on GCN with the Gameboy Player Unfortunately, so I had to tough it out!
I don't remember whether I actually ended up collecting the heart piece, but I do remember collecting all the figurines, simply for the joy of collecting. Yes, it was tedious, but that's the kind of thing you do when you're young.
YT recommended me this video at the right time. I was planning on going through a completing a few Zelda games. Already did Ocarina and Majora, starting Link Between Worlds, and was going to play Minish Cap next. Watching this, I think I'll just settle for 99% instead of 100%.
There’s a lot of things in some games that just aren’t worth completing: Korok seeds in BotW, figurines in TMC, photographs in TWW, etc. Also, keep in mind that A Link Between World’s street pass features may be difficult to complete unless you have a second 3DS.
I remember completing this quest as a child and vibing out to the granophone all the time. I don't remember the grind at all, I either blocked it out or found an incredible method for figurine collection. I'm pretty sure my goal when spending shells was to get the chance to about 67% or so, in my child brain that seemed more efficient.
I tend to find as a kid, you have way way more patience and dedication when it comes to games. So you probably just grinded but didn’t think much of it
One of the many great things about BoW is the fact that your "heart piece" is obtained through a mini-dungeon, and that thanks to the open-world approach, you can virtually drop to zero the amount of time spent backtracking. In llder Zeldas, collecting heart pieces was a pain in the ass, to be honest; it was all about time, rarely about skill.
I've played through and beaten Minish Cap multiple times, but I've only completed the figurine collection once or twice. My preferred method for getting shells was always farming big 20s with Rupee Picolyte and Whirlwind Sword, then buying shells from the store until full. This _really_ isn't a very fun sidequest to do.
This sidequest was where I bowed to the GameShark; just used an Infinite Shells code after a while because I'd already been grinding for six hours and only had 30 figurines. Even with infinite shells I only seemed to get a new one every 20-ish pulls (luck and RNG have NEVER been on my side) but at least I didn't drive myself insane finishing it out.
Darn, I really liked the figurine shop stuff back when Minish Cap came out. I was a fan of probabilities, so strategizing the most efficient use of shells each time I came back to town was a highlight instead of a slog. I do remember some post-game grinding for shells, but it was mostly mixed in with other sidequests so it never got that frustrating for me, either.
That's last bit is what people don't really realize about quests like this or even the triforce quest in wind waker and why the complaints frustrate me, though I realize I may be alone with the latter. In any case these quests are not really designed to be done all at once, they were designed to be done while you were busy wrapping up other things. It's not the devs' fault that players would apparently rather do these things all at once and get annoyed at it rather than go "oh hey, I'll be doing sidequests anyways so I should just take my time and grab these as I go." Like yeah you can argue that it's annoying for challenge runs and such that don't do the sidequests and I get that but it's not the devs' job to cater to that, it never has been and it never will be.
Do the figurines actually do anything before you have 100% of them though? From this video it seems like the entire mechanic is just for that heart piece
It's absolutely baffling that each shell only raises the probability by 1%, since that makes it never worth it to use shells as your odds will always be lower than if you rolled one at a time repeatedly (if spending 1 shell gives you a 10% chance, then two rolls at 10% will be better than one roll at 11%). Thus the only reason to use more shells is to have to watch the animation fewer times, so the real choice here is would you rather grind or watch a cutscene over and over? So bizarre.
Dude, I literally just finished this game-and this quest-yesterday. And I literally farmed the last 1200 shells with that rupee picolyte technique in that exact spot.
When I saw the title of this video I knew exactly where it was going. Literally just finished Minish Cap and was curious how to get that heart piece, looked it up, and said helllll no! Great video tho man!
I know I used to do this, on most of my playthroughs of Minish Cap. That means I don't even know how many times I've suffered in Carlov's room. It's been years, yet I'm totally working on it on Switch to see if it's better or worse than I remember. What I remember is that I used to spend shells to get to 51%, and then later on to get 26%. In addition to the mental kink of making the odds slightly better by adding 1% to these numbers, my thinking would always be that if you are spending 3, 4, 5, and then eventually 10, 11, 12 shells on 26%, that's way more efficient and less wasteful than spending 25 more for half chance, and over SEVENTY MORE for max chance. 26% is also "good enough" in the sense that you'll hopefully keep getting figures every minute or two. But I always hated that you are forced to spend low numbers of shells on mediocre odds because better odds are mostly too expensive to be worth it, which will indeed eventually fuck up your file, leaving you no option but to slowly grind. It's such a BS trap and design mechanic that feels like it wants to trick players and mess with their brains. You highlighted this incredibly well in this video, which is cathartic after all these years. Anyway I'll be back once I have the heart piece on Switch and report how it went. :P
@@Purble I was already basically done with the game before I started using shells for that heart piece. I already opened all of the chests with shells in them and the only other way to get them for me was the town shop. But they’re expensive for only 30 shells.
I go about this one in the best/worst way possible. I had to look at it mathematically to see what the most efficient way to go about it was, and it was to go 1 shell at a time every time. Even ignoring the rupees you get for duplicates, it is just the best way to spend to least amount of shells on average. I also did not what to do that when it was at 1%, so I just picked the lowest percent that I could handle, which was about 10%. Painful, but it was somehow less painful then the constant farming runs
If you're optimizing for shells then it's ideal to only spend 1 per roll. But if you're optimizing for speed then it's probably worth it to spend slightly more than that per roll, at least once you're getting down to the low probabilities. However the exact amount to spend would be really hard to calculate* since it depends on how long the animation for each attempt is as well as how long it takes you to grind out more shells. My gut says that your 10% pick is probably pretty close, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's more like 5%. *Though I'm sure the 100% speedrunners have figured it out, unless there's a way to glitch to the heart piece another way.
I remember when I was about 10 years old just sitting on my SP for hours every day just farming shells and trading them in, it was almost gambling lol, was for sure a "what have I been doing this whole time" moment
The absolute fastest way is not to get them as you progress the story, but to outright avoid mysterious shells until the end. At the end of the game the entire collection is available, which does help stretch out that early high probability period. You still end up having to do the grind, but you'll start the grind much later in the collection.
Having recently finished Minish Cap for the first time in my life, I couldn't bother to collect that last heart piece lmao, the figurine mechanic was too much of a hassle for me to spend time to get it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it way too time consuming
What makes it worse is that if you collect them all before fighting the final boss, you actually miss out on his figurine, meaning you have to actually beat the game first before you can get that grind to %100. Found that out the hard way.
I remember grinding shells for pulls when I was younger. I got to a point where if I got a duplicate, I turned the game off to try again. The main reason why I tried getting all the trophies was because I'm a completionist. I don't think I even knew it would open the house for the heart piece lol. I just happened to find it open one day and figured it was something I unlocked way earlier without realizing.
This is how I’d sort it Ocarina of time- fishing Majoras mask- octorock shooting, or that goron challenge on the moon The wind waker- battleship board game, or when you had to hit the sword trainer 500 times Twilight Princess- also fishing Skyward sword- minecart race Breath of the wild- trial of the sword (don’t remember if it gave a heart piece but it was definitely the worst side quest) And then for the 2d games, I can’t name any because I’ve never played a 2d Zelda game
"Twilight Princess- also fishing." That's wrong. You don't need to do fishing to get any Heart Pieces in Twilight Princess. That Heart Piece at the Fishing Hole can be gotten by swimming to it and using Clawshot or Boomerang.
@@gamewizard2008 okay well thanks for letting me know lol. I don’t remember the heart pieces in twilight Princess that well because I thought they were the easiest of any Zelda game, but if I had to pick another hardest it would be that one you have to get with a boomerang on hyrule field leaving Faron woods, since it’s so hidden
@@brendanreilly4675 Damn I really liked BOTW trial of the sword, even though it was pretty hard I thought it was very challenging and fun. But anyway, the trial of the sword doesn't give a heart piece, it makes your master sword stronger. In BOTW you can only get heart pieces either by completing 4 shrines or by killing one of the 4 bosses.
I try to keep the probability at around 70-80%, this allows me to get a new figurine almost every time without having to spend too many shells. And i dunk all the shells on the final 10 or 20 figurines. But i have to do it as soon as i can access the shop to make sure i won't waste a single shell.
I actually did this in autumn 2021 and didn't even think people didn't like it. I didn't use the bottle things, as I didn't really know about them but I grinded the shells from that spesific Hyrule field spot. It took me few days but it was so worth it. For me I mean. I wasn't doing it to get a heart piece. I just wanted all of the figurines hahaha!
Getting the shells directly still seems faster than the rupies. Reason being the time for receival is almost the same, but if you get the shells directly you don't have to waste the buying time. Due to being able to nonstop farm to the number you want it seems a lot faster that way and probably more engaging. With the bottles. =3
I did do this as a kid actually lol. Not sure if I would ever do it again...another good candidate for worst Heart Piece in history is the one in the Link's Awakening Switch remake you get from Dampe's dungeon creation thing. Like man you gotta work for that one
Getting Dampe's bottle in Majora's Mask is also a pain in the butt since it needs to be done at night on the 3rd day and he walks slower than a glacier.
My main gripe about collecting the figurines is that I have to go through the dialogue explaining that more shells will increase the odds EVERY TIME...
As soon as this was apparent that this heart peace is obtained because of some sort of gachapon system, I knew I was in for something horrendous! Makes me happy I rarely go for 100% completion!
I finished this game around 5 times in my life and I always dropped that heart piece quest because the closer you are to completing the collection the more harder it gets, until you run out of energy to do it. Now watching this makes me want to try that strategy, so I think after totk I'll go start a new run of Minish Cap, still my favorite Zelda!
I'll add, the length of this quest is like more than the main quest and all side quests combined. There's no reward in the game that could be worth that. Oh yeah I know one that is: That precious 100% completion!
I've got a lot of fond memories looking at all the different figurines and learning their names. Minish Cap actually helped my young child brain solve a puzzle in a separate game, Link's Awakening, in which you had to defeat enemies in a named order but I didn't know their names. Keese, Pol's Voice, Stalfos, still have it memorized.
That is the puzzle that stumped me for a long time as a child when it first came out on the game boy. For the 2nd dungeon Boss Key if I remember correctly. 2 years later, I came back and figured out what I needed to do and 100% completed the game. Also, at the time I remembered it as bat, bunny hat, and hopping skelly.
@@Zakusa13 I would absolutely love to peer into the minds of the folks who came up with the names. I'm sure it's a mixture of Japanese folklore reference and translation issues, but "Pol's Voice" still confuses me
@@VivaSativaMusic So I did some quick research, and according to what I found, the name "Pols Voice" is unknown in origin. I even tried to look up any slight mistranslation of the name "Pols", and nothing came up. The "Voice" part, though, is likely a reference to their appearance and weakness to sound, normally shouting, in the original Japanese Legend of Zelda. For the Famicom (what our NES is based on) the controller had a microphone, and in the japan release, making sound into the microphone caused all Pols Voice on screen to be instantly defeated.
This video is correct. Having only played an hour or so of Minish Cap, and never having had to do this sidequest, even I can see the repulsively grindy nature of this quest. And I'm allergic to grinding.
I feel like this quest would actually just be better without including the Heart Piece as part of the reward. The figurines and music box are clearly within the realm of bonus content, while Heart Pieces are core game content. This quest goes beyond the scope of core game completion, and is more like unlocking art galleries in legacy collections from modern Capcom design.
A true example of it’s all perspective. If you go the whole time looking forward to more figurines rather than the one heart piece, sounds like you’ll have a much more tolerable time. Problem there is the figurines serve absolutely no purpose other than that. Kinda like figurines irl but hey.
hey with figurines irl you can pose them and they are a physical thing to look at and see all the detail so they serve an aesthetic purpose which is the not the same as no purpose
I have a feeling that this side quest was intentionally set this way to deter speed-running. It also feels like they [Capcom] wanted to encourage playing this game for longer periods of time, considering the content Minish Cap has going for it. Thanks for this video, I can now play this game rightly :)
I don't really remember being frustrated by this one. I 100% the minish cap and honestly it was just so much fun the whole way through. Still my favourite zelda game!
Great topic for a video. I’ve been playing Minish Cap for the first time and have been really impressed with how much of the traditional Zelda formula has been retained on the GBA, but after seeing this video it is clear to me just how unnecessarily complicated it is to get that heart piece. It feels as if the developers intentionally made it as tedious and grueling as possible to simply mess with the player. Thanks for explaining the best way you found to get that heart piece and the amount of time you’ve saved me trying to get it myself.
Thanks! Yeah if you do go for it, just make sure you're doing it throughout the game otherwise it's just not worth it whatsoever lol. But Minish Cap otherwise is great and super underrated, so I hope you're enjoying!
I’m a big completionist for any game I really get into, especially Zelda games, but there is no way in hell I would ever bother with this. Sorry, no 100% for me for Minish if I ever do play it.
The system absolutely reminds me of the Monocoin system in the Danganronpa games. Same sorta deal, same grind to get them, same probability decreases the more of the collection you complete.
Ah, Danganronpa… Nothing like looking up which classmate has the “extra monocoins” skill to max their friendship and then fast forward whatever trial is fastest to net the max amount of monocoins and ‘cheat’ the gacha system. Still easier than getting all of Monomi’s side game drops in DR2 and all the student cards in DRV3, but still annoying.
This is like if OG windwaker made the figurine collection there mandatory for a piece of heart. Just like here, it would be impossible to get it until pretty much postgame or NG+. If minish cap ever gets a remake, this is probably the one quest that will be drastically cut down. Maybe you get the heart piece after 50 figurine. Also, Nintendocaprisun just got to finding the shop in his LP. He got a dupe with a 98% probability on his third pull.
What's interesting about this is the heart piece probably isn't even the point of the side quest. For a lot of people, there's a a sense of accomplishment from the act of collecting and just gathering the figurines is enough for them. Many of these types also probably would have done it just for the sake of completion and value knowing they're in the minority out of those who would even attempt it. Sort of like getting all the custom moves in Smash 4 or completing the pokedex in most pokemon games or even just getting all of the achievements in any game. The real issue here is they tied it to the heart piece making it seem like the value of the hard work wasn't the grind itself but the stupid health increment you don't need.
Absolutely agree, it's why I understand why some people like collecting figurines. But if you just want the heart piece, it frames the whole thing in a totally different light.
When you mentioned the minish cap, I was a bit confused, because that is one of the few zelda game's I've 100%ed Then the memories flooded back when you said "figurine set"
I can see how this might be annoying for speedrunning completionists, but as a kid on a casual playthrough, collecting the figurines was my favourite part of one of my favourite Zelda games. I know I got them all in the end, but I don't think I ever even knew that I unlocked that room for doing so. The figurines were their own cute reward.
After that example of how it would take 43 minutes in a perfect scenario I was expecting you would show us the math with the total shells available in chests and the shell requirements to get everything with 100% probability and the aproximate time to do it all in the end, but there wasn't any of that :(
Before I watch the entire video and let myself get caught in nostalgia, I barely remember the gacha heart but I know that I 100% that game and it's still been one of the only games I ever completely finished. I'm glad that the Minish Cap gets some spotlight! ❤
It took me years as a kid to complete the collection. I didn't even know it was related to the locked shop, I just wanted to see every figure and complete it.
Great video as usual! I've played Minish Cap during my childhood and even went back to finally finish it on my GBA SP 4 years ago. With that said, for some reason I've never actually linked the connexion between the figurine gamble shop with this one heart piece in that house, and since I didn't actually remember to search for it after finishing the main game (despite being a completionist as well), I now feel lucky that I did never get to know about it, because I know well enough how stubborn I would be in order to get it at that period. I can really see this being a remarkable experience for you, even so in a bad way (it would totally be for me, at least). Great writing and pacing, kept me entertained the whole way through. I see a lot of potential in your channel, so I will make sure to share this with some of my friends, thank you!
A really weird one is in OoT, the one by the tree left of hyrule castle in which you have to place a bomb on the ground right next to a random tree which opens up a hole to a heart piece… With absolutely no hint or mark, you just wouldn’t be able to find it without a guide and the first person to find it must’ve just been bored and threw bombs all over hyrule field. Similarly if you place a bomb in the middle of the square fence outside Lake Hylia there’s another heart piece.
The Stone of Agony, from 20 Skulltula tokens, was how you found hidden grottos. It would allow the N64 Rumple Pak to activate when near hidden grottos. Of course, if you didn't have a Rumble Pak, you would have needed external information to find them.
For similar items in other games that don't have an in-game hint to find them, I feel like literal children would have a higher chance to find them than a casual player due to their tendency to do random shit such as, for example, throwing bombs all over hyrule field.
Oh wow! I've lost count of how many times I've played Minish Cap, but on my latest playthrough after it dropped on NSO I finally decided to go for it. That thing had been taunting me for 18 years and it felt so good to finally nab it.
useful tip i've learnt on reading about it: it will be 3/4ths a counterclockwise rotation I believe if you get all the rings, so once you pass that last ring to get 10x, try and get to the proper position, and course correct at end if you need, it seems to have helped me get better at it, using that strategy
@@thespicehoarder Well yeah you can do that but it will take so much longer having to restart the game for every bad roll... Might be worth it for the last few though
I never knew that this is how you were supposed to unlock the music house. On my totally-legit copy, it was just a random unlocked door and I always wondered why.
A shortcut for this if you have the virtual console version is to go into the treasure shop(recommend the 3 chest one) and before choosing a chest, create a restore point, and if you get it wrong, load the restore point and choose the correct chest. Then, go to the shop and buy the seashells, making the process a lot quicker. Hope this helps.
I had forgotten about this quest until this video. I don’t remember how I had the patience to complete it when I did, but I didn’t even sit down and grind like how you did. I just genuinely kept finding them. I had to do it over weeks and weeks, absolutely unreal
Imagine a quest like this in a brutal game like Link to the past, where collecting hearts pieces is almost not optional due to how hard and unforgiving the game can be.
@@hugostiglitz6823 Compared to later games, LTTP is definitely more challenging and can at times be pretty brutal compare to most of the later entries in the series. I can confidently go through an entire playthrough of OoT (and pretty much every zelda game after that) without using fairies or potions and without collecting heart pieces. Hell, even the three heart challenge isn't as hard as it is in Lttp. I think the reason for this is because Lttp has a rather large variety of enemies that can deal massive amounts of damage in a rapid succession. A great example are the Ice creatures in the Ice Palace. They deal 5 hearts of damage without the blue mail and can kill you so quickly that the blue mail that you get from the same dungeon is an absolute must. This is also before Nintendo changed the heart system to where each heart was had four quarters instead of it just being two halves.
as someone who 100% minish cap 3 times (im probably masochist) the best way to grind rupees is ironically the treasure game shop, even being a lottery hitting 4 chests(or 3 chest if you go the one with 3 chest) and leaving is easier and less time consuming than farming with picolytes
Its funny because as a kid the mindless grind was part of the fun, especially when your parents only bought one game for you once in a while and you had to make due with what you got. I have fond memories of grinding rupees and getting more and more unique figurines, though im sure i wouldn't have the patience for it today.
For a second I expected it to be that one you get in twilight princess by cutting open that boar that’s being cooked by the bokoblins at gerudo desert. Don’t know why I thought that, probably because it had TP Link in the thumbnail
Yep people get nostalgic for old games and design and forget a lot of the pointless grinds that existed. Nowadays the grinds still suck but at least you get an achievement i guess.
This video was very cathartic for me, I got minish cap when it launched and when I was a little older beat it and got every heart container without a guide... EXCEPT for this one! It's legit the last heart piece I need and I did not realize it was this tedious to get, didn't even realize the figurines were tied to it or that guy sitting outside.
This sidequest is a grim, yet educational reminder that Gachapon, lootboxes and "surprise mechanics" are a blight upon game design.
Agreed, hate these features in games. If I wanted to go gamble, I'd go to a casino or bet on sports.
@@MrDrBoi At least when Kirby does it, the RNG is actively rigged in your favor, and the chance of getting a duplicate in any given Kirby game gacha are much lower than they should be
@@morrius0757 It doesn't matter what you play on a roulette wheel, unless your goal is something very specific like "I want to leave with X amount of money, with X being more than I started with and less than the maximum payout of a single bet". If the casino is giving you standard odds, the expected value of literally any bet is the same. For example, if there's 18 red and 18 black spaces plus a 0 space, and the casino offers 1:1 payouts for calling a color, you have an expected value of 36/37 of your bet on a color. On the same wheel, calling a single number normally gives you 35:1 payouts, and your expected value is again 36/37 of your bet.
Years before some marketing executive got the idea while doing a line of coke off some $10K a night hooker's ass.
We were warned people!
@@morrius0757 You have a gambling addiction. Stop promoting gambling to impressionable people
I knew it was going to be this one. The scariest part: My late mother was a crazy completionist and loved all of the Zelda games. She completed Minish cap multiple times - and fully completed this crazy side quest each and every time she played.
That's dedication!
I've only gotten this heart piece *once*.
And I've beat Minish Cap with 100% -1 about 6 or 7 times
"Late" mother?
@@dallinnielsen7514 she's passed
Just drink the blue shell potion. You can pull like 400 blue shells per potion. And you can get easy money from the chicken catch game.
I remember this quest. As a kid, i didnt mind the grindset. As an adult, i cant believe i spent so much time grinding shells for a single heart piece
when you are a kid though, you're thinking about how fun it is to be doing something fun, rather than if it is worth it or not
Hard same
But you get some backstory of the characters with the figurines. I honestly did it for that.
Yeah, i love collectable lore sheets.@@vanyadolly
This explains why, after my brother 100% ran Minish Cap for the first time, I found him in the corner muttering "mysterious shells" over and over
He definitely gets PTSD from it
When he goes to the beach, he quickly turns away at the sight of a light blue shell...
Indeed. Alas, he at least wasn't muttering "clickbait youtube image from a different game" instead.
@@SephirothRyuthat’s not an «alas» situation, it’s the opposite.
As someone whose save data got corrupted shortly after receiving this one, losing all data including the 100% file, I relate to that trauma.
Out of curiosity, I looked up a 100% speedrun of this game to see how they handle this side quest.They do some kind of RNG manipulation to seemingly get new figurines with every pull, and they complete the whole collection in around 35 minutes. Crazy!
Wow that's pretty interesting, gonna have to look that up! Insane that it takes even speedrunners over half an hour to complete.
I am part of the speedrunning community, but don’t do hundo. I do have knowledge of thd manip though. There is currently only a manip for the Japanese version, although we could make on for european to. Unfortunately it is slmost impossible for the US version. Because Ezlo talks whenever you restart you game file in the US version, it basically progresses RNG an indeterminate number of times and makes any manip impossible.
You only use 1 shell untill the odds of getting a new one are like 10% then you start using more its pretty simple actually :)
@@andrewpoe-bowdren1111 What a shame!
@@HandheldGamer1991 This is true on a statistic level (I assume), though it's actually very mind numbing with how long each pull takes and the small chance for a new figure. Even if you're playing the game in a way where you can speed it up at will, it's just so mind numbing, I can't blame anyone for going for the method described in the video. Might be more time-consuming (I think?), but a bit less boring and being able to assure yourself a figure feels nice.
As someone who has gotten this heart piece, TWICE, I agree; NOT. WORTH. IT!
Why oh why would you do it again
@@marzipancutter8144 I was super young the first time, and it had been long enough I forgot how bad it was my second time through. Never again.
@@AdeptRougeOfHorus I am so sorry man
Nice! I got it once, but this was also my first Zelda game and the only one I had at the time. It was magical so this one tail end part was not super tedious to me.
Bro, I'm worried about you
The worst part is, Librari gives you a full heart container for basically doing nothing. This should be the full heart container.
Yes! That always irked me too!
@@chippedgoatThe last piece of heart and a heart container have the same end effect
@@trollface7622At least a Heart Container is more worthy.
@@trollface7622 if i assumed you had $100 already and gave you $25, did I just give you $125?
@@trollface7622 That is like saying getting one green rupee while having 99 to get to 100 is the same as getting a 100 rupee while having 0 to get to 100. Not only did you needed 3 other heart pieces for that one last piece to give you a heart, but getting a whole container is more valuable.
Actually, the way the math works out, it’s essentially never worth it to spend more than one shell on the gacha. Sub 50% is still a coin flip essentially, so spending 2 or more shells to get the odds over 50% is less efficient than just flipping. When you get down to 30%, you can spend 20 shells to raise your rate, or keep rolling 1s and get a new figurine 1/3 times. In the 20s it’s 1 of every 5 shells spent vs 30 just to get back to 50/50 odds. That works out all the way down to 2%, you’re almost guaranteed to hit a new figure in less shells than you’d spend on a sure thing. obviously that’s insanely time consuming, but even as low as 5% you should be rolling one every 20 tries, roughly. Which is still less time than you’re likely to spend going out and grinding for shells. The best strategy is to just grind it while watching TV or something and save your shells to make the last few 1% figures a sure thing, because that’s the only point where you’re spending as much on rolls as the odds boost.
The rewind feature on the new switch port also helps quite a bit
Wow, looks like no matter how you complete this it's still horrible lol
Not sure if I could handle the monotony of betting 1 shell at a time, even if it's marginally faster. Same as with rupee grinding outside Link's house.
Rewind is really helpfull but feels like cheating. But for this awful 100% I went full on with it.
Went to the Gamble house to fill up my wallet with the help of the rewind tool, went in buying all the shells and got all figuriens with a 80% chance.
Plus, if all 30 shells give you a repeat, then you get 150 rupees back
If this were true, the probability distribution of figurines would show for it. It does not. I mean it's somewhat true, but only when you reach near the endgame. Carlov lets you know when you go in at various points in the game that he has new stuff to win. The "probability" gets fairer later on, but based on my recent playthrough (last week), 33% does not come out to 1/3 chances of winning. More like 1/4 or 2/5.
You seem like a smart guy. You should do video analysis of anime or something.
fun fact: When I first played, I grinded every single figurine except for number 22. Every time I entered carlov's shop, he said he doesn't have any more figurines. It wasn't until a freak accident when I noticed the area just south of the goron merchant in hyrule town and how it made a dusty patting noise under link's feet. I used my gust jar to finding beetle and sure enough, he was the last figurine I needed. I basically did the entire quest without picolyte because I mainly resorted to the coucoo minigame.
I remember grinding this in the back of my parents car on a 7 hour trip. Didn’t even finish it
Reading that somehow physically hurts me.
^
Probably the only scenario where this sidequest is worth your time
While still not perfect, I liked the design of the Wind Waker figurine side quest a lot more. You take pictures of the subjects to get figurines of them. Not only does this eliminate the randomness, but it means you're actually interacting with the subject in some way to get their figurine. Pulling a lever from a gacahpon machine just feels so disconnected from what the figurines are about. Also, there's no significant reward for getting every figurine in Wind Waker, so if collecting them stops being fun...you can just stop doing it.
Totally agree with these points. Even though I've never gotten them all, I can say that taking pictures in Wind Waker with interesting angles/framing is exponentially more engaging than pulling a lever on a RNG machine. And because there is no reward attached as you said, the focus is on the quest itself, and not its prize like it is in MC. Definitely the better figurine quest.
@@MrDrBoi The reward for getting all of the figurines is the final figurine with a letter saying congrats for getting all of the figurines. Truly something optional
Hell, even in the Wind Waker HD it's impossible to complete the Figurine Collection on the first quest unless you got lucky getting rare pictographs on Miiverse by other players.
You can buy the rare pictographs in WindWaker HD though, it's not a random miiverse thing.
@@thiccbubble I am aware that you can buy Legendary Pictographs from Lorenzo. What I was trying to say was that it is impossible to finish the Nintendo Gallery on a first playthrough because you will miss out on important NPCs before getting the Picto Box on Windfall Island; mainly Tetra's Pirate crew while you are on your way to the Forsaken Fortress. You must begin a second playthrough to start with the Picto Box to take pictures of the crew. The only other way to obtain them was via Miiverse posts which were honestly very generous in passing rare pictures around.
>sees thumbnail
>twilight princess link and heart piece
>clicks video
>minish cap
Yeah, I was confused too, the only Zelda game I've seen gameplay of other than BoTW and the only one I played, ToTK was TP.
So I was a bit curious as to what heart container in TP it would be, not this game lol
@@halinaqi2194 yoiuve never seen Oot or majoras mask?
@@prdproductions I have seen clips, but I watched my bro play through Twilight Princess as a kid, and I played ToTK as an adult. Botw I have seen videos on.
So I never watched a play through of OoT or MM
@@halinaqi2194if you want to get into Zelda, do yourself a favor and at least check out Ocarina of Time. It’s an absolute classic, and it’s influence is still plastered all over the series today.
@@halinaqi2194 Play OoT and when you're done play MM then go back to Twilight Princess, it's the best Zelda experience you can have !I made my fiancée play Oot when she never played a Zelda game before, she loved it even in 2022.
I think the worst part about the Minitendo heartpiece is that not all figurines are available at the start; more get unlocked as the game processes. Naturally, every time that happens, the chance of for a new figure increases, so you want to start collecting near the end of the game. But Link can only carry 999 rupees and shells each. That means you have to actively ignore opening treasure chests until the endgame to make things slightly more bearable.
Either that or stop by multiple times and empty your shells into it each time you get 800+
@@kylehennkens9578 Of course you can, but you will have a significantly lower chance of getting a new figurine than when doing it in the end game.
plus there are missable kinstone pieces, so if you miss those the first time around.. you're basically screwed on 100% completion.
@@metayoshi1712 Hey, as per this video I replayed a 100% save of Minish Cap and can confirm that no fusion is truly missable
You can fuse with NPCs like the King, but what it actually is is a group of about 20 or so fusions that get shared for a bunch of NPCs all over the game, they can just be fickle about wanting to fuse with you
Edit: The EU version has a glitch that can make a kinstone fusion missable, but this isn't due to the 20 shared fusions I talked about above
Light arrows I can recall being missable considering the ghost with the gust jar, which is a kinstone unlock, to which is a requirement for 100%.
Library can't be backtracked once finished.
Certain castle shenanigans also play a role along within changes to the hyrule shop.
And when ya miss at least 6 kinstone reactions ya can't backtrack to or have no way of completing them due to the NPCs in question not existing anymore or being blocked off, Tingle just tells gives ya the finger and calls it a day, where the game has been critiqued numerous times beforehand outing the kinstone system needing refinement.
What’s insane to me about this video is that when I was young I got this heart piece. I never even knew it lead to a heart piece, I just collected the shells and gave them in until I got the whole collection just because I wanted too. I don’t even think I grinder for it, I must’ve been so lucky cause I don’t remember struggling as much as it sounds it does.
You probably don't remember how many hours you sunk into the game.
I definitely did this too. I actually got this heartpiece earlier than some others I couldn't find. I do remember the figurine grind, but I did enjoy it. What I remember more, is the search for the other heartpieces that ended up taking way longer, and it was more frustrating, since I was endlessly combing the map for heartpiece locations. At least the figures weren't hard for me back then, it just took long.
Same here. I remember enjoying it, honestly. But I can understand the argument.
Agreed, not sure if I even got that heart. My priority was figures.
I vaguely remember getting every figurine as a kid, and that the way I did it was entering and exiting a room in the final dungeon to kill the enemies, who dropped shells. I don't remember it being _this_ terrible. But maybe I'm not remembering right, I'm not sure.
The heart piece? 100% not worth it. The jukebox that could play any song in the game as a kid who didn't have an ipod or mp3 player yet? *_THAT_* was the true reward of kings.
The most offensive part about this quest to me is that even ignoring it doesn't lessen the impact it has on the game design. This quest is the ENTIRE reason for the shells to exist as a secondary form of currency, so a ton of minish cap's reward structure is rendered completely worthless, on top of the kinstone stuff. It's funny. If the shells and kinstones were removed from this game's rewards and replaced with more that was tangibly helpful, minish cap would probably be one of the best, most beloved games in the series. The dungeons, items, puzzles, graphics, and music are all top notch, but the charm doesn't outweigh the immense tedium and disappointment that you frequently run into if you're trying to engage with more than the bare minimum content the game has to offer.
Those are some seriously great points! I knew I forgot to talk about the Kinstones, but it is so true that if you choose not to participate in this quest it has a negative ripple effect throughout the rest of the game. There needed to be a rupee/mysterious shell exchange because you're right that so many of the game's rewards are disappointing if you decide to ignore this game mechanic.
If the video wasn't already long enough, I probably could have added a few more minutes just talking about those two points.
I actually really like the kinstones. That's one of my favorite parts of Minish Cap. It's always exciting when you keep unlocking new secrets in areas you've been to. The seashells/figurines however are garbage.
@@hist150project5 I can kinda get the appeal of the kinstones, but the fact that there's no way to track fusions you have and haven't done, the RNG of having the right shapes, and the reward being opened up forcing you to trek across the map for something that probably ends up being worthless, like one of the two types of currency, really makes the system tiring. I much prefer when you can unlock things in old areas when you've made a mental note of something you can't do yet and come back when you realize you now have an item or ability you can use. That, to me, is more exciting since you're having a realization that you can do something due to your abilities progressing, whereas something opening from a kinstone fusion feels more arbitrary, like "Oh, I know where that is. I guess I can do that now."
@@RedPandaSmash While many of the rewards were just rupees and stuff, some of them were good stuff like pieces of heart. Personally when I fuse a kinstone and I see a cave opening I get excited to find out what's in that cave. The kinstones as well as the shrinking mechanic really makes Minish Cap feel like the densest overworld in the series.
@Paradox I hated the Kinstones because sometimes your reward for fusing kinstones is more kinstones making it seem like one of those long trade quests where you go to different people with different items, to get more items to trade to get your reward at the end of the thread except the only item was kinstones. Kinstones that can be found literally everywhere. At least with long trade quests you get different items and your solving problems that the people in the quest have making it narrativly rewarding, but with kinstones you're finding a random NPC to smash kinstones together with no help on where they could be to open a secret, to get a kinstone, to mash together with a different NPC and rinse and repeat at nauseum until finally you get a reward. I would much rather have kinstones not exist and there be clues to get into secret areas or even just limit the kinstones to a smaller amount because at a certain point, it just feels like tedious padding. Not to mention, it seems like kinstones were a substitute for side quests. There are still side quests here and there, but most of them revolve around kinstones. Fusing them for the solutions rather than finding specific items or beating certain enemies. I like sidequests, especially if they have a plot to them. I feel like kinstones robbed us of interesting sidequests, but that's just my opinion.
As someone who grew up with The Minish Cap, this heart piece was the ONE thing that kept me from 100%ing. It wasn't until years later that I realized how to get, and as I still have my original physical copy and a GBA SP, but no charger, my file is stuck at 99% until further notice. Thank you for this video for highlighting the absolute torture that is this Heart Piece
You have more power than I. I'd probably feel compelled to finish that file cause I'm stupid lol
You can get a cheap charger or an alternative like the “gbxcart” or “gb operator” Anyway, amazing game and crazy heart piece.
I love Minish Cap but the fact that they put heart pieces in dungeons pissed me off
@@ChewyChicken589 I feel the same way about Twilight Princess as well!
As someone who played this game as like, a 9 year old..... I salute you for even beating the game, Vaati is NOT easy.
This is a peak example of an extremely difficult challenge exposing every single design flaw in the rest of the game.
A simple shell/rupee exchange could have helped so much, I don't know what they were thinking.
@@MrDrBoi And it would make finding shells in chests or in grass still valuable because it means you get more rupees to spend on other things. Or, if you are a person who values their sanity, still not do the quest because it would problably still be EXTREMELY tedious, just more economically stabalized.
@@MrDrBoi Better yet, make the game cost rupees instead of shells
In the switch version, this is much easier. Playing the treasure hunt game with the rewind feature makes grinding for rupees much easier.
Facts
You can also just rewind and slash your sword before pulling the lever in the figure shop to reset your RNG
Not to mention, you don't need 100 probability for the figurines either. You can just rewind if you don't get the right one
What's stopping you from just reloading a save?
I love features like this because personally I like to make sure I don't take too much advantage of it and beat something I should have lost to, but when it's stuff like this that is mind numbingly RNG based I feel no remorse for rewinding or loading a save on. Also I have no animosity whatsoever on people who reload saves where they lost in a fight or used too many resources, games are supposed to be fun and if that helps save their enjoyment then that's all that matters no point in being the CEO of fun gatekeeping lol
"Several frustrating decisions by Capcom" is a phrase many of us are quite accustomed to, though not usually in regards to a Zelda game.
Too true lol
Ok it wasn't just me who had to take a 2nd take there haha!!
Honestly, the thing with this heart piece, is that I always found the figurines so cute and was wondering what each new one was going to be and the little blurb that went along with it, so I would end up grinding those all out regardless.
When the point of the grind is the figurines themselves, then the heart piece becomes a nice surprise, rather than an arduous task. Like, "Oh, that was how!" and you don't really remember the grind much because you were getting that boost of enjoyment every figurine rather than just draaaaaagging oooooooon for the thing at the end.
Exactly this. I beat this quest, before beating the game, too, because I just love to collect and complete things. The figurines were adorable, and I loved the feeling of getting a new one by chance. It was very exciting to me. Plus I relished in reading all the descriptions for the lore and just the cuteness of it all. The heart piece wasn’t even really part of it for me. Lol It was just like, “oh yeah, right… oooh, what does this music box do!?!” I really didn’t need the extra piece of heart anyway, like he said. :P
If I ever make a game like I’ve been thinking to do for YEARS, I’m definitely going to include something like this. Just, you know… maybe not make it RNG based. More like in Wario Land where you just find hidden areas and chests, and the collectibles aren’t integral to anything; they’re just for people who like fun little secrets, like me.😊
I feel like even with that mentality, the Heart Piece being part of the reward is still a problem. It'd be better if there was no Heat Piece along with the Music Box. The music box fits as being the same type of reward as the figurines themselves: bonus content. Like modern legacy collections with unlockable galleries. Heart Pieces, on the other hand, are core game content.
I assume that this was the idea behind it. Honestly, if there wasn't a heart piece locked behind it, I'd probably really enjoy doing this just to get all the cool figurines. At least when I was younger and had more time... Growing up sucks.
I think also you're supposed to space out your figurine splurges between the main storyline, as you will frequently max out your shell count just from exploring and going into dungeons. Do a few Stockwell circuits between main story quests and you should fulfil the figurine sidequest by the time you're ready for Vaati.
I feel like you've finally found justice for childhood me. I never completed the quest and felt like I had to be missing something; there's no way it's this bad!
But no, it is that bad. Thank you for calling it out
I promise you did not miss out on anything good lol
I didn’t know that music room heart piece was tied to… this… No wonder I never 100% Minish Cap back as a kid. Think I got 18-19 heart containers but I assumed the figurines were it’s own thing not tied to HP.
@@dylpickle0192 it is own thing
I'd go as far as saying this is one of the worst ways to spend your free time in human history
It's probably worth mentioning that the probability and number of figurines available aren't constant either. Clearing a dungeon or major area expands the available figurines, which can also bump up the probability of getting a new one.
@@bartdudley8597 True, though strangely the game lets you claim the reward even if you don't unlock those last 6 or so so long as you haven't beaten the game yet. It's bizarre because the guy congratulates you for getting the Carlov medal and lets you into the house, yet you only get the medal if you get the last few later.
@@bartdudley8597 Hadn't heard of the soft lock issue myself. As for groups, maybe try the zelda subreddit?
Yes that's true, a good point I could've touched on.
Thankfully the source code for Minish Cap is almost done so when I play it again I will increase shop shells to 100 and maybe tweak the probability a little
@@MrDrBoi …I’m sorry, what? You can softlock this one? How exactly?
I've been doing some testing for this Piece of Heart with the rewind feature on NSO. The figurine you get is *sort of* determined when you place your bid. Assuming you go directly from the bidding window to the lever, then you will always get the same figurine you have unless you've put in enough shells to tip the scale to a figurine you don't have, which I tested by rewinding and upping the bet by a few shells every time.
However! If you can advance the RNG after placing that bid, you will get a different figurine. The way I've found is rolling, as the dust particles seem to use random checks of their own. Place a bid, pull the lever, and if it isn't a new one, rewind, roll, and do it again. It's still a lengthy process, but by spacing this out throughout the game, I've gotten that Piece of Heart before entering the final dungeon. (edit: *without* purchasing a single shell, just picking up chests and going back to town regularly)
As someone who loves Minish Cap, has 100%'d it without save states, and has played it at least ten times by now: if you have the option, absolutely use the tools at your disposal to expedite this Piece of Heart. Rewinds, save states, whatever. You don't have to prove anything to anyone and your time is more valuable than this. Games should be fun-do what it takes to make it so!
As a completionist who's also a big fan of minish cap I feel your pain...I hate it when I've got everything else there is to get but have to run around for hours while having 19 and 3/4 hearts it just feels off
Minish Cap doesn't even let you get to 100% once you get enough figures.
It's like a cruel joke lol
I hated the Tingle award for the Kinstone fusing.
I never got this heart piece, but even still, Minish Cap was definitely one of my favorite Zelda games growing up. The 600 rupees as part of the reward give me BOTW golden poop vibes lmao.
Same here, Minish Cap has always been one of my favorites!
Capcom did this is that korok seeds could exist later
Personally I prefer this to the korok turds. I thought it was fun collecting the little figures and seeing what was included, but the korok seeds are dead weight and boring once the inventory can no longer be upgraded.
@@MrDrBoi The Minish Cap honestly has to be the most underrated Zelda game. It is up there with the 3D Zelda games as one of the best.
I played something worse as a kid.
I had a Minecraft mod. I don’t remember what it was, just that I saw it looked cool, made sure I got it from a safe site, and played it. I never saw anyone else play it, and it only had a couple hundred downloads, which was small at the time. I was maybe 6 or 7 at the time. This mod, along with the new mobs, world, materials and such it added, added something that I’m sure was inspired by this exact game, for it was almost exactly the same. You collected a shard of some kind off of a new mob the mod added, at a 0.1% drop rate, and then you went to a special kind of villager in the mod dimension that would trade you a figurine for 1 or more shards. The chance scaled almost exactly the same as the one in this game does, and of course this was already frustrating, because the mob had this annoying gimmick that made fighting it take forever, and it only dropped 1 shard at a 0.1% chance, or 2 at a 0.01% chance. The mob’s spawn rate wasn’t so bad, and they usually spawned in groups of 3-5, but man, it was annoying.
And the worst part was that there wasn’t 130 figures. No.
There were over 930.
The item you got for completing the collection was necessary to unlock the boss of the mod dimension. NECESSARY. (It was this special pickaxe that you had to break a vine obsidian thing with to get into this hollow tree where you spawned the boss using a different item that was only a little annoying to get.)
I swear it must have been coded by a sadist because what the fuck.
I did end up finishing the grind when I was 8, but then my parents moved me across computers and the website the mod was initially hosted on got taken down (it was a private website, they had a page on curseforge or something like it but you couldn’t download it from there). I remember I posted a screenshot of me beating the boss in the “review” section of their website and it got removed for profanity or something. Fun times.
If you're playing this game with access to save states, you can use the chest mini game in Town to cheese large amounts of rupees. Otherwise, the method shown is the most efficient way to get this heart piece on an original cartridge.
Honestly with save states you may not even have to use that minigame because you could just keep reloading until you get a successful pull
@@MrDrBoi That didn’t work for me, it kept giving me the same duplicate figurine unless I put the probability up to 100%. But if you exit Carlov’s house and come back in after reloading the save state it will change the figuring
@@MrDrBoi nah you still have to reload for 130 times
@@Jvarls14 Walking around the shop and talking to Ezlo may manipulate the RNG, sometimes in your favor.
@@MrDrBoi While that is true, tbh it's likely just faster to keep abusing the minigame to just brute force the gacha mechanic to be 100% on every pull. that's how I did the completion, anyhow.
I’m also pretty sure that figurines become available as you encounter their bases in the game. Including the final boss. On top of the grind, the heart piece is unobtainable until after you’ve already beaten the game.
You're not entirely wrong
Figurines are only obtainable after seeing the character or enemy in the game and beating vaati unlocks 6 more, but if you get the 130 before defeating vaati it still counts as complete
@@KuroDHero Can confirm, as I obtained it before completing the game last night. The mirror shield, on the other hand...
This is like if Wind Waker's Pictograph Gallery quest was required for a heart piece, and thank god it wasn't.
It'd also be on par with OoT making you have to do the Biggoron's Sword side quest just to get a heart piece as well. There's a reason you don't, and I'm glad that's the case as well since it would be quite annoying in terms of heart piece collection. As much as that side quest is worth the time to get that sword just because if you get it before the Water Temple, it makes Dark Link a really easy mini boss fight.
For me, the most annoying thing is the amount of time it takes to do a single pull. The most efficient way to spend shells, probability wise, is to spend them one at a time. Without exception. Even at a low base probability, let's say 5%, spending two shells individually will get you a 0.95^2 chance of failure, or about 90.25% chance you won't get a new figure with the two shells. But spending those the two shells at once gets you a 94% chance of failure, because each shell gets you an additional 1% chance ish.
If you could do like, 10 individual single shell pulls at once or something, this quest wouldn't be nearly as painful. Using that same 5% base success chance as an example, doing 10 individual pulls with 10 shells will have about a 60% chance to not get a new figurine. If they made the most efficient shell spending procedure less tedious by letting you pull multiple at once, the amount of shells you get would likely be sufficient and there'd be no need to grind them at all.
Yup. There should’ve been a counter mechanism that holds a set amount of shells on it, where every time you pull it spends the amount of shells on the counter, with varying odds based on what you already own. It could even further save time by letting you choose to watch the animation and see the item. All it needs to do is say “NEW” or “duplicate” and let you press a button to see what it is.
You also get a 5 rupee refund for each duplicate pull. I can't say it will be faster for sure, but it's definitely simpler
Game theory wise, you do want to spend more shells once you get down to the last few figurines because the shell currency becomes worthless at 0 figurines. For instance, if you have 5 figures left and 600 shells, you're better off maxing out your odds.
I consider the figurines to be a reward on their own, it's just that a heart piece isn't a satisfying reward for how extensive the quest is. It warrants at least a sword upgrade which would also validate locking the completion of the quest until later in the game since a major facet of the story revolves around making the picori blade stronger. If the reward was just a final optional sword upgrade that you could only obtain after getting every other upgrade then it would be completely acceptable.
I'd agree with that if Minish Cap had more stuff for you to do in the post game. Honestly, I dont know if there is any end reward that could justify this quest the more I think about it. The figurines should be the reward, but at least to me, they are just not satisfying enough in MC.
Honestly, I don't know why I do this quest on every playthrough. Especially since I always wait until the end of the game to start the grind. Sure, it takes a few hours, but I never had to grind for shells more than twice, and even then my wallet would be maxed out from Carlov's refunds, meaning I would only have to grind for maybe 300 at a time. I feel like the only thing that makes the quest unbearable is how hard it is to remember to go back there frequently.
"The legend of Zelda, Minish cap, is one of the most underrated Zelda games of all time"
Man, you just made my heart happy.
One of the best parts of making this video has been seeing all the love for Minish Cap that I didn't know was out there. Definitely my favorite GBA game!
@@MrDrBoi Botw graphics spoiled me but Im glad Im playing all the zelda games for the first time, some of these older games are really challegning but fun.
You know it’s funny because the other day I rolled a figure for the first time and then the 2nd had a 98% chance of it being something else, but I still ended up getting the exact same one as the first time 🙃
That's rough buddy.
We call this "gamer's luck syndrome"
Mobile Gacha game logic
You got that Fire Emblem luck
Yoo same. I wonder if it's hard coded to miss if you dont up your ante on the second pull?
I'm sitting here racking my brain thinking of what heart piece is the worst and nothing is coming to mind and then I see the video swap to Minish Cap footage and I'm like "OH YEAH!"
This heart piece: a completionist’s nightmare
The 1000 Koroks in TotK: “Finally, a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary!”
There's like a million Koroks in BotW too lol. It's one of the main reasons people never usually do 100% runs of either BotW or TotK, because you just know just the Korok hunting is gonna take over a whole day (24h) on top of the other stuff you have to do. 😛
A few things I recently discovered... You'll need to get extra 6 figurines if you go there after beating the game... also! I played this with the wiiU meaning you can save state. This allows you to play the treasure game and get rupees faster, but still took almost 3 full streams to get this heart piece. You can also use save state to redo figurine pulls. And this still barely helps... this for sure is the worse heart piece
Oh and now that this is on the switch, I'm sure save state will help there too
Very true, I forgot to mention you have to get those extra 6 after the game is done! Which obviously just makes things worse lol
And I agree save states help, but it's definitely a band-aid for a bullet wound type situation. I played on GCN with the Gameboy Player Unfortunately, so I had to tough it out!
I don't remember whether I actually ended up collecting the heart piece, but I do remember collecting all the figurines, simply for the joy of collecting. Yes, it was tedious, but that's the kind of thing you do when you're young.
YT recommended me this video at the right time. I was planning on going through a completing a few Zelda games. Already did Ocarina and Majora, starting Link Between Worlds, and was going to play Minish Cap next. Watching this, I think I'll just settle for 99% instead of 100%.
There’s a lot of things in some games that just aren’t worth completing: Korok seeds in BotW, figurines in TMC, photographs in TWW, etc.
Also, keep in mind that A Link Between World’s street pass features may be difficult to complete unless you have a second 3DS.
i just recently played this game for the first time and decided to 100% complete this. this quest took me roughly 6-8 hours it was insane
I know, it's like you could complete all the temples in that same amount of time.
I remember completing this quest as a child and vibing out to the granophone all the time. I don't remember the grind at all, I either blocked it out or found an incredible method for figurine collection. I'm pretty sure my goal when spending shells was to get the chance to about 67% or so, in my child brain that seemed more efficient.
I think I settled on around 70% eventually
I guess divide the probability with the shell cost to get the expected number of figurines per shells, then maximize this ratio.
I tend to find as a kid, you have way way more patience and dedication when it comes to games. So you probably just grinded but didn’t think much of it
One of the many great things about BoW is the fact that your "heart piece" is obtained through a mini-dungeon, and that thanks to the open-world approach, you can virtually drop to zero the amount of time spent backtracking. In llder Zeldas, collecting heart pieces was a pain in the ass, to be honest; it was all about time, rarely about skill.
I've played through and beaten Minish Cap multiple times, but I've only completed the figurine collection once or twice. My preferred method for getting shells was always farming big 20s with Rupee Picolyte and Whirlwind Sword, then buying shells from the store until full.
This _really_ isn't a very fun sidequest to do.
This sidequest was where I bowed to the GameShark; just used an Infinite Shells code after a while because I'd already been grinding for six hours and only had 30 figurines. Even with infinite shells I only seemed to get a new one every 20-ish pulls (luck and RNG have NEVER been on my side) but at least I didn't drive myself insane finishing it out.
@@KamenRiderGumo ...but if you had infinite shells, couldn't you bet an mount that would give you 100 % probability of a new figurine each time?
Darn, I really liked the figurine shop stuff back when Minish Cap came out. I was a fan of probabilities, so strategizing the most efficient use of shells each time I came back to town was a highlight instead of a slog. I do remember some post-game grinding for shells, but it was mostly mixed in with other sidequests so it never got that frustrating for me, either.
Same
Same
That's last bit is what people don't really realize about quests like this or even the triforce quest in wind waker and why the complaints frustrate me, though I realize I may be alone with the latter.
In any case these quests are not really designed to be done all at once, they were designed to be done while you were busy wrapping up other things. It's not the devs' fault that players would apparently rather do these things all at once and get annoyed at it rather than go "oh hey, I'll be doing sidequests anyways so I should just take my time and grab these as I go." Like yeah you can argue that it's annoying for challenge runs and such that don't do the sidequests and I get that but it's not the devs' job to cater to that, it never has been and it never will be.
It's the devs job to make the game fun and this isn't fun.
Do the figurines actually do anything before you have 100% of them though? From this video it seems like the entire mechanic is just for that heart piece
It's absolutely baffling that each shell only raises the probability by 1%, since that makes it never worth it to use shells as your odds will always be lower than if you rolled one at a time repeatedly (if spending 1 shell gives you a 10% chance, then two rolls at 10% will be better than one roll at 11%). Thus the only reason to use more shells is to have to watch the animation fewer times, so the real choice here is would you rather grind or watch a cutscene over and over? So bizarre.
Dude, I literally just finished this game-and this quest-yesterday. And I literally farmed the last 1200 shells with that rupee picolyte technique in that exact spot.
My condolences. Hope you enjoyed Minish Cap otherwise!
Savestates and Rupee gambling game go brr!
When I saw the title of this video I knew exactly where it was going. Literally just finished Minish Cap and was curious how to get that heart piece, looked it up, and said helllll no! Great video tho man!
Thanks!
I played through Minish Cap, this definitely was a heart piece I ignored. The figurine collection was hell.
This was definitely the hardest heart piece to get. Still felt accomplished to 100% complete the game.
I wish I didn't get such a dopamine hit from getting 100% because while I agree, this heart piece just sucks lol
I know I used to do this, on most of my playthroughs of Minish Cap. That means I don't even know how many times I've suffered in Carlov's room. It's been years, yet I'm totally working on it on Switch to see if it's better or worse than I remember.
What I remember is that I used to spend shells to get to 51%, and then later on to get 26%. In addition to the mental kink of making the odds slightly better by adding 1% to these numbers, my thinking would always be that if you are spending 3, 4, 5, and then eventually 10, 11, 12 shells on 26%, that's way more efficient and less wasteful than spending 25 more for half chance, and over SEVENTY MORE for max chance. 26% is also "good enough" in the sense that you'll hopefully keep getting figures every minute or two.
But I always hated that you are forced to spend low numbers of shells on mediocre odds because better odds are mostly too expensive to be worth it, which will indeed eventually fuck up your file, leaving you no option but to slowly grind.
It's such a BS trap and design mechanic that feels like it wants to trick players and mess with their brains. You highlighted this incredibly well in this video, which is cathartic after all these years.
Anyway I'll be back once I have the heart piece on Switch and report how it went. :P
Hopefully with save states it goes a little better this time around!
And rewinds
It's like if they took the MonoMachine from the Danganronpa games, and made getting all of the presents a requirement.
Dear God, the _monsters._
I had 6 mysterious shells left and 1 figurine left and had basically no way of getting anymore, so i used all 6 and somehow got the last one 😂
Nice!
How would you not have a way to get more shells?
@@Purble
Maybe he had terminal cancer.
@@Purble I was already basically done with the game before I started using shells for that heart piece. I already opened all of the chests with shells in them and the only other way to get them for me was the town shop. But they’re expensive for only 30 shells.
I go about this one in the best/worst way possible. I had to look at it mathematically to see what the most efficient way to go about it was, and it was to go 1 shell at a time every time. Even ignoring the rupees you get for duplicates, it is just the best way to spend to least amount of shells on average. I also did not what to do that when it was at 1%, so I just picked the lowest percent that I could handle, which was about 10%. Painful, but it was somehow less painful then the constant farming runs
If you're optimizing for shells then it's ideal to only spend 1 per roll. But if you're optimizing for speed then it's probably worth it to spend slightly more than that per roll, at least once you're getting down to the low probabilities. However the exact amount to spend would be really hard to calculate* since it depends on how long the animation for each attempt is as well as how long it takes you to grind out more shells. My gut says that your 10% pick is probably pretty close, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's more like 5%.
*Though I'm sure the 100% speedrunners have figured it out, unless there's a way to glitch to the heart piece another way.
I remember when I was about 10 years old just sitting on my SP for hours every day just farming shells and trading them in, it was almost gambling lol, was for sure a "what have I been doing this whole time" moment
The absolute fastest way is not to get them as you progress the story, but to outright avoid mysterious shells until the end.
At the end of the game the entire collection is available, which does help stretch out that early high probability period. You still end up having to do the grind, but you'll start the grind much later in the collection.
Having recently finished Minish Cap for the first time in my life, I couldn't bother to collect that last heart piece lmao, the figurine mechanic was too much of a hassle for me to spend time to get it. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it way too time consuming
Don't blame you!
What makes it worse is that if you collect them all before fighting the final boss, you actually miss out on his figurine, meaning you have to actually beat the game first before you can get that grind to %100.
Found that out the hard way.
I remember grinding shells for pulls when I was younger. I got to a point where if I got a duplicate, I turned the game off to try again. The main reason why I tried getting all the trophies was because I'm a completionist. I don't think I even knew it would open the house for the heart piece lol. I just happened to find it open one day and figured it was something I unlocked way earlier without realizing.
9:19 Haha, that 20-rupee hole next to Link's front door is how I did this when I was younger. What a mind-numbing time sink.
Yeah, even if it might be faster it's to brain dead to be a viable option for me haha
I would watch a video going over every worst heart container/piece for each Zelda game.
Good idea!
This is how I’d sort it
Ocarina of time- fishing
Majoras mask- octorock shooting, or that goron challenge on the moon
The wind waker- battleship board game, or when you had to hit the sword trainer 500 times
Twilight Princess- also fishing
Skyward sword- minecart race
Breath of the wild- trial of the sword (don’t remember if it gave a heart piece but it was definitely the worst side quest)
And then for the 2d games, I can’t name any because I’ve never played a 2d Zelda game
"Twilight Princess- also fishing." That's wrong. You don't need to do fishing to get any Heart Pieces in Twilight Princess. That Heart Piece at the Fishing Hole can be gotten by swimming to it and using Clawshot or Boomerang.
@@gamewizard2008 okay well thanks for letting me know lol. I don’t remember the heart pieces in twilight Princess that well because I thought they were the easiest of any Zelda game, but if I had to pick another hardest it would be that one you have to get with a boomerang on hyrule field leaving Faron woods, since it’s so hidden
@@brendanreilly4675 Damn I really liked BOTW trial of the sword, even though it was pretty hard I thought it was very challenging and fun.
But anyway, the trial of the sword doesn't give a heart piece, it makes your master sword stronger. In BOTW you can only get heart pieces either by completing 4 shrines or by killing one of the 4 bosses.
I try to keep the probability at around 70-80%, this allows me to get a new figurine almost every time without having to spend too many shells. And i dunk all the shells on the final 10 or 20 figurines. But i have to do it as soon as i can access the shop to make sure i won't waste a single shell.
If you don't value your time, using 1 shell at a time is mathematically the best. For the rest of us, your method is pretty good
I actually did this in autumn 2021 and didn't even think people didn't like it. I didn't use the bottle things, as I didn't really know about them but I grinded the shells from that spesific Hyrule field spot. It took me few days but it was so worth it. For me I mean. I wasn't doing it to get a heart piece. I just wanted all of the figurines hahaha!
Same! I'm a completionist, I love these kind of collections, I completed the figurines in Wind Waker as well xD
Getting the shells directly still seems faster than the rupies. Reason being the time for receival is almost the same, but if you get the shells directly you don't have to waste the buying time. Due to being able to nonstop farm to the number you want it seems a lot faster that way and probably more engaging.
With the bottles. =3
I did do this as a kid actually lol. Not sure if I would ever do it again...another good candidate for worst Heart Piece in history is the one in the Link's Awakening Switch remake you get from Dampe's dungeon creation thing. Like man you gotta work for that one
What is it with Dampe and terrible pieces of heart in Zelda games lol
Getting Dampe's bottle in Majora's Mask is also a pain in the butt since it needs to be done at night on the 3rd day and he walks slower than a glacier.
@@porkeyminch8044 I absolutely hate getting that bottle!
My main gripe about collecting the figurines is that I have to go through the dialogue explaining that more shells will increase the odds EVERY TIME...
As soon as this was apparent that this heart peace is obtained because of some sort of gachapon system, I knew I was in for something horrendous! Makes me happy I rarely go for 100% completion!
I had completely forgotten how terrifying this heart piece was. your video revived old traumas
I finished this game around 5 times in my life and I always dropped that heart piece quest because the closer you are to completing the collection the more harder it gets, until you run out of energy to do it. Now watching this makes me want to try that strategy, so I think after totk I'll go start a new run of Minish Cap, still my favorite Zelda!
I'll add, the length of this quest is like more than the main quest and all side quests combined. There's no reward in the game that could be worth that. Oh yeah I know one that is: That precious 100% completion!
I've got a lot of fond memories looking at all the different figurines and learning their names. Minish Cap actually helped my young child brain solve a puzzle in a separate game, Link's Awakening, in which you had to defeat enemies in a named order but I didn't know their names. Keese, Pol's Voice, Stalfos, still have it memorized.
That is the puzzle that stumped me for a long time as a child when it first came out on the game boy. For the 2nd dungeon Boss Key if I remember correctly. 2 years later, I came back and figured out what I needed to do and 100% completed the game. Also, at the time I remembered it as bat, bunny hat, and hopping skelly.
@@Zakusa13 I would absolutely love to peer into the minds of the folks who came up with the names. I'm sure it's a mixture of Japanese folklore reference and translation issues, but "Pol's Voice" still confuses me
@@VivaSativaMusic So I did some quick research, and according to what I found, the name "Pols Voice" is unknown in origin. I even tried to look up any slight mistranslation of the name "Pols", and nothing came up. The "Voice" part, though, is likely a reference to their appearance and weakness to sound, normally shouting, in the original Japanese Legend of Zelda. For the Famicom (what our NES is based on) the controller had a microphone, and in the japan release, making sound into the microphone caused all Pols Voice on screen to be instantly defeated.
This video is correct. Having only played an hour or so of Minish Cap, and never having had to do this sidequest, even I can see the repulsively grindy nature of this quest.
And I'm allergic to grinding.
I feel like this quest would actually just be better without including the Heart Piece as part of the reward. The figurines and music box are clearly within the realm of bonus content, while Heart Pieces are core game content. This quest goes beyond the scope of core game completion, and is more like unlocking art galleries in legacy collections from modern Capcom design.
I loved this game so much as a kid. I didn't mind grinding for shells, I remember I was wishing for there to be more figurines :D
A true example of it’s all perspective. If you go the whole time looking forward to more figurines rather than the one heart piece, sounds like you’ll have a much more tolerable time. Problem there is the figurines serve absolutely no purpose other than that. Kinda like figurines irl but hey.
hey with figurines irl you can pose them and they are a physical thing to look at and see all the detail so they serve an aesthetic purpose
which is the not the same as no purpose
I have a feeling that this side quest was intentionally set this way to deter speed-running. It also feels like they [Capcom] wanted to encourage playing this game for longer periods of time, considering the content Minish Cap has going for it. Thanks for this video, I can now play this game rightly :)
Bro had to flex at the end, mad respect though lmao
I don't really remember being frustrated by this one. I 100% the minish cap and honestly it was just so much fun the whole way through. Still my favourite zelda game!
Great topic for a video. I’ve been playing Minish Cap for the first time and have been really impressed with how much of the traditional Zelda formula has been retained on the GBA, but after seeing this video it is clear to me just how unnecessarily complicated it is to get that heart piece. It feels as if the developers intentionally made it as tedious and grueling as possible to simply mess with the player. Thanks for explaining the best way you found to get that heart piece and the amount of time you’ve saved me trying to get it myself.
Thanks! Yeah if you do go for it, just make sure you're doing it throughout the game otherwise it's just not worth it whatsoever lol. But Minish Cap otherwise is great and super underrated, so I hope you're enjoying!
I’m a big completionist for any game I really get into, especially Zelda games, but there is no way in hell I would ever bother with this. Sorry, no 100% for me for Minish if I ever do play it.
The system absolutely reminds me of the Monocoin system in the Danganronpa games. Same sorta deal, same grind to get them, same probability decreases the more of the collection you complete.
Haven't played those games, but sounds terrible lol
Ah, Danganronpa… Nothing like looking up which classmate has the “extra monocoins” skill to max their friendship and then fast forward whatever trial is fastest to net the max amount of monocoins and ‘cheat’ the gacha system. Still easier than getting all of Monomi’s side game drops in DR2 and all the student cards in DRV3, but still annoying.
This is like if OG windwaker made the figurine collection there mandatory for a piece of heart. Just like here, it would be impossible to get it until pretty much postgame or NG+. If minish cap ever gets a remake, this is probably the one quest that will be drastically cut down. Maybe you get the heart piece after 50 figurine. Also, Nintendocaprisun just got to finding the shop in his LP. He got a dupe with a 98% probability on his third pull.
I really hope it is fixed if they ever remake this game. Also poor NCS, that's rough!
What's interesting about this is the heart piece probably isn't even the point of the side quest. For a lot of people, there's a a sense of accomplishment from the act of collecting and just gathering the figurines is enough for them. Many of these types also probably would have done it just for the sake of completion and value knowing they're in the minority out of those who would even attempt it. Sort of like getting all the custom moves in Smash 4 or completing the pokedex in most pokemon games or even just getting all of the achievements in any game. The real issue here is they tied it to the heart piece making it seem like the value of the hard work wasn't the grind itself but the stupid health increment you don't need.
Absolutely agree, it's why I understand why some people like collecting figurines. But if you just want the heart piece, it frames the whole thing in a totally different light.
I absolutely love this content, and I also had no idea the real struggle for this heart piece so thank you for making this!
Thank you! Glad you enjoy it!
When you mentioned the minish cap, I was a bit confused, because that is one of the few zelda game's I've 100%ed
Then the memories flooded back when you said "figurine set"
Haha yeah it's easy to block from your memory
I can see how this might be annoying for speedrunning completionists, but as a kid on a casual playthrough, collecting the figurines was my favourite part of one of my favourite Zelda games. I know I got them all in the end, but I don't think I ever even knew that I unlocked that room for doing so. The figurines were their own cute reward.
After that example of how it would take 43 minutes in a perfect scenario I was expecting you would show us the math with the total shells available in chests and the shell requirements to get everything with 100% probability and the aproximate time to do it all in the end, but there wasn't any of that :(
Honestly I tried! I'm just not that good at math lol
@@MrDrBoi All good bro, enjoyed the video nonetheless
Even with perfect RNG, the current world record is 35 minutes.
Ironically, the reason I haven't managed to 100% isn't the figurine heart piece, I got that one. It's the Cucco minigame :|
That minigame is the hardest thing in the game.
Before I watch the entire video and let myself get caught in nostalgia, I barely remember the gacha heart but I know that I 100% that game and it's still been one of the only games I ever completely finished. I'm glad that the Minish Cap gets some spotlight! ❤
It took me years as a kid to complete the collection. I didn't even know it was related to the locked shop, I just wanted to see every figure and complete it.
Great video as usual! I've played Minish Cap during my childhood and even went back to finally finish it on my GBA SP 4 years ago. With that said, for some reason I've never actually linked the connexion between the figurine gamble shop with this one heart piece in that house, and since I didn't actually remember to search for it after finishing the main game (despite being a completionist as well), I now feel lucky that I did never get to know about it, because I know well enough how stubborn I would be in order to get it at that period. I can really see this being a remarkable experience for you, even so in a bad way (it would totally be for me, at least).
Great writing and pacing, kept me entertained the whole way through. I see a lot of potential in your channel, so I will make sure to share this with some of my friends, thank you!
Thanks so much! And yeah be glad you didn't know about it, I'm sure your Minish Cap experience was better because of it.
A really weird one is in OoT, the one by the tree left of hyrule castle in which you have to place a bomb on the ground right next to a random tree which opens up a hole to a heart piece… With absolutely no hint or mark, you just wouldn’t be able to find it without a guide and the first person to find it must’ve just been bored and threw bombs all over hyrule field. Similarly if you place a bomb in the middle of the square fence outside Lake Hylia there’s another heart piece.
The Stone of Agony, from 20 Skulltula tokens, was how you found hidden grottos. It would allow the N64 Rumple Pak to activate when near hidden grottos. Of course, if you didn't have a Rumble Pak, you would have needed external information to find them.
For similar items in other games that don't have an in-game hint to find them, I feel like literal children would have a higher chance to find them than a casual player due to their tendency to do random shit such as, for example, throwing bombs all over hyrule field.
Oh wow! I've lost count of how many times I've played Minish Cap, but on my latest playthrough after it dropped on NSO I finally decided to go for it. That thing had been taunting me for 18 years and it felt so good to finally nab it.
Doing Dodoh’s flying through the rings and land on the pink and black space is the most hardest Piece of Heart in Zelda: Skyward Sword.
I have done that minigame so many times that I can actually do that first try and get the 500 rupees
useful tip i've learnt on reading about it: it will be 3/4ths a counterclockwise rotation I believe if you get all the rings, so once you pass that last ring to get 10x, try and get to the proper position, and course correct at end if you need, it seems to have helped me get better at it, using that strategy
I'll be honest, until seeing this video, I never actually found out what those shells where for. They were useless for me
I personally found this the most memorable one as a child, I had the most fun collecting the figurines.
Could you turn the game off if you ever got a bad roll?
@@thespicehoarder yep, I did it
@@thespicehoarder Well yeah you can do that but it will take so much longer having to restart the game for every bad roll... Might be worth it for the last few though
I never knew that this is how you were supposed to unlock the music house. On my totally-legit copy, it was just a random unlocked door and I always wondered why.
A shortcut for this if you have the virtual console version is to go into the treasure shop(recommend the 3 chest one) and before choosing a chest, create a restore point, and if you get it wrong, load the restore point and choose the correct chest. Then, go to the shop and buy the seashells, making the process a lot quicker. Hope this helps.
I had forgotten about this quest until this video. I don’t remember how I had the patience to complete it when I did, but I didn’t even sit down and grind like how you did. I just genuinely kept finding them. I had to do it over weeks and weeks, absolutely unreal
The things we will do as kids with endless amounts of free time
Imagine a quest like this in a brutal game like Link to the past, where collecting hearts pieces is almost not optional due to how hard and unforgiving the game can be.
That's why LttP is a top 3 Zelda, no bs but still challenging.
Alttp is brutal, lol? Hardly
@@hugostiglitz6823 agreed, I'm an inexperienced zelda player and i beat it on my snes when i was a younger
@@hugostiglitz6823 Compared to later games, LTTP is definitely more challenging and can at times be pretty brutal compare to most of the later entries in the series. I can confidently go through an entire playthrough of OoT (and pretty much every zelda game after that) without using fairies or potions and without collecting heart pieces. Hell, even the three heart challenge isn't as hard as it is in Lttp. I think the reason for this is because Lttp has a rather large variety of enemies that can deal massive amounts of damage in a rapid succession. A great example are the Ice creatures in the Ice Palace. They deal 5 hearts of damage without the blue mail and can kill you so quickly that the blue mail that you get from the same dungeon is an absolute must. This is also before Nintendo changed the heart system to where each heart was had four quarters instead of it just being two halves.
as someone who 100% minish cap 3 times (im probably masochist) the best way to grind rupees is ironically the treasure game shop, even being a lottery hitting 4 chests(or 3 chest if you go the one with 3 chest) and leaving is easier and less time consuming than farming with picolytes
Its funny because as a kid the mindless grind was part of the fun, especially when your parents only bought one game for you once in a while and you had to make due with what you got. I have fond memories of grinding rupees and getting more and more unique figurines, though im sure i wouldn't have the patience for it today.
Yah as kids with lots of free time and limited amount of games, these mindless challenges were actualy really entertaining.
Couldn’t agree more. I vaguely remember doing this too, and I have nothing but fond memories haha.
For a second I expected it to be that one you get in twilight princess by cutting open that boar that’s being cooked by the bokoblins at gerudo desert. Don’t know why I thought that, probably because it had TP Link in the thumbnail
That is definitely a sneaky, easy-to-miss piece of heart!
@@MrDrBoi For real! I _accidentallly_ got it because I couldn't sneak properly, the enemies saw me and we fought there...
THERE'S A HEARTPIECE IN THAT BOAR?!
Yep people get nostalgic for old games and design and forget a lot of the pointless grinds that existed. Nowadays the grinds still suck but at least you get an achievement i guess.
This video was very cathartic for me, I got minish cap when it launched and when I was a little older beat it and got every heart container without a guide... EXCEPT for this one! It's legit the last heart piece I need and I did not realize it was this tedious to get, didn't even realize the figurines were tied to it or that guy sitting outside.