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Don’t Dally in Dealing with Zelda’s Tarrey Town Side-Quest

Amongst all the ruin in ‘Breath of the Wild’, take time out for some rebuilding, and romance.

I'm suffering from a kind of completion anxiety. You've probably felt the same one, a few times over the years. When you're close to the end of a game that's been the best ride, but you're not ready to get off just yet. That's me and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. For the past month, I've put in the hours, slowly transforming my Link from reborn runt to legendary hero, more than capable—I think—of sealing the darkness for the nth time.

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So, I'm sweeping up the side quests I have left—the optional extras that I've activated over the past 80-plus hours but haven't totally ticked off just yet. Helping a pair of sisters with a dragonfly dilemma, done. Grabbing five frogs for a Zora kid who can't be bothered to find them for himself, finished. Seeking out hidden shrines by following statues in the desert and standing in just the right place, at the right time, on top of a mountain: solved. The game's three mazes, mastered. But my favorite of all of these you-can-easily-miss-them asides is Tarrey Town—a settlement in the northeast of the map that isn't there at all when you begin proceedings.

Naturally, there are some spoilers below.

Breath of the Wild's core objective is elementary: eliminate Ganon. It's been much the same story for so many Zelda games past, though few are so explicit with their instructions from the very beginning. And between arising in the Shrine of Resurrection and ultimately dispatching the pig-faced big-bad, Link will eliminate countless foes. Tens of hundreds of Bokoblins will fall to his blade, their horns and guts mixed into elixirs or sold for disguises at Kilton's shop. Countless keese will flap into his face only to be one-shotted into collectible eyeballs and wings. Untold numbers of Yiga Clan (would-be) assassins will lose their bananas.

For a game that's often a delightfully leisurely experience, outside of boss battles and a few pulse-raising set-pieces, Breath of the Wild has one hell of an appetite for destruction. But the Tarrey Town side-quest is something else—a welcome break from the fight, an hour or so to simply work towards something brilliant, to bring life back to a land that is so very scarred by ruin.

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All artwork and screenshots courtesy of Nintendo.

You might have already bought yourself a house, in Hateno Village. You might have decked it out to a fine finish, furniture and all. You'll do all this through interacting with the builder Bolson, a pink-panted chap who's happy to rest beside the fire outside your pad long after work's completed. It's only through finishing Tarrey Town that you'll move him, and his colleague Karson, on. And he'll have pointed the way to it, earlier in the game—he says he's sending another of his workers, Hudson, north, to the Akkala region.

I'm not about to wade into walkthrough proper waters, but if you look on your map, at the Akkala area, just south-west of the spiral beach, you'll see a circular inland island, connected to the mainland by a thin causeway. That's where Tarrey Town will spring up, from next to nothing. Head there and you'll meet Hudson, who spends the next half-dozen interactions or so giving you instructions on how to help him construct his town. He needs wood—lots and lots of wood. He also needs the assistance of a select team of workers, from across the game's various races—with the catch that everyone's name must end in "son".

Related, on Waypoint: 'Breath of the Wild' is the Zelda Adventure I've Always Wanted

And off you go, following his not-exactly-subtle hints to find the relevant talents. It's a prolonged fetch quest, basically, but the pay-off is wonderful. Not only have you helped to build a whole new town by the end of the exercise, and got yourself some very precious stones as a prize, but Hudson's fallen in love with one of the people you convinced to join his team. Which leads to a wonderful scene of lighthearted humor whereby a marriage ceremony is temporarily interrupted by a curious addition to the traditional vows, and discussion of building industry "compliance".

(I'd love to post a screenshot or two here, as I've taken enough, but damn the Switch's sharing functionality isn't great, is it? Is it asking too much to copy your snaps onto a USB? Evidently, yes.)

Everyone who made the journey from old homes across the world settles into Tarrey happily enough—the priest who you bring in to perform the wedding sets up an inn, which Link can stay in for free. But there's more. If you've sought out the Hylian Shield, the strongest in the game, and unfortunately lost it (despite its great durability, it can be destroyed), it's only in Tarrey Town, thanks to a particularly well-stocked rooftop merchant (look for the donkey), that you can buy it back. The same stall also sells all manner of armor items, many of which you can only otherwise pick up in Shrines. Nice.

Tarrey is absolutely the kind of one-stop shop for arrows, ore, armor and some shut-eye that your average Zelda player needs. So, don't delay (as I did) when the opportunity to pursue it presents itself. Not that you're encouraged to stop long in the town itself, if Ganon's still out there—"You don't have the luxury of tarrying here," Hudson will tell you, once happily married. Oh, puns, LOL. But yeah, I suppose I should finish this damn thing. Not that I want to. Or need to—as I've only just learned about shooting stars. Man, this game, it just keeps on giving.

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