#goddessofsecrecy

Where should I start with the Calamity Quintet++?

Do you care about the Quintet's timeline?

Yes -> Goddess of Secrecy

No -> Long or Really Long?

Long or Really Long?

Really Long -> Mark of a Hero (Try On Your Mark for a sample!)

Long -> Interested in non-fantasy?

Can it be short? -> Try the EH wiki!

Interested in non-fantasy?

Sure! -> What kind of tech?

Let's stick to the classics -> Serious or whimsy?

What kind of tech?

Let's Play a Game -> Restoration Age

Far, Far Away -> Trail of the Galaxy

Serious or whimsy?

Serious! -> Younger or order Heroes?

Whimsy! -> Kissing or cooking?

Younger or older heroes?

Kid heroes! -> Cinders of Life

Heroes with kids! -> Day After Destiny

Kissing or cooking?

Let's Eat! -> A Taste for Adventure

Concepting

I talked a lot about in a post I made on MoaH's dungeon design what I think the point of LoZ dungeons should serve as but I'll sum it up here. A dungeon has three goals narratively:

Advancing a local/character plot

Advancing a regional threat arc

Advancing the grand quest arc

If you want a really good example of this in games, Dragon Roost Caverns from WW is a prime example. I talk about it in the linked post above as well.

Starting your own, I recommend picking two of three things before you get into it:

An aesthetic

A boss and/or mini boss

The dungeon's relic

These things should inform each other and are the barest place to start before design. The aesthetic will generally decide the vibe of exploration, while the bosses determine the means of combat and likely your minions throughout the rest of the dungeon. The relic will engage with both as a puzzle solution. And typically if you can figure out two, the third will follow after.

Debatably, dungeons through an original legend should be concepts to connect together as a series of trials to build your hero up towards their final fight. It also depends on if you want to imply whether the dungeon order is linear or not how that will turn out. Having solutions only focused on general mechanics/exploration can lean more open world, while puzzle solutions that use focus on items or require items from previous dungeons will lean towards a linear narrative. Both are valid, but it's good to decide on one or the other before making a dungeon list and order.

Designing

I cannot emphasize enough in this step, but make maps. They don't have to be detailed maps, but figure out your spatial stuff. I wrote all of GoS without any maps and boy, let me tell you. The jump to having them for MoaH was night and day.

Generally, the recommendation here is to look at TTRPG dungeon design or escape rooms. If you got stuck doing this puzzle with other people/reliant on other people's pacing, what would be enjoyable to follow? Because unlike in the games where you are the player, in books, you're limited to the pace of the POV character.

There is also the limitation in writing of the reader's imagination. Complex puzzles are great and all in games, describing it in a way people can imagine is harder. Without the visual and interactive elements of games, easier puzzles are better because most people can picture the basics. As anyone who has played a TTRPG before can tell you, a puzzle for a 3rd grader will absolutely stump an adult if the setting or size of the puzzle makes them miss the important elements of it. You do not need to design complex traps and puzzles (in fact it will often go poorly).

This is also where that aesthetic decision can help. A relatively simple dungeon can absolutely be carried by an interesting location. Are there lore drops to be found in the dungeon? Is it just a cool space to explore? Is the means of backtracking post-relic something the reader can piece through as the character(s) explore it the first time? There should be hints on how these aspects will link together before the end.

I will get into this with relics as well, but it's a good idea to keep an inventory of your character(s)'s abilities before going in. Is your hero traveling alone? How many relics do they have? What resources did they bring into the dungeon? This can help inform solutions too by eliminating what your hero doesn't have access to.

Writing

Pick a pace of chapters. There's a reason that dungeons are consistent in their chapter length for GoS & MoaH. They're aimed to set the tone for how long the dungeon should feel. I'm going to use both as examples for outlining everything I haven't already said in previous sections.

GoS has two types of dungeons: Goddess Temples and Sage Dungeons. The Goddess Temples were designed to be shorter "tutorial" dungeons, the formula being 2 Dungeon Chapters + Mini Boss + 2 DC + Boss. Compared to the Sage Dungeons, which were 3 DC + MB + 3 DC + B. The Sage Dungeons also typically got a Mini Dungeon and Mini Boss to reach the dungeon itself.

The goal of this was to suggest size and difficulty. GoS was meant to parallel OoT in a lot of ways, the Convergence timeline event to the "Divergence" event that was the timeline split. So the Goddess-Sage split is meant to mirror the Child-Adult dungeon split. Once GoS!Link pulls the Master Sword, things got harder, the challenge leveled up, dungeons got longer and more complicated.

Conversely, MoaH's dungeon design was based around BOTW/TOTK and my general response to it. MoaH's dungeons are designed around the idea of having a series of shrines that build to a larger dungeon puzzle in a region. The split here will be a single dungeon chapter and Mini Boss at a time, but three or four trials before leading to the culmination of four dungeon chapters and a boss in the main temple combining the relics and puzzles from the trials.

In both cases, good divides for dungeon chapters are typically switching between floors, puzzles being cleared, or to break for backtracks to other wings.

Bosses & Mini Boss

The top of this, I want to say that the power scaling will not always be right. Nintendo doesn't even always get this right. Sometimes the Mini Boss is harder than the Boss. Obviously aim otherwise, but trust it's fine if it happens.

There are a goals to aim for with trying to keep that balance:

The difficulty of the puzzle

The tools necessary to solve it

How easy it feels like the hero lands a hit

Generally, a mini boss fight will rely on the tools already at the character(s)'s disposal while a boss fight should rely on the dungeon's relic. Both should incorporate parts of puzzles already in the dungeon itself, either in getting to the dungeon or in progressing through it so far.

It can help to look at boss fights as puzzles on a timer. The timer is how fast you hit it before it hits you harder. But that also should help pace the three stages of the fight. The first phase should be the longest, it's puzzle-solving first to see how to hit the boss. Stage two will likely be shorter, as that knowledge is reapplied. It's the same solution but with some added retaliation. Stage three should make the solution slightly harder to reach by adding that final hit glowing red desperation energy.

You want to make sure that hitting a boss monster is challenging but doable. This could be done by letting the hero get hit, focusing on coordination tactics, or having a failed attempt and having to retry. While never gets hit heroes are impressive in games, they can't build tension very well in stories. If there's no risk after all, then the reward won't feel as earned. At the same time, if there's too much risk, then it may feel like your hero is not competent enough to handle the fight. The character(s) should figure out the mini boss's weakness faster than the boss, or the steps to hit the mini boss should be easier to achieve than the boss.

If you want to come up with a new enemy and not reuse an existing one, I'd recommend picking two plants or animals to smash together. Generally, it only takes two or three off character traits for a chimera to start feeling like a monster. Too many elements though and the design may not read well to your reader (unless the point of it is to be unknowable or absurd). Your bosses should fit the aesthetic of your dungeon too, so if you're running short of ideas, trying looking what might live in the kind of environment that your dungeon is and you'll probably start getting ideas. But also, sometimes the answer is just rule of cool.

Relics

Relics are the best part of a Zelda game for me. They add a lot of fun to problem solving and reexploring old areas. They culminate to decide on the general skillset of your protagonist and dungeons serve in part as tutorials to learn how to use the relics in all its possible uses.

A relic should be the primary puzzle solution for a dungeon after its acquired. This is in game to experiment with its uses before the boss and experiment with its mechanics in lower stake situations. Most dungeons will have some no stakes mandatory puzzle in the mini boss chamber requiring use of the item before the character(s) can progress. And then it scales up from there to get creative and use the item with other tools at the hero's disposal.

While there are staples for sure (hookshot/bow/bombs/etc), most Zelda games will typically have at least one totally unique relic to that game. This is a great way to build your story's identity too! Your character's tools should cover a wide array of options, so it's important too to look at your relic list as a whole to make sure they don't overlap with other relics. It's also important to consider a relic having not only combat use, but also puzzle utility too! These are after all going to be used to get through the rest of your dungeon.

Companions

One of the harder things to balance is party comp. If your hero travels with other people, this can change the necessary scale of the dungeon as a whole. Puzzles and fights will need to be solvable with multiple people working together. Sometimes this can be expediting the issue, many hands make light work after all. Other times it's about strategically placing everyone on the map.

One thing you should decide early in is whether dungeons are intended to be solved with more than one person. If the hero is supposed to be handling their quest on their own and just happens to have a companion, then puzzles need to be solvable on their own (this may be better to implement the expediting method). Or you can make the puzzles quick, allowing for more dialogue while they solve puzzles faster.

If the hero is supposed to be traveling together, then puzzles should incorporate each of party member's skill sets. Be sure to add those to the inventory you take at the beginning of design! Rotating around party members solving the puzzles can help them feel like a team, but you can also incorporate this cooperation slowly if you're trying to build up a new relationship.

Based on Zelda tropes, it's very likely that the companion in question to a dungeon will be someone like a Sage. If this is the case, I would advise against making the character's abilities exactly the same as the relic. If the two are identical then it runs the risk of underselling them both. They can be similar, but they shouldn't be the same to make sure both have room to shine. Also so getting the relic at the mini boss isn't just your hero one-upping a companion. That's a quick way to making them seem less useful to a team! It's best to look at them as compliments. For example, if a dungeon gives the hero the hookshot to bring enemies in close, then having your companion be a fighter who deals with the monsters as they're getting dragged in to range would be a good way to highlight teamwork.

On the Grander Scale

As I said earlier, dungeons combined serve as the training montage that gets your characters ready for the final fight. But, as a narrative, they should share some central theme together to weave them together as a story. Maybe that's the overall aesthetic sharing some element, like the Divine Beasts and the Blights. Maybe it's a similarity in the bosses and how they appeared, like the echoes in EOW.

This is where making a loose outline can help. If you have a rough idea of the dungeon themes or relics you want to include, you can start to build a wider narrative theme you want to meet. Do you want your hero to feel more like a wizard? More magic focused relics may help. Do you want them to feel more like a tactician? Having more allies to coordinate could be the way to go.

And I do mean loose! For the entirety of GoS, I only had a list of dungeon names and some rough ideas for items I wanted to give Link. In the original outline, the Soul Temple was going to be kinda funky and disco themed. It ended up in narrative needing to be a much more serious late game beat. The same boss and relic was in the dungeon, but the aesthetic shifted to fit the theme I needed for that story arc. Your grander narrative can always come back to inform what kind of challenge your characters need to face in that moment. And that may change as you figure out the story.

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