When thereveal trailerforThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdomshowed Princess Zelda summoning echoes of a twin bed to create stairs over a wall, I assumedNintendowas just using a mundane object as an example. Sure, you’d get this early on in the game, andcoulduse it to solve puzzles, but as the game progressed, you would surely find so many cool new items that you would end up leaving the barely-more-than-a-cot behind. But I’ve finished four of Echoes of Wisdom’s dungeons now, and the bed remains the most useful item in my arsenal.
The Bed Is The Cornerstone Of Echoes Of Wisdom’s Puzzle-Solving
There are others that arecooler, sure. I especially like the ability (also showcased in that trailer) to summon cubes of water, which can be paired with other H2O blocks to form swimmable rows and columns. The spider summon, which allows Zelda to climb up and down, is fun and helpful for reaching high places in the side-scrolling sections. The mole echo is useful in the opposite direction, digging tunnels so you can reach platforms below you enshrouded in sand.
But the thing about the beds is that they’re useful in basically every situation. In a boring way, sure, but in the way that walking and breathing are boring. Need cover? A bed will absorb one hit, giving you a chance to reposition. Need a boat? The beds float. Need to spread fire? It’s flammable. Need to recover some health? Summon a bed echo and you can nap for half a heart. Summon two beds right next to each other and you can run back and forth between them, quickly restocking your full health bar.
The Soft Bed item makes this process even easier, replenishing hearts at a faster rate.
Zelda Is The Heir With The Stairs
And those are all cases that don’t involve using the beds as stairs, which is how I use them 90 percent of the time. Heading into the game, I expected that I would use tables fairly often for this purpose, laying one down, hopping onto it, then placing another adjacent to it and stacking another on top of it. That approach, showcased in the trailer,doeswork. Then I got the bed and everything changed.Friendship ended with table, now bed is my best friend.
Because, with the bed, you cut out the busywork. Instead of having to place two tables next to each other, the bed effectivelyistwo tables. And early on in the game, when Tri’s ability is still pretty limited, you just can’t stack tables high enough for them to be of much use.
Not only are bed’s useful, they’re quick. Making a table staircase is slow and awkward, but stacking bed steps isFortnitesmooth. Once you get used to the Echo interface, you can make precise mental plans to climb a wall as soon as it enters the screen. It’s seamless (though finding the precise item on an ever-growing item wheel is anything but).
It’s a puzzle-solving, heart-healing, fire-spreading, stair-building tool and the most crucial item in Zelda’s arsenal. It’s so good, in fact, that it kind of breaks the game as so many puzzles I’ve encountered can be solved with a bed. But, as a sleepy journalist, there’s a beauty in admitting that, yes, it probably is that simple sometimes.
