Where Do Hyrule's Rivers Go?

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austin: "i am not a nerd" also austin: "now let's exhaustively map this fictional river system"

fun fact about the floodplain theory, if you go to the backroom of the forgotten temple there is a map of hyrule on the floor which shows that during rauru's era most of hyrule field was actually one massive lake

Something was missed and is incredibly important is that under the East Reservoir is an enormous complex of pipe systems that spread out over the massive cave systems in the directions of the enormous waterfalls that feed Zoras domain, meaning its not wizard magic but an incredibly massive engineering feat of the Zora

Fun fact: A lake with an underground/ hidden outlet is called a Cryptorheic basin, and a lake with no outlet that lets off water via natural processes like evaporation is a Endorheic basin. It seems like Hyrule has a fair few of both of these types even though they are rather rare in the real world.

I hope a dev in the future quotes this channel as the reason they properly laid out river starts and ends, as well as other seemingly "obvious" map design bits.

"That's a nice river, Hyrule. Why don't you back it up with a source?" "My source is that I made it the fuck up"

12:54 I actually yelled out loud "like fucking 3 trillion" right as you said "3 trillion" and ive never felt so connected to someone

i could see a Discworld book about a character mapping all this out, especially with quotes like "the river gets really strong around here, presumably due to evil goblin magic."

Somehow I had never managed to notice that all water in the game is perfectly flat. The illusion of topographical relief worked so well that I never even considered that I never saw a river actually flow downhill.

As a real PhD hydrologist, you give really good explanations for these concepts! You are the best digital hydrographer on YouTube. At 15:00 , you point our the rocky versus mossy sides of the river. While this scene is a little more extreme than reality, it is grounded in real life! At turns in river channels, the flowing water has a hard time turning, so it's energy is directed at the outside channel wall, and this extra energy will erode the side, which may cause fresh rock to be more exposed. This is known as a cut bank. Conversely, the inside of a channel turn will have the lower energy flowing water, allowing the water to slow down, allowing for sediment to settle in this region (known as a point bar). This sediment can build up and it isn't too surprising that wetland plants to start growing here. (Although moss may be a bit of a stretch as peat moss tends to not be that close to faster flowing water). Your Skyrim video was recommended to me a few months ago, thought it was great, and I'm glad the algorithm sent me back this way!

Zora’s Domain has a cave called the Ancient Zora Waterworks- so I’m guessing that the reason water inexplicably pours in and out of places in Zora’s Domain is because during the time of the Zonai, they gifted the Zora with a magitek sewer system that pumps water around to keep it clean That being said, some of the pipes are blocked when we actually go down there, so maybe they’ve been working with a damaged system for generations- makes sense why the muck ruined Zora’s Domain’s water as effectively as it did There’s also the fact the Zonai made the Hydrant device, which spawns water out of thin air, which was used to cure the sky islands’ drought

One note about bifurcations: early in the video you surmise that much of central Hyrule is a floodplain. When floodplains flow through very flat silty areas - which seem to make up most of Hyrule - bifurcations can become much more common, at least seasonally. In that photo you showed to illustrate what a floodplain looks like, you can make out at least a dozen temporary bifurcations where the river splits and then comes back together. The other place where bifurcations are relatively common is in locations where water's direction changes at low speed, such as lakes or the turbulent pools at the bottoms of waterfalls. We see a lot of that in your hydrological diagram as well. There are a lot of bifurcations, it's true, but more of them are plausible than you'd think. The designers have created a video game landscape with tons of lakes and waterfalls, which is primarily intended to make exploring fun and interesting, but it coincidentally also makes the hydrology make a bit more sense.

In BotW they explicitly say that the Zora’s and Hylians worked together a long time ago to build East Reservoir Lake to reduce flooding. On a stone tablet they tell the story how every few years central Hyrule would be hit with unusually heavy flooding so they built East Reservoir Lake to contain the water. You can even see in TotK the intricate pump work at play to make this happen in the Ancient Zora Waterworks. We can also see in TotK how ancient Hyrule looked on a map in the Forgotten Temple, in which it shows that much of central Hyrule and its plains were once flooded and mostly wetlands. The water level used to be much higher, with the Digdogg Suspension Bridge lake previously connected to Lake Hylia, and also Lake Aquame around the Coliseum used to make it an island and connected to both the Digdogg lake and Lake Hylia. Also, East Reservoir Lake used to be connected directly to the water that surrounds Zora’s domain, though interestingly not Rutala River. Another thing the map shows is that the moat surrounding Hyrule Castle is naturally forming and not man made, as at the point in time when the map was constructed modern Hyrule Castle was not yet built. Another interesting fact is that the modern day snowy peaks of Mount Hylia on the Great Plateau were once much warmer and were not cold, as shown in memory 6 The Gerudo Assault. Also the River of the Dead on the plateau was not yet formed. I theorize that during Rauru’s time, Hyrule was much warmer either in general or this specific season. That would explain the higher water table and the lack of snow on the great plateau. We can see that climates can shift extremely fast even without magic like in the southern Gerudo highlands where all of the snow there melted and the general Gerudo Canyon being much warmer and cooler at day and night respectively. Also, the construction of East Reservoir Lake had to make a lot of changes to Hyrule’s water flow, such as the water table in central Hyrule lowering and matching what we have in modern day contrasted to the flooded version of the past.

I don't remember who, but one NPC in BotW actually mentions that the Lanayru Great Spring (i.e. the Zora's Domain area) is the source of all fresh water in Hyrule

I saw a tweet that angrily called you out for making this video, calling you stupid for even trying to ask this question, spitefully whinging that they weren't gonna watch your video at all. I, in turn, would like to spite that person and watch your video, because clearly doing this makes you happy. EDIT: This was a VERY enjoyable video, and I'm glad I went out of my way to watch it ^_^

"Because I'm not a NERD! Anyway back to mapping out the rivers in a video game." That one made it worth watching the ad all the way through!

"Places you can stand to feel strange feelings for no reason" Wow finally someone who understands these games!

in a zora quest where you are to clean the mud, an elder explains that their region supplies all the fresh water of hyrule

I like how much we can analyze so much of the thought process in the design of BOTW/TOTK's world, whether it was accurate or not, it is highly interesting. Nintendo knew who they were getting to co-design this game's take on Hyrule, being a team who had to design the topography of a world built on two giant humanoid carcasses, a beautiful alien fully open world, and parallel to BOTW was designing a sea of 7 giant sea creatures and one area of a colony of 20+ jellyfish, later during TOTK development releasing a fusion of the worlds of the humanoid titans and sea creatures suspended in time, and the world is shaped like a torus/donut/ouroboros. Props to MonolithSoft, they know how to cook interesting worlds as seen through Xenoblade 1, X, 2, and 3.