hey everyone, thank you all so much for the positive reception and encouraging comments. don't take this video at face value, enjoy and have fun with how you play games. that's it. nothing more to it other than that.

Remember how you had to pick the right dialogue choice 5 or so times in a row WITHOUT getting any wrong in order to not get the bad ending in Persona 4? That’s honestly a perfect example of this

Going through a wiki can feel like reading ancient texts to prepare for your adventure. It can also be just giving up because you can't stand trying to figure wtf you're supposed to do anymore.

You forgot one of the biggest victims of this. The entire Pokémon franchise. How the hell are you supposed to know without the wiki that my grass rat only evolves at 3am in real life at 12:00 am in game when there’s a full moon and im walking on a specific tile in a cave in the middle of no where

Games like Stardew could really benefit from easy to implement, immersive, lore-friendly ways to look up information. Like, where do I catch this fish? Look it up in a fisherman's almanac or something, but instead when you first play you either google it or you randomly cast in every area at every time of day, raining and sunny.

This discussion never fails to make me think about how old games used to come with physical manuals that would explain everything about the game to you, even the basic story, because it wasn’t always included in the actual game itself

You could argue thst some of these games dont necessarily need a wiki, they're just extremely useful. Anyway good video

Wiki games like Terraria, Minecraft and Skyrim actually kickstarted the curiosity in my brain and made me so eager to learn and research everything. Knowing every mechanics without consulting Wiki or Google feels so powerful.

It's even worse when they just have a fandom wiki and it's 5x laggier per tab nowadays compared to independent wikis

With the Stardew Valley example, I don’t think it was the dev’s intention that you’re supposed to know exactly what every NPC likes and dislikes, where they go, etc. Although this information may “help you,” I would argue that it doesn’t improve the gameplay. Finding out what the NPCs like is part of the intended gameplay. I heard this quote once that was something like, “players will always optimize the fun out of a game.” Another example of this is the debug screen in Minecraft. It was never intended to be used by players. Only by the devs to.. debug it. One of the most fun parts of Minecraft is getting lost and finding your way back again. There are items in-game that can help you with this like the compass, but why make a compass when you can just press F3 and know your exact coordinates?

This is exactly how I go from "I wonder what stuff I can do with this thing I found" to "so now I know every single thing about this game but I haven't even beaten the first boss yet"

The first time I played Stardew Valley I spent the majority of a year and a half growing wheat, thinking that I was doing well for myself because I was growing exponentially more wheat (when I ran out of energy I just went to sleep)

I will never understand how people ever played Minecraft without a wiki. "Oh yeah, naturally you make fishing rods with this amount of string, this amount of sticks, and in this specific crafting pattern. I love how you can craft anything you'd need, like if I need a saddle, its just leather and iron! Right?

I like the way Minecraft tackled this problem, by adding a "recipe guide" that shows everything you can craft with the items you collected so far, and how to craft them. Remembering how to craft pistons was annoying ten years ago, but with each update adding more and more items, it was really becoming necessary

Character: "Do you want me to come with you?" Wiki: "If you answer yes, she will leave, if you say no, she will come with you". This is why we need the wiki.

Aha, finally someone else talks about "The Wiki Trap". Some games it feels fine because its just looking there to easier secret hunt for completion rather than leaving secrets as a surprise or challenge to find, other times its kinda awkward to have a lot of missable content that doesn't feel like secrets. The worst though is definitely how Minecraft and other similar games used to be, before the crafting book and before ruined portals there was basically not a single idea in-game for how to progress at a certain point.

The problem if you want to "see everything" in one play through is simple: If you want a game where your decisions make an impact or a difference, you will end up with a game you simply can not see everything in one play through, if you could, your decisions clearly dont have any impact

I find it funny that some people think that the wiki stuff is a 'modern gaming' problem 'cause I've seen older games that require you to read 100-page Manuals or PDFs to fully understand the lore of the world, basic-end game mechanics, specific number stats, and more. Sure, wikis may not be directly provided or even supported by the devs, but games needing extra mediums because of their depth have always existed and most of the time I like it that way.

Guild wars 2 has a wiki function in chat. You type /wiki followed by an item, quest, character, etc and it will display basic info for it and a link to the official wiki page. For an mmo with seriously more to do in it than most, its suuuuper helpful

Risk of Rain 2 has a logbook that unlocks info about items, monsters, bosses/etc. when you use/encounter them. it doesn't give all the info you need, so the wiki is still helpful, but it also has tooltips that tell you what items do so you really don't need a wiki. As a dev I'd rather give players every single bit of info on how the mechanics work in the game so you don't have to wiki-scroll

Good video! Just so you know, nowadays in Stardew Valley vanilla you can check in the villagers menu what gifts they like or don't (only those that you've already tried to gift, so the player is the one discovering what each like, but doesn't need to remember it all later)

This reminds me of another video I watched awhile back. Someone ranked how feasible progression in Minecraft would be without using external information. One of the big things was they deemed figuring out how to get to the Nether to be nearly impossible. The only information you had would be the advancement info and the ruined portal structures.

I like how most of the mainstream examples of this kinda game are like "lots of crafting recipes" or "large world to remember" and then there are games like Noita where one secret requires a degree in electrical engineering (I'm not joking) and you can make a wand that literally teleports you to an alternate universe

Tbh I really love games that make me go search about it in wikis, reddit, forums, etc. I just love the feeling of learning about the game and its items, quests and mechanics. I feel that's why I love Terraria, Mass Effect, Skyrim, The Witcher, and the Souls series so much

Its weird but i loved when i discovered terraria and i had the wiki open at all times. Sometimes i even just surfed the wiki for a bit looking at items and crazy things, reading that there is an item that lets you double jump, and you combine it with a lot of things to get a balloon with many perks, or seeing a cool weapon that is like 4 bosses away from the point im currently in. Everything was new and it hyped me so much that i constantly felt like i wanted to get something new on the game

As someone with ADHD, I enjoy game wikis. They enable my “holy cow, the tab icons aren’t even appearing anymore” tendencies, lol. On the more serious side, I find the digging through a wiki and doing external research to be really fun.

I think that “Papers, please!” Is a good example of giving players all the info they need (VERY important info) and making it in a way that make sense in the game

I think The Forest and Sons of The Forest both fall into this category. There are a dozen hidden caves on a massive map that you have to visit in a specific order to complete the game. It's filled with things that would take ungodly hours to find naturally, and the game tells you absolutely nothing about anything.

Honestly, more games need to have in-game encyclopedias, like the Civilization games have always had.

9,999 hours in paradox games is when you figured out the basics of infantry combat and politics. Now it's time for the fleet.

one thing i like about "wiki" games is that i can "play" even when i'm not at home - i like to think of things i want to look up and then i'll read the wiki on the bus or on break at work.

I started developing a different view on this problem. I call it “learn to live with consequences of your actions”. It's hard, but I try to not reload the game if I mess up a quest. But there's a problem that games often mess up dialogue options like: “I don't believe you” @ “You lying piece of $&*t mothe@&ing son of a ****” Or there's sometimes this thing that choosing “okay” instead of “alright” somewhere in the beginning of the game affects the ending and you're just 😳🥴

Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter nights have caused my distrust of games to the point i keep looking stuff up. "Ooops, you killed one npc 8 hours ago and saved over it, have fun restarting the ENTIRE GAME"

I just wish more games, especially metroidvanias, implemented a notepad/journal functionality which you can use to write notes and reminders. It is bafflingly rare.

Pretty sure with the Stardew Valley gift system, whenever you give a gift them a gift, their reaction will be noted and catergorized in the friendship menu are whatever it’s called

Game dev here. Fantastic video, great points! I agree, games shouldnt NEED a wiki, a way to compact the information will make it better and simpler for the player. Its why Minecraft added the crafting guide/recipe book,.

I love how every game used to come with a wiki (game manual), but then we stopped doing that for a few years and then made it a digitised thing that fans upkeep.

My solution to this is to have a friend next to me that already knows everything about that specific game. That way he'll be able to give the exact info i need without spoiling things.

I created an entire handwritten guide to completing the community center in stardew valley, I was so sick of switching from my game to my phone for the wiki. It’s just easier to have a piece of paper in front of me. Was really fun writing it up too I felt like I was doing a school project again lol

I do find that I look at wikis more now than I used to. Even when I don't need it. I feel like it's making me more of a 'lazy gamer' instead of the explorative and curious one I used to be.

The most important thing about these games is that the Wiki won't be around forever. It's a new variation on old games which had critical information only in the manual... _Or only in magazines._

a very interesting thing to note on this topic is that during the development of Don't Starve, the devs experimented with gving the player direction but found that once the players ran out of the tutorial tips given to them, they stopped playing the game, and so the devs eventually came to the conclusion that their game would be more engaging if they gave players minimal direction, to resounding success.

Old School Runescape is the ultimate wiki game. You need the wiki so bad that there is direct integration with the wiki baked into the game with the "wiki button". This allows you to click on any item, quest, npc, spell, and even many overland features and be directly linked to the corresponding objects wiki page.

You don't need to be a cook to know if food tastes good, so you don't need to be a game designer to tell if a game is good.

I LOOOVE these kinds of games. It's always like you're delving into a great new world of mystery snd knowledge and I usually try go push as far as I can without looking anything up.

As someone who learned terraria without using the wiki, it’s really difficult to see people who rely on the wiki teach newcomers how to play. It always ends up with them trying to speedrun or quickly progress while the new player is left in the dust, not at all knowing what’s going on. With a lot of hours of playtime dedicated to terraria, I’ve gotten a feel for how most items and gear is acquired, so I only use the wiki now and then to see rare drop percentages, but I actively try to stay away from wikis out of fear of getting caught in that infinite loop. It’s much more rewarding and fun to break a random block of dirt and get a cool pet than it is to look something up for 10 minutes, spend another 20 getting it, then say “what’s next?” Jeez this got long. Peace

Guess I'll say it too, I frequently enjoy wikis. Getting a new game, playing it for a couple hours on my own to get a feel for things, then diving deep into the wiki to answer all my questions is a great experience. Spending hours researching newly added items in Terraria, side quest and material locations in CrossCode, lists of synergies in Gungeon, or how in the world you get to a certain area in Dead Cells is part of the fun to me. There is the risk of getting spoiled though...

One point I would bring up that wasn't mentioned here is that if you end up needing a wiki in story games, its very easy to spoil things for yourself unintentionally (something I did with the first subnautica - though I dont know if it fully qualifies as a true "wiki game")

Enter the Gungeon's ammonomicon is a GREAT, HUGE example of how to deal with things like this. But even it leaves out a TON of hidden features that makes it more beneficial to look up items on the wiki for. The game received it's final update a long long time ago, and is still an S-class game, but if there was one thing I would change for sure, it's that the ammonomicon should display secrets and details about them once they've been unlocked once. That way you don't spoil the surprise, but you also know what it is you just received. This applies for most games with item synergy, like Vampire Survivors and Nova Drift. There's a similar issue with BTD6 and it's upgrade descriptions that never get updated, despite more features being added to each upgrade with every game update. Minecraft added the recipe book to increase accessibility right before they threw in tons and tons of new items, blocks and recipes, which made it a big help, but a lot of the time, it doesn't give you the recipe you're looking for, until you have literally every single ingredient in your inventory, which kinda defeats the point of a recipe book that tells you what ingredients you need to craft something.

A game I found that did a really good job at alleviating this is Astroneer. the game by default comes with a built-in "Astropedia" that explains where resources are, how to create certain resources, the different flora on planets, and the planets themselves without going into excrusiating detail.

Terraria honestly works alright without a wiki. The items with only very few exceptions tell you what they do and the guide guide tells you the recipes as well as where you should be looking to make progress. One thing they might still want to add (or maybe it exists and I just don't know about it) is a way to find out where you get a specific item from if you found that you need it to craft something.

I am in the group of people who thinks that games like Elden Ring doesn't need a wiki because I really like when people who play it for the first time have different experiences, but as you said you get enjoyment out of doing everything on the first playthrough so I see your point for someone like you! Isaac too honestly, you can't do everything on one run so learning what items do is part of the fun for me :>

Not even joking this video made me laugh so hard and has such a chill vibe, also wiki games are so overwhelming omg 😭

I think Noita is the poster boy for a game that NEEDS a wiki. The only time the game interacts with you to teach you something is at the beginning, when the game teaches you how to interact with the world (i.e. how to move, shoot and kick). To its credit, Noita is dizzyingly complex and deep, but it also only lets the player learn through experience of trial and repetition. "What does this spell do?" and then instantly dying because of the spell you just casted is basically the first 10 hours of gameplay. And that's just one of the basic mechanics you need to master if you want to survive for long, secrets are in another league of ambiguous. Noita is incredibly fun and I've clocked around 120+ hours and I have yet to do the secret endings, which have clues scattered about in the world, but good luck finding them, not even mentioning you have to decode what the crazed alchemist in this tablet is even refering to.

This is why 'piropito plays minecraft' is such an interesting series because he plays it COMPLETELY blind with no external help. Everything is a discovery for him and it's so awesome Good example is figuring out how to make a nether portal without external help, I am pretty sure this is why the devs added ruined portals to the game

No Man's Sky was great for including all the info I needed for crafting and resources. I never had to get out of the game to check what planets I should visit or what to do next (didn't play it at launch though, I played it like in 2018)

honestly, i used to love wiki hunting on terreria. the best childhood memories were the billions of wiki pages i had opened up, unable to wait to play more again. my first playthrough was always the best

Throwback to when games came with entire manuals and even _books_ that you were expected to at least skim through _before_ you started playing

Man, I absolutely love doing this. Going through a wiki it’s part of the fun too at least for me, it doesn’t feel stressfull it is more like a chill reading and a fun opportunity to plan what you gonna do. I probably have 9.999 hours in the stardew valley wiki and bulbapedia. The best part is you don’t need the game to do this. I just be doing whatever, being in the bus, laying on bed or just bored and pull out my cellphone and search for something that intrigued me.

You perfectly captured that moment when you go deeper and deeper and start going crazy. Guilty myself. Minecraft, Stardew, Don't Starve, Portia, Elden Ring, you name it. Oh, Banished or Cities Skylines too, it's not just survival/crafting games. Even Sims! Not to mention, making Excel spreadsheets. Generally, I try to look on wikis *after* I finish a game session, or in between when I remember something. If I need to check something quickly while I'm in-game, I try not to get in too deep (or I open a few tabs lol, for checking out *later*).

Story time: I only started Minecraft recently (around the 1.14 aquatic update) and since I knew pretty much nothing about the game, I decided to test how far I would come without using the wiki. About a week. What tripped me up? I couldn't figure out how to get sheep to my base. Or animals in general. I would never in a million years guessed that I had to hold food for them in my hand because sheep are already eating grass. And I just didn't thought me holding something in my hand is something that NPCs notice anyway. And once I was on the wiki I definitelly went on a wiki-walk. Imagine my surprise once I learned about light dependent spawn mechanics! I also had trouble finding iron, but admttedly that's more me being a wuss and not exploring caves. The other example was in Pokemon Sword. I caught a galarian Farfetch'd and knew it has an evolution. But I decided to not look it up. There has to be an NPC somewhere who tells you how to evolve it, right? Or maybe I stumble over it myself, that would be so exciting! As it reached level 70 and I still had't found any hints how to evolve it, I gave in and looked it up. Ho boy. 3 critical hits in one fight?? That would've never happened naturally. Even after I knew what I had to do it took several tries. I'm not against wiki-games in general, but if you deliberately try to avoid the wiki and get really frustrated, it's hard not to wonder if this is a good idea. Especially because we might be a bit to comfortable with the idea that wikis will always be there. I was playing a lot of games in the 90s and there aren't a lot that you can still find all the walkthroughs and hints that you need to play well. I saw way to many big sites go down for the dumbest reasons and all the infos about the games on there being lost forever, to just think that everything on fandom.com will still be around in 10 years. A single copyright lawsuit or something and all is gone. The internet is not forever, almost no sites have a long term goal to be genuine archives. So making games that rely to such an extreme amount on fans providing info online isn't a good idea if you want your game to be playable on it's own in 50+ years. But I doubt any gamedevs care about that lol

I like the kind of "wiki games" where the beginning eases you into the game with everything being explained and such, but the game having a lot of complexity to just crawl into the wiki eventually

your voice is so smooth, man i could watch this for hours

I appreciate the Minecraft wiki because you don’t “need” the wiki for much. A lot of things can be discovered through trial and error. Sure, lighting up your base would be easier if you knew light measurements and spawn rates, but it’s also possible to just patch dark zones when things start showing up. I think it’s games like Stardew don’t really catch it because you can’t really even PLAY parts of stardew if you don’t read the wiki. As stated, likes and schedules would have it take a few seasons just to track one villager’s stats.

you, have just made me interested in multiple games because I'm into reading wiki

These edits are goated

I found that there are many players who never use wikis ever. Either they don't care, or don't even know what wikis are or if the exist for a game. It seems that there are two main groups: wikiheads who have gone down many rabbit holes for their own learning experience, and people who sink all their time into a game. It was so surprising to see the amount of hours people had put into games even surpassing my progress, even though I had much more technical knowledge. It just comes with being a minmaxer. One thing that I super appreciate and encourage is developers adding in visual clues for mechanics. Think about the Wither in Minecraft and a new player who has never seen any online content (almost impossible, lol). There's no way to know that you can create a Wither (much less Snow/Iron Golems), because it's not something that pops up in the helpful "Recipes" pop ups (another super great addition - as soon as you pick up an item for the first time, it shows you what you can make with it) after you pick up a Wither skull. However, there is a clue they added - one of the 2x2 paintings is a model of a Wither, so people who are looking could progress all on their own. Stardew Valley actually has a built in Journal that you take notes in for the townfolks' likes and dislikes after you interact with them, as well as filling out when you pick up Secret Notes. There's no real time limit on the game, so just letting go of minmaxing every single day, you can achieve many goals by sleeping and passing time to let crops grow quicker in real time and get to the next week for gifts, events etc. There are a lot of differences between being a wikihead and just playing the game as the developer presents it to you

This video was actually weirdly comforting lmao. I'm so envious of people who can play a story game and not stop to Google every single aspect, sometimes I spend more time on my phone looking stuff up than actually playing the game

I love how you used Stardew Valley fishing sfx for censors

Honestly, there's something I deeply love about "wiki games", not because they're easy to understand... but because they force you to reach outside the game, talk to other people or read the things they've left behind. I usually find that games where you end up needing to look things up have strong communities of people sharing knowledge... and being gatekeepers, but that's a fact of humanity. My favorite part of any work of media almost invariably becomes the community that grows around it, and wiki games by their nature foster strong communities, and become more fun to play the more the community as a whole puts into it. That obviously doesn't mean it's for everyone, but it's an aspect of this kind of game that is unique to them, and can create something good.

The problem with isaac is that there are lots of items that requires wiki - because their effect isn't obvious or is hidden, - and a lot of items, that may surprise you and create unforgettable situations(like plan c🥴). You don't use wiki and half of the items(especially trinkets) don't do anything at all or you use it and lose incredibly funny situations with plan c, soy milk, cursed eye etc

That intro was the most accurate thing ever, I felt your pain. This video was hilarious! I love Stardew and Terraria and I find all the options to indeed be intimidating, but also so exciting because of all the possibilities

This is so genuine and raw. This is like lowkey funny asf.

maybe its because I grew up playing both of them but I never minded using the wiki for minecraft or terraria. it was fun and exciting to see new things and hunt down interesting items or learn more about the world itself at an age where games were largely an enigma.

Learning to play Escape from Tarkov requires so much time on the wiki, 90% of the quests pretty much require you to look up how to complete them. A quest will be like, go get an item from a room in this building, and the quest wont tell you which room or that the room requires a key.

I played terraria without looking ANYTHING, just discovering it by myself, it was an INCREDIBLE experience, it felt like the game was infinite

The edge browser has saved my life with the ability to put tabs into groups.

I was laughing so hard at that intro, brilliant!

Minecraft modpacks take even further. Even when mods have their own guidebook built in, I always find myself looking at the wiki because there's almost always something not fully explained in the book. Modpacks that have quests to guide you through the different mods also overlook some very useful but obscure feature in the pack that may hinder your gameplay experience, especially if you're on a skyblock map or something. Like in Captainsparklez' recent modded skyblock type series, he didn't know that he could just get pebbles from dirt for a while, so he was stuck without cobblestone for the first episode or so. I do love modded Minecraft, but I can definitely see why a lot of my friends were turned off by it when I started a modded server lol

You know what all these games that require wiki’s also have in common? They foster a dedicated community that want to help and support each other, which is why they are so beloved

Remember when the guide didn’t have a crafting menu, I didn’t look up anything either so it took me like a year or two to even get to hard mode in terraria. Had fun building tho

I think a good medium between needing a wiki and not needing one is the Alchemy system from Elder Scrolls. If you want it all spelled out for you ahead of time, you can use a wiki, but there's also a built-in wiki in the game that you unlock through natural gameplay. I wouldn't rip this system out exactly as-is and paste it directly into every game like what's happened with locked doors, but maybe something like the flavor text of items changes as your skills increase.

I don't know why but games that "require" a wiki are my favorite games to play. Maybe it's because of the complexity they have that necessitates the existance of a wiki. It also feels really good to know so much about a game that you no longer require a wiki. Like for example I've played Minecraft for over decade now and I was surprised it was mentioned in this video because I don't even remember having to look up stuff anymore.

In terraria, the guide can serve as an adequate replacement for the wiki. He tells you what you can make with the materials you have, although he doesn't tell you where you can get them.

Imagine trying to understand all trinkets in Tboi without the wiki

Your explanation of terraria was exactly my experience and I have almost 2k hours in stardew valley and i literally have 3 tabs of the stardew wiki page on my bookmarks bar i've gotten used to it by now... oh and i also bought a whole ass animal crossing "guide" book (before the updates came out too bruh) idk how to stop myself Edit: also your voice is really nice and I looked up how many hours in a year and it was 8000 something... I only have 300 hours damn girl

I really used to enjoy games like that but now that I have less time, it really feels like such a hassle to keep a holding on to a wiki and I started to think: Wait... Thiis is a GAME right? Like, something that you can play for fun for a while and after that, live life. This just feels like work!

me and my friend have a mini game we play when we open terraria which is “how long can we play before opening the wiki” and our collective record is 12 minutes after 1200+ hours each

i feel like the external item descriptions mod for binding of isaac is almost necessary, it's just so so helpful. the only time i need to use the wiki anymore is for unlocks

Funnily enough, this video popped up on my feed while I have 6 terraria tabs open one of which being the guide to classes and another being the ankh shield

To be honest, I'm surprised that you aren't more popular. The video was very high quality and well made!

In my opinion it depends greatly on your free time. When I was like 13 to 16 I used to play like all day, so having complex, hard and demanding games was the only way to have any degree of challenge. Now that i'm older I basically got shit to do and don't have time/energy/will to put all that effort in games anymore (even tho I still love to play).

I personally enjoy the "wiki" style of games! It might just be the fact that I already have 50+ tabs on random Wikipedia articles open at any given moment- but the ability to really sink my teeth into a huge chunk of readily available game data is so enjoyable to me. However, the way that information is structured and provided to the player is (usually) totally up to the input of the community or small group (which can vary). There needs to be more in-game databases, almanacs, and wikis that feel like they're part of the game and not walls of text that almost nobody is gonna read. This would really make that info accessible to people who lack a stable internet connection as well. Anyways, I'm starting to ramble- this was a really great video! I'm glad you covered this topic! :D

A good take on a sometime polarizing topic. For instance me and my buddy were playing through the first Nioh, and he is incredibly against Googling/wiki-ing. So we got to this point where we noticed the blacksmith just wouldn't level anymore and he caved and asked me to give it a look as it turned out, the blacksmith even after thousands of hours of gameplay and grinding simply DOESN'T level up. Unless you were on a specific section of the campaign in which case you could cheese the game and mash a couple buttons to level her up instantly (I think it was a her). So we did that as it was literally impossible to do so otherwise. That's why I wiki things.

me playing terraria be like: - look up mod wiki to see how im supposed to progress - the terraria mod wiki links to a different mod wiki because its a mod that expands on a different mod - then that mod wiki links to the original terraria wiki when i try to look how to get the item i need to craft the thing i need - suddenly i have 17 tabs open

I couldn’t imagine the experience going into any of these games blind. The intro of this video lists some of the games I have the most hours in, and maybe it’s just because I was the right demographic for it at the time, but I didn’t start off any of those games by playing them; I started off by watching Let’s Plays of them on KZfaq.

you just taught me that I did not know anything about isaac at one point in time

I love games that gives you an easy quest to obtain a McGuffin, alongside simple instructions on how to get it so you'd do everything right, but it doesn't work, so you look it up on the wiki, only to find out that you have to do a moonwalk in a specific outfit at 2:45PM in real time alongside inspecting a very specific trash can, following it up by talking to a NPC with zero relevance to the story, who will give you yet ANOTHER QUEST to require you to find a whopping 239 of the mystical Bullshit Coins to be able to progress through the game.

I got instant PTSD when I saw the crafting requirements for the Zenith blade how could you re-traumatise me like this, great video :)

I think a good way to mitigate the wiki problem while preserving the guidance and motivation might be in-game achievements. They give you a little bit of guidance through flavor text but it's up to you to do the rest. And for me at least, having progress tracked and getting to see when I'm close to finishing one is extremely motivating!