You upgrade your items by collecting the little octopus guys. For every 10 you return, you can choose an item to upgrade. There are a few upgrades separate from this as well.
Oh, that sounds like filler ass pain. Are any of the upgrades worth the effort? I’m most of the way through the final castle so I can’t imagine they will help me much now.
The bow upgrade is decent, it makes the bow shoot 3 arrows in a fan. The fire rod and ice rod are also pretty OP, since it seems to be a general damage and AOE upgrade. I’ve heard that the helicopter leaf one is also pretty great (I never used it). You can purportedly completely break the combat using nothing other than upgraded Fire Rod+Tornado Rod. The hookshot, boomerang, and sand rod upgrades seem fairly useless. Bomb and hammer are decent, but nothing to write home about.
Really one of the best upgrades is the one you get for getting all 100 MaiMais
The Great Spin Attack, which fairly drastically increases the range, charge speed, and damage of your spin attack.
It’s all pretty academic, though. I don’t think any of them will help you that much. I mostly got them for completion’s sake.
You can definitely get by without the upgrades. These things seem like they’re more balanced based on hero mode rather than the default. With all the upgrades, you’re pretty unstoppable. Even the tower challenge is pretty trivial then.
Beat it and traded it towards Luigi’s Mansion. Liked it alot but don’t generally replay zeldas. Luigi’s is pretty cute so far.
I maxed mine out with 3 dungeons left to go (not counting Lorule castle) and with all rental items bought.
The upgraded weapon counts for both. I wasn’t playing against real streetpasses, though. Even if you don’t streetpass occasionally a Dark Link will show up near your house or sanctuary or somewhere.
Luigi WAS good. I really enjoyed it.
Link Between Worlds is a good, even great Zelda entry, though for some reason I’m having difficulty getting motivated to finish the last few dungeons I need to progress.
The next 3ds game I’m looking at is probably Bravely Default.