I defeated Stone Talus. I couldn’t time-stop his boulders in midair and knock them back at him, which I thought would be fun. But the way to beat him is a lot easier than that. Just run up to him, climb up onto his back, and slam him in the weak spot with a heavy weapon. The sledge hammer was good for this purpose, and it only took a few hits. I also discovered that holding down the attack button for a few seconds will charge up a higher energy attack, which takes longer to recover from but does a lot more damage if you can land it, and uses your stamina meter.
Stone Talus dropped a bunch of gems.
I also figured out that you can use the Woodsman’s Axe to chop grass and bushes, which yields tree branches, but also uncovers various small creatures that you can capture for use as ingredients. I’ve captured butterflies, fireflies, a frog, some lizards, a shit ton of crickets, but I keep missing birds that sometimes fly by. I also managed to catch some more bass. I need to get more meat, because I think the Old Man’s favorite recipe involves meat and fish cooked together, probably with hot peppers. If that’s right, and if I can make it, then I will be able to get his warm doublet and explore the winter lands without concern about time limit.
I’ve crafted a few meals and made some that were pretty useful, but I haven’t used any yet. I’m a power-up hoarder, and hate using them unless absolutely necessary, or unless I know where I can farm them later. I get the sense that BOTW is very anti this play style, since everything seems to be designed to break, wear out, or get used up. So I should just get used to it, but my only real alternative is to use save points to restore back if I try something and end up wasting some elixir or food that I didn’t know what I was doing with, or screwed up, and I’d rather not do save-restore a lot, because it’s lame to play videogames that way.
I tried taking on the Guardians in the ruined building, but they still kick my ass. There is ONE boulder in the area that I can timestop, but I haven’t been able to deal any damage to them that way, and my regular weapon is just too weak to do anything to them. I did shoot it with arrows, and found that this disrupts their attack charge-up, which is useful, but I’m going to have to find a serious weapon before I can try to take these guys on.