I played an extended session and ran the battery down to 15%, and made some good progress.
I tried fighting the Guardians in the ruins area again, but they keep killing me. I don’t have any weapon that can hurt them, it seems. I tried explosive arrows, even they were no use.
I found a mud bog, which if I step into it, I die instantly. There’s two treasure chests on a platform in the middle of it, which I don’t know how to get to. I tried magnetism, but nothing nearby responded to it.
I managed to kill another boar, took its meat, and went to the old man’s house, cooked it up for him right there with the fish and the spicy pepper, and he liked it. He gave me his warm doublet as a reward, and I’m glad I was able to figure out the solution from the clues the game gave me.
As a result, I didn’t need to use any of the concoctions I had made that resist cold temporarily, so I can continue hoarding those as long as I like.
It took me for frickin ever to find the old man’s house again, because I forgot where it was, and had to wander all over the damn place for like 3 hours or so, until I found it again. But because of this, I am pretty well stocked on ingredients for stuff.
Once I got the warm doublet, I put it on and went up into the cold area above the second shrine, and explored. I ran into some new creatures, an Ice Kees, some icy version of the blob things like the ones I encountered at lower latitude, except these guys freeze you with their attack, and explode doing cold damage when they die, which will hurt you if you’re too close. I figured out how to deal with them, though — wait until they launch their cold attack, dodge it successfully, and while they’re recharging, they can’t cold-splode when they die, so you can safely run up and kill them.
Then I came to a river with a fast current and what looked like very cold water, and it looked too dangerous to try to swim across. You can’t swim very well at all in this game, and I kindof figured the cold water would put me into cold-damage territory again, and might just kill me outright.
There was a dock, with a raft on it, and the dock was partially destroyed, making it impossible to get to the raft. But there were some trees nearby. And like a not-too-subtle hint, there was a Woodcutter’s Axe embedded in one of the trees. I still had my Woodcutter’s Axe in my inventory, and used it to cut down one of the trees, and it fell into the river, floated, and went downstream and got stuck on the pylons of the ruined dock, making a bridge to get over the damaged portion. It didn’t quite look like enough though, so I cut down two more trees, which helped, but in the process of so doing, I broke my Woodcutter’s axe. But that was perfect, because I just picked up the new one that was there.
I got on to the raft, and used the Korok leaf to generate wind to propel the raft across the river, and got to the other side.
Somewhere over there, I found a sword, which is the best sword I’ve found so far. I had found a rusted bronze sword earlier, and ended up breaking it in one of the fights, so it was good timing to pick up this one. I decided to keep it in reserve in case I ran into something particularly dangerous, and not waste it on easy enemies.
I wandered down the bank of the river, and came to a partially destroyed bridge, which I could use to cross the river half way, and I recognized the area on the opposite side, the bokoblin tree house I had cleared earlier. So I didn’t need to cross, and went back the other way and continued exploring up the mountain.
I ran into some bokoblins, and, not wanting to waste a lot of time and weapons on them, I figured out how to use nearby boulders to crush them, which worked pretty great. I found another group of them, but left them alone and kept climbing higher, and discovered the third shrine. I know they can be handled in any order, but this is the third one I found, so I’m calling it the third shrine.
I completed it pretty easily, and got the cryonis power and the spirit sphere, and then left. There was a treasure chest nearby floating in an icy pond that was too cold to go into, but using the newly-acquired cryonis power, I was able to retrieve it, and got an opal.
On my way down from the shrine, I killed the bokoblins that I had ignored previously, in one shot using a bomb arrow, from a safe distance above them, as there were no boulders nearby that I could roll at them. After looting their camp, as i walked down the mountain, three huge snowballs rolled down, sneakily from behind, but I was lucky and they missed me. I wonder if the explosive arrow I had used triggered an avalanche?
I noted on the map that the peak of Mount Hyrule was nearby, and decided to see if I could climb to the top of it, because surely there must be something good up there. I get up there, and the Old Man is waiting for me, and tells me this is a great spot for sight seeing.
He tells me again to use my scope, and I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, so I decide to cheat a little bit and look it up, and find out that there’s a function of the tablet that turns it into a telescope, which use can use to mark far-away landmarks, which transfers the mark onto the map, so you can more easily navigate to the thing that you marked.
This makes things considerably easier, but it pisses me off that the game tells you ONE TIME, when you get to the top of the tower for the first time, how to activate and use this ability, in a dialog that doesn’t repeat ever, and if you do try to talk to the Old Man again so he’ll tell you how to activate it, he acts like you’re wasting his time and won’t tell you. That right there is the single worst bit of game design that I’ve come across in the game so far. Sure, it was my fault for not reading clearly the first time when the Old Man told me what to do, but fuck, I just cleared what he said too quickly for me to register what I had read, there was no way to go back, AND no way to get him to repeat it after he said it ONCE. Fuck that.
I went back to the partially destroyed bridge, and used Cryonis power to make ice pillars that I could use to hop across the gap. Then I noticed an iron door laying on the ground, and used my magnetism power to move it, and laid it on top of the bridge pylons to create a more permanent makeshift bridge there. That was cool; there was actually multiple ways to access the cold region, and several solutions to the obstacle of the river.
I wonder if that good sword I found will work on those Guardians.
I still have one more shrine to find on the plateau, and then I get my hang glider. I bet there’s a ton of other secrets I haven’t found yet on the plateau, but I figure I’ve gotten a lot out of this area already.
I wonder if the cryonis power will work on that mud bog to get me access to those chests…
I’ll have to try more when the battery recharges.