Zelda BOTW Diary (9)

I found and cleared the fourth shrine today. As I had suspected, it was in the vicinity of the ruins that had those Guardians that I’d been avoiding. I just ran past them, and I was fine. I got the bomb power and the fourth spirit orb.

The Old Man greeted me outside, and I thought he’d give me the glider right there, but he told me to meet him on the map where the lines connecting the shrines intersected.

I looked at the map and it was the ruined Temple of Time.

I went there and prayed at the statue again, which I remembered it had told me to come back when I has the four spirit orbs. I was rewarded with the choice of a heart container or more stamina.

Being an OG Zelda player, I chose the heart container, because That’s What You Do. But I think it was probably a mistake. Because so far the game is light on combat, combat has been pretty easy, and there’s a lot of indirect ways to kill enemies without engaging in close combat. And so much of the game is so far is based on movement and exploration, and much of it depends on the stamina bar, and climbing and especially swimming is rather limited.

After receiving the heart container, the old man called to me from the roof of the temple, and beckoned me to climb up there. I hadn’t thought to try to get up there previously, but I found that the walls were climbable. I started climbing, then noticed a ladder on the adjacent column, so I climbed down and used that instead. I had never seen the ladder before, and wondered if I had missed it previously, or if it appeared after I completed my orb quest.

On the roof, the old man revealed his true identity and told me the story of Hyrule. I got a sword and the glider, and he told me to head east to Kakariko village and find Impa, a familiar name from previous games in the series.

I took off from the temple and flew down from the plateau to the ground. Holy crap is the world map vast. I have virtually no hope of ever discovering every last secret that is surely hidden here. It’s inconceivable that anyone could burn every bush and bomb every rock in this game, as we used to back in the day.

On the ground, I encountered some empty ruins, explored them, but found nothing. I proceeded further, and found a cave wherein I found several clusters of flowers. Noticing that the clusters were bunched 1,2,3,4,5, I touched them in this order, and as I did so they changed color. After touching the fifth, a little nature spirit appeared and talked to me, explained that he’s a Korok, and gave me a seed. I wonder if the seeds do something for me later on.

I continued on and found new animals. I shot a big goat with my bow, and a large crane-like bird. I found more butterflies and some crickets. It seems like animals are more plentiful and varied here than on the plateau.

Venturing further, I came to a bridge, and met a man patrolling there. His name, Briga, reminds me of Bridge, which I expect is no accident. He told me a few things and gave me directions and wished me luck. I went to the edge of the bridge to look into the water, and he tried to talk me out of committing suicide. I thought that was rather dark, and unexpectedly so, but very interesting, and brave of Nintendo to put into a video game. Nintendo usually keeps things light. I was just looking at the water, not intending to jump, and it did look dangerous, so I thought the warning was surprising realism, and I appreciate that.

I crossed the bridge and a little further encountered a man along the trail who buys and sells things. Talked to him, but didn’t buy or sell anything. There was a tall column near his tent, and I tried to climb it, but couldn’t get to the top with my stamina and I didn’t want to use a stamina replenishing food because I’m a hoarding miser. So I left it for later and continued on.

I found a path with some more flowers, and I tried to harvest them, but they disappeared as I tried to collect them, and then another flower appeared a short distance away. But it lead me up a trail and at the end of it I met another Korok. So, I guess this is a way of rewarding and incentivizing you to explore the world. It reminds me a bit of the Skultullas that you could discover in Ocarina of Time.

I went back to the main road and encountered a bokoblin camp, and cleared it out by rolling bombs down into it, which took them all out rather easily, although it took a long time because the bombing was not very accurate and it takes time to generate another bomb after you lob one. Looted the camp, and followed a river bank to find a tower, but it was on the other side of the river, and the river was way too wide for me to swim across it.

Had to use my ice power to cross the river to get to the tower. I climbed the tower, and it augmented my tablet so that it detects nearby shrines. This would have been very useful to have before! It detected a shrine nearby right away, so I found it and cleared it and obtained a spirit orb, although I was not able to figure out how to get to the treasure chests in this one.

That’s as much as I got done today. I’m about halfway or so to where I expect to encounter Impa. Dang, this is a huge world.

Updated: 2020-Apr-22 — 7:20 pm

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