I give up on finding the shrine, and proceed onward to the south, following the mountain range. On my left is the the unexplored jungle zone, and on my right is a part of Hyrule that I have the map for, but haven’t been to. I decide to see what’s over on the right. The mountain ridge I’m running along gradually tapers down, until I reach a long, wide, curving gentle slope. I’m high above on the hill, looking down, and see two mounted bokoblins riding around on horses. They look tough, and I still don’t have any good weapons, or fairies, so my only real option to deal with them is to lob bombs. I’m very high up, and there’s no way I can get a bomb over to them on the fly, but the slope is convenient and the round bombs roll down, if I bowl them just right, they run down to where my targets are. It takes a long time to take them out this way, but it’s safe, or so I think. At one point, the bokoblins actually manage to spot me high atop the ridge, and begin opening fire at me with their bows, and woah, they’re firing fire arrows at me. I’ve never had that before, and it looks awesome. Fortunately, I’m so high up that their arrows just aren’t able to reach me, but I’m surprised that they are capable of seeing me so far away.
My bombing is not very precise, and doesn’t do a lot of damage. I probably lob a good 40-50 bombs, and it takes a ridiculously long time, probably a good half hour. Eventually, though, I manage to take them both out. One of their horses is still around, and I hop on it and ride it for a while, to make speed and give me a better chance of escape if I run into a new enemy that I can’t handle. This horse is very gentle and easy to control, but I don’t have a saddle for him, as he’s unregistered.
I ride him a way, and the terrain starts to change, and it looks like it’s getting more arid. I’m walking along, going downhill toward a canyon, when I stop dead in my tracks, as I see a huge monstrous looking giant, which I believe is the same type of creature as the skeletal one I fought in the woods behind the stable one night.
I get close enough to take a good picture, and think about trying to take it out with a stealth strike, but it doesn’t seem possible. I still don’t have a good weapon, and I bet this thing has a lot more hitpoints than the moblins that I still can’t usually one-shot.
I think about what else I can try to do, when it becomes daybreak, the giant wakes up, and I decide to retreat before he sees me. I run back to the rear wall of the canyon, and quickly scale up, abandoning the horse. By the time I reach the top, I think I’ll try spending another hour dropping bombs on this giant. But by the time I turn around and look down to where I last saw him, he’s gone.
Checking my photo album, I see that this creature is called a Hinox.
Since I’m once again high up on an elevated platform, I take a look around with my scope, looking for nearby towers and shrines that I can visit to make return travel to this spot easier. I do see one or two but after marking them on the map, they’re all quite far off.
I decide to go for an exploratory scouting trip into the jungle zone, which is still on my left, and I leap off the mountain ridge and sail down into the jungle.
I’m fortunate enough not to run into many enemies, and mostly they’re weak types: chu chus, kees, skeletal bokoblins, and I’m able to take care of them easily, taking no damage, and replacing worn out weapons with equivalent.
The terrain is terraced, and there’s rivers and waterfalls everywhere. I make my way down slowly, gliding down one terrace at a time, watching carefully for enemies so I can avoid or deal with them with maximum advantage. A few terraces down, I find a tower at a level with the cliff I’m standing on. I can glide right over to it and be nearly at the top, which will make this one easy to top. This is fantastic, as I’ll finally have a teleport spot to return to this area with easily. After I make it to the top and activate the tower, I scan around with my scope, and see some interesting features: a bridge, and what appears to be some kind of horse statue.
Walking back off the tower, I spot a couple of lizalfos, and using arrows, I kill them from a safe distance. They’re relatively weak, and I score a couple of headshots, and they go down quick. I’m in luck, both are armed with lizafos boomerangs, which are much better than any of the melee weapons I’m currently holding.
I continue to make my way northward and downhill, find a kurok seed, and come to a river with a waterfall. After taking out a couple of octorocks, I discover that bombs can kill fish, which makes them a lot easier to catch.
I glide down from the waterfall, and am at the level of the bridge I saw from above. A thunderstorm comes and I am out in the open. I try to find shelter, but sparks start going off around me and I’m only seconds away from being blasted by lightning. I dash and run across the bridge. It’s night time, and the legendary beast dragon emerges suddenly from the water, electrical energy shooting off of him, and I can’t get away from him. His discharge kills me, and I resurrect at the beginning of the bridge, it’s still night, but the weather is clear. I run across the bridge, and find the horse statue I’d seen from far away is actually a stable.
I talk to the locals and find out that my three horses are all available at this stable, too, even though I left them back near the Dueling Mountain stable. My Sheikah slate is pinging like mad that there’s a shrine nearby, and it takes me a while, but I eventually find it behind a well hidden bomb-able wall. I activate the shrine, and clear it. It’s a see-saw challenge, that I solve with my time-stopping power. The final challenge is two see-saws back-to-back, and I can only time stop the first one; after that I have to wait for the ability to re-charge. I puzzle over what I need to do here. Do I need to upgrade the stasis power before I can solve this? No. In the end, I discover that if I just jump, I can just make it up the slope before it tilts back the wrong way, and get up to the platform where I can claim my spirit orb.
Now that I have a quick way back to this part of the world, I transport back to Kakariko to replenish my fairies, and manage to grab 3.
Then I transport back to Hateno village to sell off excess forage and purchase arrows and another weapon display case for the house. Then I transport to the shrine near the bokoblin camp where I found the Knight’s broadswords. By transporting here, I have an easy way to sneak up on their camp from behind. I manage to scale their skull cave house, and from up there, I am able to lob bombs. It’s time consuming, tedious, but safe and consumes nothing. I manage to bomb the four archery posts, taking out the sentries. For a while, they’re freaking out, setting off alarms and shooting arrows at me like mad. By the time it’s over, I end up collecting 15 reclaimed arrows. Thanks guys! Getting bombs into the skull cave is as simple as dropping them so that they roll down the eye sockets and roll into the cave. It takes a good, long time before I manage to take them all out, but in the end it works beautifully, and I have three nice broadswords that I can use to take on greater challenges.
By this time the battery has run down and it’s time to stop again.