Not all who quest are in a hurry.
I could try the Eventide Island mission again, but I don’t much feel like it. Instead I want to explore.
I end up taking about 5-6 hours and go all over Hyrule, to places I haven’t explored thoroughly.
It’s going to be hard to remember everything I did, and the order in which I did it. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I recall that in order to upgrade my Sheikah slate powers, I need to get ancient machine pieces, which can be obtained from dead Guardians. I’ve looted a bunch, and most of them have screws, springs, and gears. But the upgrades for the Bomb and Stasis powers require different parts, and they seem to be much more rare. I’ve only found one Shaft, and I need two more to upgrade the Bombs. And I forget offhand what it was that Purah said I need to upgrade the Statis power. But I know the one Shaft that I did find dropped when I killed the only Guardian I’ve managed to kill so far, so I decide to try to kill a few more.
First, I head back to the Great Plateau, and fight the two Guardians that are in the ruins area on the southeast corner by one of the four shrines. I’m well armed, and now these guardians are pretty easy to kill. I just hit them in the eye with an arrow, run up, and smash them. I get them nearly dead before they can shoot a second time, and if I need to I just back off and hit them with another arrow. I don’t get any of the parts I needed though. I transport back to Hateno village to pay Purah a visit to double check, and sure enough, I don’t have the parts she needs.
Leaving her lab, I forget all about Guardian killing and decide on a whim to wander north of Hateno village, in the cold region of Lanayru mountain. There are three pine trees on the top of three nearby peaks, and there’s got to be something up with those. I glide out and sure enough, I find a korok seed. I have several minutes on the cold resistance food I ate, so I explore a bit more, and re-visit the Spring of Wisdom. I still don’t know what to do there, and I don’t know where I’ll find the clues I need to figure it out.
I hope I can find some more serious cold weather gear that will allow me to spend indefinite time up here without having to eat special meals and watch the clock, and then I can screw around and experiment and explore more thoroughly.
I try touching the sick dragon, and it damages me, but not a lot. So, OK, I guess you don’t climb up on the dragon and pull a thorn out of its paw. Well what else could it be? I guess I’ll find out someday. I climb down and explore the east side of Lanayru, and find a couple of korok seeds, and a shrine. This shrine was another one that was well hidden, behind a bombable rock wall. It can be difficult to see on the mountain, it seems like it’s always dark when I go there, and the weather is bad, poor visibility, and so I’m lucky I found this one. Now I have a quick way to get there. I cleared the shrine, it’s tough to remember, but I think this one told me that I was worthy just for discovering it, so kindof a freebie. I think here is where I received some climbing boots, which give me another speed boost to my climbing. Sweet.
After this, I decide to explore up and down the coastline on the eastern shore of Hyrule, starting up north. I get to a low enough altitude that it doesn’t hurt to exist any longer. On my way down the trail, I fight a few lizalfos and some ice kees, who freeze me a couple of times because I don’t want to waste arrows on them.
I get down to the shore, and explore, and find several more korok seeds. Checking the map, there’s a string of islands on the north side of Lanayru, and I haven’t been up there before. The nearest is called Wintre Island, and I try to glide there from the mountain, but it’s much too far, and I don’t make it halfway there. So I give up on that, and head south down the shore. It’s desolate and rocky, and the forage isn’t great, but I do find several more korok seeds, some mineral deposits, and not a whole lot else. I get all the way to the southern point of the continent, to a region caled Mapla point, and continue back to the West, coming nearly south of Hateno village to an area called Deepback Bay on the map. Somewhere in this area, there’s a beach where I found a lot of gemstones and a couple or three more korok seeds. There’s lizalfos sleeping on the beach but they’re not too tough, and then I run into the gemstone beach, and there’s a bunch of baby stone taluses, maybe 5-6 of them, and they’re really only hurt by the iron sledge hammer, which I don’t have right now, so I bomb them and take them all out with one or two bombs.
There’s a dock with a raft around here, and I take it and swing around Mapla Point and head all the way back up to Wintre Island, where I find two more Korok seeds.
There’s what appear to be ancient Greek ruins on the land mass nearby Wintre island, and it looks interesting, so I try exploring it. Here, I find my first Lynel, and it’s a blue one. For the other enemies in the game, blue means extra strong, so I don’t know if this holds true for Lynels, or not, but this one was easily the strongest enemy I’ve encountered in the game so far. I tried fighting him, and he could one-shot me without even trying. He wielded a lightning weapon, I managed to hit him a couple of times, but he had 3000 hit points, and I don’t know what that translates to in terms of heart containers, but he definitely outclassed me.
After respawning, I decide to observe him from a safe distance, and see what i can figure out about it. He seems to be patrolling this area by the ruins, guarding it. I want to get past him, and I think I can do it. I manage to sneak by him, and it’s not hard. He patrols a fairly wide area, and when he’s on the far side of it, I duck down and sneak along the edge of the rocks, and mange to keep quiet and out of sight.
I get over to the ruins, and there’s a couple of chests sitting there. I pull them close to me using magnesis, and open them, and there’s a couple of Gold rupees, which are worth 300 rupees apiece.
I decide to leave this area for later, since if this Lynel is typical of what I’ll find up here, I’m definitely not ready for it yet.
I get back on the raft and start heading south, but it gets rainy and night time and I decide to just Sheikah slate teleport back to a more familiar part of the map, and set my destintation for the shrine near Kakariko village, where I raid the fairy pond, and find 3 fairies, which brings me up to 5 total again. I love having fairies, they’re a great life insurance policy. While I’m there, I have the fairy of the fairy pond enhance my new climbing boots.
I jump back to the Stables by Dueling Peaks, and it’s dark. I think about the Hinox skeleton that I fought it he wooded area nearby, and decide to try to find it again. I know right where it is now, and I marked it on the map. I have a lot of arrows and I am still very well armed, so I feel ready. I transport to the shrine by the river where the Hinox skeleton is, and get out there, and sure enough it’s there! I fight it, but I don’t get started until 2:30am, and at 5am the game changes to “morning” and the Hinox crumbles back into the earth and disappears. I had him down to near dead, and it escaped from me. Crap.
I transport back to the Dueling Peaks Stable, sit by the fire until night, which officially starts at 9pm, and then warp back to the Hinox skeleton, and fight it again. It’s a fun fight. I have a hard time with it, and have to do it 3-4 times before I manage to not get tripped up on running into trees while focusing on the Hinox, or having my view occluded by treetops. Apart from that, though, the combat goes really well. I hit it in the eye, and it seems easier somehow. I can run up and pound on him, and get in about 10-12 hits before he gets up and I have to run away again. I even manage to pop his eye out, and watch him search around and pop it back in to his skull. He also rips the ribs right off of his skeleton and throws them at me. He’s got some interesting attack options, I’ll give him that. I notice that when his eye pops out, it has its own health meter, and recalling how bokoblin skeletons take a hit, and then their head pops off and their skeletons crawl back and pick up the head and reassemble themselves, regenerating their healthbar, and aren’t truly destroyed until you smash the skull on the ground, I realie that this is what I need to do to defeat the Hinox skeleton, so the next time the eye comes out, I run up and smash it a couple of times, and the Hinox is defeated.
It drops a lot of loot, but the weapons it drops aren’t anything better than what I have. It does give me a Knight’s Halberd, though, which is a pretty cool spear weapon that does decent damage.
There was also a korok archery test on a nearby mountain that I found one time but didn’t have enough arrows for, and I have plenty of arrows right now, so I go back to the spot on the map where I marked it, and complete that challenge.
I continue to explore this mountain area, and end up getting back into the area of the map between Mount Taran and Ebon Mountain, an area I haven’t explored too well yet. I notice the next night that the moon is blood red, and since the monsters will all be resurrecting, I decide to warp to the shrine on Cape Cales, and do another raid on the bokoblins there so I can restock on Knight’s Broadswords.
I really don’t need to do this, though, as I’m well stocked with good weapons, and as it happens this time they do not drop any broadswords at all! I might have destroyed them all with explosions, or something, I hope. I realize that I’m near where that tall pillar of rock offshore was with that strange bird man who was playing a song about a hidden treasure. I decide to go back out that way again, and this time I find the treasure — a sunken chest nearby one of the rocks, which has a 300 gold rupee in it. I still don’t know what to make of the clue, 17 of 24 doesn’t make any sense to me; I just found the chest by searching with magnesis vision, which made it easy to spot. Maybe in the 17th hour (5pm?) of the 24 hour day, the shadow of the pillar of rock falls on this spot? I don’t know, I was there at 7pm, and didn’t want to wait around for 22 hours to see. I transport back up to the shrine on Cape Cales.
After clearing the bokoblin lair, I realize I haven’t explored much downhill from the cape, so I do so, and get into the area around Mount Dunsel. I encounter a couple of mounted bokoblins, and take them out, knocking them off their horses with the bow, and then finishing them with melee weapons. I take one of their horses, and ride it a bit, so I can go further, faster.
There’s a cluster of mountain peaks, and I kindof wander through, some of the places I’ve been to before, and I recognize it, but other parts I haven’t. This is another area of the map where I haven’t been to a whole lot, and taking a second pass through here, I find a few more kurok seeds, and pick up a few that I’d seen spots for but wasn’t able to figure out how to get them on my first pass.
Somewhere around here, I encountered another sleeping Hinox, this one was in a spectacular cavernous area in the vicinity north of Mount Dunsel. It was a red Hinox, and not too difficult to defeat. I glided in, landed on its chest, charged up a melee attack, did some good damage, and then managed to get an arrow to the eye or two to finish him off.
Not sure what to do next, I decide I want to explore more to the west of where I’m at. I lose the horse I took from the bokoblins, and transport to Lake Tower, scope around, and spot a shrine out in the open a distance away. It is too far to glide to on a straight shot, but I can get about halfway there, and then run the rest of the way in. As I get closer, I find another stable, the third so far that I’ve managed to discover. I talk to the people at the stable, save, and got clear the shrine. This shrine involves magnesis puzzles, and I have to rip a door off its hinges and turn it into a makeshift bridge to cross some gaps between platforms.
A person at the stables tells me he’s really into horses and challenges me to complete a course he has set up, and if I can do it in a good enough time, he’ll give me better horse gear. I try it, but don’t succeed. Another person tells me that there are some marauders on horses nearby, and asks me to take care of them. I get into a skirmish with 3-4 bokoblins on horseback, and take them all out easily. Then I spot another telltale orange glow of a shrine nearby, go and explore it and find it. I clear out this one too, I forget what the challenge was. Outside this shrine, there’s a woman sitting by a campfire, and she tells me about her best horse, who died, and she is hoping to reunite with it by going to a special place that is rumored to be near here where horses can be resurrected. It sounds pretty unbelievable, but who knows.
There are a lot of horses in this area, and I catch a few more, but none of them are any better than the horses I have already, so I don’t register them. A person at the stables can change your horse’s appearance, so I give Horsier a mohawk mane. I think he looks cool that way.
I take the horse on the steeple chase course, and after a few tries manage to get a sub-1:30 time, which earns me a fancy bridle, and then a few more tries and I get down to below 1:15, which earns me a fancy saddle. They don’t seem to do anything for my ability to ride, so I guess it’s just cosmetic.
I ride out and follow a pass I saw through a mountainous ridge that ran alongside the steeple chase course. I follow it, and eventually come to what looks like another fairy fountain flower. This one wants 1000 rupees, but I have plenty of rupees from all the exploration I’ve done. This is not a fairy, though, but a horse god, who tells me they have the power to resurrect a dead horse. I’ve seen Horsey jump off of a very high bridge, land in water, and swim to shore, so I don’t know what it takes to kill a horse — I did capture a horse once only to have it shot out from under me by a Guardian, just as I had succeeded in taming it, and that blast killed it. They also seem to take hits from weapons, so obviously they can die.
I continue exploring the area, just following a trail of korok seeds, mineral deposits, and hidden treasure chests, until I find myself on the south coast of Hyrle again, this time far further west than I was when I retook the fishing spot near Lurelin village. I reach a tall cliff, and far down below I see beach. I make my way down there, stopping on a few flat levels to harvest minerals, and when I get to the beach, I find a half-dead Guardian, and kill it, then I find another Guardian a little further down the beach. This one is alive and well, and wakes up, and it can walk. It kills me, I manage to hit it once with an arrow, miss it with the second arrow, and thereafter it just pummels me, it shot recharging just as my fairies bring me back to life, so I just get revived, killed, revived, killed, 5 times until I’m out of fairies and Game Over it.
I restore from my last save point, and head the opposite way, and end up exploring a long stretch of beach all the way back to that Lurelin fishing spot. Along the way I end up fighting a lot of lizalfos and a few bokoblins, including two mounted ones, and I take another horse, and ride it for a while, all the way back to the jungle zone, where I go to register it, only to find out that I’ve maxed out my horse registrations. It’s not a very good horse, so I let it go.
Since I’m back here again, I decide to go back to what I was doing 8 or 9 hours ago, in real time, and try to find that shrine that’s just east of the bridge. I still can’t find it. Any time I’m there, it pours and thunders and doesn’t stop. I try to climb up levels, because I can’t find any sign of a shrine on the lower levels, but the rain won’t let up, and it makes climbing impossible. At one point, I can hear accordion music, which I think is coming from the stable nearby, but the stable is far enough away that I shouldn’t be hearing any music. But I also heard this same music being played by the weird bird-man at the rock pillar in the middle of the bay near Hateno beach. I can’t tell where the music is coming from.
Frustrated, I give up on it, and walk back east, looking for a drip spot to climb, and get all the way back down to the beach again. Eventually, I do find a place I can climb back up, but it’s a very long trip to that spot, and after getting to the top of the cliff, the ground is very flat. These mountains have an unnatural, cubed-off look to them.
There’s a massive waterfall, and a few sunken treasure chests in the lake at the top of one of them. I get a bundle of ice arrows, and a sword that’s inferior to the weapons I already am carrying.
On another one of the flat mountain tops, there’s a circle of stones, with one stone in the center. I’ve seen other stone circles like it before, and they always have koroks on them. This one doesn’t, or at least it’s a puzzle that I don’t know the solution to, because nothing happens when I lift the center stone. I look around and try to figure something out, but can’t. I notice that right where the stone circle is, my shrine sensor is pinging like crazy, but I still can’t figure out where this shrine is.
I reach the end of the mountain range, so I backtrack and explore to the other end of it. I find a few more bokoblin camps, with some fairly tough bokoblins on them, and they’re decently armed. There’s a few lizalfos as well. I fight them, and win, although it wears through a few more weapons, and I end up biting it at least twice, running through the last of my fairies.
At the very top and farthest west end of the mountain, there’s a small lake, and in it there’s a magnetic iron door, which I lift out, expecting that there will be something I can do with it, or maybe it’s covering another treasure beneath it. But nothing. The lake is full of Hyrulian Bass, probably around 15 or 20 in a tiny little pond. I bomb them and harvest as many as I can.