I continued exploring the jungle region. Climbing again up the bluffs behind the Lakeside Stable, I find large statue with what might have once been an altar in front of it. I don’t know if there’s anything here to do or not, but I try various things and nothing does anything.
I take advantage of my altitude to look around a bit, but I don’t see much of anything that I haven’t seen, although I’m getting a bit different perspective. Down below, there’s another bokoblin camp, and I drop bombs on it for a while until the two blue bokoblins are taken out, then drop down and take care of the sentry on the tower. I loot whatever drops, and move on.
Continuing West, I run once again into the two sisters, Nat and Meghyn, who hunt truffles outside of Hateno village. They’re under attack again, and this time they get knocked senseless by their attackers, who I drive off a bit slowly. They’re just stunned, though, and are revived after I rescue them.
I have found several truffles, so I try to offer them one, but the game doesn’t allow it. I hold it and stand next to them, I try to talk to them, I tried even putting the truffle down on the ground in front of both of them, but they ignore it. They say they’re out here risking their safety to find a truffle, and here I am giving them what I have so they can return home and be safe, but there’s nothing.
This is a broken moment, I wish that the programmers had thought of this situation and accounted for it.
I move on, and come to the boundary that separates the jungle zone from the next area, and it looks like I’m coming into the area where the Horse God dwells. There’s a road that goes along the border, and I follow it a bit, and find a few more korok seeds.
I’m now up to nearly 80 korok seeds, and since first encountered Hestu, and gave him all the seeds I had at the time, that puts me over 80 and probably close to 90. I feel like I’ve been playing a game that should have been titled, Korok Quest: And Incidentally Link.
I’m not figuring anything out, I’m just on a mission to explore the world, lift every rock, climb every tree and mountain, and look at everything, but so far there’s been next to nothing about the main mission of the game, defeating Ganon. The Shrine tests don’t do anything other than give me a puzzle to solve. But they don’t tie into the story. They purport to prove my worth as a hero, and that’s fine, and the challenges themselves are mostly OK, though not amazing, but I really wish that they had designed them in such a fashion that they would reveal clues and story. Like, a clue to where the next shrine is. Or tell me who this Monk was, and let him tell me about Hyrule, Ganon, Zelda, or anything, really. My only real driver for finding shrines is that they put me 1/4 closer to a heart container or stamina meter upgrade, and a waypoint that I can teleport back to if I decide that I haven’t found enough korok seeds out in that part of the world yet.
But there’s jack shit out in the world telling me about how to find the Four Legendary Beasts, What to do when I find them, How to defeat Ganon, more about what Happened 100 years ago, or any of that stuff. I know that it must be out there. I haven’t found 10 of the 12 photographic memory spots yet. But there’s TWELVE of those, and there’s got to be a good 200+ korok seeds in the world, and I believe north of 100 shrines, although I have not found that many myself — not that I’ve been counting, but I think I’ve probably cleared maybe 16 to 20 altogether thus far. Most of the time, my sensor doesn’t detect anything when I’m exploring, so I must have cleaned out the parts of the world that I’ve been to. But I keep finding ridiculous amounts of korok seeds and forage and hidden weapons everywhere I go.
I continue following the road until it is clear that if I go further, I’ll be leaving the jungle area, so I turn off and head back into it. I find yet another korok, and then I encounter a sleeping red Hinox, who I defeat pretty easily. He manages to hit me one time, but with my armor equipped it doesn’t one-shot me, I take a mid-combat meal and recover, and take him down. He’s got some decent item drops, including some Knight’s-level arms.
Moving on, I find more hidden treasures in the water, and by this river, encounter that same odd hovering, teleporting, lightning shooting creature. It looks like maybe a Wizzorobe? But it’s wearing white. I get excited and forget to photograph it to get an ID for sure, and I don’t notice it displaying a name on-screen when I target it. This time I manage to take it down with a couple of good arrow shots. I’m running low on arrows again, down to just 4. Hitting it with the bow stuns it, and gives me ample time to hit it again, which I do, and it only takes two arrows to take it down. I happen to have a pretty nice bow equipped, which has an attack rating of 36, so other bows probably take a few more shot than that. I don’t think I headshot it, but maybe that happened, and made it a relatively easy encounter. The creature, whatever it is, drops its lightning rod, when I kill it, which fills my last weapon slot. This is a cool weapon, a bit inexact, and not great damage, but it gives me a range alternative for weak enemies, and can be used effectively to fight meta-users and aquatic creatures.
Crossing the river and going up another level, I find a large, flat, open area, and spot my second Lynel. This one is red. He’s also equipped with lightning weapons, and has very good vision. He sees me a long way off, and I try to run, but he comes up and even though I think I’ve gotten far enough away that he should have reset back to his idle AI behavior, he’s still tracking me, and hits me at long range with a thunderbolt, taking me out in one shot.
I experiment a few times, going up against him with different equipment, but nothing makes a bit of difference, he simply outclasses me, and by a large margin.Looking at my photo album of clues to the story, it looks like one of the photos was taken somewhere in this area, but I haven’t been able to find it. I see palm trees and ferns and square-shaped red rock formations, and what looks like some kind of building near a lake, but I have yet to encounter it. It feels like I’ve been all over this part of the map, pretty thoroughly by now, but of course it’s very possible that I’ve missed a huge swath of land somewhere. And of course, I have not really been anywhere near where that Lynel is patrolling. Although, I have come up adjacent two its area from two different directions, now.
I wonder how I’ll ever become powerful enough to stand toe to toe against one of those things.