Zelda: BOTW Diary (34)

I double check the dragon’s mouth, and re-read the clue the statue gives me. It says I need to get a golden scale from Farosh, which is the name of that dragon I’ve been seeing in the night sky near the Great Plateau and on into the jungle region.

Great, so how do I get a scale from him? The statue says he gives it to me? Huh. OK. The Goddess Hylia will show me the way. Right then.

I leave the dragon’s mouth temple and head back to where I left Horsier. On the way I get ambushed by a couple more lizalfos, and they’re in water deep enough that I have to swim to get close to them, which means I can’t fight, so I can only take them out with bombs and arrows. They’re not particularly strong, but I’m pretty low on normal arrows again, and I’m trying to conserve them. On the way back, I blunder into another bokoblin camp, and wipe them out. My faster weapons have all broken, and all I’m left with right now is high-damage two-handed weapons that are slow and awkward to use against weaker enemies, and it leads to me taking hits from them that I could ordinarily dodge or use my shield or pre-empt with a speedier attack.

I don’t much care for the two-handed heavy weapons. But maybe I just need to use them on the right type of enemy.

I get back, and find Kass the bird-man still sitting there, too, playing his accordion. I talk to him more, but he just tells me the same thing about the “shrine” at the dragon’s mouth, which makes me think I didn’t find something I was meant to, because Kass always tells me something congratulatory after I solve the puzzle in his songs. The place I found isn’t a “shrine” in the sense of the Sheikah Shrine puzzle dungeons that are all over Hyrule, so maybe there’s still one in that general area, waiting to be discovered? Only, my scanner never went off… So, I dunno.

I mount Horsier and we ride down the road, racing past any enemies we come across, until we get to the Highland Stable. I board Horsier there, and then transport to a shrine a little closer to the dragon’s mouth area. It’s still a hike to get there from the shrine, but I save about half the distance. I take a wandering path, checking out anything that looks like a korok seed, and I find several more, getting my total up to about 90.

I encounter a few more of those floaty teleporty guys with the wands, including ones that use fire.  I get a picture with my Sheikah camera, and they are indeed Wizzorobes.  The fire ones are a little different to fight, as the fire can set blazes nearby you when you dodge them, and you end up taking damage from the secondary burn anyway.  I find they are hard to hit with arrows when they dance around, but once in a while they kindof stand still and you can take a shot at them, then run up and hit them a few times, and this is the best way I’ve found to handle them so far.  If you don’t have arrows, they’re tough to fight.  Arrows knock them down to your level (they seem to float above and a bit out of your normal reach, otherwise) and stun them long enough that you can nail them pretty solidly if you’re quick about it. When you defeat them, they always drop a wand for you, which is a fairly weak weapon, and delicate, but it does elemental damage and has a range effect, which makes it worth having while they last.  The fire wands are almost as dangerous to myself as they are to my enemies, though.

I climb a small rocky hill and find a little lake at the top where I see three fairies and a bunch of fireflies. The fairies are high over the water, and it’s hard to get at these ones. I manage to screw up and make noise that scatters them and they disappear. Drat.

I continue northward and encounter a chain of shallow marshy wading ponds, with lots of forage, snails and frogs and plants. I find a couple of korok seeds there, and continuing a bit further, end up in an area I recall from my first trip off of the Great Plateau, down the main road to Kakariko village. I am near the big river with the bridge where I met Brigo the Bridge Guard. There’s the giant fallen hollow tree, where I found one of my first korok seeds, and a swampy low-lying area with a lot of ruins that I haven’t explored. I decide to search the area, and encounter a couple of weaker lizalfos, who I kill without too much difficulty. I get to the far end of the swamp, and there’s a large rock, which wakes up and it’s a big Stone Talus. I don’t have a iron sledge hammer to fight it with, so I mark the spot on the map, and transport back to the Highland Stable again, where there’s a free hammer that I can pick up, and then I transport back to a shrine that is very nearby the site where I found the Stone Talus.

This Talus fight is tougher, because his vulnerable ore-spot is not on top of him, but on his back, high enough that I can’t reach it with the hammer easily. He’s pretty hard to get behind, and when I do he has to be bent backward to make the vulnerable spot low enough that I can hit it, or else I need to be standing on a raised part of the ground. This is very difficult to arrange. I try jump attacking at the spot, but this isn’t really any easier.

I find if I climb up his back, and roll a my round and square Sheikah Slate bombs down his back, and detonate them, they do enough damage that it’s a worthwhile little bit extra. Then I can jump off his back and do a falling attack, which is tough to connect with, but works maybe half of the time or less. When I do manage to hit with the hammer, it does a big chunk of the Stone Talus’s life bar, about 1/5th or so. I also equip bomb arrows and when I can, I get a shot off at him, hitting twice, and the combination of all that manages to defeat him, but only after he hits me 3 different times, forcing me to eat two foods to keep my health up. The reward for victory is the usual massive gemstone drop, which to be honest isn’t such a great reward at this point, as I’ve found dozens of amber and other minerals, and don’t have much use for them still. Despite that, the Stone Talus fight is pretty enjoyable, about “just right” as far as the challenge level I can handle, and I like the battle music.

Having vanquished the Talus, I complete exploration of this swamp ruins area, and find a couple of hidden chests, and some animal and plant forage, and then I head back over the hills intending to make my way back toward the wooded river area that leads to the Dragon’s mouth and see if there’s more stuff I missed there, which I’m sure there is, but if it’s just forage and minor enemies, I don’t care about it. I only want to find a shrine or some clues that can tell me how to proceed on the main quest.

On my way back, I come to that fairy pond that I found earlier, and the fairies are back. I manage to capture two of them, but spook the third one away. Still, not bad, and it’s very good to have two fairies again.

I make my way own into the wooded area and find another small bokoblin camp. This makes the third or fourth one that I’ve cleared out in the area, and I wonder how many more there must be. You can’t see far at all from the ground here, which makes finding things much harder. I could walk right past something and have it be on the wrong side of a tree or a river bank, and never know it was there.

Updated: 2020-May-04 — 8:06 am

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