Zelda: BOTW Diary (43)

I want to complete a few of the sidequests at the Stables I recently discovered. There’s a rumor about a pure white horse at a hill nearby, which I would like to check out. But I do not find the name of the hill on the map. It must be on one of the regions I have yet to activate the Sheikah Tower.  Maybe if I venture out I will find it anyway.

I try heading north up the road from Central Tower, to see how far north into central Hyrule I can get.  I see Hyrule castle off in the distance, and it is pulsating with an evil looking purple glow. I’ve seen it off in the distance many times before, but never this close, and I aim to get closer.  The road I am on seems like it was once well traveled, though now abandoned and disused.  I encounter little on the way.  The field are wide open with low, rolling hills, and a tree here and there, a busted wagon occasionally, and little else. 

I make my way easily until I spot a Guardian up dead ahead, patrolling.  Looking to see if I can simply detour around it, I spot a second Guardian to my right, on the other side of the road.  Neither seems to see me for the time being, so I have some time to try to formulate a plan.

I note the grass is fairly tall, and I wonder if, using my stealth outfit, I might be able to sneak slowly past and go between them.  I decide to try, and get about halfway between them before they both spot me, the eastern one first, and then as I duck down below a low ruined rock wall, and begin to equip my weapons, figuring I’ll see if I can take it out, the other one spots me.  The first Guardian is right up against the other side of the wall, and I’m in its blind spot, but I’m directly in line of sight of the other Guardian, and have nowhere to hide. 

I pull out the Sheikah slate and bring up a safe shrine on speed dial, going back to Central Tower.  I head out from there again, this time to the northwest, up to an area called the Giant’s Woods, where I discover a sleeping Hinox. I am not interested in fighting this one right now, and leave him alone, and fortunately he does not stir.  

There are a couple of horses about, and I think maybe if I ride a fast enough horse, I could get by the guardians. These horses look like the more wild type, and so I try to get one.  They’re very skittish, though, and won’t let me get close enough to grab one. I chase them around a while, eventually grabbing one, but not the one I really wanted. There’s also no sign of this supposed pure white horse, either, although that does not surprise me as I am still not in the right spot for that, and still don’t know the location where it is to be found.

I do manage to grab a horse as it runs past me, spooked, and get it under control. I ride it back to the Outskirts and register it, naming it Horstimus.  I want to name it Horstimus Prime, but horses can only have names that are nine letters long. He’s not quite as good as Horsier, in terms of stats, though.

I decide I don’t want to try to ride past the Guardians after all, after talking to the old man about the white horse again, it sounds like it’s more west of where I’ve tried to go so far, and I decide to strike out on foot, as it looks like there’ll be a lot of climbing in that direction.

I go out that way, following a road at first, and uncover a couple more koroks.  And it’s not too long before I am diverting offroad for this purpose, when I detect a shrine nearby.  I start climbing up a mountain, and it starts raining, making it difficult for me to continue up.  I’m very close to the shrine, but don’t see it yet, when I spot what looks like a bomb-able rock doorway, so I head over to it, and blow it up, and there’s nothing — a false door.

I head back the way I came from, and the pinging gets louder.  I continue to move up and to the south a short distance I find the shrine. This one has a bunch of objects that I have to move using magnesis, to swing from platform to platform, and to move massive spiked balls out of my way, and to create a staircase out of some platforms that slide along rails.  It requires a bit of thought, and planning, but is not overly difficult.

I continue further up the mountain, and near the top of it, I find a beautiful cherry tree blossoming, and I get to see it in the last minutes of sunset, and it’s really beautiful.  I just knew that there had to be a blossoming cherry tree somewhere in this world.  In the vicinity of the tree, I find a couple more korok seeds.  

I have an excellent view of terrain that I’ve only been able to see from a great distance from this spot, and so I spend considerable time just looking through my scope, marking shrines on the map, and gauging how likely I am able to reach them.  But I’m really more interested in Towers.

I spot a couple of shrines, and a couple of towers.  I decide to try to glide as far toward the nearest tower, and then run the rest of the way, and not get distracted by anything other than an obvious korok seed or a shrine, and if I don’t see it in plain sight I’m ignoring it.  I get maybe 2/3 or so of the way by gliding, and land right nearby a woman being attacked by a bokoblin. I come to her aid, but she seemed to be handling herself OK.  She gives me something, and tells me about a doctor who makes a monster extract of some kind, which can make better elixirs.  I make a mental note of it and move on, the tower is not much farther.

As I get to the tower, I can see that the surroundings here are a bit more alien than the rest of Hyrule.  There’s a forest off to my left of what appears to be enormous, tree-sized mushrooms. And a massive thunderstorm seems to be permanently above it.  I keep running on, and as I approach the Tower, I can see that it’s emerging from the middle of a flooded shallow lake.  

As I get even closer, I observe that it’s not actually shallow — the shallow parts are actually the flat tops of submerged mushrooms.  The actual depths go far below to what used to be the mushroom jungle floor.  The tower appears to be well guarded, with a number of yellow lizals and three yellow wizzorobes surrounding it on all sides, and with the water, the electrified powers of these monsters are going to make them really tricky to deal with.  I carefully take out the closest wizzorobe with enhanced arrows, finding that the fire ones maybe do the best damage.  If I make the first shot connect, it stuns him, making follow up shots easy to connect.  I end up needing to kill 2 or 3 lizals as well, in order to clear an approach to the tower.

I don’t need to clear the entire area around the tower, thankfully, and am able to get up the tower once I knock out the monsters on the side nearest to me.  The actual climb itself goes smoothly.

At the top, I activate the tower, download the map data, and talk to an odd man who is stuck up there. He studies the bird-men, and is interested in flight.  I tell him about my glider, and he asks me to do a test glide from the tower to see how far I can get. 

I get pretty far, and return automatically, and he gives me 100 rupees for my trouble, but this is after he takes a 20 rupee registration fee.  On the glide, my shrine sensor goes off and so I take a second swing out that way to look for it.  I find it rather easily, and land there and clear it out.  This on is a ball puzzle involving some waterways and a tilting chunk of the room.  It take a while to puzzle out how to solve it, but it’s not too bad once I figure it out.

I had also spotted a small lake a little past the shrine, with a tree growing on an island in the middle of it, and it looks like a likely korok spot, so I head over to it, but it’s actually an abandoned-looking enemy outpost.  It’s dark and raining when I get there, and lightning crashes around continually, and I switch into my rubber gear, and it saves me as a lightning blast clips me one time, but doesn’t do a whole lot of damage due to the protective gear.

I pick up what loot I can from the outpost, and move on.  Morning breaks, and the rain immediately ceases, and it’s suddenly a beautiful clear day.  I’m pretty close to Hyrule Castle at this point, although it’s still a pretty safe distance away. I think about scouting it out, if I can.  I start by scoping it from the top of this ridge that I’m standing on, when I spot what appears to be some kind of flying drone quadcopter patrolling the area from the sky.  Oh hell no.

I don’t like the look of that one bit, and decide that I’m going to stay way the hell away from those things.  I do spot a shrine inside a cave a little further up ahead, and I reason that if I am quick, I should be able to glide right to it, and get in before a drone copter spots me.

I glide in, but as I get closer what looked like a cave from a far distance is actually covered over in rock rubble, and then the whole side of the rock slope that the cave entrance is about halfway up is covered with thorns.  I crash the glider right into the thorns and take damage.  I think they look flamable, and taking out my flame spear, I find that indeed they are.  A little burst of flame, and the brambles burn away, and I’m able to blow up the rock wall and enter the cave, where I find the shrine.

The challenge here is a Minor Test of Strength, another combat trial, and this one I am able to prevail capably.  I do take a little damage in the fight, but I take the shrine Guardian down with relative ease.

By now I have more than enough spirit orbs for another heart container, so I return to Kakariko to pray at the statue for it, and do a fairy run, pulling down 3 more fairies to replenish the ones I’d used up during the fights on this excursion.

I also have over 55 rushrooms, so I transport to the Gerudo stables, to trade them to the old man for the diamond.

That’s enough for now, I think, and wonder what the next logical step should be.

Updated: 2020-May-04 — 8:04 am

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