After clearing that least shrine, it’s Blood Moon Eve. I can tell, because the night before a Blood Moon, there’s a hint of the music that plays, just a note, but if you’re paying attention, you can usually hear it.
That’s my cue to head back toward Washa’s Bluff and strip. I’m not 100% sure if it’ll be tonight or tomorrow, so I need to hurry to get there. I transport to the nearest shrine, on Satori mountain, and check the time — it’s 11:20 pm. I glide over as fast as I can get there, and midnight passes before I land, but there’s no resurrection tonight, so it must be tomorrow night.
I climb up onto the big mushroom where Kass is playing his tune again, and talk to him one more time so he can run me through the song to make sure I have it right. I listen, save my game in case I mess up and do something wrong, and then build a fire with firewood and flint, and sit by it until the next night, purely in order to make the time arrive as quickly as possible.
The time comes, and it is raining. I glide down to where the song says I should stand, and un-equip all my clothing. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to sit here all night, or if it only happens exactly at midnight, or what I should expect, but I don’t end up having to wait long, because almost immediately something happens, my gamepad starts rumbling, and the shrine emerges from the ground nearby, right in front of me.
I walk up and activate it, and go inside. It’s a combat trial, a Modest Test of Strength, and I am able to defeat this shrine Guardian no problem. I collect some weapons and my spirit orb, and when I emerge from the shrine, Kass is nowhere to be found. His accordion music is not playing, and he’s disappeared.
I climb the big mushroom to see if he’s there, but he’s really gone. He left his diary behind, so I read it just in case there’s a new final entry, but nope, there’s nothing.
I decide to transport to Rito Stables to see if I can find him there. He’s there. Last time I talked to him, he almost started telling me about his past, something about the songs his song master taught him, but he stopped himself. I’m hoping he’ll tell me now. But, no, he just says the same thing as he did before. OK.
Well, I decide I’ll try investigating up the mountain near Rito village, and see if anything new is going on up there. The first thing I do is transport to the shrine near the Flight Range, and I’m hoping that the Rito who I am supposed to meet will be there this time, but he’s still not there. I must need to do something in order to trigger his arrival at the range, but I have no idea what. If I go back and talk to the people from the village, maybe they’ll tell me, but for now I just continue on exploring.
I figure maybe I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to do at Warbler’s Nest, and head down there, but I end up getting sidetracked and never quite get there. Instead I end up exploring around the northwest side of the mountain. I come across a bokoblin skull cave, inhabited by 7 or 8 of them, and take them out, and then a little further north it starts going downhill and I come to a lake, where there’s a dock and a raft, with a korok leaf sitting on it, inviting me to take it out for a trip on the water. I kill an octorock by the dock, and then head out. I have to drop one weapon, and everything I have is real good stuff, so I just lay it on the raft, pick up the korok leaf, and when I get to where I’m going I drop the leaf and pick up the weapon I put down.
First, I get to a little island with a pile of bombable rocks on it, and thinking it’s a korok seed spot, I bomb it. Instead of a korok seed, a windy updraft appears where the rocks I bombed were, and I ride it up with my glider. I land on the side of the mountain and start climbing a bit, then notice a flower that is the telltale signature of a korok seed puzzle. I find the seed, then glide back down to the island and continue rafting across the lake.
At the far end of the lake, I see an orange light, which could be a fire, or could be a shrine. It looks too small to be a shrine, but as I get closer my shrine sensor starts pinging, and as I reach the other shore and explore, sure enough I see that there is a shrine just on the other side of a narrow crack in the rock. I try squeezing through, but can’t fit. I can’t bomb it bigger, either. I try everything I can think of, but nothing works. I wish I could magically shrink myself, maybe that would do it. But there’s no ability like that that I know of that does this.
I think maybe if I go around to the other side of this hill I’ll find another way in, so I wander about and explore. I don’t find the entrance, but I do find a hot spring that heals me if I stand in it, so I replenish my hearts, and continue looking. There’s another skull house with monsters living in it on the top of the hill, but I try to avoid messing with them, I’m more interested in figuring out this shrine. It’s night, and they’re asleep. But I run into a well-armed moblin skeleton, who hits me real good with a dragonbone club, taking me down to half my hearts before I know what’s going on. I kill it easily, and get a new fresh club. But now that I’m badly injured, I decide to go back to the spring and heal back up again.
While I’m down there, I get disoriented, and so I head back over to the crack so I can make sure I know where the shrine is supposed to be so I don’t waste time looking for the entrance in an obviously wrong place.
I notice another pile of bombable rocks, and blow it up, creating another updraft. I glide up it, and when I land I am on a ledge. I can see down from the ledge into a dark hole, where there’s an orange glow from a torch or fire, and I check it out, and end up finding the way to the entrance for this shrine.
This one is pretty cool. There’s a lot of dangerous looking spiky traps, but most are easily avoided. I have to blow up some boxes to clear a path through a blocked corridor, then there’s a slowly spinning log bridge that I have to stay balanced on top of while avoiding stepping on spiky parts, and also avoid falling into lava below. There’s a clear path if you are patient and let it rotate for you, and I cross without difficulty. I blow up another barrier wall, and on the other side there’s four minor shrine Guardians, of the weakest variety, who I am able to take out easily with arrows. They hit me a few times with their blasts, but only do a heart of damage. The next part is a simple ice puzzle, I have to create ice platforms in the shallow water of the room in order to have something I can climb up to get at a chest and a switch that opens the door to the next room.
Finally, there’s a rolling spiked ball that I have to dodge, after which I find magnetic chest on the other side of another lava river, that I grab with magnetism, and a final test in the form of a final rolling spiked ball. This one regenerates after the first one rolls down, and I discover after running into it on its second pass. So I figure out time freezing it will allow me to get by it easily. I clear the shrine and get another spirit orb.
I check, and this is my 7th orb, so if I can find and clear one more shrine, I should be able to pray at a village statue and get another 2 heart containers, which will be a big help.
I remember that my shrine sensor went off by the shield surfing pro’s cabin, so I transport to the one shrine that I did find there, and then hike over to the cabin, walk in, and sit by the fire until morning. Then I head out and look for the shrine. I find it this time, after a bit of searching, behind some ice formations that I have to melt in order to get access to the shrine.
This shrine is another combat trial, and it’s a Major Test of Strength. I’m very well equipped though, and am able to defeat this test, although it takes me two tries, and I have to eat a meal after taking a hard hit from its axe. Once I have it down to its final tenth or so of its life bar, it starts shooting high powered energy blasts at me non-stop, and I learn to dodge them. It doesn’t let up, though, and I can’t get close to it, so I equip bomb arrows, and finish it off with those. It takes 4 or 5 bomb arrows to do it, which is annoying, because bomb arrows are pretty darn expensive, and they don’t seem to do as much damage as I think they should. Maybe I should try hitting it with an ice arrow or Time Stop and run up and hit it with a heavy weapon next time.
I broke a few weapons in this fight, but the Guardian has a sword, spear, and axe, which are all very powerful, and then the shrine rewards me with a chest containing a very powerful two handed sword, which has a damage rating of 56, which I think is the most powerful weapon in raw attack power that I’ve seen yet. Maybe I saw a 60, it’s hard to remember. I get my spirit orb and clear the shrine.
I return to the cabin, and try the shield surfing challenge. I’m not very good at it, and at first I don’t even know how to do it, but I figure it out, and after 3 runs I get a mediocre time of just under a minute, which the instructor says is marginal but good enough for me to try a new course if I want to. I decline, for now, as I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing and can’t improve much unless I waste a lot more rupees, which I don’t want to do right now.
During one of my downhill runs, my shrine sensor started beeping, so there’s at least one more nearby shrine that I can find in this area.
But for now, this is enough, and it’s time to return back to the village to cash in my spirit orbs for those heart containers.