I want to find the statue of the Eighth Heroine so I can get the sand boots, even though I’m basically done with the sandiest part of Hyrule. I still haven’t found anyone in Gerudo who knows anything about it, and I am pretty sure I’ve talked to everyone in town multiple times, and at various times of day. There’s the one Gerudo woman who climbed up on to the city walls in order to be away from everyone so she can eat melons all day, but she is not interested in talking to me, and just tells me to go away. Who knows what her deal is, but I don’t seem to get anything out of her.
I guess I should look further in the desert and hope that I come across it, then. I comb the desert to the northwest of Gerudo town and find 4 or 5 more korok seeds, and a couple of treasure chests with rupees, and hopefully have cleared out the entire desert pretty well by now. I had only been up through this area once before, during the shrine quest with the statues pointing at the shrine, and visibility was very poor then, so I’m not surprised to find more korok seeds that I had missed previously, but I don’t find the Eighth Heroine. I was hoping I might due to all the small statues. I haven’t counted them all, and I ran out of map stamps to mark their locations, but there must be over two dozen of them. I visit as many as I can, and look to see if any of them is pointing a direction other than toward the shrine, but they all are pointing to the shrine, at least as far as I can tell. Unless I missed one, maybe. I’ve been pretty thorough, but there are a lot of them.
When I get to the far north end of the desert, there’s a a tall cliff that serves as the natural border between Gerudo Desert and the Gerudo Highlands. I’ve been up this way only through the valley, which is east of where I’m at now, and I haven’t been up through the west part of this area at all, so I decide to try to climb the cliffs. They are very tall, but I have some additional stamina capacity from a potion I drank a while back to heal during the fight with Thunderblight Ganon, and I use up most of that getting to the top. I don’t know if it was really worth it or not, but it got me where I wanted to go.
It’s cold up here, and all of my fire-based weapons have been used up, except for my fire arrows, but with my cold weather gear equipped I’m OK. It’s snowy, so I use the snow boots that I got from the creepy pickup artist guy who runs laps around Gerudo town to impress the ladies. Exploring a bit, I find a couple of korok seeds, eventually bringing my total up to 180, and then I detect a shrine nearby. I walk in the general direction towards the shrine signal, but don’t see it, until I come to the edge of a cliff, and it’s there, down below. I glide down and activate it, and enter.
This is another Major Test of Strength combat trial, and in this shrine there are no pillars to hide behind, making this a bit tougher than many of the others I’ve faced. I am equipped with many strong weapons and have plenty of bomb arrows, though, so am not worried. I equip my best armor, including my new diamond necklace that protects against Guardian attacks, and step into the arena
I fight the guardian, and it’s tough. I break several weapons, but my defensive skills have improved. I have learned a lot of ways to avoid the attacks, now, and I remember most of them. When it does the spinning attack charge move on me, I manage to get my shield up and deflect the blow, which is a first. I do take a couple of hits from its weapons, and am revived by a fairy, and then eat a meal to recover my full health to continue the fight. I figure out how to get out of the way of its attacks, and get back in to hit it with an attack of my own when it gives me the opportunity. Its timing is not that fast, and it’s very regular, and there are significant time gaps where I can get in quickly, strike, and get back out of the way. I can also bring up my shield and parry at the right time, and get in an extra few attacks.
Like other shrine Guardians, when this one is reduced to below about half of its life energy, it changes its attack pattern, becoming a bit more dangerous. It starts a spinning laser attack that generates a lot of wind. I stand off and attack from a safe distance with bomb arrows, but they don’t do great damage and it takes a lot of them to put it down. Eventually, it switches from the spinning laser to a more powerful charged laser shot, which is easy to dodge if I listen for the queue and run at the right time. But just once I try blocking it with my shield, and it destroys the shield in one hit, and then the follow-up blast hits me, dropping me for about 2/3 of my total health. I manage to get back to my feet, and just dodge the blasts after that, which is much better. I finish it off with another series of bomb arrows.
I pick up all the loot it drops, and get 100 rupees from a chest in the shrine master’s chamber, and then get my spirit orb.
Exiting the shrine, I continue further north, up a snow-filled valley. There are a couple of ice Lizals, and I kill them with fire arrows to be as efficient as possible. They are well armed and appear to be wearing armor, so my melee attacks aren’t as effective on them, and I don’t want to break a lot of weapons fighting them. The fire arrows kill them in one shot, and are definitely the way to go.
I find an empty, apparently abandoned skull cave, and spot a treasure chest inside. When I go to open it, I’m suddenly surrounded by ice chuchus, but I quickly lob a bomb and kill half of them, then get out of the way of the others, turn around, and hit the remaining ones with another bomb, and escape without getting frozen or taking damage. I forget what it was in the chest, I think a decent weapon, but I’m so well equipped at this point that weapons aren’t my biggest concern right now.
A little bit past the skull cave, I come to a place where I find a couple more korok seeds. There’s a bombable rock formation that when I clear it, creates a strong updraft which I can use to glide up to the top of an adjacent rock formation. As I get clear of the top of the rock, I see a couple of bokoblins who seem to be messing about with a block of stone that I’ve seen many times in korok puzzles. I touch down and fight them, defeating them both easily and then carry the block a ways until I find the puzzle where it fits, and complete it to earn my korok seed. I find another seed nearby, as well.
Just a little further north, I get to the end of the snow valley. We’re still at high altitude, and end of this valley drops off suddenly, creating a long slope where it looks like shield surfing would be ideal. Here is where I discover the location of the Eighth Heroine statue. I take a picture of it, and investigate the area to see if there’s any good stuff hidden about, but don’t really find anything.
I could go further, but I decide to teleport back to Gerudo town and get my sand boots. I find the thirsty boy jogging around the city, and show him my photo, and he gives me the shoes, but then he asks for his snow boots back. There’s no option to refuse, so I have to return them. This is super annoying because I don’t really need the sand shoes, and I have a lot more mountainous snowy territory to cover with those boots!
I hope I can get them back somehow, permanently. I consider reverting back to my previous restore point, but before I do that I decide to cheat a bit and google the answer to whether I can get them back. It turns out I can, so OK, I don’t need to restore and forget about completing this quest. I don’t look into the precise details on how to get the boots back, but he mentioned that he would be going to stay in a tent nearby, so I guess I’ll have to visit him there and see what he wants. Maybe he’ll sell them to me, or I can bargain with him and trade boots back and forth for whatever I want at the moment, or maybe there’ll be another quest for me.