I did a lot of things in my game session today.
I decided to go back to Zora’s Domain and explore the area they mentioned where you can find shock arrows just laying around for the taking. There’s a lynel up there, and I have a hunch it might be an easier one, kind of a My First Lynel that I can fight and maybe I’ll be able to defeat it.
I get going and don my Zora armor and rubber helmet and pants, and travel out the way they said to go. Following the map is pretty easy, and the Zora armor’s ability to swim up waterfalls makes it even easier. I get up the mountain very quickly by zipping up waterfalls, and I find shock arrows embedded in just about every tree I see up there. I’ve collected a lot of them, and then I see the lynel. It’s far enough away that I think I’m pretty safe, just going about the outside edge of the plateau that we’re on, and for the longest time he doesn’t seem to notice me. I go around almost the entire perimeter of the mountaintop getting every shock arrow I see, when I realize that I’ve lost track of the lynel.
That’s when he attacks. From behind. The arrows go wide, and I escape major damage, but I think that’s more because I have had my armor enhanced a few levels by the fairies. I turn around and there he is. He doesn’t seem as big, somehow, like maybe I’m right and he really is a lesser lynel that I get to practice on before I meet the really big bad ones. Only, I’ve done a lot of stuff kindof out of order, and so this is the last lynel I’ve discovered, or maybe just the latest one so far.
I fight him, and actually prevail. My longer life bar, more powerful weapons, and upgraded armor seem to do it. I don’t think I developed any great tactics for fighting it, and he hit me a bunch, and I had to take a meal break to regain my health, but in the end I guess our power levels were about equal, and I just had more resources, not really the skill yet. I did find that I could stun him with an arrow to the face, and do the by-now familiar run up while they’re stunned and pour on some melee damage. I also managed to mount the lynel, which enabled me to get in some free hits from behind, from relative safety, which was pretty cool.
When it died, it dropped a sword, shield, and bow, and a horn and a hoof. So now I finally have found a hoof in the game, and so I think I’ll take it back to Korok town and give it to that riddling korok and see if it’s the solution.
Now that the mountaintop has been pacified, I decide to take advantage of the altitude and get a good look around at the countryside from this vantage point. I see a lot of places I haven’t been to — the whole of the northeast part of Hyrule, I haven’t been to yet, and haven’t mapped, haven’t really even seen yet, being that it’s been behind the Lanayru mountain range all this time. I see a vast, wide countryside, where the trees are fall colors, and I also get a better view of the volcanic area. Everywhere I look I see two or three things that look interesting, and I can hardly decide where to start. I see shrines, another stable, what looks like a village, and of course the two remaining towers that I have to activate in order to get the maps for these regions.
The nearest thing to me is a shrine, so I fly down to it and activate it, go in, and it’s a Lesser Test of Strength trial. This time the shrine guardian barely puts up a fight and I defeat it easily. I pass on the weapon it drops, and the one in the chest, get my spirit orb, and move on.
Next, I decide the best thing to do will be to activate the tower. It looks nearby, but it requires a lot of climbing to get to it. Then I notice that I’m very close to another fairy fountain, just below where the shrine I just cleared is, so I glide down to it, and find out that this fairy wants 10,000 Rs to open up. I don’t have that much, so I’ll have to come back later. The tower it is, then.
As I start walking in the general direction of the tower, I get attacked. It’s night, and three moblin skeletons pop up, and then for good measure another 3 lizalfo skeletons pop up as well. As if that’s not enough there’s a couple of bokoblins on horseback riding around, and a couple of fire keese flying through the air. I don’t want to use up all my weapons fighting these guys, and it’s a bit much to defeat with bombs. I manage to drop some of the skeletons with bombs, but by that time everyone else has shown up, before I’ve had a chance to finish off their skulls, which is what really kills them. The keese start setting the ground on fire, and the bokoblin riders open up with fire arrows, and I decide to just get the hell out.
I run away and glide off the edge of the plateau I’m on, and climb the next one, cross a bridge, all the while heading in the general direction of the tower, which is still a long way away. I get closer and closer, but it’s still far. It seems like it’s closer than it is, and it takes longer to get to it than I think it will. It also requires a lot of rock climbing and mountaineering. But I have the complete climbing suit now — in my last session, I found the climbing shirt to complete the outfit, at the island shrine with the combat trial. Climbing is super fast now, and that’s a good thing.
I climb and climb and climb, and eventually as I’m getting close, I see more bokoblins and a few of those ancient technology hovering drones, like the ones in the canyon that were ridiculously tough. I give them a respectful distance and watch for them to move away on their patrol circuit, and then move, and they don’t notice me. It’s not hard at all to evade their detection, and they seem to pretty much only notice you if you are standing directly in their searchlight beam, which means it’s very easy to avoid them.
I have to fight a few more lizals, bokoblins, and moblins here and there as I climb, and for the most part these fights are not a great challenge, but they’re enough to keep me occupied.
Finally, I get to the tower. The tower is absolutely covered in calamity goo, and it doesn’t look like there’s any way I can climb up it. The whole bottom is just slimed, all the way around. There’s some ruined stone buildings adjacent to the tower, and I walk around them looking for anything that might be useful, items, a metal object that I could turn into a bridge or ladder, a clue, anything. I fight a few more bokoblins, and find a few random weapons and rupees. I also do manage to find one goo-eyeball that I can shoot, and it clears away a little it of the goo, but not enough in the scheme of things to clear a path to the top. I need to get altitude somehow and then glide in to latch on to the tower mid-way up.
After exploring the ruins a long while, I manage to find a way to get to the very top of the closest ruined stone building, and am able to glide to the tower, getting onto it above the goo, and from there I am able to climb all the way to the top and activate the tower. There’s no one at this tower waiting for me, no story sequence unfolds. It feels like solitude. Even the monsters and enemy drones that were so thick in this area don’t seem to be around up here. You’d think that activating the tower would draw a lot of attention, but nothing happens, nothing comes.
I look around at the surrounding countryside, and I can spot two or three more shrines nearby in plain sight. It’s hard to tell for sure in every case, because the lava from the volcanic region glows the same orange color, and can fool me at a distance. I see another stable, or at least I think it’s another one, unless I got turned around and am seeing the same one as I saw before, and just think it’s a new one. There’s so much that I’ve left undone at all of the northern stables.
So much to do. I decide to clear the nearby shrines, and take care of anything else that looks interesting that I run into between them. Then I go to the final tower, climb it, and activate it. I now have the complete map of Hyrule. There’s still a lot left for me to do in this part of the world, I’ve barely started exploring it. I even barely touched Zora’s domain and the region around it, for that matter. At the top of the final tower, I’m able to spot the final Divine Beast, the lizard is climbing on the side of the volcano. So I guess that’s what I’ll eventually do.
I decide that before I take on more new stuff, I should cross a few things off of my list. I go to Hateno village and show the boy Nebb a wind cleaver sword, which I picked up from a Yiga swordsman who attacked me as I was traveling through the new region. He gives me 100 rupees and now he wants me to show him a Guardian Axe+. I have a regular Guardian Axe, and a Guardian Axe++, but not the single-plus, so I’m out of luck until I can find one. I hope that’s the last one. But maybe the last one will be the Master Sword.
I travel out to the Korok riddler and show him the Lynel Hoof, and that is indeed the solution to the puzzle. He gives me a diamond, which is pretty cool for a quest reward. I’ve only found about 10 diamonds in the whole game so far, although mineral deposits have been dropping them a bit in some of the areas I’ve been through in the last week.
I travel back to Rito village and complete the Warbler’s Nest shrine quest. I find the last bird sister high up on top of the town. I have to transport up to Vah Medoh to glide down to where she is. Then I talk to her, and then all five sisters go to Warbler’s Nest, where I follow. There they all are, singing their song. The five of them are each a different color, and it reminds me of the Disney Ducks, Hewey, Dewey, and Louie. I talk to each of them, and each of them says something and asks me to listen to their song, so I oblige and they just repeat the same five notes each time. But I get it. The song is a clue. The last sister gives me a korok leaf as a gift, and tells me to use it to blow wind through the rock formations that I’d been trying to shoot arrows through previously. I do so, going in numeric order, 1-5, and nothing happens. But each one plays a note. So I realize that the bird sisters are singing the notes in the order I need to blow through the rocks with the korok leaf. The sisters stand from left to right, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and they sing in the order 4, 5, 3, 1, 2. So I use this sequence and it reveals the shrine.
I don’t remember the shrines I cleared all that well. They sortof blur together. The one at Warbler’s Nest, I know I had to climb a very tall ladder, and at the top of it there was a trapdoor that dropped me down into a lava-filled chamber that was full of blowing fans, and I had to glide from platform to platform while avoiding spikes and falling into lava, open a few chests, and get the orb. That was not too hard, but pretty fun.
Another one, I had to figure out how to get past huge rolling balls that kept dropping down these chutes. Most of them were stone, but one was a steel ball. The stone ones, I could time stop, and it gave me enough time to sprint up the chute safely. The metal one, I could grab with magnesis, and push the stone ones out of my way, so I used that to safely get up to the master’s chamber and claim the orb.
One was another combat trial, I think I already mentioned that. In taking care of all this stuff, I crisscross the world map so many times using teleportation that it sortof jumbles the continuity of my memory, and there’s not an obvious order that I remember doing everything in.
Eventually, I’ve taken care of those several small quests, and I’m back to Akkala. I go to the stable and sell a bunch of excess forage to Beedle, and raise the 10k I need to open the Fairy pond. I go do that, and this is the last of the fairies, and she can now upgrade my outfits to their maximum potential. I do as much as I can until I run short on materials needed, but now I have a lot of high end equipment, which should make me a lot better protected for combat.
I glide down to the little village I saw, and it’s just that dude from the Bolson construction company in Hateno village, all by himself, building buildings. He says he needs help to attract people to settle here. I give him 10 bundles of wood that he says he needs, which I happened to have on hand, and then he tells me he needs to find a Goron to hire, and the Goron’s name has to end in -son. So if I find such a Goron, I have to bring him here somehow. Ok.
I leave the village and go up the road further, and find the stable. I talk to the people there, and they tell me about the weird scientist guy who hangs out at skull lake and makes special elixirs out of monster parts, and I gather that I should seek this guy out soon. Pikango tells me I can find another memory photo spot to the west of this stable, so I’ll have to remember to go do that too. Further out to the northeast, I learn is the location of Akkala Ancient Technology Lab, so I run out there and pay a visit. There’s a shrine nearby here, so I clear it out. I think it was another combat trial, and not a difficult one. I talk to the scientist Robbie and his wife, and learn about their project. I need to re-start their ancient technology oven, as well, which requires a blue flame like the one in Hateno village.
I don’t know where I’ll find that yet, but apparently not too far off somewhere. I climb up to the top of the lab and look around, and in the distance I can see another maze, with a shrine in the middle of it. I take a mental note to go there at some point, but I already have a bajillion other things to do right now all of a sudden.
I still want to go back to the Lost Woods area and explore it more and try to find the Master Sword, too.
I guess I’m going to be pretty busy for a while.