Standing atop Eldin Tower, I survey my surroundings for a bit, pondering where to go. I see a lake of lava with two islands on it, and decide that looks promising, and glide down towards it. As I get over the lava, the temperature goes up, and I equip my Gerudo male armor, thinking that it will give me adequate tolerance of the heat, but it doesn’t, and I continue taking damage. I equip an ice weapon, and it does nothing to reduce the ambient temperature in my immediate surroundings. After a couple of seconds, I catch fire.
Nope! I teleport back to the top of Eldin tower. Not ready for that area, apparently!
Looking to the south and east, there’s a canyon below which is filled with a river. The water looks warm and inviting, and I see numerous mineral ore deposits that I should be able to mine, so I glide down that way instead, and explore a bit. I mine the minerals, and I also find a couple or three korok seeds. The water is indeed inviting, steamy, and has healing properties, so I get my lost hearts back wading about. But there isn’t much else around here to find or do.
I begin walking along the road to see where it goes; it goes up. Before long, I encounter a fully-functional Guardian, who I fight and defeat without difficulty using the Master Sword. Along the way there are numerous fire chuchus and fire kees, which are nuissance enemies, and I try to take them out with bombs, or by firing the Master Sword at them. I discovered that if you try to throw the Master Sword, it shoots a beam of energy — a callback to the original LoZ.
I’m detecting a shrine nearby, and eventually I determine it’s on the far side of the canyon, after gliding over that way. I find it, below in a small cul-de-sac of stone. Above it on the ridge is a large monster treehouse, which I clear out and find another Royal Shield and Royal Bow. One of the monsters I kill is a moblin who wields a goron smasher, which looks like it would be a fearsome weapon, but only has an attack rating of 15, making it barely better than a standard iron sledgehammer. I leave it, my inventory is full of better weapons.
I find another korok seed on the ridge, and then cross back over the canyon to explore the roadway up into Death Mountain. I go up and up, mining ore deposits along the way and killing kees and chuchus as I encounter them. There’s also the occasional octorock, and once in a while I run into a moblin or lizal. At night, more moblin skeletons pop up, and I deal with them. They drop Dragonbone Moblin Clubs, which are one of my favorite weapons, for they have a heavy damage and do a lot of knockback.
Along the road, I encounter a sign that tells me I’m on the road to Goron City, and I am glad to know that I’m on the right path. I keep going, and it gets hotter, and now wooden equipment spontaneously ignites if used. I get free fire arrows out of this, but I can’t use my wooden bows or shields, or they ignite and burn me. And if my wood weapons catch fire, they do extra damage, but get burned up quickly. A short distance past the second roadsign, the heat gets more intense, and I have to use an elixir to resist the heat and prevent myself from catching fire again. I use the first elixir, which gives me only 3:40 or so of time, so I move quickly, skipping anything that isn’t essential — I quickly dispatch monsters with bombs but don’t bother picking up their remains unless they’re directly in my path, ignore ore deposits, etc. I encounter a second fully functional Guardian, and fight it, but I manage to get it down quickly, and it drops a bunch of mechanical parts which I do pick up.
Eventually, after a time I get to a small mining camp where I find some Goron workers digging with picks. I talk to them but they’re mostly busy, but they seem friendly. I meet a Hylian, as well, who tells me that up ahead it gets even hotter, and more dangerous, and he’s leaving the area to go back home. He wanted to bring some fireproof lizards home as souvenirs, but forgot to get them, and they’re too fast for him, but if I can find ten for him, he’ll give me his fireproof armor, since he won’t be needing it any longer.
Looking in my inventory, I have but a single fireproof lizard. Lizards are one of the forage items that I rarely pick up. They’re fast, somewhat hard to see until the last minute, and if you don’t creep up slowly on them, they get away from you. In the general area of this mining camp, though, they are plentiful, and I find numerous lizards hiding under rocks. I use up a second elixir, this one is more powerful, and gives me 6 minutes of heat resistance, and it’s enough time for me to find enough lizards with about 40 seconds to spare. The Hylian is good as his word, and gives me his fireproof armor.
I equip it, and once the elixir wears off I find I am still comfortable.
One of the Gorons at the mine has a name that ends in -son, which means I can try to convince him to go to Tarrytown in Akkala to help out with the construction, as part of one of my sidequests. But when I talk to him, he says he’s busy working, and I should come back at night if I want to talk.
It’s pretty early in the day, and I don’t want to just sit around, so I spend as much time as I can, blowing up mineral deposits and foraging gems. But once those run out, it’s still only early afternoon. I proceed forward, and come to another monster treehouse, this one has two fire lizals, and 4 or 5 moblins, and a couple of bokoblins. I take the lizals out with ice arrows from afar, and then paraglide to the treehouse and start kicking ass.
Using a royal claymore, I deal a lot of damage and quickly take down the bokoblins and one of the moblins, before breaking my sword; then I switch to a Dragonbone Moblin Club and mop up the rest. There are three treasure chests here, one with a weapon, one with a Royal Shield, and one with a gem. I also blow up all their storage boxes and they yield gems and meat, which instantly cooks in the extreme heat.
I continue on the road, fighting a few more octorocks and chuchus and kees, and soon I reach the Goron City. The Gorons are friendly, cheerful, and hearty, and they love to work hard at mining, and they love the heat, but they tell me that due to the Divine Beast it has gotten too hot even for them, leading to them closing their Northern Mine, which they can no longer safely work, and also magma bombs keep falling from the sky, which is bad for tourism.
I find an armor shop, where I buy the rest of the fireproof armor suit. The pants are 700 Rs, but the helmet is 2000 Rs. I have almost 7000 Rs when I get to this store, but I’d been planning on spending it on Ancient Armor at the Akkala Tech Lab. I guess I’ll have to scrape together even more money to do that now.
With the full suit of fireproof armor, I’m well protected against the heat, and can survive even hotter parts of Death Mountain. I talk to a few more of the Gorons in the City, including the Boss, who tells me he is looking for one of his workers who went to the Abandoned North Mine to find painkillers for his bad back, but hasn’t returned.
I hear my shrine sensor going off, and after climbing a bit I find the nearby shrine, so I go and activate it and enter, and clear a series of challenges involving burning stuff with fire, which aren’t too hard to solve.
Exiting the shrine, I just sortof go off in a direction and eventually I find the Abandoned North Mine area. There’s a Goron there, but he’s not the one I’m looking for. He knows the missing Goron, though, and tells me where he last saw him, but tells me that it’s too dangerous for a Hylian to be up here, and I shouldn’t try to find him.
There’s a cannon at the North Mine, which they use to keep the Divine Beast at bay, and I fire it a few times by dropping a sheikah bomb into it, and setting it off. It launches a shell, but I don’t seem to have any way to aim it, and it has little purpose.
I continue a bit further along the road, and after fighting some more octorocks and a lizal or two, I find a hot springs area where I meet another Goron who is bathing there. He tells me that these springs aren’t hot enough for him, but he can’t go to where he likes to go normally because it’s too dangerous now. He also warns me about the Divine Beast. OK I get it, he’s very hot.
I proceed a bit further, and come to yet another shrine. This one involves a massive stone block being launched into the air again and again by a spring-loaded platform. Each time it launches into the air, an electrified column in its center completes a circuit which briefly opens the gate to the shrine master’s chamber, but only for a split second.
I figure out that if I stand on the ground next to the massive block, it will launch me into the air, and then I can paraglide and fall slower, and so land on top of the massive block. From there, I try to figure out the timing to glide into the shrine master’s chamber, but it’s too difficult. After a few unsuccessful tries, I realize that I can use the time stop power on the stone, to lock it into place while the gate is open, and this gives me plenty of time to glide into the master’s chamber. I do this, and also pick up a chest on a high shelf, and clear the shrine.
After emerging from the shrine, I proceed a short distance further, and reach the bridge, which the Goron at the spring told me was up, to prevent the Divine Beast from reaching this area. I get my first up close look at the Divine Beast Vah Rudania. It is very impressive, climbing along the side of the volcano, its feet aflame, fearsome and mighty. I just stand and watch it for a time as it circles the volcano magestically.
I am not sure what to do about the bridge, but it seems like there must be some story objectives that I need to accomplish first before I can proceed further. I figure I might as well head back down and maybe I’ll find the missing Goron worker somewhere between here and the Goron City.
Looking around, I spot a lava lake with an island in the middle, with a couple of ore deposits, and I decide to go there and harvest them quickly; from there I can probably just teleport back to the nearest shrine or to the City shrine. When I land on the island, I awaken an Igneous Stone Talus, a red hot magma monster who rises up out of the ground. I shoot it with an ice arrow to cool it a little bit, then climb on its back, and swing my mighty Goron hammer weapon, which does a great deal of damage. It’s the perfect weapon for the job, and I manage to take down the Talus without taking any damage, using just one ice arrow and a flurry of blows from the Goron hammer. It drops many gems, and I pick them all up, then extract the ore from the island’s deposits. I’m able to glide to a nearby rock wall to climb out.
When I do I go up to the highest local point and look around for anything else that might be interesting. Seeing nothing that stands out, I glide back down to the hot springs, where I find the Goron I met earlier, and now I notice that he is with a child Goron, who I talk to. The child, Dugby, tells me he left a treasure between here and the bridge. I go back and look for it, and find a bombable rock, and behind it there is a Goron drill spear. I grab it, and take it back to show the kid, but by now it is dark, so he is asleep.
I guess I’ll hang out at the spring tonight, and go back to the City and resume my quest in the morning.