After the wedding of Hudson and his Gerudo gal, I go around Tarrey Town and talk to everyone. Bolson and Karson are still hanging out, but after I talk to Bolson he says he needs to head back to Hateno, so he and Karson bid me farewell.
The little girl who is sick and wants to eat cake is still sick and still wants to eat cake. There is an old retired couple who moved to Tarrey Town, and the wife is a cake chef from the old days to the royal family, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get her interested in making the cake for the sick girl. The mother tells me I should talk to the husband when he comes home at night, but when I wait for night to come and return to their house to talk to him, he’s having a discussion with the wife, and she tells me it’s personal and asks me to leave, so I do.
There’s another new house in Tarrey Town, where I walk in, and up on the roof porch patio there’s a young man who tells me he is studying to be an ancient technology scientist, and has collected some suits of armor that I can buy. He is selling the Rubber suit, the Barbarian suit, and one of the other suits, I forget which one, maybe the Zora suit? All for very expensive prices, and I already have them and don’t need them. He also has the snow boots and the sand boots, for sale at a reasonable 800 Rs. But I have these already and don’t need them. So he’s basically pointless at this stage of the game, but if I had done the Akkala quests earlier in the game, I might have gotten the boots more easily out of him, and then been annoyed at spending 12k on a suit of armor that I could just find in the course of my travels as I complete quests and clear shrines.
I still need more stealthfin trout in order to upgrade my stealth suit, so I transport to the shrine at Lake Saria in the Korok Forest, which is the only place I know of to find them, and pick up another four.
I need a Dinraal scale in order to complete the Spring of Power shrine quest, but he keeps evading me. I tried to find Dinrall in Tabantha Canyon, where he flies through daily, but he wasn’t near the Forgotten Temple when I went there. I know he also appears around Eldin Mountain, near the giant Leviathan skeleton. According to the internet he spawns there daily at 9am, and it’s a sure thing to catch him there.
I transport to a shrine near the Leviathan bones, and hike over. I also need to pick up more Smotherwing Butterflies, but they’re so hard to see, and so very rare. I do manage to find 5 this trip, but I spotted at least 3 more that I couldn’t catch.
When I get to Dinraal’s morning spawn spot, I wait and watch but no Dinraal. I find a korok seed in the eye socket of the skull of the Leviathan, and another korok seed or two, and a bombable rock wall that a chest is hiding behind in the vicinity. Past the tail of the Leviathan skeleton there’s a Lynel on patrol, and I need some hoofs and horns to upgrade some of my armor, so I decide to challenge it to combat.
The fight goes pretty well, and I defeat the lynel, but in doing so I end up consuming sevral Hearty Durian meals and use a Mipha’s Grace and break a sword. I keep being slow on the draw with the bow and getting hit just before I can get a shot off. I go through about 20-30 arrows in this fight, as well, but when I do manage to connect with an arrow, I stun him with the shot to the head and can mount him for some free attacks. The Lynel drops a Savage Lynel Sword, which is the most powerful one-handed sword I’ve found in the game now, and a shield with a defense rating of 70, which is the best I’ve found in the game. I get lynel guts, two hoofs, and I think two horns as well.
I give up again on waiting for Dinraal to appear, and go scouring the mountainside looking for butterflies. I go all the way around the coast line of a magma lake and find 5 of them, and a few fireproof lizards as well, and many, many ore deposits and baby stone taluses who all drop lots of gemstones, but it’s mostly flint, rock salt, and amber, with a very occasional sapphire or ruby. I also fight a Igneus Stone Talus at one point, who drops about 8 opals and a couple of other gems. There are many octorocks, fire chuchus, and fire kees along the way as well, and a couple of fire lizals.
This foraging safari ends up taking several hours, and by the time I’ve orbited the lake, I see Dinraal flying through the sky, and I have a shot at him, but I don’t have the range on my bow, my shot falls short, and I don’t get my scale; he gets away from me.
I note that the time of his appearance is more like midnight, not the morning time the internet says he appears. I don’t know why or how my copy of the game could be different, but it’s curious.
I have gathered enough butterflies to do some upgrades, so I transport back to the fairy fountain near Tarrey Town and get whatever I can upgraded. I am still in need of more smotherwing butterflies, though, and rather than spend a million years crouch-walking around Death Mountain trying to find them, I look up to see if there’s anywhere else they can be found, and the internet tells me that Beedle sells them at East Akkala Stable and also at Wetland Stable.
I look on the map for Wetland Stable, and can’t find it anywhere. Could it be that after all this time there’s still an undiscovered Stable that I somehow haven’t found?
There is! It’s in the marshy lands near the tower to the north of Kakariko village, which was one of the first towers I unlocked in the days after making it to Kakariko, but at the time I was so weak and underpowered that I didn’t feel like I could safely travel through this part of the world, so I just unlocked the map in that part of the world and stayed away until much later, having returned only relatively recently, and then mainly stayed in Zora’s Domain area, not the west area where this Stable is located.
I transport back out to the tower in the swampy area, and scout around, and spot an orange glow to the west that looks like a shrine I haven’t cleared yet. I mark it on the map and glide out that way. I really haven’t been through this marsh land at all, and gliding over it I see there’s a lot of ruins and many spots where I can encounter monsters to fight. I glide over most of it, and land just past the swamp, in a grassy area a little east and north of the shrine that I’d spotted from the tower.
I run off in that direction and have a monster encounter. There’s a ruined building where I see a column of smoke rising, and I take a little detour to investigate; it’s bokoblins. I have found and fought a similar group in a similar situation somewhere else on the map, but I don’t recall where, exactly. Probably in the vicinity of Eldin Tower or Akkala tower. These ones are not too tough and I just run in and fight them all, heedless of their attacks or numbers. After defeating them I loot the bodies and take what I can that is useful, which isn’t much.
I move on, heading back toward the shrine. Just as I get there, I see a shooting star in the sky, and track the star fragment down to the ground, where I see its beacon glowing in the distance. I need more star fragments, too, so I opt to skip the shrine and head right for it. I try to mark it with my scope marker on the map, but it’s hard to pinpoint the exact spot, and I only get kinda close.
In my excitement and haste, I forget that I can unlock the shrine to enable it as a transport destination, and just run out after the star fragment.
It’s a lot longer run than I was expecting, and I keep running into monsters along the way. A shitload of skeleton enemies, chuchus, and a huge flock of kees harass me, yiga warriors, and two guardians. I end up running out all the way into deep central Hyrule about directly south of Hyrule Castle, when after I fight the second Guardian, I lose track of the star fragment beacon, and I guess it has faded out and disappeared.
I’m annoyed at having gone so far to come up short, but at least I’ve managed to find at least one more ancient core, which I need for upgrades to the Ancient Armor suit as well as to make more ancient weapons at the Akkala tech lab. In fighting hte second Guardian, I discover that Guardian weapons are particularly effective against them — using a Guardian sword against it, it only takes one hit to sever a leg, where most other weapons take at least two hits. I suppose this should not be a total surprise, maybe it’s even obvious, but it’s good to note their effectiveness, as in the last part of the game I can pretty well expect to run into many more Guardians.
In the vicinity of the stand of trees where I thought the star fragment had come to rest, there’s a little stone courtyard, where I find another one of Link’s memory photo locations. I recognize it even before I see the shimmering cloud that indicates the memory spot, because I’ve looked at the photo many times, and it’s easy to recognize.
I recall the memory; Link is receiving some kind of ceremonial blessing from Zelda at this location, to bind him to the Master Sword. The Four Champions stand on, watching, and commenting to each other. One of them mentions that Link is the living embodiment of Zelda’s failure, and a constant reminder that she hasn’t managed to unleash or tap into her own powers, or something. I guess that means they have a strained relationship. He is loyal, brave, trustworthy, and skilled, and she still seems to have a hard time personally accepting his heroic deeds of valor in the service of the kingdom of Hyrule, even while she is duty bound to honor them officially. This is a sad story, and the lack of harmony between Link and Zelda seems tragic. Perhaps this is why Ganon is always able to return to menace the land again and again.
Now I have a long hike back to the stable that I had just reached, but forgotten to unlock the shrine as a transport destination. Considering how long that took me, I am not really looking forward to retracing my steps back. And I’m annoyed at having lost the star fragment, even though finding the lost memory and picking up another ancient core are somewhat good consolation prizes.
Rather than run all that way back over cross country, I opt to transport to the shrine near Riverside Stable, and take my faithful and first mount, Horsey. We run out, and along the way I stop to find a korok seed or two, and while doing that I keep getting attacked by stalfos and Yiga clansmen.
Eventually, I get all the way back to the Wetland Stable, where I buy three Smotherwing Butterflies from Beedle, talk to Pikango the painter about another nearby memory photo location, talk to a little kid briefly who knows the local geography, and talk to a guy who is pretend/practicing sword play with a torch he mockingly calls the Master Torch. I equip the Master Sword and talk to him to see if he’s interested in it, but he doesn’t believe it’s real. I demonstrate by firing a sword beam, but he doesn’t seem programmed to respond to that in any way. I consider shooting him with the sword beam, but I don’t think it’ll do anything, and seems like kindof a dick move, even for someone who isn’t showing proper respect, it’s not something a hero would do, so I don’t do it. But I want to.
I go the shrine and unlock it, enter, and it’s a water puzzle, that requires creation of ice blocks to create steps to climb a waterfall, to lift a gate to gain access to a chest where I find a Royal Broadsword, which is a really nice weapon for this area of the map, although by now I have plenty of high level weapons that are its equal or better. And then I have to navigate a short river-filled corridor with strong currents, and glide down off of a waterfall at the end, to reach the shrine master’s chamber and receive my Spirit Orb.
Emerging from the shrine, I talk to Kass the bird-man, who I ignored earlier, and he asks me if I had seen the shrine that I just finished clearing. I gather he might have had more to say about it if I hadn’t already just cleared it. He offers to sing me a song of old Hyrule, so I take him up on it, but it’s the same song he’s sung in many other locales. I don’t know why they don’t give him a different verse to sing in each place, it would keep the game fresh and more interesting.
It seems there’s still a lot of game left in this game. Large areas of the map that I still haven’t adequately explored; 19 more shrines remain to be discovered, and I am only certain of the location of two of them. Hundreds of undiscovered korok seeds, and who knows how many little sidequests from various people around the land. Certainly at least a few more stable quests and definitely at least one in Tarrey Town, and a couple in Zora’s Domain, one in Gerudo, and possibly another one or two in other villages.
I could go straight to Ganon and defeat him to end the game now, if I desired, but I’d like to come close to 100% completion after having done so much. I don’t care to find every last korok seed in the game, as I’m not that obsessive, and I’ve read that there’s supposedly close to 1000 korok seeds throughout the world, and I’ve barely found a quarter of those, if that. I’ll pick up every one that I can, but I’m not going to scour every pixel on the map to find every last one, that’s just insane.