Zelda: BOTW Diary (85)

I need 3 fragments of Dinraal’s Horn to complete upgrading my Barbarian armor suit, so that’s what’s going to happen today.

I transport out to Death Mountain and kill the Lynel who patrols the area by the Leviathan skeleton.  The fight goes pretty well, I manage to hit him in the face with arrows most of the time, he only hits me a few times, and I only go through 2 or 3 Durian fruit meals to keep my health up.  One of these days, I’m going to get the knack of headshotting these things, and it’s going to be a beautiful day when that happens. But this was one of my better fights all the same.

There’s a tall rock near the space the Lynel patrols that is a perfect vantage point for collecting Dinraal parts when he appears in the morning. I make a fire and sit by it and wait until morning, when Dinraal appears.  Morning starts at 5am, and by about 7am Dinraal is close enough to nail in the face with an arrow.  Using my long-range bow, it’s simple.  Just wait for him to get up close, and let loose, then glide to where the shard lands and pick it up.  I do this a total of four times, because I need 3 pieces of his horn, but I accidentally hit him in the body and knock off a scale on the third attempt, and have to do it over.  

One thing that I notice while I’m doing this is that Dinraal starts out high in the sky to the north of Death Mountain, and then he swoops down low, making is pass at the rock where I wait for him, then just past it, he turns back skyward and flies up, up, up, and I see a vortex in the sky open up, which he flies into, disappearing, and then the vortex dissipates.  Remarkable!

Having collected what I need, I transport to a fairy pond and get my upgrades done.  I’m still short a couple of Lynel guts to complete the Barbarian suit, but I do manage to upgrade two of the pieces once each, plus the Champions Tunic, for which I needed the Naydral’s horn that I had collected previously, I can max it out, and do so.

Looking over what else I can do with myself, I decide that tonight is the night, I’m finally going to return to Eventide Island and attempt the challenge one more time.

This time, I get to the island by flying out to it, gliding from the nearest shrine on the mainland’s east coast, and with my two full wheels of stamina, I make it out there easily.

As I drop from the sky, I attempt to go into my inventory screen before I touch down, and drop some shields, swords, and bows so that I’ll be well equipped, but I guess the inventory screen does not allow you to do this while you are in freefall, although it will allow you to change your equipped armaments and clothing while you are hang gliding, which is not especially realistic.

So I land on Eventide, and it strips me of all my gear, and I do not get to employ the cheat that I had tried to use on my last attempts.  OK then, cool, I’m up for the challenge. Let’s do this.

I know exactly what to do, and by now I have plenty of experience, and it’s not hard.  I landed on the island in the early morning, which is important because you have a much easier time if you are there before the daily thunderstorm strikes the island around 4pm.  So I land, I find a couple of weapons laying about on the beach, and I run over and take down the Bokoblin bikini beach party.  These guys are absolutely no threat to me with my life meter nearly maxed out, so I don’t worry about conserving hearts, and just go at them, cutting them down with the rusty claymore I found on the beach.  It does the job, but is nearly broken by the time I’m done.  I collect all the loot that I can here, and sit down at the fire just as it’s beginning to rain, and manage to get my sit-down in a split second before the rain puts the fire out, allowing me to camp until morning.  Hooray.

When morning comes, I go around the island and find all the hidden nice weapons that I know about, as well as forage for whatever edible stuff there is to grab. 

Once outfitted, I raid the bokoblin tree fort on the other side of the island, again just running up and dealing death like a seasoned pro who has nothing to fear from such low level monsters, and I clean them out with no hassles at all.  I fought a Lynel earlier, I can take out a large number of bokoblins with no clothes on and weak weapons.

I grab the sheikah orb from the bokoblin camp and walk it over to the corner of the island where the pedestal sits offshore on the rocks, drop it in the ocean, float it up with some ice blocks to make a bridge, then walk it into the hole where it belongs and drop it in.  All the while, one of the off-shore octorocks is bombarding me, but it’s at such a great distance that its aim is not very good, and it only tags me once or twice, for minimal damage.  I just ignore it and get the job done, then go sit at the beach fire and wait for morning.

Morning comes, and I cook up all the food items that I’d found, and heal back up to max health.

Next, I turn my attention to the monsters encamped on the highest part of the island’s north edge.  There’s 3 or 4 bokoblins here, plus a moblin, who I remember being pretty tough, and decently armed.  I decide to be a bit cautious with this bunch, so I climb up the side of the island where I’ll be out of sight.

I throw remote bombs and let them roll, and my first one gets close to the western guard tower, I detonate it, and it explodes a barrel, which catches the bokoblin bowman on the top of the tower on fire, killing him, and as well it manages to put the moblin afire, doing a slight bit of damage to it.

I rain more sheikah bombs on the camp, and one rolls over to their campfire, where two bokoblins, red and blue, are sitting by, as though they failed to notice the huge explosion and fire and death of their friend. I blow the bomb and it kills the red one outright, the blue one is knocked silly and loses his equipment.  I throw more bombs until he’s dead. It takes time, but there’s zero risk. I only have to keep my eye on the weather.

The moblin I injured earlier is too far away to hit with bombs, so I switch to bow and arrow, and light him up.  I hit him with 3-4 arrows, scoring one head shot, and figure he’s down enough to where I can just swoop in on the glider and take him out.  I come in and drop on him, doing an arial attack, which knocks him off balance, and then I recover first and pour on a few more hits, breaking my weapon, but killing him.  I pick up his sword, it’s a Knight’s Broadsword, which is one of the better swords in the game.  

There’s one guard tower left with a bokoblin standing on it, peeing its pants as I just run up and straight up murder it with one swift flash of my blade.

I loot the camp, grab their orb, blow the flat stone covering off of the pedestal with stasis and a boko bat, breaking the bat in the process, and put the orb in its socket.  2/3 done.

Now, the Hinox.  I know the trick now is to just grab the orb and run, and not bother trying to fight it. In order to do the run successfully, I need to prepare my path and clear the enemies out of the camp by the third pedestal.  I glide down to the southwest corner and make my way up the slope.  I get to where I can just see the enemies, and they spot me as I’m nocking my arrow.  I fire it into the yellow chuchu, and it goes up, exploding in a cloud of electricity, shocking several of the nearby monsters, detonating another chuchu, which in turn re-shocks the monsters again, and by this time I’ve fired another arrow into the third chuchu, taking it out and doing shock damage to a couple of monsters near it.

The dead chuchus drop yellow chuchu chunks, and apparently these are little bitty shock grenades, and when the bokoblins run over them they get shocked, stunned, drop their weapons, and take even more damage.  

This is going surprisingly well.  The chuchus have taken out most of the monsters or knocked them down far enough to where they will be easy to mop up.  I run in and swing the sword a couple of times, and it is done.  I don’t even need to blow up any of their explosive barrels, or toss in sheikah bombs.  It’s nice not to have to do that, because it leaves their food drops and other loot undamaged, which allows me to pick the campsight clean.

The pedestal on this hill has a couple of boxes sitting on it, so I remove them with magnesis, and now everything is ready for me to grab the final orb from the Hinox’s necklace and make off with it.

My desired plan is to glide in and land quietly on his chest, then use time stop on the Hinox, quickly grab the orb, toss it off of him, and then jump off and land on the ground, hopefully quietly and far enough away that it stays asleep.

Unfortunately, the time stop effect is extremely brief when used on this Hinox, and it wears off before I’ve barely tossed the orb.  It wakes up, and I have to just make a run for it.  I don’t look behind me to see how close it is until I reach the hilltop, but I apparently outran it pretty good, because I never did see it.   I place the orb into the pedestal, and the challenge is completed. 

A shrine pops up on the highest point of the island, and my gear is returned to me as a voice congratulates me on completing the challenge, and invites me to enter the shrine and receive its blessing.

I go up there and receive 300 rupees and a spirit orb.  Hooray.

Upon exiting the shrine, the island is changed.  The monsters are all resurrected, even though there was no blood moon.  And there is now a Rito sitting perched up on this highest point of the island.  I go to talk to him, and he explains his fascination with the wind and philosophy of flight, and invites me to take part in a training course that will enable me to develop skill with flying.  

I agree, and he sets up a course with rings that I need to fly through, catching wind currents in a few places.  I just need to fly through as many as I can, and he’ll grade me on the performance.

Seems easy enough.  I go to do it, and screw it up a few times, because at a mid-point I don’t realize that there’s more, because I’m pretty close to the ground and there’s an updraft that I’m supposed to ride to complete the rest of the course, but I don’t notice it the first two times, so I just land and that’s it.  But it’s not enough rings to pass the course, so I try again, and on the third time I do it well enough to earn a payout of 50 rupees.  But since I’ve spent 80 to run the course several times, I’ve really lost 30. I could probably do even better, but that’s enough for me for now.  

I have to say that although this course is fun, and it’s pretty cool, this is not a skill that you really ever need anywhere else in the game. I’ve been through pretty much the entire game right now, and there are a few places where you need to fly, but all you need to do is have stamina and fly in a straight line to get anywhere.  There’s never any precision flight needed where you have to do anything that is approximated by this obstacle course.  

I think that’s a missed opportunity on the part of the developers, and I don’t know why they didn’t bother to do more with this flight concept.  It’s like a mini-homage to Pilotwings (SNES) or Superman 64 (N64) (except that it doesn’t suck.)  But it does seem a bit underdeveloped, and thus pointless.

One last thing.  I just HAVE to kill that Hinox, since he ruined so many of my earlier attempts to run this island challenge back when I only had 6 or 7 heart containers.  I fly down to land on his chest, and as I charge up my royal claymore attack, again I just clip through him or slide off somehow, as though you’re just not able to stand on a sleeping Hinox’s chest and use a charge shot.  This wakes him up again, and as he’s getting to his feet I nail him 4-5 times in the body/head with the claymore.  Both of his feet are armored, and I don’t have a good angle on him with the bow, owing to the short distance between us, his eye is just at a bad angle for me to hit it to knock him down and stun him so I can hit him more. So, instead I run up the side of the hill just a bit, not to where I start climbing the wall, but high enough so that the sword will hit him above his leg armor.  This works pretty well, and I hit him a few times, but then I have to run away to dodge his attack.  I try hitting him with the bow again, and miss the eye, but hit him 2-3 times, and then go back up the side of the hill and try to hit him again.  He’s just a little too far away from me, so I end up sinking more arrows into his side and back, until he drops.

Take that, you one eyed jerk.

He doesn’t really have any good weapons, but it was still satisfying to do him in.

Talking to the Rito on the island gives me the idea to return to Rito village and buy the cold weather armor.  I don’t need it, but I have enough rupees that I should be able to afford the suit in one trip, and I probably have all the materials needed to upgrade it fully, so what the hell why not.

I transport out there, and right by the shrine at Rito village, I see Kass the bird-man with the five singing girl Rito, playing music and singing together.  It turns out that Kass is these girls father.  I talk to each of them and the middle one, Nebb, tells me that if I find all the shrines in the world, to come back and she will give me a special reward.  This doesn’t add a new sidequest to my Adventure Log, curiously, so I wonder what the reward is.

Kass tells me to come back after dark to hear a special song.  It’s nearly night time as it is, so I run down to the clothing shop and buy the full armor suit.  The Rito who stands outside the shop thanks me and is impressed that I bought the full suit, which I think is a nice touch that the designers put in a special comment for “big spenders” who clean out the shop.

I go back up and talk to Kass, and he tells me more about his teacher who he learned all these songs from.  I notice for the first time that Kass isn’t just a generic bird-man; he seems to have the appearance of a parrot. Specifically, this kind of parrot:

I mean, it figures, Kass is the one who talks to Link the most out of all the Rito, so he’s got to be a parrot, right?

Kass’s teacher was a Rito who was close to Princess Zelda, before the Calamity.  Through song, Kass reveals to me that Princess Zelda loves Link, and it is this love for Link that is the key to unlocking her true powers, which through memory flashbacks I have learned she had failed to control, which lead to the downfall of Hyrule. 

So, the power of love is what is going to destroy evil and save Hyrule.  This is incredibly cheesy stuff, but for some reason it gets to me and I start crying.  Lol.  I am not embarrassed to cry or have emotions, but I’m confused as to how this moment has affected me so.  It is a total surprise.  As much as I’ve been enjoying the game all along, I wouldn’t say that I have felt tremendous emotional investment in it.  Much of the time as I’m playing, I’ve been picking apart the design and criticizing and appreciating its craftsmanship.  But I have not been especially moved by the storyline.  So what is up with me tearing up and getting emotionally overcome to the point where I turn on the waterworks, I have no idea.

But this last minute impulse to return to Rito village and buy the armor has turned into a major revelatory plot twist.  Kass’s teacher fell in love with Princess Zelda, but it was unrequited, because he knew that Zelda was secretly in love with Link, who never knew about it.  Then Link sacrificed his life to protect Zelda, as is his sworn duty as her personal knight.  But Zelda was able to get him to the shrine of resurrection and bring him back a century later.

It’s going to be interesting to find out what Zelda did to prevent herself from aging for a century, or what is going on with that.  And oh, poor Mipha, who crafted Links Zora armor as a pre-engagement gift.

After Kass is finished with the song, I stand there and just look around at the world from atop Rito village’s overlook platform, momentarily stunned.  The world is… changed.  Not in any visible way, but I now look at it differently.  Something in me is changed.

There’s now a sense of urgency to face Ganon and defeat him.

But first I still need to find some Ancient Cores and a few Lynel guts so I can finish my personal goal of maxing out all of Link’s outfits.  Lol.

I guess my next session will be Lynel and Guardian slaying, and if I’m lucky and finally accumulate all the materials I need, then I’ll finally be ready to take on Ganon. 

I back go to the fairy pond and, sure enough, I have all the materials needed to fully upgrade the Rito armor, so I do that.  I notice that I walk very slow in this armor, but it makes me wonder if I fly any better in it, in addition to having the cold resistance boost.  I’ll have to test that out and see.

There’s not much else left in the game for me to do, but if I want to 100% the game (not including all the korok seeds), I will need to:

  • Find the last couple of shrines, complete them, and get my last heart container.  I think there are now 2-3 shrines remaining in the world.
  • Go back to Rito village and find out what Nebb gives me for finding all the shrines in the world.
  • Find a Hylian royal cookbook somewhere in the vicinity of Hyrule Castle, for the fellow at one of the stables who was obsessed with Hylian royal cuisine.
  • Max out the Ancient Helmet and the Barbarian suit.
  • Buy an Ancient Short Sword at Akkala tech lab to show the kid from Hateno village.  (I can’t see finding enough Ancient cores to make this happen before I go to defeat Ganon, unless they start dispensing them like candy when I farm them by Guardian hunting. So unless I find one in a shrine or something, probably not happening.)
  • I think that might be it?

I guess there’s the DLC after that.

Updated: 2020-Jul-16 — 9:52 am

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