I spend a bit of time staring at the painting in Impa’s house of the image of Link’s last remaining un-recovered memory, and conclude that I must have been close when I looked for it before.
Before heading out to find it again, I walk down the wrong road, and end up at the end of Kakariko village where the garden of stones is, and I see the little girl, Koko, who likes to cook and is too hard on herself, standing there, which is unusual. As I draw nearer, I see that she is crying. I talk to her, and learn that her mother has died. This fills me with a deep sadness, for I have had a soft spot in my heart for little Koko. She cries a little, and I feel overwhelmed. There is nothing at all that I can do.
This isn’t a side quest, it’s just a tear jerker moment that you can’t do anything about. So much death and loss for this world. Of all the characters in this world to do this to, why Koko?
I spend longer there than I need to, before moving on. Before leaving, I take one of each of the different types of flowers that you can pick, and drop them there. It does nothing, but feels appropriate.
I turn back to head down the road out of Kakariko, and pass by the clothing shop, and decide to stop in one last time. I never bought the Hylian tunic, since around the time I first came here, I received the Champion’s tunic. But it’s only 120 Rupees, and I have the trousers and the hood, so I might as well complete the set. I’ll see about upgrading it later.
Winding my way down the road from Kakariko village, I hop in the air and glide, following the path, but moving a bit faster than running, to make time. I land at the bottom of the trail near the north end of Kakariko Bridge. There’s a traveler by the side of the road, and when I talk to him, he reveals himself to be a Yiga Clan ninja, and attacks me. I cut him down quickly with the Master Sword, and then cross the bridge.
It occurs to me that I really haven’t been here but perhaps a handful of times — once I gained the ability to transport, there was little practical reason for traveling along the road. I decide to take a little bit of time and look around the vicinity to see whether there might be anything of note hidden nearby. Looking down into the water toward the west side of the bridge, I see a ring of rocks that signifies a korok seed spot. I need to toss a boulder into the ring, but this is one of the most difficult things for me to do, as the aiming is difficult. I carry a boulder down to the bank of the river and use the Cryonis power to create an ice bridge to carry me to the ring, one block at a time, and then just jump into the ring carrying the stone. It works, and I get my korok.
When I extract myself from the water, I notice a little campfire beneath the bridge, on a sandbar, and swim over to investigate it. There’s a couple of steel boxes and some roasted fish and I find some arrows and an old, weak shield, but little else worthy of mention. It’s late afternoon by this point, so I decide to sit by the fire and wait for morning.
At dawn, I resume walking out along the road, taking the fork that leads to Hateno village, and am quickly beset upon by some little chuchus, and I blast them with a bomb, and move on. My eyes are locked on the skyline, trying to spot the familiar contour of the mountains from the last memory photo. I feel like I must be very close, as there are some features which do look like they match with the photo. I move off the road, watching the horizon and watch as the shifting parallax creates the image from the memory, more and more faithfully, until I’m sure I’m in the right area. I look around and keep moving about, and then finally I spot the shimmering energy field that signifies the spot.
I recall the memory. Link and Zelda are in the field 100 years ago, there has been a great battle, and the Guardians are marching towards them. Link is badly injured and exhausted, besotted with dirt, and looks like he is near his limit. Zelda implores him to leave her and save himself, but he doesn’t leave her side. Then, a Guardian approaches, looming over them, and is about to blast them, and Link is too weak to defend them, when Zelda steps in front of him and something happens. Her power finally awakens within her, and she emits some kind of energy field that does something to the Guardians that renders them inert. Link collapses. A moment later, two Sheikah soldiers run up, a bit late, to rush to the Princess’s aid. She commands them to take Link to the Shrine of Resurrection at once.
So this is the spot where the Hero of Hyrule fell.
I now have all of the memories, and so the main quest to recapture the lost memories of Link is finally completed. After returning to the present moment, Link hear’s Zelda’s voice telling him that now is the time to face Ganon, and to head to Hyrule Castle for the final battle.
I just need to do a few more things before I’m ready to do that again.
First, I want to farm that last bit of Star Fragment that I need in order to upgrade my Ancient Helm to full power. I also want to find the Hylian Shield, which I believe is somewhere on the castle grounds that I haven’t yet found.
I decide to look for falling stars by standing on the top of the Dueling Peaks, and wait for night, and watch the sky for as long as it takes. From this point, I’m pretty close to the center of the map, and can see a long way in any direction, which should make it likely that I’ll see any falling stars that happen to come at night. Only, I do not know how long I might have to wait for this. I hope it will not be very many nights, but it might take quite a while. I just don’t know.
I’m also running way low on normal arrows, so I go to all the places I can think of to buy arrows, and buy every arrow they have: Gerudo Town, Kakariko Village, Hateno Village, Korok Village, Tarrey Town, Beedle’s stable shops. I end up with 160 by the time I’m done scouring Hyrule for all the arrows I can muster.
While at the Dueling Peaks stables, I find a couple of guys who look like they want to talk to me, and discover a new sidequest that I hadn’t known about previously. These guys are looking for the treasure rumored to have been hidden by a master thief. They give me a clue for 100 Rupees, and it’s easy enough to interpret. There’s a pair of bridges nearby, which the riddle references, and then says to find a cave at the source of the river. I hike out that way and find it, and it’s a decent hike, but the treasure is pretty good, although this would have been a lot better to find in the early game. I bomb open a cave at the top of a waterfall, and find about 5 or 6 treasure chests, containing a sapphire and some weapons. There’s a hidden bonus chest behind a bombable wall, which I get as well.
While at Hateno village, I go into the clothing shop by mistake, and see an armor set that I’d never purchased before, the soldier’s armor. I vaguely recall when I first came through Hateno that I had visited here, and was pretty low on Rupees then, and the suit just seemed way too expensive for me to think about buying right then, and so I eventually forgot about it. I think also that when you’re looking for better equipment, there’s not really an advantage to buying the suits, because anything you buy starts out low power, and doesn’t give you an immediate boost. So unless the outfit has a special bonus, like the climbing gear or the rubber suit or the fireproof suit, or the Gerudo Vai clothes, until much later in the game when you realize that you can upgrade clothing at Fairy Ponds, you look at these things and think they are way overpriced and don’t really do anything for you, and it seems like a waste of resources to buy them.
Now, however, I have a surplus of rupees, so I buy the Soldier’s Armor suit, and then go back to the Kakariko fairy and get it upgraded. To fully max it out, I need more Hinox guts and Lynel guts, so I go kill a Hinox, the one near Zora’s domain, and it doesn’t drop any guts, so then I go to the one in Giant’s Woods, in central Hyrule, and get guts from that one.
I also stop at Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, and drop the rest of my cash on Sheikah Slate photos. I still need close to 18,000 Rs in order to get every last photo for the album, and you can bet your bippy if I spend it all I’m going to spend a good 6 hours looking through the whole damn thing so I can say I got my money’s worth.
Then I go to raid the Lynel near Eldin’s Leviathan, and I have a decent fight with it, it drops a Savage Lynel Sword and Bow in addition to Lynel Guts, a gem, and 10 shock arrows. Pretty good loot drop. I still need more Lynel Guts, so I transport out to the plains that separate Gerudo from Faran, and fight the two Lynels there. I drop in from above on my glider, and get a slow-motion mid-air headshot on the first one to start off the fight with a stun and mount, then as I dismount I nail it with 3 perfect headshots before I run out of stamina and fall to the ground. It comes back and hits me a couple of times, and I have to heal myself, but I have a pretty good fight with it, and this one drops a Savage Lynel Crusher with a high attack bonus, this one has an Attack rating of 104, which is sick.
The other Lynel has a Savage Lynel Spear, which also has a pretty good attack bonus, and is the best spear I’ve ever seen in this game, with an attack rating of 41 or 42. Against this Lynel, I manage to get my first perfect dodge and flurry rush since the training shrine where they teach you those moves. I jump left just as it’s coming at me with its spear, trigger bullet time, and rush in to do a flurry of extra strikes with the sword. It recovers and does a flame burst attack, which generates updrafts, which I take advantage of to ride up and get another slow motion headshot with the bow, stunning it again, land, mount it, and hit it a bunch, then fire more arrow headshots as I’m dismounting again, and this takes it down pretty quickly. With the multi-shot Lynel bows, those dismount headshots hits are super effective at running their hitpoints down.
Having acquired all the monster parts that I need, the only thing left for me is to get the final star fragment so I can finish upgrading my Ancient Helmet.
Because this is such a rare item, and I don’t have a lot of other things to do while I watch the sky for falling stars as a background task while I attend to other business, I decide it’s time to go to the internet and read up on star farming. I learn from this that shooting stars occur on Full Moons, and there’s a guy at Dueling Peaks Stables who I remember way back when who first told me about the moon cycle and the Blood Moon. So I go there, and talk to him, and pass days sitting at the fire until it’s the day of a Full Moon. Then I transport to the shrine atop Dueling Peaks, and wait until night and watch the sky to the East, until finally, just past 2am, game time, a shooting star appears at the right of my peripheral vision.
I watch it fall, and mark the site with the Sheikah Scope, then glide down as close to the crash site as I can get, and run the rest of the way, and retrieve the fragment.
I return to the fairy fountain one last time and upgrade the Soldier Armor and Ancient Helmet, maxing out both sets.
Looking at the Adventure Log, I notice that it says that I’ve completed 71 of 77 side quests, and 38/42 shrine quests. I’ve found 330 of 900 korok seeds, and 111 of 120 shrines.
So there are 4 more shrine quests, and 9 more shrines. I wonder how I could have missed the shrine quests, and where I might find them. And for that matter where the other 5 shrines that are not associated with shrine quests might be found.
I’m so close to 100% completion for the game now, not including korok seeds, I consider whether I should continue looking for the remaining 9 shrines. One more will give me a fourth Spirit Orb, which will max out my life meter, and then that leaves 2 final upgrades for the stamina meter. These final upgrades will only give me a marginal power boost over where I’m at already, so I’m pretty much at full power right now.