I haven’t played in a few weeks.
Just wrapping up the remaining loose ends on the BOTW ToDo list.
The last active sidequest I have running is to show the boy in Hateno village an Ancient Short Sword. I transport to Akkala Tech Lab and have them make one for me, and then transport to Hateno and show him. The kid gives me a diamond. This kid’s flippin rich.
While in Hateno, I visit with Bolson for a minute, and he tells me I should try to popularlize a dance that he shows me how to do. I never had him tell me this before. Is it the start of a new sidequest? How do I do these dance moves? He also has an amulet around his neck, and the dialog tree gives me the option to ask about it, and he talks more about Hudson’s wedding. I guess he used the amulet to create a stream of falling confetti or something. I do not understand why in fantasy literature amulets always have powers. Real amulets don’t do anything. They just hang from your neck, and do nothing. What gives authors such ideas?
I notice that all the Akkala Tech Lab weapons costs the same, 1000Rs, + some ancient tech parts. Specifically, it’s the exact same recipe to make a short sword, which does like 30 damage, or a bladesaw, which does 55 damage. Why would you ever buy a short sword then, other than to show it to the kid in Hateno and get a diamond? I haven’t bought a bladesaw yet, but I guess it probably must be a two-hander. I think about picking up an Ancient Bow. I have enough coin for it, but not enough weapon slots. Maybe later, then.
I’ve completed 71/77 sidequests according to the pause screen, but I don’t know what the remaining 6 are, or where I’d need to go to find them. I wonder if there’s a list of BOTW sidequests online that I can look up and see what I have yet to discover.
The controller feels rusty in my hands. I forget that you can’t transport to stables, and momentarily wonder why I can’t. I figure it out eventually.
I have found 112 of 120 shrines in Hyrule, so there’s still 8 more out there somewhere for me to discover.
I don’t have time to aimlessly wander around the world hoping to stumble into them, so at this point I am OK with cheating a little bit and looking them up.
The first one I couldn’t find on my own is right off the road after Fort Hateno. There’s a shrine quest involving the man who lives in the little cabin just inside the ruined wall. I’ve been to this house a few times, but never at night. I arrive there during the daytime and read the book that’s sitting out on the desk, and it gives me a clue about some statues that glow at night. I don’t remember reading this before, but it’s possible I just never noticed the book, or that I read the book but couldn’t figure out what it means, and forgot about it long before I learned enough about the game to figure it out. I notice there’s a bed in the cabin, and when I stand near it, it gives me the option to sleep for free. I never knew that before! How did I not know that?
The clue in the book speaks of a statue that has eyes that glow at night, so I use the bed to sleep until night. When I wake up, the inhabitant of the cabin is there! He is a doctor who is studying the mystery of the glowing statue. We talk for a bit. It reminds me a bit of the other shrine quest on the top of the snowy hill near the Gerudo desert, where I discovered the ruins of an old cabin and a diary there that gave a clue about the shrine there. I feel like in so many of the shrine quests in this game, you meet someone who has been looking for the shrine their entire life, and then you go and discover the solution to the puzzle in usually a short time, like five minutes. Sometimes I’ve taken longer to figure them out, but that was really only the first couple; once I learned what shrine quests were about, most of the rest of them were simple to figure out.
In this case, though, I do not know where the statues that glow are. I have to look this up, too. It turns out, a little ways down the road toward Hateno village, there’s a canyon off to the left, where there are numerous statues. One of them glows at night, and if you shoot it with an arrow, it reveals the shrine. I mostly don’t travel the roads — when I walk on foot, I’m usuually foraging and exploring off-road, and often climbing and gliding, and if I’m not exploring, I usually transport with the teleportation power to save time. So I have probably only used this road maybe a couple of times, and apparently went right past this canyon and never noticed it was there before.
Although, when I walk into the canyon, I do find a Korok buddy who I had already discovered, so apparently I have been in this place before, at least one time. I don’t remember it, really. But there are a bunch of little statues, and one of them sure enough has glowing purple eyes. I shoot an arrow at it, and the shrine appears. This one has a complex mechanical platform puzzle, involving a rotating drum with a couple of spikey metal balls, and platforms that line up, and treasure chests that are difficult to reach. I do not bother with the chests, since I am not in need of any more equipment, and proceed directly to the shrine master’s chamber, to collect my spirit orb. The trick to getting up to him is to time-stop the rotation of the room briefly, to enable you to cross over the center of the room when the platforms are properly aligned.
I look up another two shrines that I haven’t discovered, and both are in the northwest area of the map, near Rito village and Hebra. One is well hidden in a overhanging rock cave with a swift river of icy water that damages you quickly if you try to swim in it. I just tank the damage and get across, and enter. The shrine offers no challenge, and rewards me just for finding it.
Exiting the shrine, there are two logs laying about on the little island with the shrine entrance. I push one of them into the water and climb onto it, and ride it out of the cave. The rushing water runs out of the cave and comes to a waterfall. When the log goes over the falls, I glide to a landing on a little island in the river at the base of the falls, where at the top of a tree I find a korok seed. I find another korok seed at the top of another tree nearby somewhere, too.
Nearby, there’s another shrine, at the bottom of the Tanagar canyon. I drop down and find it, and go in. This one has puzzles that involve using the time-stop power to move heavy objects to activate switches. I get a Great Thunderblade from one chest, ignore another chest, and get the spirit orb.