Unsure of what to do next, I decide to see what’s up the road from the Fairy Fountain near the Stable I just visited.
Along the way, I spot a hill with a lone tree standing on it, and figuring it must have something of interest, I go off-road to check it out. It’s easy going along lush grassy hills, and I reach the tree, but there’s nothing of interest up the tree.
I guess the designers decided that not every point of interest has to be marked by a lone tree or stone.
Nearby, though, are some ruined buildings, little left of them but some crumbling foundations. I check them out, but as I’m going about it, here come a group of Bokoblins, lead by a Boss. They are blue, and wearing armor made of wood. One of them has a bunch of what look like red chuchu jellies. This group looks formidable. They seem to be heading my way, up the road. I hide and take cover, crouching behind the tree.
The Bokoblins march right up to the area where I was, look around for a moment, and then turn around and head back down the way they came. I wonder: did they come out this way because they thought they saw something? Or was this just a pre-determined route that they were programmed to patrol? Did the tree I spotted, which took me off the road, save me from a face to face encounter with this group?
It seems so.
Since it’s momentarily safe here, I resume scouting the ruins, but I don’t find much. I’m also watching the Bokoblins to see what their behavior is, and observe that they march back down to a little camp they have, and then turn around and head back up the hill.
Here, I discover a well. Since I need a hiding place, it seems a good idea to check out the well. I jump down; there’s no ladder, and I land unhurt in the cave below. Here is another secreted hideaway that someone has been using to grow and cook food items. I take what I find, and read their diary, which tells me that eating fire fruit will give me a boost of strength, but does not protect me against desert heat like in the Gerudo desert.
There’s no way out of the cave, other than to use the Ascend power, which I use, hoping that my timing will be safe, and not pop me up right in the middle of those Bokoblins.
As luck has it, they’re down at their camp when I pop out of the ground.
I decide I should try to see how formidable they are, and plot an attack strategy more clever than simply rushing in and trying to fight them hand-to-hand.
I only have 3 arrows, and I’m trying to stock up, so I decide to try lobbing bomb flowers at them. The range doesn’t seem to be too great, but I don’t have a huge amount of experience with aiming, other than throwing brightbloom seeds underground. But fortunately that seems to be enough experience, because my aim and my range are both true, and I manage to score hits on the group. Two of the Bokoblins are greatly injured by the first bomb, and one of them dies from the fire. A bonus, they seem to drop the fire chuchu jelly without it detonating, and don’t bother to pick it up again. They look around, confused, not seeing where the attack came from, and eventually pick up their weapons and resume their march up the hill toward my location. So I lob another bomb, which takes out the remaining Bokoblins and does some more damage to the Boss. I lob one more, and it only hurts the Boss a little, despite hitting him directly. But since it is down to just him I decide I should be brave and finish him off with my weapons.
I glide down from the hill and use a dive attack, which does splash damage. There’s one more Bokoblin who I somehow didn’t see, behind his Boss, and my attack deals damage to both of them, and fortunately it’s enough to take out that surprise Boko. The Boss drops his huge sword, giving me a further advantage, which I lose immediately by accidentally activating my telescope, making me effectively blinded for near vision, and I get hit by the Boss, hard. The blow takes me to 1/4 hearts, and knocks me on the ground. Annoyed, I pause the game, swear a bunch, and then eat enough food to bring me back up to full life, knowing that if I get hit by that thing again, the only thing that will save me will be if my life meter is full. I get up and switch weapons to my Royal Claymore which I’ve fused with a Bokoblin skeleton arm, and is my strongest weapon. The arm breaks off with the first hit, but fortunately the second finishes the Boss, and I’m victorious.
It’s a win with very little meaning attached to it; I’ve consumed weapons and food, and gained little beyond a few monster parts, and some experience with fighting these enemies.
I don’t think to check out their camp to see what else I might get, and instead I think about where I could go next.
I decide rather than trying to complete some of the quest objectives in the immediate area of this stable, I will try going back to Kakariko Village and see if I can make any progress with my open quests there.
There’s the old woman who is sick with Gloom, and I’ve found some ingredients in the underworld that might work to create a cure for her. There’s also the four Ring Ruins, which I need to visit and see the stone glyphs. And the fifth Ring Ruin, which is off limits. I wonder if I can find a way to sneak in, or perhaps visiting the four will unlock the fifth to me.
I fast travel back, and arrive in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm, at the Shrine nearby. I glide down and find the old woman’s daughter who cares for her, and try talking to her again, but her responses haven’t changed; she doesn’t seem to notice that I have ingredients that might help. So maybe I don’t have the right ingredients after all. Or maybe I need to cook them into a porridge for her? I don’t understand the intended solution; she tells me that she has some of the ingredients — the Hylian Rice and Milk, but doesn’t know what the missing ingredient I need to supply, and doesn’t mention whether she has any Wild Greens. I haven’t seen Wild Greens anywhere, and am not sure where I would look for them, or if Wild Greens is perhaps a category of any kind of vegetable? I am wondering about this. I notice she mentions a merchant who travels on the road to the west of the village who sells the rice and milk, so I decide to try to find him, in case I maybe need to buy them. But based on what she’s telling me, she has that stuff already, which seems to imply that I don’t need to.
In the morning, down in the village I find a girl selling garland wreaths. She says they are for the Ring Ruins, since they resemble them. She seems to suggest that I should carry a garland up to the ruins and lay them there as a tribute, but it looks like a long climb.
I buy a garland from her for 5 rupees, and to my annoyance it is a carryable object, not an inventoryable object. So I can’t run while carrying it, and I can’t climb either. So that’s the challenge. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get a wreath to the place she’s indicating, and it seems like it’ll be a royal pain to do it on foot, and I’m not quite ready to start constructing something with Ultrahand parts to try to get there, either. Maybe another time.
I walk up the road and find the merchant who sells milk and rice, and buy some, just in case. I also find another Addison who wants help holding up a sign, which I take care of for him.
I decide the only other thing I can do right now is try to find Wild Greens, so I get out my axe and start mowing the lawn in the grassy field here. This proves fruitless and I get distracted quickly, and decide to try visiting the remaining Ring Ruins and at least complete that quest.
This takes quite a bit of time and climbing around, but I do eventually manage to complete the required tasks, which I find is easier when I mark the locations on the map that I’ve been to already with stamps. One of the investigation crew who I talked to mentions something about a rare yellow herb that can counteract gloom. I wonder if he means Sundelion, which is rare on the ground but seems to grow in the sky islands above.
As I’m going about this, I find another Korok who needs help reaching his friend, and stop to help him out. It’s a long way, and to make the trip a little shorter, I use a Zonai wing and fans. I saw a tip saying that if you can’t get the wing off the ground due to friction, you can use Recall and Ultrahand to accomplish this, as follows: Use Ultrahand to lift the wing up in the air, then drop it. Stand on the wing, and use Recall, and it will be lifted off the ground, in reverse of your lifting action with the Ultrahand. Cancel Recall when it reaches the height you need, and hit the fans or rockets you’ve attached, to take off.
This works well enough, but only gets me about halfway there. But it does cross a rather steep valley that would have been difficult climbing for me had I tried to carry the Korok over my head, so I think this is a win.
I get the two korok seeds for my reward, and then turn around and re-use the wing to travel back the way I came. But as luck has it, it runs out of juice and drops me right into the chasm nearby Kakariko Village. I glide to avoid falling down into the underworld, but land in a pile of Gloom, and take some damage from it.
Fortunately I get out of the Gloom before I take more than 2 hearts of damage, and I’m OK.
I walk the rest of the way back to the village, running into a Blue Bokoblin in the wooded area that has a lot of good forage items that I used to visit a lot near the fairy fountain in BOTW. I wonder if the fairy is still here, or not, but I think the Ring Ruins may have covered that particular location up.
At any rate, I return and talk to the man in the village who was interested in the stone glyphs on the Ring Ruins, and we share information. They give clues about elemental powers like Time and Light and so on, and special rocks that can harness this power, and Sages who fought the Demon King in the past. They seem to be clues to how to defeat the Demon King, but it’s all pretty vague.
But that’s about it. It doesn’t do anything to unlock the 5th Ring Ruin. I suppose I should find Tauro and try talking to him.
While I’m in the center of the village, I enter the two shops. One, the ingredients shop, is out of everything. There’s so much tourism to view the ring ruins that they can’t keep anything in stock. But the shopkeeper thanks me for settling the quarrel between the two old men who bickered about the merits of offense and defense, and gives me a carrot as a reward to completing a sidequest I didn’t even know about.
The other shop is an arrow shop, and I need arrows. I have something over 100 rupees, but I’m trying to save those up as well, and knowing I can farm arrows by getting near Bokoblin archers, I think I’ll hold off buying them for now.
Night comes and I decide to go back to the sick woman in the village. One of the villagers is tending a garden nearby, and tells me about her plum trees. Part of the garden is given to a research project to try to grow more Sundelions. I can’t pluck this particular Sundelion, as with all of the other vegetable gardens in the village, I’m not allowed to plunder them. But I have Sundelions, and I decide to cook one.
Just one creates a Sunny Wild Greens recipe, which is good for warding off Gloom. So that clues me in. I go back to the daughter of the sick woman and offer her a Sundelion, but she doesn’t do anything with it. So I pick it up and cook it with Rice and Milk, and this produces Sunny Greens Porridge, which cures the grandmother.
Now that she is well, her daughters are happy. They bring the prices in the clothing store down, and one of them tells me she is going to Hateno to study fashion. I’ve completed that side quest, and now I can buy some clothes… once I have enough money, but they’re still much too expensive for me to buy at this time. I only have about 100 rupees, and the cheapest thing is about 500. There’s two sets of clothing, one for stealth, one for radiant, and together they’ll run about 3000 or so.
I still don’t know what else I can do about gaining access to the fifth Ring Ruin, which seems to be very important. I recall that in BOTW, Kakariko village had a large stone orb in the Chief’s house, which I wasn’t allowed to touch for the longest time, and I had to wait a long time to be able to do anything with that. I wonder if this could be the same type of deal?
I talked to the man who was interested in the four Ring Ruins, and that completed a side quest, but now he doesn’t seem to be interested in them any further, and is just a tourist, not an official on the investigation committee.
I’ve talked with Tauro, Calip, and Paya, and they all are interested in the mystery but are heeding Princess Zelda’s orders, so nothing has changed there. I talk to everyone else I can find, including two tourist girls who are as curious as I am, but neither of them seems to be helpful. I return to one of the ring ruins and find the man sleeping on the stone tablet, who is dreaming of Hearty Truffles. Fortunately I now happen to have one in my inventory, so I take it out and place it on him, which wakes him up, and he leaves. I’m able to take the Truffle back, too.
But none of that does anything to further move the plot along.
It seems I may have done about all I can in Kakariko for now. But there will be more to do later, at some point.