I just finished the shrine from last entry, but didn’t collect the chest. I go back in to do that, and it’s not that hard. The cart rolls back from the landing where you go to collect the Light of Blessing, and slowly enough that it’s no problem to grab the chest with Ultrahand and pull it near, drop it to the floor, and open it.
It contains an elixir of speed, which is ok.
I exit the shrine and return back to the stables and talk to everyone again. This time I take notes.
The lady who talks about sightseeing recommends four destinations nearby:
- West to Menoat River, where I can expect to run into pirates.
- Lakeside Stable to the East, and Lake Floria
- Further East, and turn South when I reach the ocean, Lurelin village, which has also been attacked recently by pirates.
- Go North to the thick forested area, then head East until I reach Floria river, then turn North until I reach a rain forest, where I’ll find the Zonai ruins. Above the ruins is a thundercloud that may have something in it.
- (Direction?) to Lake Hylia, which has a bridge that is guarded by a large monster, I assume the Flame Gleeok that I saw earlier from afar.
- South to the Southern Shoreline, where I’ll find Martha’s Landing, Kono Shoreline, and Puffer Beach, where there are flying monsters that can keep up with a horse.
Someone else mentions a giant white stallion, which has been seen near the Lake of the Horse Goddess, which is to the Southeast.
I am interested in heading to the Zonai ruins, because that sounds like it could further me in the main quest, and I mount up on a horse, and try to head out in that direction, but I misremember what they told me and try to head East instead. Only, the way the roads twist around in this area, even going East is too much for me, and I end up going West instead.But first, I run into a Korok who needs help meeting up with his buddy, so I help him. And then not very far along the trail I’m trying to follow, I find another korok in need, and help him. Both of these are easy tasks, not a big deal. It’s a bit annoying to have to dismount from the horse, help the korok, call the horse, resume riding, but I get four Korok seeds out of it, so hey.
Then I discover a new well, go down it, and find a sleeping Hylian girl who doesn’t wake when I try talking to her, but says something in her sleep about a storm and a fox. I have no idea what it means. I leave a “person” marker on the map and figure I’ll come back sometime if I ever figure out any more clues.
Then I go down the road and to the West, where I find another Addison, needing help posting his sign, an easy enough task, and I get some rupees and some food for my trouble.
I end up running into the pirate ship, and so I decide to help out there, because hey, I’m here and why not. The monster fighting crew consists of a ragtag bunch of Hylians who don’t look like they can fight too well, plus a Goron who at least looks like he can hit hard and take a hit. They’re standing off, looking at a ship moored in the river, as though uncertain of what to do about it. I talk to the one mounted on horseback, who turns out to be their leader, and she tells me that they can’t board the ship because the bridge to board became broken, and if it were repaired they would be able to attack.
I go up to ship, and look at the bridge, and try to re-attach it to the point where it broke, but it refuses to re-attach. So I guess I’m supposed to find some construction materials nearby and fix this thing some other way? But there’s nothing nearby.
I’m spotted by the monsters on board the ship, and it looks like there’s a decent lot of them, mostly Bokoblins, but also a couple of Moblins. I don’t see a lot of bows and arrows, and no armor, so this isn’t that bad. I fire some arrows at them, since I can’t cross the bridge either, and hit them hard with bomb flowers, which takes them down some. I don’t have a lot of arrows, though. They respond by throwing rocks at me, and eventually the Moblins pick up Bokoblins and throw them at me! They fly over the gap of the broken bridge, and surround me. I expect the companions nearby to start to engage and help me out, but they stand around like they weren’t programmed to handle this contingency, and do nothing. I end up dying, surrounded and unable to dodge or run.
I still have yet to pull of a flurry rush in any combat outside of the practice shrine, because I suck.
I respawn and try again. This time I try using muddle arrows, in addition to bomb arrows, which is super effective. The bomb arrows set the Bokoblins on fire, and also their weapons, and they end up standing too close together, so the flaming weapons burn the Bokoblins standing next to each other, and end up killing a few of them, greatly reducing their threat. Eventually there’s just one Moblin left. I still don’t have a means to cross, but I discover that near the bow of the ship, I can glide down to the anchor, and from there Ascend will let me tunnel up through the ship to the deck, and I’m on board. I finish off the Moblin, attempting to pull off a dodge of any kind that will allow me to practice flurry rush, fuck it up, get hit instead, almost die again, and then just take the Moblin down with regular attacks. FML, but at least it’s done.
The Hylian Monster Crew are thrilled and amazed that I just rushed in and took them all out by myself, and they reward me with 100 rupees. A pretty decent reward. They tell me they’re going to head to the northwest and I might meet them again in the Tabantha region or was it Hebra?
Back on the road, I keep getting turned around and going the wrong direction. It’s really hard to navigate because the roads don’t go straight in any direction, and follow the topology of the land, meandering about in wide curves. Without the map data from the Skyview Tower for the region, I don’t really know where the road leads and therefore I don’t know if I’m heading in the right direction or not. I end up coming down a slope that leads to what looks like the southern shore, and I’m in a beach area, when I spot a blue Lynel. Oh hell no, I turn right the fuck around and get the hell out of there before it can spot me, and head in the opposite direction, back to the pirate ship I just cleared out, taking a path leading around the bow, around a bend to the left, and up some hills.
I find another korok spot along the road, a shimmering patch of lights swirling around 5 statues lined up.
A bit further than that, I discover a shrine puzzle, another Glowing Gem Offering. This time the gem has been discovered already by a Hylian, who tells me he loves horses and he wants to see the Giant White Stallion, so if I bring him the stallion, he’ll let me have the gem.
Fine, OK then so now I really want to find the stallion. I use the Purah scope to look at some horses nearby, there’s a large herd consisting of three groups of three, but none is especially large, nor white.
I still have my horse with me, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to grab the nicest looking solid black horse, who I manage to tame after a few attempts, and ride all the way back to the Stables I came from, and I register it, releasing the 2-star in ever category Pony that I found earlier on, and name this one Blackstar.
I guess I want to try to find the Giant White Stallion next, since it’ll give me another big horse for my stable, and also enable me to unlock a shrine. So that was supposed to be near the Lake of the Horse Goddess, to the southeast of this stable. That’s where I’ll head next. But first I want to go all the way back to where I left my other horse when I captured Blackstar, and get him back.
I run out to where the man guarding the crystal is, which takes a good while, but at least while I do this I retrace my steps successfully and feel like I’ve remembered the route to follow, all the turns in the road to take to get me there. My horse, Horsier, is there waiting for me. I take him all the way back to the Highland Stables, and along the way I find a couple more Koroks. Just as the Stables are in sight, I spot a campfire smoke coming up in the distance, off to the right of the smoke plume coming up from the Stables. I scope it out, and see a small campsite just on the other side of a wooden bridge. I decide to check it out, find another korok before the bridge, and then crossing the bridge a Stone Talus comes to life, somewhere nearby but I don’t see it. The Talus music starts playing, and I hear the earth quaking, but it must be up a hill or something, because I can’t see it. This concerns me, so I spur my horse to sprint across the bridge, and we get away.
I talk to the two men who have camped here, and they are interested in the Horse God (I thought it was a Goddess?) and the Giant White Stallion, who they say has been spotted nearby in this area. But they say that the Horse God has departed from this lake, and is rumored to be… elsewhere… they said where, but I can’t recall what they told me now that I’m writing this.
I continue forward and see the Giant White Stallion at end of a narrow strip of land, surrounded by shallow ponds, surrounded by steep ridges of rock, creating a horseshoe-shaped corral of sorts. There are many butterflies and frogs here, so I spend a few minutes collecting as many as I can, taking advantage of the dense concentration, and end up picking up a bunch of them.
Then I try mounting the Great White Stallion.
In BOTW, the Giant Horse is a lot harder to tame. I think I had two full Stamina rings when I finally succeeded. The Giant Horse in BOTW spawns in an wide open area in the mouth of a canyon leading to Gerudo Desert, and in the vicinity of a pair of Lynels. He’s skittish and runs easily, and just mounting him requires speed or stealth, or a drop from above tactic, involving climbing a baobab tree. Then taming it requires hammering the LZ button really fast, while consuming Stamina foods or elixirs to outlast the horse until it calms down and breaks. I had to try it a dozen or more times, and then once I managed to calm the Giant Horse, I still had to ride back past the two Lynels, who I was yet unready to face, and ride a horse who is not capable of sprinting past two of the most powerful enemy in the game, while it was still not fully attuned to me and liable to panic and buck me off. Once past those two Lynels, there’s a pack of mounted Bokoblins who you have to get through, and it’s a long run to get to the nearest Stables.
In TOTK, the Giant White Stallion is comparatively docile, and easy to sneak up on, doesn’t run far if you do spook him, and therefore quite easy to mount. Calming him down is possible pretty quickly, and then getting back is simple. You’re very close to Highland Stables, and the only potential risk is waking the Talus near the bridge, but you can just keep plodding on and ignore it.
It’s dead easy, not really a challenge at all. Maybe I just learned a lot from BOTW, but even so, the setup and situation is much, much less challenging, and I manage to calm the horse on my second attempt, with just one potion, and make it back to the Stables and register him without any problem.
On the way back to register him, I stop to chat with the two men who were interested in the Giant Horse, and they are amazed and impressed. They’re still looking for the Horse God, and say they will go elsewhere (I forget, Hebra? Tabantha? Somehow I’m thinking the northwest) to look for him.
We then ride out to the campsite where the Shrine Gem is, and I show the man my horse. He’s impressed and gives me the gem, and I carry it back over to the location of the Shrine, unlock it, and claim my Light of Whatever.
Outside the shrine, I notice a glider, a control yoke, three batteries, and two fans, right near what looks like a pretty ideal launching point. I decide I must try this and see how far it takes me, even though it means leaving my Giant White Stallion behind.
I assemble the vehicle, lift it into the air, and drop it, then use Recall to reverse its drop so that it levitates up into the air, hop on and activate the fans, and it takes off. It’s off balance and awkward, i’m constantly adjusting course up and down with the control yoke, but I head in a roughly straight direction heading out from the launch point, just to see where it will take me if I go in that direction.
The three batteries give me a lot of range, and despite my wobbly course, I get out pretty far, until I can see… the Highland Stables dead ahead. I’m heading back to the Stables. The batteries run out, one by one, and then all I have left is my own Zonai power pack, and when that runs out, I jump off the vehicle and glide the rest of the way.
I actually land right on the roof of the Stable, which has nothing special of interest hidden there. It seems that the TOTK designers decided not to put something interesting on the top of every climbable thing, like they did in BOTW, which I think maybe is a design decision to cut down on the tendency to be distracted by exploring every interesting-looking peak, rock, or tree to look for treasure chests and koroks, and keep you more interested in the storyline and main quests. I think it’s a good move, to be honest.
Anyway, since I’m at the Stables, I figure why not try to board the horse that I have out, and I ask the man, and sure enough I can board my Giant White Stallion, even though he’s miles away back where I left him.
So, I guess I just learned that riding Horsier all the way back in order to board him after catching that new wild horse was kind of a waste of time, then. But it really wasn’t, because doing that led to finding some koroks, the location of the Giant Horse, and got me more familiar with the region and the roads. So it’s worth it for those things.
I’ve accomplished quite a few things here, now. The Stable manager keeps mentioning the Dark Cloud to the northeast, so it seems like that’s probably the next thing I should check out. Which, at the start of this thing, was what I had been intending to check out, except for I kept getting turned around and running into other things to do along the way.
So it’s about time I get my directions straight and figure out how to get to this place.