It’s raining again in Farun, and it’s hard to see far due to the rain and the dense jungle, and it’s impossible to climb, and there’s not much around to see or do at the Dondon pen. I’m really curious about that Satori experience I just had, which led me here, and I want to go back and see if I can find the cherry blossom tree, which I should have marked on the map but understandably in my excitement I had forgotten to do.
I quick-travel back to the shrine near the horse stables that I had embarked from, hoping I’ll be able to retrace my steps. It turns out to be surprisingly simple — right from the shrine, I am able to see the tall pillars that I remembered climbing which started me out on the last adventure. I glide down to the nearest one and climb it, and find the korok that I found the last time still dangling from his pinwheel. I look down and the cherry blossom tree is very nearby, barely more than a stone’s throw away from the shrine and the stables. Wow. In my mind it had seemed like a much longer walk to get here the first time.
I mark the spot on the map, save, and then offer the statue in front of the tree another apple. The mystical blue lights appear again, marking the overworld like my pins on the map.
I have it in mind to try to mark as many of these points as I possibly can before the effect wears off. It seems most efficient to do so. I think, I’ll just look around with the Purah Scope, place pins directly onto the Satori lights, then switch to the Map view so I can replace the Pins with Stickers, so that I can keep re-using the Pins and mark many more than just six locations.
It’s a really good idea, but it doesn’t work out so well in practice. Most of the Satori spots are low lying, many of them cave entrances well concealed down at the bottom of hills, many of which are on the far side of the hill from where I stand. So it’s all but impossible to mark these locations with map pins, because in order to pin a location, you have to be able to place the pin on a physical, solid object, and the Satori light is not a physical object. I could put a pin close to the light, or shoot right through it and end up plotting a course that is way, way off the mark from the site that I was really trying to get to.
So this doesn’t work out so well. But the Satori lights do last a while, it seems about a full day, and it’s a lot of time if you want to move quickly, and I’m pretty capable of doing that.
I try to visit as many of the spots that have lit up as possible while I can. I find a few more Excavation Sites, and these generally have a physics puzzle that I have to solve in order to open a gate which gives access deeper into the cave, usually I find a treasure chest with some minor prize in it, and often a bubbul frog as well. I try to get as many bubbul frog gems as I can, still not know what they may be used for, and for all I know they’re just “achievement points” for how much of the game you’ve explored, and not useful in-game for anything. But I’d really like to know, because I’m putting a fair bit of time into trying to get them, and it’d be nice if it was worthwhile, beyond the enjoyment of just doing it for its own sake.
I get a bit turned around and end up, I think, visiting the same two excavation points and going back and forth between them, wasting time. But then I see one of the Satori spots is in the water of Lake Hylia, a raging whirlpool. I might have guessed that it was something interesting, but probably wouldn’t have chanced it before, fearing the danger and expecting that at some point a safe method of going into it would present itself. But now I’m feeling like this Satori light is a signpost telling me that it is safe to go to it.
I have to hike a bit to get close, and I try to glide as much of the way as possible. As I get close, it seems to me that I’ll need to glide from the top of the towers of Lake Hylia Bridge, and that’s a bit risky because Gleeok is guarding the bridge, and I don’t know what its range is, or what its powers are, exactly.
It turns out that Gleeok doesn’t see too well, or doesn’t care about people unless they get really close. And it’s hard to see, but maybe I’m somehow coming up from the back side of the direction Gleeok is facing, which probably doesn’t hurt my chances of avoiding its 3-headed gaze.
I come up to the bridge tower nearest the whirlpool, and climb it. At the top, I discover a korok puzzle, an easy one that involves running to the opposite tower before a countdown times out. I manage the feat and collect my seed. Then it’s time to save and glide down as close to the whirlpool as I can get.
It turns out I can get right up to it, and I glide over and drop down into it. I get sucked down, and fall into a cave. A cave which somehow is not full of water, but has water constantly pouring down it from the lake above. It’s a rather vast space, and in it I find some forage materials, a bubbul frog, and a shrine quest. It’s another gem quest. This time I’m at the shrine, and it’s telling me to find the gem at the other end of a green laser beam that’s projecting directly upward, vertically through the ceiling of the cave.
I suspect that this means I can just Ascend up through the cave ceiling, and somehow maybe I’ll end up in another space between this cave and the bottom of the lake. Or maybe I’ll even be in the lake on the floor, or who knows. But ceiling is too high for me to use Ascend, so that’s not it.
I puzzle over this for a bit, and surmise that this may mean that the gem on the other end of the laser beam may be up in the Sky Level. I look at the map to see if there are any Sky Islands directly above the lake, and it’s hard for me to tell because I don’t yet have this region’s map data. I do have a bit of the adjacent region though, because that’s the Sky Island where you start out the game. The Cave of Awakening and The Temple of Time are both right nearby, and are convenient fast-travel points.
I try teleporting up there to see if I can see a Sky Island with a laser beam flashing down out of it into the lake. But at the range I’m at, seeing a pencil thin beam of light is probably not possible. Still, I go to the edge of the Sky Island, making a beeline toward Lake Hylia’s whirlpool below, and using the scope, I can see some sky islands, far below the level I’m on, and a good ways out.
I’m not sure if I can make it by gliding, but I try. I have to try a few times, and it’s at the extreme end of my range, but I do have enough stamina upgrades to fly directly to it, and then Dive down, flare my paraglider at the last second, and make a safe landing.
Once I land, I find the sky island is pretty tiny, and populated only by birds and golden colored trees, with a stone building that looks like a temple in the center. I’m in the back of it, and when I walk around to the front, I find stairs leading up to an entrance room where I find the green glowing gem associated with the shrine in Lake Hylia Cave. Sweet! I figure it out.
I wonder about how I’m supposed to get the gem from here down to the shrine location thousands of feet below and beneath the lake floor. It seems like it would be all but impossible to line up a drop and throw the gem off the edge. Then I notice a square hole in the floor, leading to open air. I surmise this is the way, and I carry the gem to the hole, and then jump down.
As soon as I’m falling, I can’t hold onto the gem anymore, and it seems to fall slower than me, at first. But it catches up, and then accelerates past me, and I begin to worry that I’ll lose it, or cause it to despawn. I try the R button to dive in order to fall faster, and I’m not sure if it mattered or not, but I do end up splashing down in the Lake, and getting sucked down into the whirlpool immediately, and when I emerge on the other end of the waterfall in the cave, I find that the gem is there right next to me. All I have to do is pick it up and walk it over to the shrine’s spot, and complete the quest.
It was really satisfying to figure this out, follow the clues, and solve this puzzle. I like that it employed verticality that included all three world levels, and made them feel entirely connected, rather than three separate spaces.
I receive a Mighty Zonai Sword and a Light of Blessing from Rauru, and am feeling more enlightened than I did before I started this quest.