I decide to hike up the road from Lookout Landing to Eldin. It’s the quickest way to go into any new territory. If I take a horse, I can go faster, but I spend more time mounting and dismounting every five seconds while I am finding tons of interesting stuff to investigate and forage to pick up. I don’t have any quick-travel destinations that are much closer, and if I glide out there from somewhere, I just fly over a lot of interesting stuff, or I abort and dive the moment I come over something that looks interesting.
Running up the road, I don’t encounter a lot of enemies. In fat, I don’t have any combat encounters at all. I do spot a bokoblin or moblin here or there, but they’re well off the road and don’t seem to pay me any mind, and so I leave them alone.
As I get closer to the border of the Central Hyrule zone that I have mapped out, I’m coming to a bridge. On the far side, I see a huge, moss covered Battle Talus, with a couple of Bokoblins riding on it. I might have to engage it to get beyond and to the marker on the map where I have spotted a Skyview Tower, which is my destination. But just before I get to the bridge, I find a Korok who needs help finding his friend, and I decide to give him a hand. There’s a convenient Zonai wing on the ground, and I attach a rocket and a fan to it, and then glue the korok to the vehicle and ride it in the direction of the friend, who is on the other side of the river. We make it and I’m on the other side of the river without having to deal with the Battle Talus. Plus I get two more Korok seeds.
As a bonus if that wasn’t enough I spot the Eldin Stables right nearby, up a slight ridge and along a road. So I go there, and I talk to people. I get Pony Points, and I find two people standing on the stage. I think they’re the ones from the musical group. One of them has a violin, and her name is basically a weird spelling of Violynne (or something like that) and the other is called Mastro, and seems to be a conductor. Talking to them doesn’t really do much, they are talking about something bad that has happened, and they want to report it to the newspaper.
I’m not sure what to do about that, but I guess I’ve been hearing about the newspaper out in Rito Village, and how it’s possible to get a job as a reporter working for them. So I guess, I could go to Rito, get a job as a reporter, go to Eldin, and report these guys’ story, and maybe that will lead to the band getting back together and playing music for the Fairies and unlock all their flowers. It seems like a lot to do, but I guess that’s what I’m going to do next.
There is a Fairy flower near the Eldin Stables, which I need to mark on the map, and the usual Shrine and another Well behind the Stable. I explore the Well, it’s small. After I Ascend out of the well, I spot the Balloon that belongs to Kilton the monster guy. It’s night and I assume the rules are the same in TOTK as in BOTW, that he randomly appears sometimes in certain places, and only at night, so without delay I run out to talk to him. He is there, and he has a brother. The brother, Kolton, wants to become a Satori — the mythical blue animal we’ve known as the Lord of the Forest, or the blue bunnies, I’m not sure which. He believes this can be accomplished by eating bubbul frog gems, and I have 9 of them so I give him one, and he feels funny, thanks me, and then runs off before I can give him the rest of them, telling me that he’s going to look for more, and if I have more I should give them to him. Well, doofus, why don’t you take the 9 others I have? As a reward, he gave me a bokoblin mask, and I wouldn’t have minded getting the rest of his stuff right then and there. Oh well.
Kolton had been exploring a nearby cave, and said that there was a bubbul frog within, so I go down and explore it, clear it out, and then come back up and tackle the shrine.
The Shrine is a series of easy Recall puzzles that takes me no time to figure out and solve.
Once I exit the Shrine, I can see a campfire smoke drifting up from a way down the road, to the West. That’s the direction Rito Village is in anyway. I figure I’ll go check out the campfire and see what I can do there, and then come back to try to visit and unlock the SkyView Tower for Eldin, and then head to Rito Village.
On the way to the campfire I find another well, and clear it out. It’s got a bubbling mud pool instead of water, and I have to build a bridge to cross it to pick up a whole bunch of brightbloom seeds.
The campfire belongs to two treasure seekers who are trying to get a treasure chest sitting out in the middle of a muddy pool that they can’t cross. I build a bridge out of boards and retrieve it. Beyond the muddy bog, there’s another cave, and I go into it and check it out, clearing it out and finding another bubbul frog. I Ascend out of the cavern, and then glide down the hill to land on the road back where I started from, and run along the road away to a bridge, heading back to Hyrule Castle’s north side, where I spotted another Shrine.
This shrine has some more puzzles that are solved by Recall, and they’re a little harder than the shrine by Eldin Stables, but not that much harder.
After I come out, I’m ready to go try to get to the Eldin Skyview Tower. I fast-travel back to the shrine near Eldin Stables. I notice that there’s a broken down wagon with two wheels missing on it, sitting in front of the stage. I figure I’m supposed to fix it, like I did the wagon at another village, and there’s some wheels nearby, so I attach one, but the Mastro asks me not to do anything strange with their Breezer, which I guess is the name they gave to their wagon. OK dude.
Some other people I have talked to have warned me about Gorons carrying strange rocks, and another lady who is walking along the road talks to me about a fashionable bandit who hid outfits, and points out some locations on my map where they might be found. She also tells me that the Fairies are in hiding, but if they can be coaxed out again they will augment your clothes, making them more protective than armor.
Well don’t I know all that, but I’d like to know how. I guess I’ve been getting some clues. Once I see if I can activate the Skyview Tower here, I’m heading to find Rito Village and join the newspaper and see if I can’t get some fancy clothes from the Fairies.
When I get to the SkyView Tower, I find that it has been damaged by a falling piece of sky island, which has knocked the lid off and jammed the door shut. There’s a man from Hudson Construction Company who is there to service the tower, but he can’t get inside because of the damage.
It doesn’t really look all that damaged to me, although the lid of the tower is knocked off. I decide that’s a clue that I might be able to get in from the top, so I climb the tower, and find that my hunch is correct. I jump down and the controls are working, I just need to activate them. The tower turns on, the doors open, and I’ve resolved the problem.
I take the “elevator” up into the sky, and look around, updating the map as I do so. Very nearby there is a sky island that I can easily land on as I’m coming down, over to the east. I drift toward it and land on it, and it seems to be part of a chain of sky islands that are connected together by rails. There’s a system of Zonai carts that I can ride up the rails to ascend higher into the sky and reach the next island.
There are a few Zonai constructs here, all hostile, and I have to destroy them as I explore. In addition to the usual forage, I find a chest with a nice bow in it, a Zonai gumball machine, and a shrine.
I enter the shrine and clear it, the challenge is a firey one, with lava and Zonai water sprinklers. Spraying the lava with water cools it down, creating a crust that floats and is buoyant and cool enough to walk on. These serve as stepping stones, or can be joined together with Ultrahand to create bridges, ramps, or whatever you need. You can even carry a sprinkler, walk forward, and create a path as you go forward.
I clear the Shrine and look around for a bit to survey the land. There’s one last bit of sky island here to check out, and all it has on it is an apple tree. But it seems like it must be special, because it’s so hard to reach. I try to glide over to it, but I can’t climb up the side to reach a level part that I can stand on, and end up falling down. Rather than fast-travel back to the shrine on the sky level and try again, I notice a falling star coming down, and it’s hard to gauge how far away it is, but I think it’s nearby, but deep into the mountains of Eldin, and I decide to try to retrieve it. I glide a very long way, probably closing about half of the distance, but then run out of stamina, and fall nearly to my death. I save myself at the last second with the last chance glider move, but I deploy it a bit too early, and lose almost all of my health when I drop the rest of the way. Worse, I land on a steep slope and slide all the way down it, fortunately not taking more damage, and more fortunately than that ending up in a healing hot spring. I sit in it until I’m back to full health, trying to spot the star fragment’s shine, but the mountains around me are much too tall, and I’ve lost track of what direction it was in, and lose it.
I try climbing to re-acquire the marker, but it’s in vain. I do make it to the top of the mountain, much to my surprise it is not too hot and I take no damage. I spot a few shrines visible within a long glide’s distance, and note that one of them is by a stable, so I head toward that one.
This shrine is a real challenge for me, because I suck so much at combat. I’m stripped of all my gear and clothing, so all I have are my glider and the Zonai arm powers. I have to defeat a bunch of Zonai constructs, who are armed with weak weapons but any of them are enough to kill me in two hits, and they have significant reach advantage on me. There’s a wooden club, and two tank-like robotic Zonai vehicles. They’re really more like Roombas than tanks, but they can mount Zonai devices and thereby be turned into fighting vehicles, and turned on by striking them with a weapon.
There’s two of them in the first room, and two spikey metal plates, which I mount to the front, and then activate them, so they take out the first Zonai construct. After defeating the Zonai construct, a locked gate opens, and the real challenge is presented: a larger room, with 6 or 7 Zonai constructs, armed with all manner of weapons, most of them spear-like with reach advantage. These guys are fast, and I have to keep moving at all times just to stay out of their reach. Running around the room activates all of them and they rush me, and if I stop moving even for a second I get hit by one of them, and I can’t afford to get hit at all. But as I’m running around, I notice a few more of the Zonai roombas, and some weapons that I could potentially attach to them, if I could manage to get a moment of breathing room and was really on top of my Ultrahand control.
It’s not happening though. I try again and again, and I just keep getting slaughtered. I try a new approach, and just send the roombas in, hoping that they will distract the Constructs enough that they will not notice me run into the room.
I try pushing the roombas into the battle arena room with Ultrahand, and hang back and let them soften up the enemies as much as possible, but what keeps happening is the roombas will run up a ramp and fight the lead Construct, and push it to the edge, and then one of them will fall over the edge and flip upside down and become stuck.
One time, though, I finally get lucky. The little roombas manage to not fall off a platform, and all the Zonai constructs try to get at them, and they’re getting in each others way more than they are doing anything. I can’t see whether the roombas have life meters or not; I assume they can’t take infinite damage, but they aren’t going down. Maybe the spiked plates are working like armor, protecting them against damage, or maybe the Zonai constructs weapons just aren’t that strong. Whatever the case, the roombas seem to be winning. Eventually, they take down all the Zonai constructs except one, which is on a higher platform and armed with a bow. I run up at this point and activate one of the additional roombas sitting in the big room, attaching a flame projector to it, and using Ultrahand, move it up to the platform to attack the last one, and it takes it down pretty quickly, thankfully.
The challenge vanquished, I feel like I didn’t really do anything other than set up some machines and let them do almost everything. I wasn’t a capable, contributing fighter in the mix; I just sat back and let them take care of everything.
It kind of feels like maybe that was the lesson, but I also feel like if I had better ability with the controls, maybe I could have run in and activated each of the additional roombas and had a huge melee going on with them, and it would have been a lot less cowering in the back room waiting and watching from a distance, and more something that felt actually fun.
Oh well, I did it, and there’s no wrong way to do anything in this game, right?
The reward for this shrine is a really nice Zonai Captain III Spear, which is extra durable and has a high damage rating according to the description.
Anyway, I head out from the Shrine, and visit the nearby Stable, which is for South Akkala. I talk to everyone; the main thing going on here seems to be a missing chicken that I find has fallen down the well. I can’t figure out how to get the chicken out of the well. It isn’t grabbable with the Ultrahand ability, and I can’t find anything small enough that is ultrahandable that I can fit down the well to maybe build into a chicken bucket and lift the poor thing out. So I dunno what the solution is.
I talk to the chicken’s caretaker, and she says that she just wishes the chicken had some company, so I throw another chicken down there, and this does seem to make the chicken happy. It lays an egg, and so maybe I’m done? But I don’t feel like I am. I feel like I need to rescue the chicken.
The people at the Stables usually tell you about what’s going on in the area, as well as what’s nearby down the road. It’s no different here. But I’m not really that interested in hearing it right now, because I really wanted to go to Rito Village, and ended up clear on the other side of the world because of the way the SkyView Tower in Eldin lead me this way. It’s OK though. I can fast travel about 3/4th of the way to Rito from anywhere, and nothing I do in the world is really that much of a waste of time. It might not be the most important thing there is that I could be doing, but I’m always either finding koroks, clearing shrines, unlocking the map, doing some minor side quest or discovering some new part of the world.