I’ve upgraded all I can for now from the fairy near the Dueling Peaks Stables. I guess I should investigate the claims that the Yiga Clan have captured Princess Zelda and are holding her hostage. I don’t believe it, because Zelda seems to have the ability to appear and disappear at will, but I can’t take the chance that somehow they’ve got her.
I’m near the eastern end of the rift that split the peak in two, and I figure I’ll try to move quietly between the two peaks and see if I can find any sign of the Yiga clan.
Only, I end up making a bit of a wrong turn, and go off to the south before I reach the peaks, and end up in East Necluda. I start running into Bokoblins in the woods, and they’re weak enough that they don’t worry me, but I don’t want to waste my time on them, so I run a bit to lose them, and in so doing I end up taking the wrong fork of a path and end up missing the Dueling Peaks mountain pass. There’s a lot of forage in the forest, though so I take the opportunity to stock up on whatever I can find.
I end up finding a few koroks, and then I make a Discovery! of a large cave system. This cave is dripping wet, and full of thorny brambles. It’s also crawling with Bokoblins. By this time, I remember that I have a Bokoblin mask, so I put it on. I blend in this way, and as long as I don’t hurt a Bokoblin, they regard me with curiosity but don’t attack. I take full advantage of this, robbing the place blind, and when I’m done with picking up every item I can carry, I sneak attack the Bokoblins and take them out by surprise. I don’t take much damage in the process, either. To advance through the cave system, I need to figure out ways to burn the briars that are blocking my way at several points. It’s not easy — I have just one bundle of wood on me, so making fires with wood isn’t going to be easy. But the brambles ordinarily are flammable enough on their own — it’s the moisture of the cave that makes them nearly fireproof. I try shooting fireballs with the ruby sword and sometimes I manage to ignite something, but more often than not it fizzles.
The bokoblins do have some explosive barrels in this cave, and I can pick them up and place them where I need to, and then set them off. I’m trying not to do that, though, because I don’t want to accidentally hurt any Bokoblins, or alert monsters of another type, which I do not have a mask for, and end up having to fight them. I’m trying to run this cave without fighting much, and using stealth and trickery as much as possible.
I do manage to get through the entire cave system, using a bit of ingenuity. The cave walls are slick with dampness, and not easy to climb. At some points there are ladders, and others platforms that I can Ascend through. In one part of the cave, there’s a handy Zonai spring platform, which I use to jump up to get on top of a rock formation, where I discover a secret chest.
Eventually I clear out the entire cave, at least I’m pretty sure I did. I could have missed something, though, just due to the sheer size of the place. But I find a bubbul frog, in a part of the cave hidden behind a bombable wall, which seems to be the designer’s cue that you’ve found everything.
I ascend up through the roof of the cave, and seem to travel a long way up before I break through the surface, most of the way up a mountain. It’s the middle of the day and the weather is beautiful, the sun is shining. I can see two SkyView Towers from where I stand, both of which I’ve never been to before. One is so near that I can easily glide to it; the other is a long of a distance away, so I mark it with the Purah scope, and glide down to the nearby tower.
When I reach the tower, the weather has changed. It’s dark, and rainy. The tower seems defended. It’s surrounded by brambles. But no one is actually here. I find some building supplies and a note from one of the Hylian construction team. Apparently the place is subject to constant rain, and they can’t do much but try to keep their materials dry. There’s a few bundles of wood under a tent, which I grab, and a lot of wooden crates and construction material.
I walk up to the Tower entrance, and it’s completely blocked off by brambles, and since I just went through the wet cave, I know that these are not going to be flammable unless I do something clever. I notice that there’s some construction scaffolding around the base of the tower, and I decide to use it to construct a rain shelter. I glue several planks together using Ultrahand, creating a long makeshift bridge. I lay the bridge over the gap between the two sections of scaffolding on either side of the entrance, creating kind of an awning. This shields the brambles in front of the door from the rain, allowing them to dry out after a few moments. I then place the wood bundles I just picked up, and for good measure I add in a few Hylian Pine Cones, for an extra flammable burst. I step back and use my ruby sword to set it off, and it does the trick. In no time I have a huge blaze burning and the brambles are reduced to ash, clearing the way.
I open the door and walk in, activate the tower, and zoom up into the sky. The map updates.
Looking around, I see one of the Dragons is flying below. It’s near enough that I think I might have a chance to catch up to it and maybe see it up close, but it’s moving away from me and too quickly to catch up to. I realize this and change my mind and decide what I should try for instead is a nearby chasm. I fall from the sky level down into this hole, and end up in the underworld.
I happen to be fairly close to one of the X’s that were marked on one of the Old Maps that I’ve found, and I figure I’ll try to find out what’s there, and if not at least I’ll get to explore and stock up on underworld materials.
The way is difficult. It seems there are a lot of wrong turns. I have over 240 brightbulb seeds, so I’m not worried about wasting them, but it seems like every time I want to go in the direction of the X on the map, there’s a sheer wall in my way, or else a sea of Gloom. The terrain is very uneven, and at one point I even find a waterfall of lava. I glide a little too close to it and take heat damage, and my shield and club catch fire. I unequip them to extinguish the flames, and glide away from the intense heat, and end up in an area where there are deep gorges and sheer walls most of which are covered in Gloom. I have to be careful to climb while avoiding gloom poisoning, and just getting out of one gorge is enough of a challenge, but each time I end up turned around and going in the opposite direction of the X.
It’s pretty frustrating and I keep thinking about giving up and fast-traveling back to the surface, but I try to stick it out for as long as I can, and as long as I can avoid dangerous encounters with creatures I think I’ll be OK, and I can try to map the place out a little bit.
I eventually find a lightroot and activate it, and then maybe an hour later I find another one, not that far away. I haven’t made much progress because the terrain is so damned difficult, and I keep getting turned around and looping back to where I came from.
Somehow or other, after much struggle and getting lost and re-orienting, I find a Bokoblin mining camp. I have the Bokoblin Mask on still, and they accept me. I rob the camp of everything I can grab, and even get their ore. There’s a Boss Bokoblin leading this group, and while I’m standing on a rock pile in the middle of their camp, he takes especial interest in me. He tries to come closer and ends up walking into one of their own torches, which burns him. He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s on fire and taking damage, and after burning for a few minutes, his life bar drains away to zero and he dies, dropping a bunch of monster parts. I haven’t fought boss Bokoblins much, and this is a freebie. Even better, since the fire damage wasn’t caused by me directly, nobody suspects a thing still. I pick up all the loot I can, and now that the Boss is dead, I decide to take down the rest of the Bokoblins. There’s four or five of them, and most are armed with bows, so it’s a lot of free arrows for me. I run around and collect arrows they’ve fired at me when I can. I let Tulin’s avatar wear them down, but he’s not doing it very quickly, only shooting arrows occasionally, so I switch tactics and start hitting them with my melee weapons when I can. But this opens me to taking some damage, and I am down hearts due to the gloom here, so it’s not going well. I end up using a fairy resurrection, because fortunately I had a bunch of fairies from that one incredible well I discovered at Dueling Peaks Stables.
Finally, I manage to kill the Bokoblins and grab everything they dropped.
Now I’m hoping I can finally re-orient myself and figure out the way to the X on the map. I find one more Light Root, and when I activate this one, it seems to open up a lot more of the map than the first two did.
I stumble across some Zonai building materials, and use them to craft a wheeled vehicle that I can use to cross over the gloom without taking damage. But the terrain here is so awful that I frequently have to get out of the vehicle, pick it up with Ultrahand, and move it over some rock formation that I can’t get it to climb over. So the going is incredibly slow, and I still am having a lot of difficulty keeping my travel in the right direction. Eventually I give up on the vehicle. It’s gotten me across some areas of heavy gloom, but now I’m in a new area of the map and it seems to be more open, and there’s more climbing so the car isn’t very good here.
I end up going quite a ways east of the point where I am trying to go, and end up discovering a mining site. These are usually interesting and worth exploring, but apart from zonaite ore and a few weapons left laying around, there’s not much at this one. I cross a canyon and find another mining site, and then another. The third one that I find seems to be recently in use, although no one is around. It seems to have been fortified with spikes and brambles, and there’s equipment and material laying around. It looks like people from the surface have been here. Then I spot a Hylian and run over to talk to him. He tells me a story about being part of the Hylian underworld exploration committee, or something, but then he reveals that he’s Yiga, and this is an ambush. I’m surrounded by 3 or 4 Yiga Bowmen. I’m lucky and somehow manage to not get hit by any of them as I take them out. My bow, Tulin’s bow, and my Topaz sword are what I use to do it. The topaz sword is great because of its electrical stun effect, which helps me to prevent the Yiga from using their teleportation ability so I can get in some extra hits on them while they’re down, and this enables me to deal with them very effectively.
When they are all dead, I discover more hints of their presence — mighty bananas, and a notebook that has some information about their operations. They have discovered the secret of the Sundelions, and are trying to mine zonaite so they can use it to create weapons.
I thoroughly explore the area and find a couple dormant Zonai Constructs. One operates the zonai smelting equipment, and has a store of refined Zonai items for me to buy. I can trade raw Zonaite for refined Zonai charges, and I have enough of that on hand to buy him out. The other Construct says he has something for me, but I’m not ready for it yet, and that I should first visit the mining camp in central Hyrule underworld, and then come back.
I continue to explore the area, and once it’s cleared out I resume heading toward the X on the map. I am moving in the general direction of the X, when I spot a pack of those lizard like creatures that like to lunge at me and stay out of reach of my melee weapons. These guys give me trouble, so I climb up a giant fungus tree that happens to be nearby. Then a bokoblin on a stalhorse charges and I manage to hit him with a Bomb, and blow him off his horse. The horse survives, and if I can deal with these stupid lizards I can use the horse to get around. I decide to play safe and use arrows on the lizards, which is very effective. They don’t stand a chance, and I wipe them out with well aimed shots, some of the longer range ones I use a zonai bow and keese eyeballs for homing.
I get on the stalhorse and take it for as long as I can. Eventually I come to another bokoblin camp, and somehow the bokoblins make the horse disappear. I’m not sure how that happened. I loot this camp and move on without taking the time to fight the enemies here. I’m near the X and I don’t want to risk getting killed now.
I have to climb higher to get to it. It’s a tough, long climb, and I can’t even see whether there’s a top to reach, or if the wall I’m scaling will hit the ceiling and be a dead end. But eventually I do reach a flat spot where I can stand, stop, and rest. It’s yet another mining area, and it seems that I’ve finally made it to the X. The item I find is the Hero’s Cap. It’s the classic green cap that Link has been wearing ever since his first adventure. Cool.
There are tons of Poes around down here. I have so many, over 350 now.
I’ve managed to do everything I came down here to do, not that I really knew what I was here for.
I try to explore around a bit more, hoping to find another light root, but before long I end up in a confrontation with more bokoblins, when I stumble upon another camp, this one having a Like Like in it. When run into a camp with mixed enemy types, your mask doesn’t fool any of them once the monster type that you’re not wearing the mask of gets a look at you. I get mobbed, and rather than try to win an unexpected fight that I hadn’t prepared for, I fast-travel back to the surface world.
One other thing worth mentioning, while I was down in the depths, when I encountered the group of lizard-frog creatures, I observed that they eat brightbloom seeds that I’ve thrown down! When I was up the tree, safe from them, I observed four or five of them approach one of my brightblooms, and after a few seconds, they devoured it, and it was gone!
My target is the shrine near Dueling Peaks stables. I visit the well there to try to pick up more fairies, but I end up scaring them. Immediately after I exit the well, a blood moon occurs, so I to back down hoping that the blood moon will have replenished the fairies, but no. I’m down on health, so I rest at the Inn. The next morning, I run out to explore Dueling Peaks. I cross the busted bridge, and meet a traveler, and help him get past the bokoblins who have set up a camp just on the other side of the river. They’re easy to take out, and I don’t mind the practice.
This time I run down the right road and get in between the peaks, following the river that flows between them. I find a korok who needs help crossing the river to meet up with his friend. There’s a bunch of construction material nearby so I build a bridge for him and carry him over.
Further down river, toward central Hyrule, I encounter a few more monsters. Some Lizalfos in the water, some bokoblins on the opposite shore, near where I helped the korok. Some octorocks. I come out of the Dueling Peaks pass, and have seen zero Yiga. They must be hiding, or perhaps are up top in the peaks. I go back, and explore the mid-level, but still don’t find them, but I at least pick up some more forage materials. Down and back through the peaks, but no Yiga still.
This time when I come through the peaks I go a little further, and discover a small stone building has fallen from the sky, and there’s a Zonai Construct in there. I activate him to talk to him, and he tells me a riddle, something about three water borne keys that need to be placed in three receptacles in this building to unlock a shrine. This doesn’t trigger a Shrine Quest, so I’m not sure what’s up. I don’t know what his clue means, either. I puzzle over it for a bit but can’t figure it out, and continue on, heading west toward central Hyrule, and turn South, heading toward Lake Hylia and Faron.
I find a cave in this area, which I explore, and find another piece of the rubber armor suit. I now have the helmet and breastplate, and once I have the legs I’ll have a complete suit.
I explore kind of randomly, mostly just trying to stock up on forage materials while I look for anything interesting — a shrine, a cave, whatever I can get into. I end up coming close to where the Battle Talus is, near the SkyView Tower that I couldn’t figure out how to open up. I try fighting it, but I can’t get on top of the damn Talus’s platforms, to hit its weak point reliably. I keep getting knocked off quickly, or failing to get on top when I try. It’s frustrating. I end up giving up on the fight, and just head to the SkyView Tower. I have no idea what I need to do but I’m hoping that since I’ve done so much since I was last there, maybe something will have changed.
When I get to the tower, I notice a well in front of it. Strange, I had not noticed this before. Did it appear here, or did I simply fail to observe it because I wasn’t yet familiar with the wells of Hyrule? I go down it and find a little underground tunnel and cave system. Around the corner, I find a man-made portcullis, which has trapped a Hylian who was exploring. He’s excited to see me, the prospect of rescue giving him joy. He tells me he’s with the Hudson Construction Company, and begs me to trigger the release, and tells me how he came in through a different tunnel. I face the way he points, and Ascend to the surface, then run downhill until I find the cave entrance he was talking about. Then I stand on the trigger and open the portcullis, freeing him. He thanks me and gives me a reward, then rushes off to repair the mechanisms in the SkyView Tower. After he goes, I notice another tunnel, with a treasure chest behind another locked portcullis. This time, the trigger is on the other side of the barred gate, and I can’t get through it. But I’m smart enough to know that I can use Ultrahand to move the treasure chest, so I move it to place it on top of the switch, opening the gate, and I receive my reward.
I Ascend to the topside, and find myself outside the SkyView Tower, and the construction worker who I just rescued is there. He’s fixed the problem with the tower, mentions that it was caused by humidity, and tells me he’s needed elsewhere and takes leave. I go up the tower and activate it. Update the map, and fly up to the sky.
From above, I see the sky island that fascinated Picango, the painter, when I met him on the south side of the Lake Hylia Bridge. I dive down to the island, and there’s another one of those stone tablets that I need to take a photo of so that Wortsworth can translate it at his Kakariko Village research station. I take the picture, but I also want to see what Picango will say now that I’ve been to the island he’s been painting.
I visit him, but he doesn’t say anything new, which seems odd. I’m disappointed. He suggests that I should visit the island, and I’m like DUDE, I JUST DID! But he doesn’t seem to be getting that message. How weird, did the developers for get to program his reaction? I even have pictures of the island for him, but he doesn’t seem to care, and just repeats that it’s a fascinating shape and easy to paint, and that I should visit them somehow. Grr.
Well, enough screwing around. I go to Kakariko and show Wortsworth the photos, and at least he’s interested. He gives me my usual 100 rupees reward, and translates the inscription that I photographed. It talks about how King Rauru’s sister was able to use Zonai constructs to store Zonai’s souls so they could live on after they died. So that means… oh, wow.
Next, I fast travel back to Lookout Landing. I have four Lights of Blessing, and trade them in for another Heart Container. I also talk to the Well Girl and tell her about three more wells that I’ve found since I last talked to her. I thought it would have been more than that… oh well. Lol. Oh well!
I feel like tying up some loose ends while I’m in this part of the world. There’s two X’s on the map, to the north east and northwest of Hyrule Castle. They’re a short journey up the road from here, and I want to check them out. I go to the cave in the northeast and find a Stone Talus in a big cavern, defeat it, and then find a bubbul frog, and finally, behind a bombable wall, an armor chest with the Barbarian armor breastplate in it. To the northwest, I have to sneak past the sleeping Hinox on the bridge, and then I find a cave across the river. In here, I find the rubber armor body piece, giving me two of the three pieces now.
I decide I want to go back to Dueling Peaks Stable and track down that story lead on the Yiga kidnapping of Princess Zelda. This time I climb higher up onto the peaks, going over the top of them. I’m on the northern peak, and fight some weak bokoblins who’ve camped there, a little to close to their own explosives, which I use to blow them off the mountaintop.
On the other side of the valley, I spot some Yiga Clan flags and out in plain sight, there’s Princess Zelda, in a cage. I know it’s not her, and this is a trap, but I have to go complete the quest. So I glide over, and “Zelda” calls to me to rescue her. I use Ultrahand to lift the cage off of her, and she thanks me, then immediately in true Yiga fashion tells me that this was all a trap and she’s going to kill me.
I’m ambushed by 3-4 Yiga bowmen, but I’m able to deal with them effectively. It’s not an easy fight, as when they gang up on me they can really make life difficult, knocking me down repeatedly and then teleporting away when I’m ready to hit them. But thankfully Tulin is a great help with his bow, keeping them occupied and knocking them down so that I can target them while they’re prone and recovering. They don’t have a lot of attack strength or hitpoints, and I take them down pretty quickly once I connect with my attacks.
Once they’re vanquished, my Rito friend Penn swoops down and fills me in on what he has been able to find out about the story. I tell him my half, and then he pays me and flies back to file the report with the Lucky Clover Gazette.
I travel out that way myself, because I want to see if anything changes when I talk to Traysi. She says the same thing as before, that if I’m looking for Penn I should go out into the Hebra mountains. I guess I gotta do that eventually.
I also spend a little time at Rito village, talk to the Rito elders. Tulin’s father, Teba, tells me he’s crafting a new bow which he will make a copy of for me if I provide him with the materials. Cool; but right now I don’t have a great need for what might be one of the best bows in the game, as I have a few really good bows right now and no open inventory slots.
Teba’s wife tells me about a legend about something hidden that will be revealed when three water sources are restored. It sounds like there’s something for me to do out in the Hebra mountains, where apparently I’ll find some hot springs that maybe I can divert or something.
Also in Rito Village, unexpectedly, I find Impa and her assistant. They’re here to check out the Geoglyphs in the area. Her assistant mentions to me that they wish they had a photo of the map room from the Forgotten Temple, which showed the location of every Geoglyph. I thought I took a picture of that map already, but he doesn’t act like it. So I fast-travel out there and do it, and then fast-travel back to Rito Village, and he still doesn’t seem to care, so I give up. Either he’s just trying to hint at me that I can use a camera in the game, for no actual reason, or I didn’t take the picture in quite the right way the game wants me to, and I have to figure that out another time.
While I’m out here, I try Ascending to the very top of the Rito Village stone formation, whre I find a korok hiding under a rock out at the very end of the tip. I scope around, looking for more Shrines or other interesting features to check out, and spot another rock pillar in the Rito Village lake, which appears to have a hollow bowl shaped crater at the top. I glide over and discover a pair of statues. They’re not goddess statues, but look like a mother and child. There is a crude wooden frame over them, with a partly-assembled roof. The missing piece of the roof is nearby, so I place it and am rewarded with another korok. I was hoping for something a bit cooler than that, but hey. I’m back up to 30 korok seeds, so I might be able to open another inventory slot.
I guess the next thing I’m going to do is try to scout out Hebra and find more Shrines, that Geoglyph Impa is looking for, and see what else is out there.