I decide to fast-travel out to the SkyView Tower in Akkala. I recall there’s something I wanted to do there. One of the map Pins I planted is near there, and I want to go back and look at what it was that I pinned — probably a Shrine.
I make the trip and shoot up into the sky so I can quickly glide to where I need to go. Once up in the sky level, though, I see something else that grabs my attention, and head toward it — a Geoglyph, far to the South. Between where I am and that point, there is a sky island, which I can land on to rest.
I glide that way, using Tulin’s gust for aid, which gives me a whole lot more range. I can recharge the gust about 3 times and still have a good half a wheel of stamina left to get me to a soft landing.
I make it to the island. Looking at it on the map, it appears to be shaped like a fish. But the entire island is covered with muck. I clean off a lot of it with Splash Fruits, looking for treasure hidden beneath the mud, but I don’t find any. I don’t bother to clean off 100% of the mud, and after I leave I wonder if I might have triggered an event of some kind if I had done so. I guess I’ll have to return again and find out. There are only a few boxes and barrels up on this island, and breaking them all open nets me about 14 arrows, which is a pretty good haul.
I take off again, and fly down to the Geoglyph. I land right next to the Tear pool, and examine it, and see the next vision: Rauru and various Hyrule Champions from the Goron, Rito, Gerudo, and Zora tribes are having a meeting with Princess Zelda and the Queen. The news is grim. The last stronghold in Gerudo Desert has fallen to Gannon and his evil forces. Rauru declares that it is clear that it is up to him to stop Gannon. The Queen advises him that he is not strong enough to do it alone. Rauru tells the assembled that he wants to show them something, and leads them into a room where he presents them each with a Secret Stone, the comma-shaped stone that enhances the innate powers of its possessor.
The vision is over quickly, and I am back to reality. It is dark and raining, and the field I’m in where the Geoglyph is drawn seems desolate, with only meadow, trees, and some rocks around, and nothing else of apparent interest. Off in the distance, across a bay, and halfway up a hillside I see a Shrine, and decide to make for it. I don’t have any difficulty reaching it, with a bit of gliding, climbing and hiking. I enter and the puzzle involves gliding wings, which I must use to carry a steel ball across a chasm to place it in a bowl to unlock a gate that bars the inner shrine. It’s easy; this must be a beginner’s tutorial shrine, and I’ve done more complicated and difficult versions of this puzzle already. So I solve it easily, collect the Light of Blessing, and move on.
Further up the mountain, I find that I’m in the Lanayru region, in Zora territory, close to their city, but to the south, on the opposite side of their lake. What I see is disconcerting — everything seems to be covered in mud and muck. It looks like there are several massive mud waterfalls originating in the sky islands, which are coating the land in thick sludge. The water has turned a sickly brown.
I guess this must be one of the Regional Phenomenon that Purah wanted me to investigate. I recall that back at the Lanayru SkyView Tower, I met a Zora and freed him from some muck that he was caught in, and in thanks he offered me a spear but I didn’t want it because my inventory was full of better weapons. I figure I should go back to talk to him, and maybe that will kick off the storyline for this area. So I go back to the Lanayru SkyView Tower, and find him still waiting for me. I talk to him, and he offers me the spear, which I accept. I learn that the spear has extra durability and does extra damage when wet. But it is by itself a relatively weak weapon, being rusted like most other weapons since the Upheaval.
I noticed that to the South there’s another SkyView Tower, one that I haven’t yet visited. I would like to travel there, but it looks like it’s at the very top of a very tall mountain, and it seems like it will be time consuming and difficult to get to it, as I don’t see any good options for fast travel or flight to get up that high, which means if I want to go there it’ll be hiking and climbing the whole way.
I decide to put that off for a bit, and see what else I can get into. In almost the exact opposite direction from the un-visited Tower, I spot a column of smoke rising up from the ground a good distance away, and check it out with my scope. It looks like a Stable, not too far away, and one I don’t think I’ve visited before.
I head there. It’s an easy glide from the tower, and with Tulin’s aid I’m there in a single non-stop flight. As I get closer I observe a second column of smoke, rising up from a campfire nearby a small tent. Interesting. I also spot another Shrine. There’s always one nearby every Stable, and it’s good to unlock the fast-travel spot, so I head there first. I find that this one is a fairly simple puzzle as well, involving fans and turbines. I need to attach two fans to a large rotating wheel, and then activate them. Activating the fans spins the wheel and also turns the turbines that are standing about the wheel in a circle. Getting all these spinning doesn’t take a lot of effort, and unlocks a gate to the inner sanctum of the Shrine, and I collect another Light of Blessing.
Outside the shrine, I go over to check out the campfire. I see two familiar Hylians, the treasure hunting brothers I met elsewhere earlier, along the northern road to Eldin. They speak of a cave full of treasure chests, but each filled with just a single Rupee. There’s supposed to be some treasure in there, and they can’t find it. They give away the secret, which is that I should give some meat to the dog they have with them. This is a pretty commonly known secret dating back to BOTW. It works here; I give the dog four regular meats, and he goes and shows me the correct chest to look in to find the treasure, which is a pair of pants that have heat resistant properties. It’s another of Miska the Bandit’s secrets. There’s also a bottle in the treasure chest, with a note that talks about how I can find a secret called the Sword of the Fierce Deity, and there’s mention of some other suit or outfit for the Fierce Deity as well.
I make note of the clues and open chests until I’m at an even 500 rupees, which I figure will be good enough for me to buy my next piece of armor at one of the clothing stores in one of the villages, whichever one I go to next.
Outside the cave, though, I find the two treasure hunting brothers, still talking about more treasures they know about. And to tell me about three of them they want 100 Rupees for each clue. So of course I pay them, and they tell me what they know. Again I make note of their clues. Suddenly I have a bunch more to do, with leads to 6 or 7 different items. And I haven’t even checked out the Stable yet.
Which is what I do next. The Stable has three doggos, Hylian Retrievers, and a cute girl is training them. She tells me that if you befriend a dog and give it food, it will show you the location of a treasure. And there’s three dogs here, so… wow, that must mean there’s three treasures nearby!?
The dog trainer also complains that the people staying at the Stables right now are all wearing nothing but their underpants, and are weird. I go and check it out and find out that indeed that’s what they are doing. At first I suspect that these are Lurelin Villagers, who perhaps are dressed in their tropical garb. But they tell me that they are part of the Zonai Survey Team, and are acting on orders from Princess Zelda to dress this way. I learn that two of them went to check out a Monster Hideout nearby and haven’t returned. Probably got captured. And Penn, the Rito journalist for Lucky Clover, is here, covering this story as well.
There’s also another Addison puzzle, which I help him prop up his sign for Hudson Construction, to earn his rewards.
Inside the Stables, there’s a poster on the wall for a recipe, which I photograph, and another poster on the wall showing the footprints of some unknown new creature, which I presume to be the DonDons that I’ve already learned about and seen for myself down in Farron. The Lucky Clover news mentions something about Gorons acting crazy and eating red rocks, which is puzzling. It is interesting that this is the Foothills Stable, and is named such because it is at the base of Death Mountain, with a road leading directly to Goron City.
Oh, and of course there’s a well. I go out back behind the stable and jump down it. This one has a few treasure chests embedded and semi-submerged in the ground, and I need to rig a platform to stand on using some construction materials that happen to be laying around down here. It’s not a difficult puzzle, but the items I retrieve are nothing special.
So there’s a whole lot of things for me to do around here, I have a lot more to do now than when I started.