After exploring that cave in the Death Mountain region, and not finding Zelda, it feels like the next place to go is to the mountain top. It may be that the shrine I discovered in the cave serves as a useful waypoint for fast-travel back to here. I’m not sure where to go next, but I think I was pretty thorough in clearing out that cave, although it could be I missed something. But finding both a shrine and a bubbul frog and getting a lot of forage material, it feels like I completed it.
I think about walking up Death Mountain to see if I can find “Zelda” but something about that plan doesn’t feel like right now is the right time to do it. I can explore a lot more in this area, and I’m sure there’s a lot of minerals, caves, forage materials, and treasure chests to find in the area. Not to mention some monsters to fight, including octorocks who can upgrade my weapons. I try looking around to see what looks like a promising direction to explore in, and get irritated that I have no free Pins to use with the Purah Pad scope. I have six different colored pins, and all are in use marking placed on the map that I noticed looked interesting and wanted to check out when I had a chance. They’re all far away now, and I have a choice. Either I can replace the Pins with Markers and then try to remember which ones I’ve been to and which I haven’t, or I can fast-travel around the world and try to visit all the Pin points in person, and do whatever there is to do there. I’m sure a few of them are Shrines that I need to clear out, and that will help me increase my life meter, and that’s always a good thing.
So I decide to fast-travel to the one of them and figure out why I pinned it. As I’m about to leave, Yunobo says he’ll stay here and keep looking for Zelda until I get back; I guess he can’t travel with me, which only makes sense. I wouldn’t know how to fast-travel with him, at any rate. And it would probably break the game to have him going with me wherever I want to travel to, without completing his special mission. But it makes me wonder how I’ll hook up with him again when I return to the Eldin region. Will I find him at YunoboCo HQ? In Goron City? In the spot on the map where I left him? I guess we’ll see.
The first Pinned location I travel to happens to be right near a stable. It’s the very stable where I first met Impa, where she had me launch into the sky with a zonai balloon and find the first Geoglyph. It turns out that the thing I had marked was a campfire which I probably saw from far away, and in the dark, and thought might be a place where I might meet a character, only I didn’t realize I’d already done so. Oddly the fire is still burning, and there’s a torch next to it, but that balloon that Impa had been travelling in is gone — I expect she’s likely still in Rito Village where I last saw her, and that must be how she travels. I wonder if there’s any purpose still served by the lit fire, and if so what it could be.
At any rate this frees up one of my pins. The next is not that far away, although it’s still a good journey by foot. I run out over the grasslands, past several horses. Along the way I find a couple of koroks. It’s near dusk, and at a point near a large rock formation, there’s a glimmer in mid-air, which I can’t examine without finding a way to stand on a platform that isn’t there. But there’s some building materials conveniently nearby, and I construct a platform to stand on. Korok found. From atop this platform, I can see another Shrine off in the distance, and so I mark it with my newly freed up mapping pin. I check the map to verify whether it’s a Shrine I’ve been to or not, and it’s not.
Suddenly I notice I’m being watched. Off to my left, I see an “!” in the distance, and below it, for the first time I notice the imposing form of a Lynel. Quickly, I duck behind the boulder and hide. The Lynel doesn’t seem to have spotted me, and I sit a while, wondering how I can extract myself from this predicament. I don’t particularly want to fast-travel again, and I don’t want to fight a Lynel just yet. I figure I’ll sit tight and wait for it to turn around and move on, it must be on patrol in this field, and probably when it turns around I’ll be able to move freely past it. As a precaution, I save the game here.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I start hearing an alarm-like sound, and fight music starts. WTF? I think the Lynel did spot me at first, but I look again and he doesn’t seem to. I’m standing there, looking all around me trying to figure out who my assailant is, and don’t see anyone. Suddenly, I’m hit from above. As though something fell from the sky and hit me, only I don’t see what it is. Whatever it was, didn’t do much harm, but now I’m more confused than ever. There’s no good way out of this, and if I can’t see what’s attacking me, I’m going to be killed in short order, so I need to move. I try to run for it, but the Lynel spots me, and although it doesn’t immediately attack, it seems interested in following me. I run at full speed but it easily keeps up with me, as it seems that most of the monsters in the game now aren’t so easy to run away from.
You can run from chuchus and evermeans and that’s about it now. Anything else, once it is interested in fighting you, will easily keep up with you on normal terrain, and the only thing you can do to get away from them is climb a hill or mountain, or fast-travel away.
I notice that one of the items I’m carrying in my weapons inventory is a magic rod, and I want to try to create a frost staff with it, so I can try freezing the Lynel to get away from it. Unfortunately I screw this up, and instead of fusing a sapphire to it, I end up fusing a damn broadsword that was on the ground nearby me, which I didn’t notice was there.
Annoyed that I just ruined my staff, I opt to restore back to the save point I had created earlier.
Having done so, I find that the Lynel’s no longer suspicious about my location, and I’m able to just make a run for it and get far enough away while its back is turned that it doesn’t spot me darting over the meadow.
Before too long, I’m in another area where I find a korok. There’s a few earthen forms, which have hollow circles standing up from them, which appear to be some sort of puzzle, I guess. I recall something similar involving archery in BOTW. I don’t want to waste a lot of time here, or arrows, at the moment. But I head over to check it out to see if I can figure out anything. There’s a sign post in the ground, pointing like an arrow at one of the rings formations. I walk over to the ring and look through it, and I can see another ring in the near distance. I walk towards it, look through its ring, and see another ring formation, and walk over to it. Finally, there’s a final ring formation, and when I approach more closely I notice a glimmer, and there I find a korok.
I’m also nearby a shrine here, so I go in and clear it out. I’d be lying if I could tell you what the challenge was; it was something rather easy, so simple that I’ve forgotten it now.
Then there’s another shrine, the one I was originally heading for, the one I had marked with a pin a long time ago. It’s up a foothill, and takes some climbing to get to. I also have to glide over a deep gully with a river at the bottom, which seems to be a boundary separating two distinct geographical areas.
I’m focused on getting to that shrine, though, so I keep making for it. It takes a while, but finally I’m close. As I get closer, I come to an area where the forage seems to be especially bountiful. An apple orchard with many apple trees, each with perhaps a half dozen or more apples in them, where a typical tree may have 3-4. And plenty of apples on the ground, besides. And 3 or 4 foxes milling about. It reminds me of the rich forage in Satori Mountain in BOTW. I start gathering up the apples, and two of the trees awaken, turning into Evermeans, and start attacking.
I’m right by the Shrine now, so I just activate it and enter to duck out of the fight that I didn’t want to have right now.
This shrine is a little bit more interesting of a puzzle. I have to combine Ultrahand, Ascend, and Recall to get past the obstacles. Ultrahand to move blocks through a path, then Ascend to get on top of them, and finally Recall to get the blocks to move through the path I’d drawn using Ultrahand while I ride them to get where I need to go. It’s not difficult, but requires the ability to combine your abilities to solve a problem, so a bit advanced.
I complete the shine, and after I emerge, the Evermeans have gone away. I see that the foxes have been replaced by crows — there’s a bunch of crows here now, at least 6 or 7. It feels like their gathering has some purpose. I look around, and notice the hill above me seems to have a dead zone, where at the next level up in altitude, the trees are all dead and devoid of foliage. I decide to go up and check it out, and maybe I can pick up some wood, which I’m low on.
When I get up there, I find a cooking pot, fire burning under it, but no person around. I’m starting to feel like I should be on alert if someone’s near. Just then, three moblin skeletons burst up out of the earth, and attack me. I climb up to a higher vantage point, to escape being cornered or surrounded by them, and throw a Dazzlefruit down at them. This is a very effective way of dealing with skeletal monsters. You don’t have to hit them with the fruit, just being within its burst of light will destroy them in one shot. One fruit takes out two of them, and the third retreats back into the ground. As I’m moving around, I also attract the attention of a yellow Wizzorobe, who I shoot with my bow, taking him out with a couple of arrows. I pick up his lightning rod and move on.
Nearby, I see a satori bunny, who I shoot to get some rupees, and then just past him I notice a cave. I enter, and the cave Discovery! announces that this cave is Satori Cave. So I am indeed in a special region of the map! This cave is FULL of forage, lots of lizards, some bomb flowers, and lots of bright bulbs. A few Horriblins and two Like Likes. But nothing I can’t handle. I don’t find a bubbul frog here, which is curious — I may have missed something, although I did explore pretty thoroughly.
Up the hill from this cave, I find the familiar grove where in BOTW the Lord of the Mountain would appear. The place looks much the same, but… maybe slightly less lively. There’s something off about the place, it has the look of the aftermath of a party, or like it’s sometime after the peak of the blooming season. The cherry tree here is still in bloom, but not as full as I remember it being. I wonder if it’s the natural changing of the season, or if it’s got to do with the Gloom and the upheaval.
I notice an offering basket near the base of the tree, and drop an apple into it. The Lord of the Mountain appears, and the surrounding landscape is lit up once again with multiple glowing beacons of light, each marking a special spot somewhere in Hyrule. I try to mark as many as I can with the Purah Pad map pins, and to avoid running out of pins, after placing a pin I swap it for a Skull marker, since I don’t generally use that one, it’s a good way to indicate on the map a place where I want to go.
Then I notice that one of the glowing beacons is yellow, not blue, which indicates that a shooting star has fallen nearby. I pin it, because on the map the shooting star beacons don’t appear, and use the pin to find the location where it fell on the map. Then I fast-travel to the nearest skyview tower, and ride it up, and then glide as far and as fast as I can toward the landing site. I get almost directly over the star fragment just as the last of my stamina runs out, and I freefall a huge distance, what looks like at least 1000 feet, and manage to time my last-second parachute deployment perfectly, safely landing right on the star fragment, which I immediately grab.
I’m nearby another map pin that I placed on a shrine, so hike there and enter. This one is not very difficult. I have to transport a large heavy ball by sliding it down rails over a bottomless pit, connecting four large platforms together. The first is easy, I just roll the ball down the rails. The second isn’t much more difficult, the rails are too wide, but I can attach some metal stakes to the side of the ball using Ultrahand, and it rolls nicely to the next platform. The third one is just a single rail, and I have to build a hook so that the ball will hang from it and ride the rail down. I solve it pretty quickly, the solution each time is pretty self-evident.