Category: Nintendo

TOTK Diary 28

Out of ideas for how to fix the broken Sky Tower in this zone, I decide to try to finish some of the active quests in my log and then explore looking for more of the locations I’ve pinned on the map that I’ve been meaning to check out. Some are shrines, some are towers.

I fast travel to the horse stable where I found the woman who wanted help fixing her wagon. I go and find two wagon wheels nearby, and Ultrahand them onto the cart, fixing. She is very happy, but now she needs a horse. So I go and tame one of the wild horses nearby in the field, and bring it to her. This completes an easy sidequest in just a few minutes. She thanks me profusely and gives me a silver rupee worth 100 rupees, which is a pretty good reward for me since I need all I can get to pay for clothes and other stuff I’m sure I’ll need.

Having completed this objective, I fast travel again to shrine nearest to one of the pinned locations on the map. This pin is a Sky Tower in another zone that I have yet to explore. It looks as though I’ll have to glide a long way and cross a wide canyon or river, and then still have a long way to go to get to this tower. And it seems that it’s a long, steep climb up the canyon wall on the other side.

My glide gets me a decent way across the canyon or river — it’s dark and I can’t tell what’s at the bottom. I’m not sure how far I can make it, and I don’t want to lose too much altitude and end up in the bottom of the canyon, and have to climb out or else have a long walk along the canyon floor, so when I see a glow on one of the islands in the middle of the canyon, I decide to check it out. It looks like a campfire, and I’m hoping it will be friendlies.

I’m in luck, and I’ve managed to find a Hylian outpost at a place called Diggdogg Suspension Bridge. I’d heard someone mention this bridge a while ago in my travels, but I don’t recall where or what I had heard. Possibly Kakariko Village. There’s a fallen Zonai ruin here, and people investigating it. I’m told there’s another stone tablet with runes on it, but I don’t locate it to read it. I do talk to a bunch of people, though, and most of them tell me of the hazards of the Gerudo desert, which is across the canyon on the other end of the bridge.

The desert gets frigid at night, and super hot during the day. Without being acclimated, I will take damage. I’ve played this game before, so I know what to expect. I can cook special meals that will give me time to explore while I’m immune to the effects of the sun or the cold. Or I can hold a heat or cold source in my hand, and stay cool that way. Or I can find a cave or a shady spot, or water to cool myself in. Eventually, I’ll find some clothing or armor that will give me permanent protection, and I’ll be fine.

I decide to explore ahead, and come to another small camp at the start of the Gerudo canyon. A pair of Hylian travelers are talking about their 3 companions who were with them, but got separated and are missing now. So it’s up to me to find them. It’s not a top priority, but if I see someone who looks in need of help, I’ll do what I can.

Along the way, I do see a column of smoke from a campfire — the travelers mentioned that at night they would probably keep warm by a fire. So I detour that way and investigate it, and sure enough there’s one of the lost travelers. He is deyhydrated, so I offer him a splash melon, which revives him, he thanks me and returns to his friends. His camp has a mysterious green crystal, which I look at. This opens up a shrine quest. The crystal is sending a thin laser like green light in a direction, which if I can follow it, it will reveal the location of the shrine. A clue is that I need to offer a crystal there.

I decide that rather than try to follow the faint, pencil thin line, I will just carry the crystal with me and use it like a flashlight to guide me to the location. I’m not sure what I need to offer — one of my gemstones? A bubbul crystal? I pick up the huge green crystal and start walking in the direction of its beam.

The sun is coming up, and it gets hot, but the canyon walls are high and cast enough shade that I can keep cool enough there, although this slows me down. But I’m already slowed down by carrying this crystal, so I don’t mind really.

I find a Korok who need help reaching his friend, and it’s not a long distance, so I do the good deed, and then leave the giant green crystal behind as I follow the beam into a solid surface. Thinking this must be the place, I try dropping every gem type and crystal-looking object I can think of in my inventory, but nothing happens.

I decide to give up on that and proceed forward, and then notice that the crystal’s beam actually penetrates through this wall and continues onward. Since it’s tough to carry, I decide to just follow the beam until I know where it really ends. I find the location, a much more obvious spot that looks like a Shrine should be there. Again, I try dropping all the crystal-like object I can think of as offerings, but nothing works.

Maybe I need to carry that green crystal all the way here, maybe that’s the offering? Well, I’ll try that later; right now I’m more interested in exploring ahead a bit further The river here is cool and keeps me from overheating.

A bit further ahead, I discover some construction wood and a fan and what looks like a kind of control yoke or steering wheel, an object I have not seen before. I try assembling a raft and this is indeed what it looked like; I now have a boat that I can steer and move upriver with more quickly. Sweet.

I hop on and go as far up the river as I can, and then stop when I find something interesting. There’s a sand bar with some forage, I pick up a treasure chest and break open a few boxes and get arrows. I seem to be getting a lot of arrows, probably the game is preferring to drop them for me since I’m so low on them. Good.

A bit further upriver, I find a cave entrance at the bottom of the canyon, and make another Discovery. There are a lot of gems and other forage items, including bright seeds, so I’m happy to mine this area for all it’s worth. I run into some Horriblins, and kill them, and proceed deeper into the cave, run into a bubbulfrog, and kill it, collecting another bubbul frog gem. Then I find more Zonai parts that I can assemble, I create a balloon platform and use it to ascend up to the top level of the cave. There’s shaft of light and some sand cascading down from the hole, and I want to check it out. It’s a semi-hidden part of the cave which leads up to the surface. I use Ascend to get up, testing to see if it’s too hot for me, and it is. So I run back to the edge of the canyon and jump down until I’m back in the shade and the cool water, and head back to the location where that crystal indicated the shrine should be.

I have it figured out. The giant green crystal is the key. I’m not supposed to just follow the laser light, I’m supposed to carry the crystal all the way to the shrine site, and then place it there as an “offering”.

This is made much easier when I recognize that there’s some Zonai tech at the site where I found the lost traveler. A wheeled platform and a control yoke. It is broken and embedded in the ground as a result of a sky island falling on it from above, but I pull it out and reassemble it, and mount the crystal on it, and it works amazingly well. It’s a very capable offroad machine and can go up the river and even up the short waterfalls with no problem. And if I do get stuck, or run out of batteries, I can carry it with me while I recharge, using Ultrahand.

So I open the shrine, and it rewards me with a Light of Blessing.

It’s pretty cool that I missed the first clue to solving this puzzle, but immediately ran into a more obvious example of the same mechanic, which helped me to recognize what I could do to make the challenge easier and solve the puzzle.

Next, I rebuild the boat and take it back up river, intending to fully explore the rest of the channel. But as I get to where that cave I had explored earlier, I accidentally break the boat, and this changes my plans. I once again go through the cave, and this time I use Ascend to reach the top of the canyon wall that the cave is embedded within.

I’m actually pretty close to the Skyview Tower, and decide to go for it. It’s nighttime, and my cold weather pants are keeping me safe, so I have no problem getting there. The last bit of it is fun; there’s a bunch of scaffoldings with elevators on them, and they make it so that I don’t have to climb up the walls of the hill that I’m currently standing at the base of, to reach the tower.

At the final elevator to the tower, I find a Hylian man who is stuck because the elevator has broken and cannot operate. He tells me the Skyview tower is out of order, but he is here to fix it, if only he can get up to the top, which he can’t do due to the elevator being broken.

It’s obvious that I just need to Ultrahand glue a heavy weight to the opposite side of the elevator and he’ll get up to the top in no time. So I go find a weight suitable for this purpose, and attach it, and up he goes.

By now the sun is up and it’s too hot to go up to talk to him to finish this and activate the tower, so I need to wait for a bit. A cloud mercifully passes overhead, reducing my wait time. I rush out and talk to the repair man, and he thanks me and then fixes the tower mechanism. I activate the tower and go up to scan the map data.

While I’m up there, I see a nearby sky island that I want to head toward, but I fumble with the controller and fail to hit the X button to glide until I’ve descended too far to reach it. I just barely make it to the bottom most projection, and there’s nowhere I can climb to with my remaining stamina, and I also can’t stand anywhere to attempt to use Ascend, so I’m screwed.

I fast travel back to the tower, and go up again to retry what I just screwed up.

This time, though I end up seeing an even nearer sky island, and it looks interesting, so I go to it instead. When I get closer, it looks similar to one I’ve been on before, and I’m not sure if it is the same one or not.

I conclude that it must not be the same one that I had been on once before, when I notice a large ramp with rails running up it, and a Zonai wing with some fan bladed attached to it. There’s another Zonai wing with two more fans attached to it. And laying on the round I find two rockets. I decide to see what this thing does. Trying to maximize my boost, I try gluing the two wings together, in tandem, so I will have double the lift and double the fans, and then I attach the rockets as well. I put my contraption on the ramp and stand on it, then activate, and I zoom off, upward into the sky. Which is great for a few seconds, but my Zonai battery pack capacity is still unimproved since I received it, and I only get a few seconds of flight time. As the wing loses airspeed it begins to stall, and then falls downwards. It doesn’t seem to have much capability to glide, at least not as I’ve built it.

I take a running leap off the nose and glide as far as I can. I’m still way, way up, and in no hope of reaching anything I can land on before I run out of stamina. So I wonder if I would have been better off just using a single wing, for less mass, and put all the engines on it? Or do I just need a bigger battery? Or use something to recharge my battery in flight? Hmm.

As I’m gliding, I see a shooting star fall from the sky. I’m actually higher than it as it falls through the atmosphere toward the ground, and I see it land very clearly, and it makes a large dust cloud when it hits. I can see the spot clearly, and to make sure I don’t lose it, I activate my telescope and pin the location. This actually works and somehow I don’t screw up and fall to my death.

I wonder if I can reach it? I check the map to see where the pin is, and it’s what seems like an impossible distance away, deep into the next uncharted zone, and pretty much right next to another pin I had already placed on the map — a location I marked where I saw a large geoglyph while I was up in the sky, that I wanted to check out at some point. It looks like now is the time.

I glide as far as I can, but I reach the end of my stamina meter and begin to fall well before I’ve reached a safe altitude to land on anything. I have a very slight chance of surviving if I hit X to re-deploy the glider one last time just before I hit the ground, otherwise I’m splat.

I manage to survive landing, although I deploy the last-ditch chute a bit early and end up falling enough to do me a lot of damage. I’m left with a fraction of a heart, and to make matters worse I’m in a frigid area, where even my snow pants aren’t protection enough to keep me from taking damage. I pause and devour a meal that gives me cold resistance, and start running toward the pinned location where the star fell. I’m also keeping its beacon in sight at all times, and maximizing my run by using up nearly all of my stamina meter and releasing it just before it runs out, so that it will recharge at its normal rate; if I screw that up, and use all of the stamina, I move very slowly while the stamina meter also recharges very slowly, and I can’t afford to waste any time.

I run and run and run and run and run, gliding whenever possible, and miraculously cover the distance. I am nearly to the crash site, which is on the side of a mountain covered by a geoglyph. I am standing near the top of it and I think I can just jump out and glide over, and then land next to it.

Just as I get close, though, it seems to slide down the side of the hill, and as it does so my heart sinks as I try to match its rate of descent and catch up to it, but cannot, and I see it plummet into the water below and disappear forever.

Well F that. I restore from the most recent autosave and try again. It takes two more tries, but I finally succeed, by going further around, taking a slightly longer route that puts me at the base of the geoglyph, downhill and in the path of the star fragment, which starts sliding down the hill — it seems it must be programmed to do so just as I get close enough, no matter how quickly I get to it. But this time I’ve managed to outsmart the game, it’s falling toward me, not away, and it comes close enough that I’m able to grab it. Success!

I’m elated that I managed to catch the fragment, and it seems like that whole sequence may not have been a random occurrence, like it was meant to happen just the way it did. I wonder about that, but there’s really no way to know for sure.

I walk back to try to find the exact location where the star fragment landed, and I think I find it, marked by a stone that, when I lift it, turns out to be the hiding place of a korok. So is that another coincidence?

This geoglyph is HUGE and the mountainside it is painted on is steep and massive. It’s very hard to traverse and it’s hard to orient myself to see where the trigger spot is for the cutscene that I need to watch in order to complete another part of Impa’s quest.

I’m down near the bottom but I have no idea where to look for the story activation spot, and I have only a vague idea of what the thing looked like, from memory, from up above when I first saw it, days ago. So it’s pretty hopeless.

Making matters even worse, it begins to rain. That ruins any hope of me doing anything but sliding downhill until the weather changes. Dang it.

TOTK Diary 27

Unsure of what to do next, I decide to see what’s up the road from the Fairy Fountain near the Stable I just visited.

Along the way, I spot a hill with a lone tree standing on it, and figuring it must have something of interest, I go off-road to check it out. It’s easy going along lush grassy hills, and I reach the tree, but there’s nothing of interest up the tree.

I guess the designers decided that not every point of interest has to be marked by a lone tree or stone.

Nearby, though, are some ruined buildings, little left of them but some crumbling foundations. I check them out, but as I’m going about it, here come a group of Bokoblins, lead by a Boss. They are blue, and wearing armor made of wood. One of them has a bunch of what look like red chuchu jellies. This group looks formidable. They seem to be heading my way, up the road. I hide and take cover, crouching behind the tree.

The Bokoblins march right up to the area where I was, look around for a moment, and then turn around and head back down the way they came. I wonder: did they come out this way because they thought they saw something? Or was this just a pre-determined route that they were programmed to patrol? Did the tree I spotted, which took me off the road, save me from a face to face encounter with this group?

It seems so.

Since it’s momentarily safe here, I resume scouting the ruins, but I don’t find much. I’m also watching the Bokoblins to see what their behavior is, and observe that they march back down to a little camp they have, and then turn around and head back up the hill.

Here, I discover a well. Since I need a hiding place, it seems a good idea to check out the well. I jump down; there’s no ladder, and I land unhurt in the cave below. Here is another secreted hideaway that someone has been using to grow and cook food items. I take what I find, and read their diary, which tells me that eating fire fruit will give me a boost of strength, but does not protect me against desert heat like in the Gerudo desert.

There’s no way out of the cave, other than to use the Ascend power, which I use, hoping that my timing will be safe, and not pop me up right in the middle of those Bokoblins.

As luck has it, they’re down at their camp when I pop out of the ground.

I decide I should try to see how formidable they are, and plot an attack strategy more clever than simply rushing in and trying to fight them hand-to-hand.

I only have 3 arrows, and I’m trying to stock up, so I decide to try lobbing bomb flowers at them. The range doesn’t seem to be too great, but I don’t have a huge amount of experience with aiming, other than throwing brightbloom seeds underground. But fortunately that seems to be enough experience, because my aim and my range are both true, and I manage to score hits on the group. Two of the Bokoblins are greatly injured by the first bomb, and one of them dies from the fire. A bonus, they seem to drop the fire chuchu jelly without it detonating, and don’t bother to pick it up again. They look around, confused, not seeing where the attack came from, and eventually pick up their weapons and resume their march up the hill toward my location. So I lob another bomb, which takes out the remaining Bokoblins and does some more damage to the Boss. I lob one more, and it only hurts the Boss a little, despite hitting him directly. But since it is down to just him I decide I should be brave and finish him off with my weapons.

I glide down from the hill and use a dive attack, which does splash damage. There’s one more Bokoblin who I somehow didn’t see, behind his Boss, and my attack deals damage to both of them, and fortunately it’s enough to take out that surprise Boko. The Boss drops his huge sword, giving me a further advantage, which I lose immediately by accidentally activating my telescope, making me effectively blinded for near vision, and I get hit by the Boss, hard. The blow takes me to 1/4 hearts, and knocks me on the ground. Annoyed, I pause the game, swear a bunch, and then eat enough food to bring me back up to full life, knowing that if I get hit by that thing again, the only thing that will save me will be if my life meter is full. I get up and switch weapons to my Royal Claymore which I’ve fused with a Bokoblin skeleton arm, and is my strongest weapon. The arm breaks off with the first hit, but fortunately the second finishes the Boss, and I’m victorious.

It’s a win with very little meaning attached to it; I’ve consumed weapons and food, and gained little beyond a few monster parts, and some experience with fighting these enemies.

I don’t think to check out their camp to see what else I might get, and instead I think about where I could go next.

I decide rather than trying to complete some of the quest objectives in the immediate area of this stable, I will try going back to Kakariko Village and see if I can make any progress with my open quests there.

There’s the old woman who is sick with Gloom, and I’ve found some ingredients in the underworld that might work to create a cure for her. There’s also the four Ring Ruins, which I need to visit and see the stone glyphs. And the fifth Ring Ruin, which is off limits. I wonder if I can find a way to sneak in, or perhaps visiting the four will unlock the fifth to me.

I fast travel back, and arrive in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm, at the Shrine nearby. I glide down and find the old woman’s daughter who cares for her, and try talking to her again, but her responses haven’t changed; she doesn’t seem to notice that I have ingredients that might help. So maybe I don’t have the right ingredients after all. Or maybe I need to cook them into a porridge for her? I don’t understand the intended solution; she tells me that she has some of the ingredients — the Hylian Rice and Milk, but doesn’t know what the missing ingredient I need to supply, and doesn’t mention whether she has any Wild Greens. I haven’t seen Wild Greens anywhere, and am not sure where I would look for them, or if Wild Greens is perhaps a category of any kind of vegetable? I am wondering about this. I notice she mentions a merchant who travels on the road to the west of the village who sells the rice and milk, so I decide to try to find him, in case I maybe need to buy them. But based on what she’s telling me, she has that stuff already, which seems to imply that I don’t need to.

In the morning, down in the village I find a girl selling garland wreaths. She says they are for the Ring Ruins, since they resemble them. She seems to suggest that I should carry a garland up to the ruins and lay them there as a tribute, but it looks like a long climb.

I buy a garland from her for 5 rupees, and to my annoyance it is a carryable object, not an inventoryable object. So I can’t run while carrying it, and I can’t climb either. So that’s the challenge. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get a wreath to the place she’s indicating, and it seems like it’ll be a royal pain to do it on foot, and I’m not quite ready to start constructing something with Ultrahand parts to try to get there, either. Maybe another time.

I walk up the road and find the merchant who sells milk and rice, and buy some, just in case. I also find another Addison who wants help holding up a sign, which I take care of for him.

I decide the only other thing I can do right now is try to find Wild Greens, so I get out my axe and start mowing the lawn in the grassy field here. This proves fruitless and I get distracted quickly, and decide to try visiting the remaining Ring Ruins and at least complete that quest.

This takes quite a bit of time and climbing around, but I do eventually manage to complete the required tasks, which I find is easier when I mark the locations on the map that I’ve been to already with stamps. One of the investigation crew who I talked to mentions something about a rare yellow herb that can counteract gloom. I wonder if he means Sundelion, which is rare on the ground but seems to grow in the sky islands above.

As I’m going about this, I find another Korok who needs help reaching his friend, and stop to help him out. It’s a long way, and to make the trip a little shorter, I use a Zonai wing and fans. I saw a tip saying that if you can’t get the wing off the ground due to friction, you can use Recall and Ultrahand to accomplish this, as follows: Use Ultrahand to lift the wing up in the air, then drop it. Stand on the wing, and use Recall, and it will be lifted off the ground, in reverse of your lifting action with the Ultrahand. Cancel Recall when it reaches the height you need, and hit the fans or rockets you’ve attached, to take off.

This works well enough, but only gets me about halfway there. But it does cross a rather steep valley that would have been difficult climbing for me had I tried to carry the Korok over my head, so I think this is a win.

I get the two korok seeds for my reward, and then turn around and re-use the wing to travel back the way I came. But as luck has it, it runs out of juice and drops me right into the chasm nearby Kakariko Village. I glide to avoid falling down into the underworld, but land in a pile of Gloom, and take some damage from it.

Fortunately I get out of the Gloom before I take more than 2 hearts of damage, and I’m OK.

I walk the rest of the way back to the village, running into a Blue Bokoblin in the wooded area that has a lot of good forage items that I used to visit a lot near the fairy fountain in BOTW. I wonder if the fairy is still here, or not, but I think the Ring Ruins may have covered that particular location up.

At any rate, I return and talk to the man in the village who was interested in the stone glyphs on the Ring Ruins, and we share information. They give clues about elemental powers like Time and Light and so on, and special rocks that can harness this power, and Sages who fought the Demon King in the past. They seem to be clues to how to defeat the Demon King, but it’s all pretty vague.

But that’s about it. It doesn’t do anything to unlock the 5th Ring Ruin. I suppose I should find Tauro and try talking to him.

While I’m in the center of the village, I enter the two shops. One, the ingredients shop, is out of everything. There’s so much tourism to view the ring ruins that they can’t keep anything in stock. But the shopkeeper thanks me for settling the quarrel between the two old men who bickered about the merits of offense and defense, and gives me a carrot as a reward to completing a sidequest I didn’t even know about.

The other shop is an arrow shop, and I need arrows. I have something over 100 rupees, but I’m trying to save those up as well, and knowing I can farm arrows by getting near Bokoblin archers, I think I’ll hold off buying them for now.

Night comes and I decide to go back to the sick woman in the village. One of the villagers is tending a garden nearby, and tells me about her plum trees. Part of the garden is given to a research project to try to grow more Sundelions. I can’t pluck this particular Sundelion, as with all of the other vegetable gardens in the village, I’m not allowed to plunder them. But I have Sundelions, and I decide to cook one.

Just one creates a Sunny Wild Greens recipe, which is good for warding off Gloom. So that clues me in. I go back to the daughter of the sick woman and offer her a Sundelion, but she doesn’t do anything with it. So I pick it up and cook it with Rice and Milk, and this produces Sunny Greens Porridge, which cures the grandmother.

Now that she is well, her daughters are happy. They bring the prices in the clothing store down, and one of them tells me she is going to Hateno to study fashion. I’ve completed that side quest, and now I can buy some clothes… once I have enough money, but they’re still much too expensive for me to buy at this time. I only have about 100 rupees, and the cheapest thing is about 500. There’s two sets of clothing, one for stealth, one for radiant, and together they’ll run about 3000 or so.

I still don’t know what else I can do about gaining access to the fifth Ring Ruin, which seems to be very important. I recall that in BOTW, Kakariko village had a large stone orb in the Chief’s house, which I wasn’t allowed to touch for the longest time, and I had to wait a long time to be able to do anything with that. I wonder if this could be the same type of deal?

I talked to the man who was interested in the four Ring Ruins, and that completed a side quest, but now he doesn’t seem to be interested in them any further, and is just a tourist, not an official on the investigation committee.

I’ve talked with Tauro, Calip, and Paya, and they all are interested in the mystery but are heeding Princess Zelda’s orders, so nothing has changed there. I talk to everyone else I can find, including two tourist girls who are as curious as I am, but neither of them seems to be helpful. I return to one of the ring ruins and find the man sleeping on the stone tablet, who is dreaming of Hearty Truffles. Fortunately I now happen to have one in my inventory, so I take it out and place it on him, which wakes him up, and he leaves. I’m able to take the Truffle back, too.

But none of that does anything to further move the plot along.

It seems I may have done about all I can in Kakariko for now. But there will be more to do later, at some point.

TOTK Diary 26

Unsure how to proceed in Kakariko, I decide to do some more exploring, and see if I can unlock more of the map. I have a look at the map, and notice a geoglyph in an unmapped part of Hyrule that I’ve been through, but haven’t unlocked the tower for. I decide I’ll try to do that, and fast travel to a nearby tower from which I can launch into the air and try to glide as far into that uncharted region as possible before I have to touch down.

I easily make it across a river and reach a position directly over the geoglyph, and decide to land. It turns out that this is one is the first one that I had discovered, even before Impa told me to investigate these. So this does nothing to further my quest, but it gives me a realization that makes me feel a bit more oriented, I recognize someplace that I’ve been to before.

Nearby, there’s a familiar looking woman with a horse cart, and a tall climbable watch tower. I decide to go up it, and use it to glide as far as I can toward the sky tower for this region, which I have pinned on the map. I do this, and get maybe halfway to the tower. I come down on a steep hillside and climb up, and immediately find myself in trouble, as I’m right near a bokoblin tree stand. This particular stand is actually built on top of a Stone Talus, which comes to life, and the Battle Talus comes at me. These Bokoblins are well armed, with flame projectors and red chuchu jelly, and I’m completely unprepared for this. I just run for it, and get away, gliding off the hilltop, into a river valley below. Continuing away from the Battle Talus would take me further from the Tower I’m trying to get to, and also will put me in danger of a Stalnox I see crashing about in the night. The only way to go then, is down through the valley the other way, back toward where the Battle Talus was, and hope that they aren’t clever enough to rain rocks and fire down on me from up there.

They do not, but I do run into an angry apple tree that uproots itself and comes at me. It’s raining, so my fire equipment doesn’t do much damage, but I do throw a red chuchu jelly at it, causing it to combust, but only briefly. I pull out my stone axe and cut it down the rest of the way, earning a bunch of apples and some wood.

I proceed around the base of the river valley, trying to find a way up the other side to get closer to the Tower. It doesn’t take long for me to find an approach that will work; I climb back up the bank to get altitude, on the hill where the Battle Talus was. Then, I jump and glide over to the other side, and grab the wall of the ravine, and climb up.

I’m right where the Tower is, and it’s unguarded in the middle of an open field. It’s doors even open for me as I try to open them. Unfortunately, the control panel seems to be on the fritz and is blinking, and I can’t use it or fix it. There’s no one around, so I don’t know what to do.

I guess I’ll figure it out later. I look around and notice a shrine a ways off, a bit of a distance but not terrible, so I go to unlock it so I can at least fast travel back to here and return more easily later. Along the way, I find a korok who needs help, but I don’t bother with him after finding out that his friend is way past the shrine that I wanted to go to first. I’ll come back for him later. I mark his location on the map, and proceed to the shrine.

The shrine is a pretty fun one, a series of challenges based on rails. The first section is easy, I just need to place a steel plate on the rail and ride it down. The next challenge is a bit more difficult, this time the rails curve and go down a steep hill, and I need to add some side guides to keep it from falling off. But this too isn’t terribly difficult, and I make it over on the second attempt. It’s a good idea to test your vehicles before you ride them yourself, just to know what’s going to happen and see how they’ll fail.

The third challenge is tougher. There’s a double rail, running parallel from the platform I’m on, and they end over a big bottomless pit, where I’m supposed to somehow transition to a new rail, a single rail positioned in the middle. For propulsion, there are some Zonai fans that i can attach to it, giving it some power

I try creating a box, to completely enclose the rail on all sides, so the vehicle can’t fall off, but this only gets me halfway across before the box ends up tilted too much for me to stay on, and I fall. The solution instead of creating a box is to create a triple guide, with guides on both sides and one in the center. This accomplishes the transition perfectly, the center guide going between the middle rail that I need to transition to, and keeps it level and balanced so that I have an easy, gentle ride to the end.

I claim the Light of Blessing.

Now what?

I emerge from the Shrine and it’s raining so hard visibility is very poor, and it is dark.

It occurs to me that I didn’t try climbing the Sky Tower to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. So I head back and attempt to do that. I glide much of the way, and get out of the rain as I do so. I reach the tower, and I manage to scale it, which isn’t easy, but with my extra stamina upgrades I’m just able to do it, although I have to rest a few times at places I find where standing is possible. Just as I reach the top, it starts raining, so hard that it’s just as before, very difficult to see much. But I’m very high up and I have a good view, anyway. I spot a shrine, far to the South, and pin it on the map. I also see another Geoglyph, one that I’ve marked on the map with a pin already, but one that I have not yet been to.

TOTK Diary 25

I decide to go back to the underworld to scout a bit more and try to light up more Light Roots and collect Poes.

I get a bunch of Poes and spend a long time down there, and explore some territory that is dark on the map, but can’t find a Light Root to wake up to open up the map any more than I have it.

I spent a long time down there, and had relatively few encounters. I did see a huge creature called a Frox (?) I think it was. It looked like a Hinox sized Frog, or maybe a bit like a Molduga. It was seriously whale sized. I avoided it, not keen on getting myself killed not knowing how to fight something I haven’t seen before, when I’m only trying to farm and scout.

Eventually I run out of arrows and decide to give up on trying to find another Light Root in the south west region of the map, and Fast Travel back to Lookout Landing.

There’s a nearby map tower to the west, which I have had pinned for a long time; the one inside the Bokoblin fortress. I decide it’s time I tried to get it unlocked.

I fast-travel to the nearest shrine that gets me most of the way there, and then run up. I take a dumb, frontal assault approach, and hope that I can handle it.

I really should be able to, but I can’t. I get flustered with the controls and the camera especially, when I’m trying to use weapon focus.

Just about all of my weapons are augmented to be two-handed, so I basically don’t use shields, and this also messes me up. The lack of shield is one thing, and then on top of it the slower weapon. I do have good reach and do very good damage, though, which slightly makes up for it.

I run up the wooden ramp to the fortress hill entrance, and encounter a blue Bokoblin, who I destroy quickly with my melee weapon, which breaks. I’m supposed to face a Moblin next, but he somehow triggers some explosive barrels and blows himself up, kindly enough. I press the initiative, and make it into the fortress, where there are three Bokoblins on the ground, carrying shields, and a Boss Bokoblin, and another Bokoblin or two on watch towers, armed with bows.

I select bombs and throw one, because it’s the most effective way to deal damage to a massed group, particularly when they are armored. This is effective against the little Bokoblins, who all catch fire and die within a bomb or two. The Boss Bokoblin is tougher and doesn’t take much damage from the bomb. I can’t figure out what else I can use against him that will be effective. He’s big, moves quickly, has a long reach, and does heavy damage. He’s also not a base red, but a more upgraded version. I keep running, hoping to get some distance and continue throwing bombs at him, because I have a bunch of bombs from my underworld farming run, and they’re not doing much damage to him. I’ve hit him with 5-6 bombs, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m failing to hit him, and he’s getting shielded by the surrounding terrain and walls, or what it is. I try to switch over to fire seeds, but I’m getting flustered and panicked, and keep running into fucking walls which causes the camera to glitch out, hiding the wall that I’m running into, and making it seem like I’m stuck on something invisible. I manage to survive a good while despite this, and at one point I climb over the inner palisade wall just as the Boss Bokoblin is coming around the corner to get me, and it seems like this is a great move, but I can’t capitalize on it, I’m all turned around and confused as fuck, and I am frustrated as fuck that the camera isn’t fucking cooperating with me to look where I need it to in order to be able to figure out how I need to move and where I can run to to get an advantage. I don’t care what, pick up a dropped weapon, cover to protect me, a thing I can grab with Ultrahand, anything!

Eventually I fuck up one too many times and get clobbered by the Boss Bokoblin, who seems to be the only one left standing, and I get the Game Over screen.

I Continue, and respawn directly in the middle of the fortress, and square in front of the door of the sky tower. Wow wouldn’t that have been great if I could have fucking found the fucking front door and walked in, like I’m doing right now, just before I got killed in the last fight? Then I would have seemed awesome. Instead I feel like I suck. But I’m more pissed again at the camera for continually messing me up. This is 2023 and 3D games have been around for 30 years, and we should have better camera control.

I need someone to explain to me WTF I’m not getting, because I watch people who are competent with BOTW run fantastically well, and I know it can be done. I was starting to get decently good toward the end of 300+ hours playing BOTW, but my skills are rusty, and I’m not as good as I was.

I do get the tower activated, which is my goal, and I shoot up and scan the terrain to update my map. So, Mission Accomplished, then.

While I’m up in the sky, I have no reason to go back down to where I came from, and probably a few good reasons to not do that, so I opt to glide toward the nearest sky island, and land on it. This gets interesting.

There’s a couple island hops, and I make it to a place that has a floating movable platform that I can glue some rockets to, which I can aim to take me across a fairly wide gap to a nearby sky island at the same altitude. I do this, and find another, similar platform, which can get me about halfway to the next sky island. When I get to that point, the rockets give out, and I’m stuck but I’m high enough that I should be able to glide in to the next sky island. But I see a huge humanoid made of boxes stomping around. It looks like a robot of Zonaite origin, and I imagine it’s going to be hostile, and I don’t feel in any way prepared to deal with this thing, especially now that I’m completely out of arrows.

I have little choice but to go for it, so I Save, and glide in. I try throwing bombs at the thing, but they’re minimally effective, if at all. Melee weapons are a joke as well, and going toe to toe with this colossus is no way to stay alive. I am mostly running, sprinting and then resting to regain my stamina, trying to stay a few steps ahead of the thing. I have my back turned to it most of the time and can’t actually see what it’s doing, which is part of what messes me up win combat. If I try to use the Left Z trigger to focus, it doesn’t seem to help, and causes me to run slower, making me vulnerable to its attacks. I’m not good at dodging to trigger bullet time, either, because I don’t know it’s attacks.

I’m starting to panic again, but for now I’m managing to keep a step ahead of it. I switch my arm power to Ultrahand, and use it to grab on to one of its boxes. I try to target the head but I’ll take any old piece. I manage to rip a few off, and even manage to grab the head one time. This seems to cause the Construct to fall apart, disrupting it temporarily. I run up to the one box that is glowing, I guess it’s the heart or something, and I do a spin move attack, using all my stamina, with my hardest hitting weapon, and manage to knock off maybe a tenth of its life bar.

Then it reforms itself and I have to run again.

So basically this thing has me seriously outclassed, and if I mess up even once it’s going to kill me, and I probably don’t have enough weapons to take it down even if I broke all of them on it.

I decide to try to grab pieces of it and throw them off the edge of the sky island, to see what that does. This is hard because I can’t run fast with Ultrahand, so mostly I can grab a box, swing around, extending the range of the grab as far as I can, and get a box close to the edge, before I have to drop it and run to get away from an attack. But I manage to do this a bunch of times, and eventually I do manage to dump one of the boxes off the edge. Maybe if I do this to all the boxes, I’ll win?

I think doing this triggered it to adopt a new mode, and instead of coming at me in the form of a humanoid composed of boxes, it turns into a cube, like a 3×3 Rubik’s Cube of Death, and starts tumbling at me, like a huge boulder in an Indiana Jones movie.

I’m really having a hard time keeping away from it now, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep dodging it like this. At this point, it’s attacks are coming at me so fast I don’t really have any time to counter attack effectively, and my tactic of ripping pieces of it off, while seeming to be somewhat effective, is now too difficult to sustain.

As I’m running around, I happen to notice a chest laying on its side on the ground. I have no time to wonder where it came from, but I do manage to run up to it and open it, and its contents are revealed: an Old Map.

It marks a location on my Purah Pad map, and I have no clue what this is for, or what I’ve discovered. I now just want to survive, so I dash for the edge of the sky island and dive off, falling a good ways before I trip my glider, and glide away to safety.

I land OK, and I’m on the Great Plateau in central Hyrule, the starting region in BOTW.

As I’m coming in for my landing, there’s a shrine nearby, and I head for it, landing right on it, and go in.

This shrine is a challenge to use motion from turning cogwheels by gluing sticks to the cogwheels with Ultrahand in ways that will engage them with other parts of the shrine to do useful work.

I connect to cogs with a rod, and get them turning to open a door. Then there’s a puzzle to figure out how to get these wheels to raise two platforms that are riding along a vertical rail. A combination of gluing rods to the cog wheel and using vertically placed rods so that the first platform raises the second works for me. I wonder if that’s the intended solution or not, but it works effectively and seems straightforward enough.

I collect my Light of Blessing, and exit. There’s another shrine nearby as well, that I saw as I was coming in to land, but I lost track of it when I landed at the Shrine I’m at now, which is nestled inside of a rocky ridge.

I climb up over the ridge hoping to see that other Shrine, but the first thing I see is a yellow Wizzorobe, and without arrows I’m in no way prepared to deal with it, so I hide and take a long way around the zone it is patrolling.

I figure I’m so disoriented now that I won’t be able to find the second shrine I saw, but I end up coming up right near it, and just have to glide over a little, then climb a bit to get to it.

This shrine is the most complicated one I’ve seen. There’s moving platforms, a spinning wheel, a huge steel ball falling that I need to redirect somehow toward a large bowl in the floor to trigger the shrine’s inner chamber to open. It seems more complicated than it really is. I need to use Ultrahand to create a platform to attach to a rising and falling platform, which I ride like an elevator to a higher level. From here there’s a fan in the floor blowing air upward, which I can use to glide over to another platform, where I see the ball falling. There’s pegs stuck in the wall, which I can manipulate with Ultrahand, to change the path the ball takes. The next part involves positioning a peg to get the ball to fall into a spinning platform that will dump the ball into a curved bit of rail, but the spinning platform is spinning the wrong way. This is easily handled with the Recall ability, but getting the timing is a little tricky, as the ball has to be falling just as the spinning platform is in the right position to catch the ball, and roll it into the curved rail section.

The ball doesn’t have enough momentum to roll up the curved section of rail to land in the bowl, and needs help, but that’s straightforward. The wall has a large spinning wheel, and the curved rail seems to perfectly match the bottom circumference of this wheel. I just need to use Ultrahand to pin a platform to the wheel, in such a way that it will push the ball up the rail and into the bowl.

This works perfectly, and then the only remaining challenge is to get back over to the starting platform so I can enter the inner chamber and collect my Light of Blessing.

When I emerge from this shrine, I’m right by a Stable, so I go to it. It’s Outskirt Stable, and there’s a lot going on here. There’s a Fairy Fountain right near here, but the Fairy has locked itself inside, and hasn’t come out since the Upheaval. There’s talk that the Fairy loved music and may need to hear a song played for it to entice it to return. The Stable keeper mentions a place called Diggdogg Bridge, and says that the largest Zonai ruins fell near there, and says I should check it out.

It seems like there’s going to be a lot of new information and sidequests here.

The walls have some interesting posters on them as well. There’s a cooking recipe, and a map of Hyrule with some large trees indicated at various locations on the map. I take pictures of both with my Purah Pad for later reference.

Behind the Stable, there’s a well, and I go down to explore it. I’m a bit surprised to find a young woman in there, talking to herself. I startle her, but she is friendly and says she is a Well Enthusiast. She says that there are 58 Wells in Hyrule, and tells me that she will give me 10 rupees for each one I tell her about. I’ve been to four, so far, so I get 40 rupees from her. She tells me she is going to the one in Lookout Landing next, so I should go there if I want to see her again. OK.

This well is especially good because it has fairies in it, and I manage to capture three, along with some glowing mushrooms and glowing cave fish, and some sticky frogs that I can use to make myself stick to wet surfaces while climbing, which sure sounds like a great idea.

After I leave the well, I visit the Fairy Fountain, and the Fairy indeed tells me that she needs to hear the sound of a flute before she will open her bud and come out again. She also mentions having a sister in another part of the world, although I neglected to remember where.

Where am I going to find a flute? Or a flute player? Some of the people at the stables mentioned a traveling group of musicians, maybe they have something to do with it. I wonder where they are…

TOTK Diary 24

I decide since I’m not sure where to go next to just fast travel back to Lookout Landing and talk to Purah. I haven’t seen her since I left Impa and Caro back at the Forgotten Temple, and I’m sure she’ll be interested in the developments I’ve seen and all this new information.

It turns out this hunch is right. Purah wants me to go talk to her assistant, Robbie, and assist him with something. Purah chastises me for not having checked out the four points on the map that she wanted me to investigate, and tells me I need to learn how to use the Purah pad to keep track of things so I don’t forget. She tells me that Robbie can show me how it works.

I go talk to Robbie, who is busy talking with another of Purah’s assistants, Josha, about the Chasms and the Gloom. She wants to go investigate, but Robbie won’t let her, because it’s too dangerous. But a previous expedition recovered a slate with an interesting figure carved onto it, and she wants to learn more about it. Eventually Robbie agrees but says he’ll investigate it personally, and take me with him for protection.

So I guess I have a new mission, and it’s going back down into the underworld, this time with an actual purpose. Am I really ready yet? I’m desperately short on arrows, and I haven’t increased my life meter any, since the start of the game. I barely survived last time I went down there, but I spent an extended time wandering lost, not realizing that I could quick-travel back to the overworld any time I wanted to.

I decide to follow Robbie’s lead and run out to the small chasm south of Lookout Landing. I’m pretty sure this is the hole I went down the first time, too. This time, at the bottom of the chasm there’s a balloon vehicle and a Hylian man from Lookout Landing is there. He says that Robbie went on ahead but that they ran out of brightbloom seeds, and can’t do much with the gloom as bad as it is down here without them. The man says Robbie went west, and I try to follow the direction indicated, but it’s so dark down there that I get twisted around and lost, and eventually I decide to just try to open up as much of the map as I can, and head toward every Light Root I can get to. There are several within line of sight of me, and I get to at least two of them.

While I’m down there, I collect a bunch of Poes, and avoid combat as much as possible. There are times when it cannot be avoided, but I stay well clear of the Bokoblin camps down there, and concentrate on foraging, especially Poes and trying to activate Light Root stations so that I can travel and see more easily down there.

When I get in trouble, I fast travel back to Lookout Landing, take a free nap in the shelter, and go back to it. After activating a Lightroot tree, I notice a Hylian tent with a campfire and a Hylian sitting there. I expect he’s part of the expedition, and run over to talk to him. He reveals that he is actually a Yiga clan ninja in disguise, and attacks. I’m not ready for it, and he’s disappearing and teleporting act is much more dangerous in this gloomy dark world where it’s easy to get turned around. I can’t seem to focus on him, and my shield is activating its flame projector, which is completely unhelpful. I’m down half my health before I know it, and nope out of there with the Purah Pad teleporter.

The second trip, I follow the directions a bit better, and don’t get lost. This time it’s clearer; I follow the the direction that Robbie’s friend is looking in, and then continue following the light, until I reach Iyasus Light Root, where I find Robbie waiting for me. He tells me to use the camera on the Purah Pad to take a photo of a statue he’s found, which looks much like the figure depicted on the slate that Josha was excited about.

Robbie then realises my camera function isn’t working, and enables it for me, along with the Hyrule Compendium. I take a photo and show it to Robbie, who is excited and returns to Lookout Landing to tell Josha. I see no reason to stick around, so I fast travel back to Lookout Landing again, and show her. Josha is excited to see the photo, and proclaims that it does match the figure on the slate exactly, and proves that at one time people lived in the depths under Hyrule. This completes the quest.

I note that I’m about a dozen Poes short of being able to buy a new suit from the prayer statue in Lookout Landing.

I also note that I am not really furthering the Impa storyline by all that I’ve done with Josha and Robbie, but that’s OK. I also haven’t done what Purah has asked me to do to investigate the four zones of activity, or whatever she called them.

TOTK Diary 23

I take some time in the Forgotten Temple’s secret back room, and snap pictures of the Geoglyphs and the world map, for later reference. I also explore the general area around the room.

I had almost forgotten, but in the room before the Map Room, there was a mysterious room with a circular feature in the center which looked like it had some purpose, but I couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a fountain or a machine of some kind. I wouldn’t want to forget that, in case it is important for some reason.

I decide rather than backtrack through the Temple, I will try to use the Ascend power to go straight up and out. I’m curious to see where this room is located, in relation to the surface, and I’m also curious whether there is any limit to how far I can tunnel through the ground with this ability. I must be very deep below the ground, and this is as good a test as I’m likely to find. I suppose I’m also testing the game design’s ability to bring me back on track if I take a random, weird wrong turn.

I trigger the Ascend power, and go up, up, up, emerging out into daylight on a rocky hilltop at the base of a mountain range. I decide to follow the ridge of the mountain up as high as I can go.

I climb and climb, mostly walking, up the ridge. Down below I can see what looks like an interesting rock formation, what appears to be a chunk of the sky level that fell and embedded into the mountain side. There’s a yellow plant growing on the top of it, and I want to check it out; it’s just fireseed fruit, nothing special. I continue back up the mountain ridge, until I get to just about the very top of it, when I spot a half buried treasure chest. I pull it out of the ground using Ultrahand, and it flies up higher into the air than expected, as though it were on a spring. I lose grip of it with the Ultrahand power, and it lands on the ground with a thud, then starts sliding down the hill. I try to run after it, hoping to catch it, but it tumbles and then falls off a cliff, and I instinctively try to glide after it. It’s falling faster than I am, but I can dive and catch up. Despite my best efforts, I lose track of it, or it despawns more likely, and I’m way down the mountain, annoyed at what just happened.

Now what? I decide to return back to the top of the ridge. I was close to a shrine, and I wanted to activate it and create a new fast-travel node.

This shrine is very dark. There’s a light in the very beginning, a bright Zonaite lantern, aiming at a locked gate. I pick up the lantern and walk around until I find a corridor branching off the back of the room, and decide to follow it. I turn a few corners, getting disoriented as I do so, and hear the sound of grinding stone. Around me I see some spiked walls, and it seems that some of them are moving. Eventually I find a treasure chest, which I get a piece of mineral out of; continuing my exploration, I find another dead end, but I notice the floor looks interesting, and I scan the area with Ultrahand and discover that the floor stone is movable. I lift it up and reveal another chest hidden underneath. This chest contains a small key, needed to unlock the gate at the starting area of the Shrine. I backtrack, and open the key. It’s a relatively easy shrine. I note that I could have used Ultrahand to pick up the lantern, which would be more useful in a number of ways, depending on the situation.

Exiting this shrine, I’m back at the top of this mountain ridge. Looking outward, I can see another map tower in the distance, one that I haven’t been to yet. It looks like it’s a long way away, but I think I should be able to glide a good bit of that distance, and make it there without too much trouble.

I do glide very far, and come to a landing in a dark, forested area overgrowing some stone ruins. The ruins look like rows and rows of columns, badly eroded and worn down by time. The mapping tower is still ahead of me. It is raining, and as I get closer to the tower, I slow down, carefully scouting the area and trying to avoid being seen by any monsters that might be nearby.

When I get close enough, I can see a light from a fire. This tower does have someone here. I spot a lean-to near the fire, and a Hylian man taking shelter there. I feel relieved, it looks like this one is already in our control. I talk to the man, but I forget what he tells me. I’m more excited to go activate the tower, and head right over there. There’s a Rito named Billson, who is trying to get the tower working, but something is wrong. He says the machinery is in working order and he doesn’t understand the problem, but it might be something to do with the tower itself?

I decide to go out and have a look at it. I notice some strange floating rocks in the vicinity of the tower, and one of them is low enough that perhaps I can use Ascend to get on top of it. Maybe from there I can get a better view and see what’s going on.

On top of the block, I awaken a soldier Zonai, who seems to be programmed to defend this little bit of ground it has. I have no choice but to do battle, but it’s quick and it goes down easily. I note that there two rocket-looking items on the ground here, and I find that I can pick them up using Ultrahand. I attach them to the sides of the platform, and hit them with my weapon. The rockets fire, and the entire block I’m standing on rushes upward for a short bit, but then the rockets are depleted and I’m left at a higher elevation looking down at the top of the tower. There are several more of these platforms below me. Perhaps I just need to get all of them to rocket up, out of the way, like this one…

I drop down and land on each one in succession, defeating a soldier Zonai and repeat the process of attaching the rockets to the platform and activating them. Soon I’ve done this to all four platforms… and then I finally notice that the tower has one of these sky platforms resting on its tip. It’s hard to notice, and it’s not like I’ve seen a lot of these towers to know the difference, but I now know what I need to do; I fly down to the tower, landing on the top of it, climb down to a level below the skyworld block that’s obstructing the tower’s operation. Using Ultrahand, I grab the block. There’s no rockets here, so nothing else I can do, and move the block up and horizontal until the tower is cleared.

That does it.

Now, why Billson the Rito couldn’t have flown up and seen the problem easily, so he could tell me what needed to be done, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I figured it out, and now the tower is active. I zip up into the sky, and download more map data.

From up here, I see some nearby skylands, and I glide toward them, easily. Off in the distance, but too far out of reach for my glider range, I spot a massive cube hovering over what looks like a labyrinth. I’m curious about this, but I don’t have any more pins to use right now on the map. From the position where I’m standing, I can see that there is one of the Geoglyphs from the Map Room in the Forgotten Temple — the one that looks like a sword. It’s nearby enough that I can get to it easily by gliding over.

I do so, and dive once I’m overhead, descending rapidly without using up my stamina, and then I manage to land on the hilt of the sword. I figure it’s a good place to start. I have to climb upward — I didn’t realize how vertical this geoglyph really was, from above, but it’s mostly vertical on a mountain slope. I climb up, up, up, and get to the tip of the sword, where I find another memory point.

I examine it, and trigger another cutscene. This time Princess Zelda is somewhere in the past, it seems. Her necklace looks like one of the geoglyphs, the one that looks like a comma. Or is it a claw? It’s hard to know. She is deeply concerned and lost in thought. Then the Master Sword appears in her hands, and it is deteriorated, looking like how I last saw it, when it was destroyed in my grasp when we awakened the Demon King.

Zelda says something about becoming a great Dragon Spirit, or something, and says that she knows what she must do now, and that she will be forever changed. Then she says that I must find her.

So I guess this is a particularly important bit of story-clue, and has to do with how I’ll recover the Master Sword.

I’m not sure exactly what it means, or how I’ll be able to return to the past to find Zelda. I guess I’ll know more eventually. Maybe it’s time to return to talk to Impa or Purah.

Below, a short distance away, a Shrine. I glide down to it, and enter. It’s a Recall puzzle, and an easy one. I use recall to get gears to turn backward; first there’s a spinning gear, which dumps a falling ball the wrong way. Reversing the gear, the ball falls to the correct side, landing in a bowl, which triggers a gate to open. In the next room, there’s another set of gears, this one not moving, but attached to a crank. I crank the crank using Ultra hand for a few rotations, then aim at the the big gear with Recall and it starts turning the opposite way that I was moving it with the crank. I ride up the cog teeth like it’s an elevator, and reach a platform where I collect my Light of Blessing.

Stepping out of this Shrine, I’m not sure where I should go next. I decide to look at the map, and head toward the nearest pinned location. This turns out to be another shrine, downhill and further to the West. I get there, and am in a lightly wooded areas with coniferous trees, and some wolves nearby. One of the wolves attacks me, and my weapons are too slow to hit it effectively. It almost kills me before I can land a hit on it, but fortunately the hit takes it out.

I enter the shrine, and it’s called Fire and Ice. There’s large blocks of ice dropping from chutes in the ceiling. Over to the side, there’s a blast furnace shooting flames. I see a switch, and try to position the ice block onto it, but it’s too big. So I move the ice near the flame, and it melts enough so that it will fit in the space where the switch is, and I activate the switch, opening a door.

There’s a treasure chest, containing a Zonai spear, which isn’t as good as any of my current weapons. Beyond that, there’s a spiked ramp leading up over a bottomless gap to another blast furnace, and a group of fans fixed the the floor, blowing upward at an angle. I can glide up the wind from the fans to the other side of the gap, and when I’m there, I see there’s ice blocks being fed into the furnace directly from the chute. These blocks melt in mere seconds.

I puzzle over what to do, and it takes me a while to figure out that there’s a grabbable platform next to the blast furnace. It looks just like a wall to me at first, but once I realize what it is, I pull it aside, and pull an ice block out from the furnace before it melts, which is tricky. But once I grab one, I glue it to the platform, and use the ice to lubricate it so it will slide down the spiked ramp. The ice is slippery enough, but the platform is not. Once the platform is down to the main level, where I came from, I glide back down there myself, to figure out what to do next.

This is also tricky, the first blast furnace is shooting flame down onto a big floor switch. It’s difficult to notice that this is even here, because the flames are so bright and hard to look at, that it conceals this switch. I try putting the platform down on the switch, but it isn’t heavy enough. So I determine the solution is to weigh the platform down more by gluing large ice blocks to it with Ultrahand. Once it weighs enough, it depresses the button, unlocking the Shrine, and I earn my Light of Blessing.

TOTK Diary 22

I decide to try to follow Impa’s advice and make my way toward Hebra. I must be able to find enough to keep me warm to at least take a quick scouting mission up there to see what I can see. Either I’ll find it along the way, or perhaps I’ll be turned back and have to come up with a better plan.

The terrain is uphill, but not much climbing. I traverse open fields and slopes, some grassy, but getting more rocky and barren as I continue. Along the way I encounter a few small groups of 2-3 Bokoblins, who are no problem for me to defeat, although at the same time it’s mostly pointless to do so, apart from farming some arrows and body parts from their corpses.

Further into the unknown territory on the map, I make a discovery (Discovery!) of a cave, and mark it on the map. This cave looks like it goes way down deep, and I am worried that it will lead me to the underworld where I won’t be able to get back up easily, and it will end up being a wrong turn. Or maybe I’m meant to go this way, who knows. But I opt to continue moving toward the spot marked on the map as the next stop in the Dragon’s Tears quest.

The mouth of this cave is concealed beneath a ridge, and it gives the appearance of an gigantic, empty eye socket peering out over the land. The area is called “Lindor’s Brow” on the map. Looking up at the ceiling of this natural bridge, I see what looks like a Korok tree stump, growing down out of the ceiling. I try shooting it with arrows, hoping to trigger a Korok, but nothing happens. So then I try positioning myself directly under it, and tunnel through it using Ascend. This works, and I collect another Korok seed.

I’m near the location of a map tower, and I really would like to get into it so I can set up a fast travel stop and get the map data for this region. As I get closer, I discover that this tower is built on a rocky island in the middle of a small lake, making it particularly difficult to reach. But perhaps I can construct something to help me get across.

There’s some construction material nearby, platforms and posts and wagon wheels. I just glue several platforms together, creating a long span that I use as a bridge. This works perfectly, and I gain access to the tower, activate it, and do a scan of the region to update my map. I’m in the Hyrule Ridge area, south of the Tabantha frontier. I recall that Tabantha was terribly cold, as cold as Hebra, in my previous journeys.

I try to take a quick 360 view of the landscape to see what looks interesting. As I start to descend from the sky, I notice a tiny skyland floating in the air a short distance away, and decide to try to glide to it. I make it easily, and from there I can take my time looking around. Off in the distance, to the north, I see what looks like a massive vortex of storm clouds swirling, like a gigantic tornado. It looks dangerous, with flashes of lightning, and there must be massive updrafts, based on the movement of the clouds. I think it’s too far for me to reach by glider, but it’s in the general direction of the Forgotten Temple, and that’s the direction I need to go, so I try to fly as close to it as possible. It is an incredibly long way off, but I am also incredibly high in the sky. My only limitation is my stamina, which gives out, and I drop like a stone. Fortunately I deploy the last-minute save move with my glider at exactly the last second, and avoid dying in the plummet. I’ve shaved a huge distance off of my travel to the Forgotten Temple by doing this, so it was well worth the risk.

During the last moments of my flight, the air temperature dropped and became cold enough to damage me, so I’m down a bit of health. The ground is snowy around here, and I pull out a few flame affiliated items to hold in my hand, hoping that they will keep me warm. I discover though that at ground level the temperature isn’t quite so bad, and I don’t need them. I can get by with my snow pants.

I trudge onward, I’m on the north rim of Tabantha canyon, and the Forgotten Temple is still a long way off. The area seems empty, devoid of life and little to hold my interest, so I just continue heading toward the point on the map where the Temple is located. After a bit of a run, I come to what looks like a large fortified Bokoblin camp. I notice a small cave in the wall of the hill that the fort is built on, and I go inside to seek shelter. There’s nothing here, but I’m able to use Ascend to get into the fort without being noticed. It’s night time and the bokoblins are asleep, except those on watch, but they’re looking outward, and can’t see me. There’s a few blue bokoblins and a bokoblin boss sleeping here among some treasure chests.

I’ve traveled a long way without making a save point, and I don’t want to risk getting killed, so I avoid waking the bokoblins up, so I stealth sneak to the chests and open them, stealing some better weapons and arrows, then climb up the wall and paraglide away, completely unnoticed.

This is cool; I like that I can do this.

Further on, I get nearer to the Forgotten Temple. I’m still up the side of the canyon, and I need to glide down, which I now do. I land outside the Temple, and it looks like the entrance has been completely filled with rock. I’m not at the bottom of the canyon, yet, so I descend a bit further, hoping to find another way in, and at the next level below, I see a Hylian man standing next to a balloon. I glide toward him, landing right next to him, and we talk. It’s a man I’ve talked to before, and he says he is with Impa, who became impatient and went into the Temple without him.

That’s a concern, so I head in after her, and quickly make my way to the back end of the ruined temple. Inside the temple is vast, but not very dangerous and quite empty, except for a couple of bokoblin camps, which I’m able to get past completely unnoticed.

I reach the back end of the Temple and find Impa standing next to a Shrine. I talk to Impa, who says something must be nearby, but she can’t find it, then enter the Shrine.

The Shrine is a building block puzzle, which I solve easily enough. There’s a combat in between two puzzles, with a soldier guardian who is armed with a flame thrower, but I manage to take him out with a bomb arrow. He drops some decent weapons, and I’ve been finding some better quality stuff in the Temple, so my weapons are now pretty buff. I still need to armor up and get some more hearts on my life meter, before I can be any good at fighting, though.

After emerging from the Shrine, Impa still says the same thing as before, that there must be something to do with the Geoglyphs nearby, so clearing the Shrine wasn’t it.

I continue forward, end find a hall leading to another vast chamber. Deeper into the Forgotten Temple, I’m starting to notice that sections of floor appear to have a raised surface, and some of the sections are different colored, in a way that looks deliberate, not natural. I think maybe these are clues of some kind, they almost look like a map of part of the world, but I can’t really see how these fragments would be useful to me as they are.

I proceed still deeper into the Temple until a final (?) room opens up, a large round chamber with murals on the wall, identical to the Geoglyphs we’ve seen, and on the floor in the center of the room is a map of what looks to be the surface level of the Kingdom of Hyrule, with the positions of the Geoglyphs marked at various locations on the map.

This is clearly a big clue. I climb down to the floor of the room to get a closer look. This triggers a cutscene, as Impa and the other guy from the balloon have caught up to me, and are in awe of the discovery. Impa tells me to visit each of the locations where these Geoglyphs are indicated on the map, and try to find more memory triggers that will give us more clues about the Princess’s whereabouts.

I like that I’ve been able to somehow keep the main storyline advancing as I’ve been going through these adventures and side quests. I think compared to BOTW, in TOTK it somehow is easier to get back on track after doing something non-essential. I think the quest log is more useful, but also the way the game seems to guide me without effort in the right direction is really impressing me right now.

TOTK Diary 21

I whistle for my horse, who is near enough to hear the call, and we meet each other a short distance from the shrine I just cleared.

I ride along the road, ignoring everything, until I come to a bridge, where there is a Hinox sleeping. There’s some construction materials nearby, and I decide that it would be fun to try to build something to help me deal with this Hinox.

I take a couple of thick poles, and attach them to a platform, so that the platform stands upright. I attach a second platform on top of the first, to give it height, creating a movable wall that I can hide behind, and control using Ultrahand.

I try to sneak the wall up to as close as I can, and apparently using Ultrahand or moving things nearby a sleeping Hinox will wake it up, I discover. Fortunately, though, the wall blocks its view of me, and it looks around, confused, for a bit, and then goes back to sleep. So far I don’t think this is really doing me any real help, but it is sort of working, and I’m happy enough with that for the moment.

I try sneaking from around the wall, to get into the Hinox’s hand, so he’ll put me on his chest, and then I can do a sneak attack on him.

I successfully make it to his hand, and wait patiently for what seems like a long time. He eventually moves me to his chest, but then I just sort of clip through the Hinox’s body, and end up standing upright automatically after I slide off, disrupting my stealth bonus from crouching, completely fucking up my entire plan.

This fucking happens about 2 out of every 3 times I try to slay a Hinox, and I don’t understand why I have such a hard time with them, or why their 3D mesh is so easy to slide off of. When they grab you, they should put you right on their chest right in the fucking middle, so you don’t fucking roll the fuck off so much of the time that it is just not fucking worth it to try this stunt with them. Bad, Nintendo.

I’m sure I’m the one who sucks at this, but after having played 300+ hours of BOTW and dealing with countless Hinoxes, I ought to be able to be better than this by now, and I don’t accept responsibility for my own sucking. The game should be more fair in this regard. It’s bullshit.

So the other thing that annoys me with Hinox battles is the camera’s glitchy unhelpful behavior when you’re standing right near the Hinox’s feet. The camera zooms way in for a closeup, and the Hinox blocks its view, so the game quits drawing the Hinox, resulting in you standing next to a fucking invisible Hinox, with a camera right up in Link’s face, completely making it impossible for you to accurately see the action, or know what’s in your immediate vicinity, or which way to fucking run to avoid getting stomped or sat on by the Hinox.

Despite all this poor response from the game engine, I do manage to defeat the Hinox. I use a spinning attack to deal a bunch of damage to it, then score a lucky eye hit, dropping it on its back, stunned, enabling me to run up and unleash another spin attack on it. It starts to get up again, and I have it down nearly to defeated, but it hits me, nearly killing me. I manage to get around the barrier, while the Hinox decides to uproot a nearby tree to use as an improvised club to continue its attack. This gives me a moment to eat a food to regain health, and then put some distance so I can try to nail it with an arrow in the eye again, to safely finish it off. I miss my critical hit with 4 or 5 arrows, before finally blundering into a tight spot where I get stuck behind a sign. The Hinox is right on me, about to kill me, when I make a lucky hit with the bow, and it’s stunned again, but I’m still stuck in the fucking geography, unable to get out from behind a signpost and some construction materials, and I lose the opportunity for the free shot to coup de grace him. Just as he’s getting back up, I manage to get free, and fortunately I’m able to run up and hit him one last time, and it’s enough, the Hinox is toast and I pick up a bunch of loot, most of which I can’t carry.

I’m plenty frustrated by the poor combat. I know I’m rusty from having not played BOTW recently before picking up TOTK, but I still had way harder of a time than I should have due to all the glitchy camera control and poor hitbox and 3D mesh nonsense. This ruined what should have been a fun, exciting, challenging fight, turning it into a rough experience where the engine let me down repeatedly, making things happen that I wasn’t trying to do, and making everything feel unfair.

Still, at least I survived. And my horse survived, as well.

I proceed past the bridge, and a short distance past it there’s a man standing next to a cave. He says he is looking for bubbulfrogs, asking me if I know about them. I’ve encountered them, they’re the cave creatures that look a bit like giant frogs, which don’t have eyes and crawl on the ceiling, but aren’t Horriblins, which also inhabit caves and can crawl on the ceiling, and we talk about them a little bit. I assume the cave he’s standing next to has bubbulfrogs in them. They’re not hard to kill, so I decide to go in and try to clear out the cave.

The cave actually has two of those big flower-looking barnacles. This time instead of running past them, I engage them, and it turns out that they are Like Likes. I know enough to keep my distance from these things, they look like they could swallow me whole. I try hitting one with an arrow tipped with muddlebud, which creates a confusion effect that turns it into an enemy of the other Like Like. They hit each other for a while, but do hardly any damage at all. I try several other types of arrows, trying to figure out what they’re vulnerable to, but nothing is doing much damage at all. In the end, I run in and try smashing them with my heavy hammer weapons. It seems they only take significant damage when their mouths are open, just before they attack with a swallow move. I get swallowed by one, and it does damage to me, but I don’t think it eats any of my shields. I wonder if there’s a more subtle effect to being swallowed that I’m not noticing.

After I clear out the cave, the man says something to me but it’s not particularly memorable, and we part ways. I continue heading to the northwest until just outside the boundary of the map that I have unlocked through the sky towers, I find another stable. There’s a shrine nearby, as there always seems to be with every stable. I stop to board Radish, and talk to everyone there. The girl who runs these stables is trying to assemble a horse cart, but needs some wheels attached. I make a note to do this for her later.

One of the people I talk to tells me that Impa is here, and that I need to speak with her right away.

I don’t, of course. I need to visit the Shrine, so I can activate it in order to be able to fast travel here in the event that I screw up somehow and can’t easily return from where I start out.

The shrine is a balloon tutorial. There’s these hot air balloons you can use to generate lift, if you have a heat source, such as an open flame. You can glue the balloon to a platform, and glue a flame source to the platform near the balloon, and if you get the balance right, you can stand on the platform and ride it up.

There’s a few exercises of this, where the solution is fairly obvious, but the execution takes a few tries. It’s tricky to get the flame near the balloon without setting fire to the wooden platform you’re trying to stand on, or to put the flame to the balloon and then jump on to the platform before it takes off and leaves you.

Fortunately, you can use Ultrahand to hold the entire thing down, if you grab it before it flies out of range.

It’s still kind of awkward, but I manage to do it.

The final challenge before me to graduate this shrine is to use the balloon to lift a heavy steel ball up to the top of a high room where I then need to place the ball into a basin. There’s actually two balls — a small one and a large one. The large one unlocks a chest room, the small one unlocks the shrine’s inner chamber. There’s these flame emitting pots that I can turn off by hitting them, which makes everything so much easier.

I assemble a platform, glue the flame emitters to the corners, turned off, glue the ball to the center of the platform, glue the balloon to the ball, hit the flame jets, and let it rise up until it gets stuck on the ceiling, then climb up a long ladder to get to the top level of the room, and use Ultrahand to grab the balls and put them where they need to go.

After I collect my rewards, I am out and ready to talk to Impa. It’s sometime late at night when I come out of the Shrine, and the very first thing I see as I exit is a shooting star, falling not far from here. I run at full speed in the direction of its beacon, and jump off a high rock formation, to glide down into a forested area below. While gliding, I pull out the telescope and mark the point where the Shooting Star landed, which is quite a feat to pull off while in the air. I land, and some bokoblin skeletons spring up from the ground to attack me, but I just ignore them, continuing to run to the spot where the star fragment is laying. I get there, and pick it up. Then immediately fast travel back to the Shrine I just completed so I can go talk to Impa, since that seems to be the most important thing to do at the moment.

Impa is trying to study the Geoglyphs that have appeared all over the landscape — the giant lines that look like writing or or drawings, that I’ve seen about the land. Unfortunately her own balloon vehicle got broken, and she needs help fixing it. Since I just did this, it’s pretty easy. I re-attach the balloon to her platform, and we get in. She asks me to light the fire, and there’s a fire and a torch on the ground conveniently nearby. I don’t want to lose a weapon because everything I’m holding now does good damage, so I just use Ultrahand to grab the torch, pass it through the flame, and quickly light the fire under the balloon, and then try to drop the torch before it sets fire to something important.

I manage to do this, and we get up to altitude, and have a perfect view of the Geoglyph. Impa still says it says something about Dragon’s Tears, but doesn’t know what it means. She suggests I skydive out and get a better look from my glider, which I do. I glide down to what appears to be the head of the creature depicted in the Geoglyph, which I don’t think looks all that much like a dragon, but looks more like Rauru. There are shapes like water droplets falling from the head, which are obviously meant to be Tears… (of the Kingdom?)

Near one of these spots, there’s a circular pool on the ground, and I recognize it as one of those Story cutscene spots that I’ve stumbled upon once or twice before.

This time my vision is of Princess Zelda; she wakens up on the ground and is approached by two gentle beings who turn out to be Rauru and another character named Sonia. They talk to the Princess and introduce themselves as the King and Queen of Hyrule, the founders of the kingdom. Somehow, Zelda must have traveled back to the past, so it would seem. Zelda seems alarmed and distraught at the realization.

Impa has landed her balloon craft by the time the vision is over, and Link relates this to her. This completes another mission of the main quest.

I guess somehow, despite taking completely random distractions and going in different directions, I’m more or less on the right path. Since I don’t really know how I could have known to do these things, to lead me to this place, by myself, I’ll chalk it up to genius design on Nintendo’s part, to lead me in a seemingly random meander that somehow came back to the important business of saving Hyrule without ever making me once feel like I was being forced back into that plot line, and without really making me feel lost.

Impa says I should go to a location called the Hidden Temple, which is located in Hebra, in a canyon. I think I may remember this location from BOTW, if it’s the place I am thinking of, it was full of Guardians and very dangerous. I wonder what it’s like now. All the old Guardians from BOTW seem to be gone from the landscape, as if they never existed.

TOTK Diary 20

I make it to the next shrine with little incident, stopping along the way here and there to pick up forage items if I see them long the way.

The shrine is called Forward Moving Object or something to that effect, and it deals with these wheels that you can attach to stuff, and then activate. The wheels turn in one direction, indicated by an arrow in their tread pattern, and in this shrine they come pre-attached to platforms to make cars and such.

The shrine is pretty easy, although I’m sure I didn’t solve it in the intended manner. First I ride across some lava using a platform car, and then I find a large heavy steel ball, which I attach to the car. The next part of the challenge involves getting the ball up a ramp, or staircase. I don’t really try to figure out what I’m supposed to do with the tools, I just balance the car, with the ball still attached, halfway up the staircase of platforms, ignore the rail next to it completely, and then climb up to the top of the steps and grab the whole car with Ultrahand and bring it to me.

Then I’m supposed to drive it down a ramp, but I just use Ultrahand again to carry it down, which is easier. Then there’s a river with some more platforms and it looks like I’m supposed to build a floating vehicle, which I try but it doesn’t do well against the current, and just stays in place. I could have maybe tired attaching some planks that are laying about nearby to the wheels, creating a paddle wheel, but I don’t think of that, and instead just end up connecting a bunch of platforms together to create a long log bridge across the water, far enough to hover the ball across with Ultrahand, and drop it on the other side.

There’s a ladder going to an upper level catwalk, which I use to make the crossing myself, and then I Ultrahand the ball back into the first room of the Shrine, which I’ve looped around to, stick it into a receptacle in the ground, and open a gate.

I also pick up a chest in the water in the river room, which contains a Zonai sword. I get another Light of Blessing.

I emerge near the Stable I had been heading toward. I am in the Wetlands of Lanayru, and it seems to be living up to its name, raining nearly constantly. The Stable welcomes me, and I talk to the two people who are here, a man who wants to investigate the Ring Ruins at Kakariko Village, and Beedle. No one else is around, except for the Stable keeper, who tells me I have enough Pony Points to trade in for a reward. I check the rewards, and find that they have a cart harness that I can use to hook up my horses to carts. So that’ll be useful at some point, I’m sure.

I actually decide I would like to take one of my horses out, since I am trying to get back to Lookout Landing, which is nearby but still a long walk, and I’m in the lowlands with little opportunity to use the glider. Sure, I could fast travel, but I’ve explored so little of the world there’s sure to be plenty of interesting things between here and there, even along the roadway.

I embark, checking the map to make sure I’m going the right way. I turn left and cross a bridge, noticing one of those glowing blue bunny creatures that you can shoot for bonus rupees. I take aim and get a good hit, getting a bunch of rupees for my well placed shot. Near where the rupees fell, I spot a cave. Upon entering, the game notifies me that I’ve made a Discovery!

In the cave, there are a few Horriblins, milling about up on the ceiling. I headshot one with an arrow, and it drops to the floor dead. The remaining ones rush me, and I try to fight them but I’m clumsy with the controls, and keep fucking up. I do some damage but they kill me, one hit from the tough looking blue Horriblin being enough to put me to a half heart from full health.

I respawn and try again, this time nailing them with more arrows, taking them down before they can close to within melee range, and clean out their little cave. There isn’t much here worth the effort, and I wouldn’t call this a great discovery. There’s a few forage items, some dropped weapons, Horribilin parts, and a few gemstones to mine. Maybe I’m missing something? Well whatever, I’m on my way to Lookout Landing.

Back on the road, I encounter a man with a horse cart coming the opposite way, who turns out to be a merchant selling wares. I buy some oil from him, since it’s something I don’t think I’m likely to find much of in the wilderness while foraging wild plants and mushrooms.

I also run into another Addison, and help him erect another sign for his President Hudson. He rewards me in the usual fashion with rupees and some food.

Next stop, another shrine, this one a little bit of a detour from the most direct path to Lookout Landing, but it’s one of the Shrines I had pinned on the map, so I make a point to go there. It turns out it is an item throwing challenge. It’s easy. There’s some fire seed bushes and a soldier Zonaite to use as target practice. I collect the fireseeds, nail the soldier twice, and collect a reward of bomb flowers, and a Light of Blessing.

I emerge from the Shrine, mount Radish, and make for Lookout Landing. I go around and talk to people to see what they have to say. Many of them are talking about a newspaper that is bringing in reports from abroad. Apparently it is headquartered in Hebra, where the Rito live. I’m told it is very cold there, so I should not go there unless I’m sufficiently prepared. I know what that means.

I found a well in Lookout Landing, like the one I found in Kakariko Village, with a ladder leading down to a cave I can explore and pick up some free stuff. I find a decayed Royal Claymore sword, and some brightblooms and other forage. I go to the shelter below ground and trade in my Light of Blessings for two Stamina upgrades, which should help me more than hearts will at the moment. Even though I’m low on life power and my armor is poor, I think exploring is better than fighting at this stage, and I’m going to avoid combat for the most part unless it’s necessary. I have three Light of Blessings left, so I’ll need to come back with one more soon anyway.

There’s another Prayer Statue, above ground, which tells me it wants Poes that I’ve collected from the underworld. Poes are lost souls and the statue helps return them to the afterworld, or so it tells me. I can trade it Poes for useful items, which seems a bit odd, and maybe unethical. These are people’s souls are they not? But most of the items are obtainable in other ways. The one I’m actually interested in, a new outfit, is out of my price range for now.

I go and talk to Purah, and she tells me that there are Four Regional Phenomena, points of interest on the map having to do with the Upheaval that I’m to visit in order to further the quest. There’s more talk about Zelda sightings, apparently she’s been spotted recently in Hebra, which is where one of these places is located. The others are in Gerudo, Lanayru, and Eldin, near Tarreytown.

I head out on Radish to travel, check the map for a bit, and decide to head toward the west. I’m not sure exactly what to do yet. I don’t feel ready for Hebra, although I do have some fire seeds that I can hold onto, some red chuchu jelly, and the winter pants that I found while I was still stuck on the big skyland during the opening part of the game. So maybe that will be enough to survive.

I stick to the roads, because the horses like to follow roads, and I look for things to do along the way.

I find another Addison, and help him erect another sign for the President of his company, and he gives me a few rupees and some food. A bit further out on the road, I spot what looks like a fortified hill, with a wooden palisade surrounded by spiked thorny barriers. It looks Bokoblinish to me. I’m not really interested in fights, but for some reason I decide to scout it out and see what I can find.

There’s a shallow cave under the hill, which I enter and park my horse for safety. I find a Hearty Truffle here, and I think that might be an ingredient that could help someone back in Kakariko Village, although at the moment I can’t remember if it’s the Gloom-sick grandmother or perhaps one of the family members of the village who’s mother died. I do remember someone somewhere said that truffles were good for them, though. So I hope I run into them again.

I check around the perimeter of the fort, and find a way in, and stupidly rush headlong into a trap. A Bokoblin is standing watch, and I try to headshot him with an arrow, but only succeed in letting him know I’m there, and then he sounds the alarm and wakes up everyone, who runs out to attack. These Bokoblins are well armed, one carries a shield and another is in full armor, and I can’t do damage with my melee weapon. I try tossing a bomb flower at him, but end up blowing myself up in the process, and am left dangerously close to death, which comes shortly thereafter. I glimpse an especially large enemy, who looks almost as big as a Hinox, but looks like a Bokoblin, as I go down.

I respawn, and this time I try Ascend to go through the roof of the little cave where I left my horse. This brings me up inside the fort, in the back area, out of the way of the guards, and right next to a prisoner in a cage. I am safe for the moment, but surrounded by enemies, and now I have to try to rescue this poor guy.

I don’t take a very creative approach, but just go with heavy artillery, bomb arrowing an effective tactic, which takes down the weaker bokoblins immediately, but also raises an alarm. The Big Bokoblin takes several headshots before going down, but thankfully doesn’t seem to be quite as tough as a Hinox at this point. He drops some loot, including a body part, which teaches me the name of this enemy is Boss Bokoblin. I think I like these guys.

I should be trying to flurry rush and dodge their attacks, but I’m just too clumsy with the controls to pull off stunts like that just yet. Fortunately I have enough arrows and bombs and it works. I Ultrahand the cage off of the prisoner, and he tells me he was investigating the Blood Moon, and discovered its connection with the resurrection of the monsters, which is how he got caught.

So, like, if you didn’t already know about the Blood Moon from having seen it about a million times, now you know.

He gives me three food items as a reward, and then heads for home. I continue looting the fortress, but there’s mostly just dropped weapons, and my inventory is full of those. So I find a few more items of ingredients and cooked food (probably cooked by the explosions I set off), and that’s about it.

I play around with Ultrahand and realize that if I had thought of it, I might have been able to use the Ultrahand to put the cage holding the prisoner onto the enemy, and perhaps trapped one or two. That would have been rather interesting to see if they could free themselves, or if the Boss Bokoblin would have been strong enough and smart enough to help them. I make a note to try that sometime.

I also play around a bit with the explosive kegs, and note that I can drop them from height with Ultrahand and they’ll detonate, as they will from a small amount of damage.

I get back on my horse and back on the trail.

I go a short distance, before I spot a shrine off in the distance. I’m going to need to climb a hill and glide to it, which is one of the reasons why horses aren’t really that useful in this game, because mostly you climb, glide, and fast travel to get to places faster than you can on a horse. So I ditch Radish and go climb a hill, then glide down to the shrine.

This shrine is a tutorial on the wind devices. I can use them in various ways: attach them to the ground to create an updraft that I can use to get altitude with my glider. I can attach them to a platform and if it isn’t stuck to the ground by friction, get it to move. I flip a platform upright using this power, and get access to a treasure chest, then attach two more fans to a cart on a rail track, and use it like an elevator to get to the Light of Blessing.

I’m happy with this one, because the solutions are not difficult and I learn a little bit about what I can do with this particular building block, without it becoming too frustrating.

TOTK Diary 19

I’m standing at the highest point of the Ring Ruins at Kakariko, and decide to take in the view for a full 360 degrees and figure out where I ought to go next.

Logically, I’d probably want to explore the other Ring Ruins and try to solve the mystery at Kakariko. But everywhere you look in the world, there’s unexplored areas with loads to do everywhere between here and there.

I had pinned a shrine on the map which is nearby and seems like it might be just within reach of my glider. I decide to see if I can reach it, and take off. Unfortunately, my stamina meter runs out well before I reach, but still tantalizingly close to landing there. I die in the ensuing fall, and respawn back atop Kakariko.

I wonder, can I use a Zonai wing, to get there without using up the stamina, and then glide the rest of the way down? I try this, but I can’t seem to get the Wing to take off. I mount a fan to it, but the fan won’t blow it off the precipice, and just runs down the battery until it shuts off.

The wing seems like a useful device, or should be, but I’m finding it frustrating. Apart from the time when I had a ready-made rail to launch off of, I couldn’t get it to work for me worth a damn.

In the end, I opt to simply glide out as close to the shrine as I can; it’s not that far from the ground, and in fact there’s a root extending from the tiny skyland the shrine sits on, to touch the ground below, just barely. I figure, I can climb this with little problem, and get up there.

So I glide out as far as I can, and when my stamina meter is up, I use the last little bit to slow my fall just before I would have hit the ground and died, the glider acting like a parachute, and I survive without injury.

I walk to the hill leading to the little skyland with the shrine on it, and try to climb up the root. But it turns out that climbing the root also would use more than a wheel of stamina. So perhaps I am meant to come back here when I have powered up at the prayer statues, or with a stamina potion.

Just to be sure, I try to Ascend through the skyland to its topside, but it’s a little too high above where I can stand to use the ability, and I can’t make it work.

I’m not giving up yet, though.

But suddenly the sky darkens, and something horrible comes up out of the ground nearby. It’s a mass of Gloom, erupting out of the ground, and it appears to be mobile. Looking more closely I see what appear to be several dark, horrid, arms reaching out of this mass. It seems to slide around along the ground, as though alive, and searching for something. It turns out, it’s trying to get to me.

I dare not go near it, fearful of the Gloom sickness and those grabbing hands. I knock arrows and tip them with brightbloom, thinking that might be especially effective against them. I manage to score several headshots, and after hitting it a few times, it seems to shrink and recoil, and then dissipates into nothing, leaving behind not a trace that it had been there, save for some unidentified monster parts on the ground, which I pick up. It’s called a “Dark Clump” and the description says it may be useful in creating Gloom-resistant meals or elixirs. Perhaps that’s the cure for the old woman back at Kakariko village?

This is one of the coolest encounters I’ve had in the game so far, and out of all the new enemies I’ve seen so far, this is far and away the most interesting. Could these hands pull me down into the underworld again? I did get grabbed one time, and “all” it did was take me down to a half heart of health, and give me Gloom sickness to temporarily make me incapable of healing. It moved quickly and seemed like it could always catch me if it wanted to, unless I was high up on a different elevation that it couldn’t ascend. I’d have to run or glide to get away from it otherwise.

I am down to just 17 arrows remaining, and I still can’t get up into the skyland platform where the shrine is. I spot a bokoblin camp downhill a short distance away, and decide to raid it to see if I can farm some arrows from their archers.

This goes remarkably well, I manage to dive bomb the bokoblins, killing one straight away, and dispatch the second one quickly, leaving one more still on his watch stand, to try to hit me with arrows, which he cannot do as long as I keep moving around. I pick up a bunch of arrows, before I am noticed by a nearby Aerocuda, which bombs me with casks of TNT. Fortunately I am moving erratically enough that it doesn’t score a hit, although it does wake me up. I take it down with an arrow — it seems they do not have a lot of health — and it falls to the ground. Then one of the nearby trees wakes up, and I hit it with a bomb arrow, destroying it in one hit.

The dead tree leaves behind some nuts and a log. I pick up the log using Ultrahand, and drag it back up the hill to the floating shrine, and try to get the log to stand upright, so that I can use it to boost myself partway up the climb without using my stamina. All I need is a short distance, and this should help.

I have to use one of my Zonai Uprighter devices, but this ends up working.

Annoyingly, just as I get this set up, it rains for hours and turns to night. I can’t climb in the rain, so I stand by and wait for hours while the lightning crashes around me.

I see wizzorobes have come out, and are dancing about nearby. Electric-charged, too. I wonder if the storm brought them out?

I also spot a glow a distance away, downhill from the place I’m standing, and using my Purah scope, I zoom in to see what appears to be a young Hylian woman. I imagine it’s dangerous for her to be out, at night, in the rain, alone, but I suspect she may be in disguise and dangerous herself. She doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger, so I watch and she eventually reaches a large tree and seems to take shelter beneath it, waiting out the storm.

I’m more interested in getting the most out of my Uprighter device so I am not about to leave the area and risk it disappearing just to check on her.

At midnight the rain lets up, and I try the climb. I get up to the level of the log, and stop to stand on it, resting until my stamina bar is full again, then resume climbing. I just barely get to the top with the very last of my stamina, leaping the last little bit, but the plan works perfectly.

I’m here, I’m ready, I run into the shrine.

This one is a challenge for bouncy blocks. These are spring-loaded platform boxes of Zonai origin, which I can trigger by hitting them. I learn all about how they work.

First, there’s an automated platform that just pumps up and down like a high speed piston, launching me into the air. I use it to get up to the next level, where there’s a movable (with Ultrahand) spring loaded box, which I use to get up to a still higher level.

At this point, it gets more challenging. There’s an inclined platform which I have to position a spring box on, to launch me across a gap, to an area where I find another spring box and a ball. I use the springbox to launch the ball back the way I came, where there was a bowl shaped depression for it, and then reset the spring box and use it again to launch myself back across.

Once the ball touches the center of the bowl, it triggers a gate to open, where I find a double spring block, glued together. I discover that hitting either of the blocks activates both of them, giving an extra boost effect.

I use this to jump up, but the room it’s in isn’t the way forward. I have to drag the contraption out of the locked room, back into the room where the ball-bowl is, and here I can jump up to the height of the next level, which is where I find the Light of Blessing.

I now have 9 of these saved up, and it seems that the challenges I’m dealing with would be easier if I had a little more stamina wheel, so I think it’s time to head back to Lookout Landing to cash them in.

As I emerge from the shrine, I take a quick look around to see if there’s anything else of interest here; I notice a climbable wall surrounding a small chimney-like structure, inside of which I can see a treasure chest. I climb up and get the treasure chest, it’s a Big Zonaite. There’s a spring box inside the chimney, so I use it to launch myself out.

Looking around I see that toward the way back to Lookout Landing, there appears to be another Stable and Shrine nearby that it doesn’t look like I’ve been to yet, so I decide I’ll glide as far in that direction as I can, and visit them.