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I want to find the statue of the Eighth Heroine so I can get the sand boots, even though I’m basically done with the sandiest part of Hyrule. I still haven’t found anyone in Gerudo who knows anything about it, and I am pretty sure I’ve talked to everyone in town multiple times, and at various times of day. There’s the one Gerudo woman who climbed up on to the city walls in order to be away from everyone so she can eat melons all day, but she is not interested in talking to me, and just tells me to go away.  Who knows what her deal is, but I don’t seem to get anything out of her.

I guess I should look further in the desert and hope that I come across it, then.  I comb the desert to the northwest of Gerudo town and find 4 or 5 more korok seeds, and a couple of treasure chests with rupees, and hopefully have cleared out the entire desert pretty well by now.  I had only been up through this area once before, during the shrine quest with the statues pointing at the shrine, and visibility was very poor then, so I’m not surprised to find more korok seeds that I had missed previously, but I don’t find the Eighth Heroine.  I was hoping I might due to all the small statues. I haven’t counted them all, and I ran out of map stamps to mark their locations, but there must be over two dozen of them.  I visit as many as I can, and look to see if any of them is pointing a direction other than toward the shrine, but they all are pointing to the shrine, at least as far as I can tell.  Unless I missed one, maybe. I’ve been pretty thorough, but there are a lot of them.

When I get to the far north end of the desert, there’s a a tall cliff that serves as the natural border between Gerudo Desert and the Gerudo Highlands.  I’ve been up this way only through the valley, which is east of where I’m at now, and I haven’t been up through the west part of this area at all, so I decide to try to climb the cliffs. They are very tall, but I have some additional stamina capacity from a potion I drank a while back to heal during the fight with Thunderblight Ganon, and I use up most of that getting to the top. I don’t know if it was really worth it or not, but it got me where I wanted to go.

It’s cold up here, and all of my fire-based weapons have been used up, except for my fire arrows, but with my cold weather gear equipped I’m OK.  It’s snowy, so I use the snow boots that I got from the creepy pickup artist guy who runs laps around Gerudo town to impress the ladies.  Exploring a bit, I find a couple of korok seeds, eventually bringing my total up to 180, and then I detect a shrine nearby.  I walk in the general direction towards the shrine signal, but don’t see it, until I come to the edge of a cliff, and it’s there, down below.  I glide down and activate it, and enter.

This is another Major Test of Strength combat trial, and in this shrine there are no pillars to hide behind, making this a bit tougher than many of the others I’ve faced. I am equipped with many strong weapons and have plenty of bomb arrows, though, so am not worried. I equip my best armor, including my new diamond necklace that protects against Guardian attacks, and step into the arena

I fight the guardian, and it’s tough.  I break several weapons, but my defensive skills have improved.  I have learned a  lot of ways to avoid the attacks, now, and I remember most of them.  When it does the spinning attack charge move on me, I manage to get my shield up and deflect the blow, which is a first.  I do take a couple of hits from its weapons, and am revived by a fairy, and then eat a meal to recover my full health to continue the fight.  I figure out how to get out of the way of its attacks, and get back in to hit it with an attack of my own when it gives me the opportunity.  Its timing is not that fast, and it’s very regular, and there are significant time gaps where I can get in quickly, strike, and get back out of the way.  I can also bring up my shield and parry at the right time, and get in an extra few attacks.

Like other shrine Guardians, when this one is reduced to below about half of its life energy, it changes its attack pattern, becoming a bit more dangerous.  It starts a spinning laser attack that generates a lot of wind.  I stand off and attack from a safe distance with bomb arrows, but they don’t do great damage and it takes a lot of them to put it down.  Eventually, it switches from the spinning laser to a more powerful charged laser shot, which is easy to dodge if I listen for the queue and run at the right time.  But just once I try blocking it with my shield, and it destroys the shield in one hit, and then the follow-up blast hits me, dropping me for about 2/3 of my total health. I manage to get back to my feet, and just dodge the blasts after that, which is much better.  I finish it off with another series of bomb arrows.

I pick up all the loot it drops, and get 100 rupees from a chest in the shrine master’s chamber, and then get my spirit orb.

Exiting the shrine, I continue further north, up a snow-filled valley.  There are a couple of ice Lizals, and I kill them with fire arrows to be as efficient as possible. They are well armed and appear to be wearing armor, so my melee attacks aren’t as effective on them, and I don’t want to break a lot of weapons fighting them. The fire arrows kill them in one shot, and are definitely the way to go.

I find an empty, apparently abandoned skull cave, and spot a treasure chest inside. When I go to open it, I’m suddenly surrounded by ice chuchus, but I quickly lob a bomb and kill half of them, then get out of the way of the others, turn around, and hit the remaining ones with another bomb, and escape without getting frozen or taking damage. I forget what it was in the chest, I think a decent weapon, but I’m so well equipped at this point that weapons aren’t my biggest concern right now.

A little bit past the skull cave, I come to a place where I find a couple more korok seeds.  There’s a bombable rock formation that when I clear it, creates a strong updraft which I can use to glide up to the top of an adjacent rock formation.  As I get clear of the top of the rock, I see a couple of bokoblins who seem to be messing about with a block of stone that I’ve seen many times in korok puzzles.  I touch down and fight them, defeating them both easily and then carry the block a ways until I find the puzzle where it fits, and complete it to earn my korok seed. I find another seed nearby, as well.

Just a little further north, I get to the end of the snow valley.  We’re still at high altitude, and end of this valley drops off suddenly, creating a long slope where it looks like shield surfing would be ideal.  Here is where I discover the location of the Eighth Heroine statue.  I take a  picture of it, and investigate the area to see if there’s any good stuff hidden about, but don’t really find anything. 

 I could go further, but I decide to teleport back to Gerudo town and get my sand boots.  I find the thirsty boy jogging around the city, and show him my photo, and he gives me the shoes, but then he asks for his snow boots back.  There’s no option to refuse, so I have to return them.  This is super annoying because I don’t really need the sand shoes, and I have a lot more mountainous snowy territory to cover with those boots!

I hope I can get them back somehow, permanently.  I consider reverting back to my previous restore point, but before I do that I decide to cheat a bit and google the answer to whether I can get them back.  It turns out I can, so OK, I don’t need to restore and forget about completing this quest.  I don’t look into the precise details on how to get the boots back, but he mentioned that he would be going to stay in a tent nearby, so I guess I’ll have to visit him there and see what he wants.  Maybe he’ll sell them to me, or I can bargain with him and trade boots back and forth for whatever I want at the moment, or maybe there’ll be another quest for me.

I guess it turns out that if you’re at the extreme southern edge of the map in Gerudo, it kicks up a fierce sandstorm so that you can’t see any further ahead, and thus hides the boundary zone.

Reversing course, then, I move northward, and explore the eastern edge of the desert, looking for any more korok seeds and shrines that I might have missed.  It’s very sparse, but I still find two or three koroks, but no additional shrines.

I pass through the desert on a course that takes me to the area just south of the big labyrinth, and I climb up to explore the southern plain, and I encounter two fully functional Guardians, who I destroy, and one disabled but functioning Guardian, who I also destroy, picking up a lot of ancient technology parts in the process.

There are many natural stone towers throughout this area, and I climb most of them just to check to make sure there’s no koroks hiding up there. Then I make my way back down south, gliding to where there’s a triad of skull-caves.  These are barely inhabited, just 3-4 lizals altogether, which is strange.  Why so few?  They are well equipped, but weak, shooting fire arrows at me, I opt to not take any chances, and return fire with ice arrows, which one-shots them.  Two of them drop bundles of 5 fire arrows, so I end up with a net gain of special ordinance.

One of the skull caves has a rock block puzzle that unlocks a korok — the first time I’ve ever encountered a korok seed in a monster’s lair.  It seems wrong and unnatural to find it here.

To the south are the ruins of Gerudo desert’s eastern Barrens again, and I can pass through one more time on the way to the sand seal race course.  Doing so, I find one or two additional korok seeds, bringing my total up to 148.  It’s a long, slow slog through the desert due to the sand, and I don’t have a seal nearby to help make it faster, but this just means I can be a bit more thorough in searching the wastes.

I reach the sand seal race course by morning, and sign up to try to beat the record. They don’t really tell me or show me the course, so I take the challenge blind on the first try, and almost but don’t quite make it, blundering off course about 3/4 of the way through.  The second time, I almost complete it, but go about 10 seconds over the 1:30 time to beat due to the sand seal suddenly veering off course just at the very end of the race.

I try several more times over the course of the next hour, getting increasingly frustrated at the difficulty I’m having controlling the seal. Eventually, I realize that what’s happening is that the seal controls use the gyroscopic sensors, and if I hold the gamepad completely level, the seal is very easy to control, but if I incline the controller so that the top of the controller is vertical, it causes the seal to be extremely prone to turning on its own, making huge wide turns that I overcorrect, and often just going in  a huge circle for no reason, like the world’s dumbest racing seal. I thought at first that the difficult controls were part of the challenge, but when I discover that I just need to hold the gamepad level, I complete the race easily, ten seconds under time.  Victory unlocks another shrine, where I get a nice shield (but can’t use it, my inventory is full) and a spirit orb.

I now have 6 spirit orbs, so I go to the goddess statue in Gerudo and cash in four of them for another heart container, giving me a total of 14.

There’s a few more things I am supposed to do, or I guess can optionally do, but aren’t really essential to the main adventure.  There’s a woman who sits on the walls of the town at night eating melons. I don’t know what her deal is, but they were talking about her in the cantina, and so I went up to talk to her, but she told me to go away.  I wonder if I revealed myself to be a voe if that would change her reaction.  A few people in Gerudo have told me they know that I’m male, but that they will keep my secret confidential, so I’m not sure what would happen if I just took off the disguise and started walking around.  There are some Gorons in town, and one of them looks male, I’m not sure, but later this is confirmed when I talk to Traysi, the person who writes the “Rumor Mill” publication that I find here and there, mentions that male Gorons don’t seem to have a problem getting into Gerudo.  Maybe times are changing and they’re relaxing the strict women-only tradition?

The guy who runs laps around the town’s outer walls still won’t give me his sand shoes.  He says something about an 8th heroine statue that I’m supposed to photograph for him, and that someone in the town knows more about it, but I can’t find anyone who will tell me anything about it.  Where the Gerudo soldiers practice, I see a statue that looks a bit like the 7 Heroines that I found out in the desert, only not nearly as massive, and I try taking a picture of it, but this doesn’t seem to be the solution to that puzzle.

I spend a long time going about town talking to people at different times of day, but don’t get anywhere.

Maybe if I can’t figure out what else to do, I should go back north to Rito village and see if I can conquer their divine beast.

While in Gerudo, I bought the diamond necklace that protects against Guardian attacks for 1500, and then cleaned out the arrow shop of everything they had in stock. Their prices on arrows were too good to pass up.  I spend over half my rupees, but it’s worth it. Well, I hope so.

Then I figure out how to eavesdrop on the bar in Gerudo, where the three women are talking about the secret club but wouldn’t tell me the password.  I hear them say the password through the wall of the apartment next to the pub, and head over and try to get in. I’m successful, and it’s another clothing shop.  They sell Gerudo-designed men’s clothing here, and they have a special suit made with luminous material that looks a skeleton.  I would like to buy it, but I don’t have enough inventory slots to get it without getting rid of something else.  This annoys me, since I have a house, back in Hateno, I should be able to keep stuff there, and not have to worry about running out of slots, and eventually get one of everything in the game, but apparently the design philosophy is not to allow this.  So maybe I’ll buy it one day, or maybe I never will, but it’d be nice if I could figure out what it is useful for, and then get it if I really need it.  I’m sure everything in the game has a purpose, and will be worthwhile for entertainment value if nothing else, but right now I don’t want to spend all my money and give up something that I know is useful in my inventory right now in order to get something that looks pretty cool, but I don’t know what it’s for.  I don’t mind that the game limits what you can carry on you, but you really ought to be able to stash useful stuff somewhere.

I decide to head out into the desert and check out the southwest corner of the desert.  It turns out to be a worthwhile expedition.  I hike a very long way out into the wastes.  Before very long I encounter the Muldorm, a whale-sized slug-like burrowing monster that can sense vibrations in the ground and is attracted to footsteps.  I am only safe if I stand on a solid rock foundation.  I can distract it by lobbing bombs, and if I am lucky I can trick it into swallowing a bomb and then detonate it.  This only stuns the creature, but while it is disabled and helpless I have about 30 seconds to run up and hit it as much as I can with a heavy weapon.  It takes 3-4 such cycles of this in order to defeat it.  It drops a bunch of body parts, and some other loot.

I bring the muldorm guts back to Gerudo town and give it to the woman who needs it for her sick husband. She rewards me with 300 Rupees, which is one of the higher rewards I’ve received for a quest, but still not a great price for putting myself at such risk.  Oh well, I’m not in it for the money.

I go back out into the desert, and this time I go still further.  I had seen on the map what appeared to be a giant skeleton with the skull, and this is what I need to fulfill one of the other sidequests.  After I get out about halfway, a sandstorm kicks up, and starts interfering with my map, and I lose reception.  I just keep following a straight line, until I come to a large monster camp, where there’s a at least 7 or 8 enemies, including a moblin, a lizal, and several bokoblins, and they appear to be well armed.

I avoid them, sneaking around their camp, and due to the poor visibility they don’t spot me. About another half mile out, I finally find the Leviathan skeleton, and get my photo. Even better, there’s a shrine and a fairy fountain here as well. I had not been expecting either.  I take the shrine first, and complete it.  It’s a series of electrical circuit puzzles, and a larger than average shrine, but I solve it without great difficulty.

The fairy fountain has four or five fairies about, and I capture them all, and then unlock the fountain, which costs 1000 Rs.  This fairy is the earth fairy, and she offers to enhance my clothing, so I take her up on it, and get just about everything enhanced that I can, except for my jewelry, because doing those requires my most exotic and rare materials, and I’m not sure it’s what I want to do yet.

With my enhanced gear, I trek across the desert to the eastern barrens, where there’s a shrine that I haven’t been to, but I know is there, because I saw it when I was on the Vah Naboris mission.  I find the shrine, and there’s a Gerudo woman there, it looks like she’s in bad shape, collapsed at the entrance.  I talk to her and she is talking like she’s ready to die, but just wishes that she could have one last drink from the bar in Gerudo town.  I put two and two together, this is the woman who they haven’t seen in a while, who loves their specialty drink called Noble Pursuit.

In another bit of nonsensical game logic, I can’t offer her any of my food in inventory, even the cold stuff that can give resistance to heat. No, it has to be this noble pusuit drink.  I can’t even be like “tough luck, lady, you’re in my way” and pull her off of the controls that activate the shrine.

So I teleport back to Gerudo, and talk to the bar owner, who now is willing to make a Noble Pursuit for me.  But she’s out of ice.  Well, I guess that’s why they put the ice house on the other end of the desert, then.  So now I have to do a mission to get the thing so I can get the thing so I can get the other thing so I can do the thing and get the thing.

I run out to the ice house and get a block of ice.  I’m supposed to carry it back to Gerudo town, well to the south end of the ruins outside of Gerudo town.  The area is crawling with lizals and bokoblins.  I sweep-and-clear the area first, moving quickly, and making use of my ice arrows to take down the fire-based lizals quickly.  Then I pick up an ice cube, and carry it back toward the city.  On the way back, more bokoblins appear, and I guess they’re deliberately there because it’s too easy to know that you need to clear out enemies ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about dealing with them while you’re carrying a giant block of ice over your head.  But the game wants to make sure that you do have to worry about dealing with monsters while carrying a big block of ice.

Of course, due to the extreme heat the ice melts if you’re not standing in shadow, so that’s the mission.  The ruins create a maze of shadows, and you can safely carry the ice block across the desert if you can stick to the shade.  It’s very do-able, and not really too hard.  Where I run into the bokoblins, I drop the ice in the shade and quickly kill one of the bokoblins, freeze the other, and move on.  I sneak around a few other enemies that the game puts in my path even though I had cleared the area thoroughly on the way out.

I get the ice to the bar tender lady, and she tells me she’ll make the drink, and to go back to the shrine to tell the near-death woman that she’s making it, and this will revive her, and she’ll come running back to the bar. This is beyond ridiculous. If the game was even a little bit serious, I’d need to bring the drink out to her.  Or we’d just directly go and rescue her, and forget about the ice, just get her any water at all.

Well, whatever.  I go back to the shrine and tell her she’s got a drink waiting for her back in Gerudo, and she perks up and goes off running back home, while only moments ago she was acting like she was about to die.  Pfft.  Whatever.

Now I can enter the shrine. The shrine tells me that I’ve earned my spirit orb already by having gone through all that just to get into the shrine.  So no puzzle, no combat challenge. 

What’s weird about this to me is that while there are other “Blessing” shrines where there’s no challenge to overcome when you get inside them, all of the others have a difficult quest that you need to complete in order to access the shrine, which by its design is clearly set up by the shrine master as a test to gain entry.  By contrast, this shrine just happened to have a sick woman blocking the door panel, who I had to help in order to get in, and which could not have been a deliberately set up test by the shrine master as a test.  So, not knowing that I’d have to go through all this trouble to get ice cubes for her special cure drink, you’d think the shrine monk would have set something up inside for me to prove myself. But no, it’s a freebie.

There’s some more ruins further to the east that I want to check out, and then there’s the sand seal races, which should be re-opened now that Vah Naboris is no longer rampaging.

I get out there, and find a korok seed.  Then a sandstorm whips up, and it’s night, and there’s no visibility.

Chief Riju wants me to rendezvous at the Gerudo southern watchpost, and formulate an attack plan to stop Vah Naboris.

I get a sand seal and head out there, and meet Riju, and she explains what we have to do.  She will wear her Thunderhelm, which will repel Naboris’s lightning, and when we get close enough to it, I am supposed to hit it in the feet with bomb arrows.  This will knock out their electrical generation and once its defenses are down, we’ll be able to get inside and calm the beast.

We take off without delay. It’s tricky to stay close enough to Riju to be protected, and then once we get close to Naboris, it’s tricky to connect with an arrow shot.  I hit the rear feet and get them disabled, but then I can’t hit the front feet.  I waste all my arrows and we have to retreat and try again.

On our second run, I switch to a different bow, with a weaker attack rating but with better range.  It zooms in when I aim with it, and this makes a great deal of difference, as I’m able to use a point-blank aim to hit the feet of Naboris rather than a ballistic arc, and it’s way easier to connect.

I take out all four feet, and Naboris stops moving long enough for me to climb up and get inside.

Once inside, the challenge is to figure out what to do, and then do it. The disembodied voice of Gerudo champion Urbosa greets me and gives me instructions and encouragement.  There are several switches that I need to reach and activate in order to restart Naboris’s main controls, which will enable us to regain control over it.

Complicating matters, the interior of the beast is mechanial, and I need to re-configure its internals in order to gain access to various parts of the inside.  It takes a lot of trial and error to figure it out, but eventually I am able to work out how to get to every part of the beast and activate its switches. It’s like a bigger, more difficult shrine puzzle with multiple stages and elements.  It’s enjoyable to figure out and solve, and what I wish all the shrine challenges could be like, at least after the initial few that are intended for training.

After I flip all the switches and return to the main control console, I encounter a boss called Thunderblight Ganon. It is a tough boss fight. Thunderblight Ganon teleports around, similar to a Wizzorobe or Yiga clan ninja, and shoots balls of lightning at me.  The lightning is not terribly difficult to dodge, and wearing my rubber helmet and pants protects me pretty well against it.  But it also runs in quick and hits me with a powerful sword attack that drops my health by about 2/3, and is all but impossible to dodge.  It also is very fast and nimble, and gets out of the way of my attacks very quickly.

I don’t even hit it one time on the first attempt.  On the second or third attempt, I do manage to hit it, and once you start doing damage to it, it’s a lot easier to hit.  It reels and gets knocked back, and I can get in multiple strikes.

After knocking its health down to about half, it changes its routine up, and takes to the air, hovering well out of reach of my melee weapons. I try arrows on it, but they don’t do damage, so again I’m supposed to do something specific to damage it.  Urbosa continues giving me advice and encouragement during the fight, and suggests that I should try to find a way to use its lightning attack against it.

In its new attack mode, it launches metal spikes to aid its targeting with lightning attacks.  I eventually realize that the metal is magnetic, and am able to grab the spikes with Magnesis, then fling them around, and if I get them close enough to Thunderblight Ganon, they discharge electricity, which knocks it out of the air, and leaves it prone and stunned for a few seconds.  

This is all I need to run up and deal a lot of damage.  On my final strike, the sword I’m using breaks, but Thunderblight Ganon is defeated.

I stop activate the main controls and we regain control over Vah Naboris.  It start shooting a laser beam at Hyurle Castle.  Urbosa grants me a new attack power, a lightning boost added to my charge attack.

Back at Gerudo town, a grateful Riju gifts me a powerful scimitar and shield that had once belonged to Champion Urbosa.

There’s a few more things left for me to do in the vicinity of Gerudo town:  

• Sand seal racing.
• The medicinal Molduga sidequest.
• Somewhere in the desert there’s a leviathan skull that I’m supposed to photograph for the scientists at Serenne Stables.
• At least one shrine which I detected near Naboris when we were heading twoards it on the sand seals.
• Probably at least a few more korok seeds.
• The sand shoes sidequest.
• The secret night club.

Back at Rito village, I decide to take a quick trip to Gerudo Tower, and see if I can figure out the solution to Kass’s puzzle. The last time I was there, I couldn’t figure it out. Something about waiting at the Tower until the sun was in the Northwest, casting a shadow to reveal the location of a hidden Shrine, and shooting an arrow into the light to reveal it.

I return and this time I solve it easily.  Kass himself is looking out in the direction where the tower is casting its shadow in the early part of the afternoon, and down below on a standstone rock ledge beneath us, I see a circular dais exactly like the one at Washa’s Bluff.  I glide down to it, and stand on it.  It’s about 2:30 in the afternoon, and the shadow of Gerudo Tower is swiftly extending toward this exact position.  I look back up to it, and the sun is directly behind the top of the tower.  I aim at it, and fire and arrow.  The ground rumbles, and the shrine pops up next to me.

I enter the shrine, and this one is another Modest Test of Strength combat trial.  I easily take care of this shrine Guardian, breaking a Dragonbone Moblin Club, and collect its weapons, although this time its spear is not worth the space it takes up my inventory. 

Recalling another rumored shrine location, I travel back to the oasis in Gerudo Desert, where I had last spoken with a man who was keeping an eye on a sandstorm off in the distance.  He said that when the sandstorm clears up, a way to a secret treasure would be revealed, but the storm hasn’t let up.

I stand by his watch post for a while, but this soon grows tedious and I decide to just chance going out into the desert with the sandstorm going.  I basically head straight out in the direction he’s watching, and before very long I lose my Sheikah slate map, and visibility is cut down to almost nothing.  But I can see just far enough ahead of me.  Up ahead, a natural rock column comes out of the ground.  Not far past it, there’s a small rise, and then I come upon a skull cave populated by lizals — and there are a lot of them.  

I back off, not wanting to get into a fight with them right now, and head back to the stone column, and use it to glide past.  I come to a tall rock formation, and climb it, and find what I am seeking — a shrine.  When I activate it, the desert sandstorm side quest is solved.  

I enter the shrine, and make my way through.  It’s an electrical puzzle, I just need to activate circuits to make platforms move that will take me to the end.  There are a couple of weak guardians who I am able to take out with a single arrow hit.  I accidentally shock myself with the battery object.  I get the sense that there must be more to this shrine than I realize, because it all seems a little too easy.  Perhaps there are more secrets that are optional that I skipped over.  But in any case, I reach the monk’s chamber and claim my spirit orb.

Next, I head back to Gerudo town, to re-interrogate the women of the guard to get my notes straight on the stolen Thunderhelm. The thieves are from the Yiga Clan, and I’ve actually been right where they were, when I went up to investigate a way to reach the top of Gerudo Tower.  Only, I couldn’t figure out how to enter.  They had a giant stone door, and I couldn’t get it to open.  I wonder if I return there now if I’ll be able to see something that wasn’t apparent on my first trip. With my weapons and expanded heart bar, I don’t think there’s much to fear from these Yiga now.  I already defeated several of them.

I try warping into the Gerudo Highlands to get as close to the top of the valley as I possibly can, but end up getting lost and wandering a bit.  After wasting some time fighting monsters for no good reason other than that they’re along the way, I decide to try the route I originally came when I went up through the valley, and transport to the shrine at the north end of the Gerudo desert, where the sword lady statues pointed the way, and hike up from the bottom.

As I come up, this time I encounter Yiga ninjas sooner than I did on my first trip.  I’m going along the valley floor this time, not trying to go as high as possible as quickly as possible.  Because of this, I encounter enemies I skipped the first time, but I also discover a new shrine.  This one I have to uncover by placing a Luminous Stone on a dais.  This triggers the shrine to come out of the ground.  I notice that these shrines are harder to find because they do not seem to trigger my Sheikah sensor at all, so I can’t just blunder about and hope that my alarm will start pinging and alert me to their presence.  This makes me wonder how many I might have missed along the way in other parts of the world, particularly in the regions where I didn’t find very many shrines.

I enter the shrine, and it’s a bomb-switch puzzle.  I’ve got plenty of experience with bombs, so I know exactly what I need to do. It’s not too difficult, a little bit of timing, but it’s actually quite simple.  I find 100 Rupees in a chest, and claim a spirit orb.

Onward I go.

Somehow, this trip takes much less time than it did the first time I made it.  I hardly walk a few hundred yards when already I’m at the chamber where I encounter the three Yiga archers and have to take them on all together.  I make quick work of them using the electric spear and ice spear.  It’s not hard to dodge their arrow fire if you’re moving, and so you don’t need a shield, and the reach and speed of the spears gives you the greatest advantage. These spears, although only middle-powered, do more than enough damage to these opponents to take them down in 2-3 hits, which can be landed quite quickly if you’re able to close to within striking distance before they teleport.

This time, after I’ve defeated them, that doorway that was blocked with stone is open.  I wonder if this is something that I triggered by advancing other points in the story line?  Or if it’s simply due to the time of day, or what it could be.

Cautiously, I advance down a tall corridor and ahead of me I see a large round chamber, with tapestries  hanging down, covering entrances that radiate from the room like spokes on a wheel hub. I have a foreboding sense of ambush, and being locked in the room with an enemy who will probably wish that they hadn’t messed with me while I have such good armaments. I only hope that I’m not underestimating them. 

I enter the chamber, and it’s too quiet. Surely the Yiga must know I am here if I just fought several of their warriors outside. I expect at any second, warriors will come streaming at me from all sides.  But nothing comes. I quietly approach the room, very cautious, and still, nothing.

There are numerous torches in the room, and it’s obvious I’m meant to light one and use it to set fire to the tapestries to reveal what’s behind them.  I go to each one in turn, one at a time.  Most of them are dead ends, with a couple of keese behind them, and I take care of them easily.  A few have items behind them, but they’re of no consequence.

The last one I torch reveals a stairway up. I enter, and quietly ascend, ready for anything.

I enter the Yiga clan’s stronghold. Immediately, I see in front of me a prison cell, with a Gerudo woman held captive. There’s been mention of one of their warriors missing, and this must be her.  I try to figure out how to release her, but when I talk to her she says it’s too dangerous and I shouldn’t try to fight them all by myself.  She suggests distracting them somehow, but doesn’t have any ideas.

I do.  Off to the left, I see a guard patrolling. He looks bigger than the other Yiga I’ve fought so far, and more imposing.  I get the sense that he’s stronger and will not go down easily. This life bar pops up over his head, and he’s got 600 hit points. Yep, that’s a tough guy.

He doesn’t see me, I guess the masks they wear don’t afford good vision. It’s dim, and he’s carrying a torch, but the light doesn’t reach up to the walkway I’m standing on.  

I sneak down and he turns a corner, his back to me, and marches slowly away.  I take the initiative, and hit him with the Stasis power from my Sheikah slate, to time-stop him, and while he’s frozen I hit him as much as I can with my strongest and fastest weapon.  He comes out of stasis and all the hits take effect on him at once, 7 or 8 blows from a strong sword.  It staggers him greatly, but he’s still up. I quick-switch to my ice spear, and hit him with it, and he’s frozen again.  I switch back to my hardest hitting two-handed weapon, and hit him one last time. This does him in, and he drops without so much as getting an attack in, or sounding an alarm.

He drops a weapon, a two-handed katana-like sword that has an attack rating of 40. If I get hit with that thing even once, it’s going to be tough to survive it.  I need to have excellent defense and timing if I’m going to take another guard like that out.

Past this guard, there’s another one, standing in front of a doorway. I try the same tactic on him, but this time he gets off a whistle, which summons two more Yiga bowmen, who appear out of nowhere and begin teleporting around the room, attacking me.  I switch to ice spear and take them down, but the warrior gets an attack in on me, and one-shots me, and I die.

I respawn, and attempt this same assault numerous times. Most of the time, I nearly kill the first guard only to have him sound the alarm.  When the first guard alerts, the second one by the door comes to his aid, in addition to the two bowmen, and it’s really tough to defeat them all. I manage to do it sometimes.  And sometimes I manage to take down both guards without them sounding the alarm.This is tough, but best.  I find that if I take the first guard out quickly enough, I can nail the second with an ice arrow head shot, and then run up, use Statis again, and finish him off with the sword.  If I sprint up quickly and pull off my attack flurry with perfect timing, I can manage to get in 8-10 hits before he can manage to do anything, and kill him.

Through the door, there’s a hallway leading to another room, to the right, and further ahead, a ladder going up.  

I switch my armor for my stealth suit, figuring this is exactly what it was meant for, and go up the ladder.  The ladder leads to a catwalk running along the top of the room, near the ceiling.  Ducking, I walk quietly along the room, and look down, and see three, maybe four Yiga guards patrolling around boxes and pallets of supplies of some sort. 

I don’t think I can fight them all. They’re too near each other and even if I can take one down quickly, the others are sure to notice and sound the alarm. I think I can probably take on one of those guards one-on-one, but 2- or 3-on one, it won’t be pretty, especially since they have the same teleport ability as the bowmen do, as I’ve found out through many trials attempting to get this far.

At the far end of the catwalk, there’s a small storage room, where there’s a huge amount of bananas, and a chest with a gem in it.  I consider that these might be a trap, but as an experiment I try taking them, and nothing happens.  From the storage room, I can see down into the main room through windows.  There are four guards, one patrolling each corner of the room.  At the far end of the room, there’s a guard standing in the middle of a doorway, blocking the exit to a hallway.

What I need to do is drop down from the catwalk, without getting noticed, and sneak past the guards.  I see another ladder leading to a second catwalk that goes along the wall adjacent to the one I’m on, and it leads directly overhead the guard blocking the doorway.

If I can get to him without being noticed, maybe I can time-stop him and just run past him.  If I try to kill him, it’ll make too much noise and take too much time, and I’m sure to be noticed.  But if I don’t do anything but time stop him, maybe he won’t realize anything has happened to him after the stasis effect wears off, and I can just sneak past him.

This is exactly what I do, and it only takes me about 4 hours of trying to pull it off.  I nearly succeed in my very first attempt, and slip past him, run down the hallway, and into a back room, another storage room.  Looking around, there’s a few chests and some that are partially buried in the floor and need to be pulled up with Magnesis.  Each time I do this, it makes noise and draws the guard’s attention, but I am able to duck down and hide and he checks the room, finds nothing and goes back.  But after the third time, I accidentally hit Down on the D-pad, which is the control Link uses to whistle for his horse.  This attracts the guard’s attention a bit more, and he comes further into the room than he has on other searches, and this time he finds me.  I almost take him, but he gets his alarm off just before I finish him off, and the rest of the guards come, bowmen come, and I actually did pretty good, managing to kill three or four of them, but eventually the big guys with the powerful swords hit me one time and I go down.

I try again, but much to my annoyance once I get past him, I get hung up on a wall and start climbing it, and when he wakes back up from stasis, I’m clinging to the fucking wall like Spider-Man, he whistles the alarm, and I’m quickly dogpiled. 

A bunch of other times, I don’t even make it that far, and screw up on other parts.  There’s no saving allowed, so I can’t do it step by step and save and restore from my last point of progress.  If I could I would be done with it in under an hour. As it is, it takes four hours.  I get pretty frustrated.  But it forces me to play very carefully and work on my skill.

Finally, I make it. I’m so frustrated that this time I don’t bother looting the whole room.  I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances or waste time; I’m here for one thing, and that’s the Thunderhelm.

In using Magnesis, I can see that one wall is magnetically sensitive, so I pull on it, and it’s a secret door that revolves open, and I go in without any further hesitation.

The game switches to a cutscene, and I enter a large, arena-like room, with a pit in the middle that looks bottomless. I’m alone at first, but then a voice shouts “Hey!” at me, and I am found. It’s the boss of the Yiga clan.  

He monologues a bit, and then we fight.  I have felt like Hinox fights and Lynel fights feel like boss fights, but this one feels more like a boss fight than those. This guy isn’t nearly as tough, though, and he’s not hard to take out. This fight is also somewhat comical, he has a clownish appearance and is something of a buffoon.  I use the same basic approach as I have with the rest of the Yiga, favoring quick striking weapons with decent range, switching to bow if he’s at a distance, and favoring elemental effects that disrupt or freeze him, such as electrical or freeze.

After I knock him about halfway down, he teleports to hover over the middle of the bottomless pit, where I can’t reach him anymore with melee weapons.  He creates a force shield, and then summons two large round bomb-looking things, which he lobs at me.  They’re not hard to dodge, and his windup is so slow that I can just nail him with an arrow before he fires them at me, and he drops them.

I hit him with arrows for like 10 minutes, before I notice that his life bar isn’t going down when I do this.  This annoys me to no end, because I end up wasting about 500 rupees worth of bomb arrows for nothing.  I hate it when boss fights have a specific thing that you have to do and that’s the only thing that will work, because that’s what the designers intend for the fight.  This is one such boss fight.  

What you are supposed to do is, wait for the bombs he generates to start circling around him, and when one is directly over his head, then hit him with an arrow, disrupting his concentration, and the bomb falls, hits him in the head, and does damage.  It’s not like an arrow, even a bomb arrow could do damage, it has to be one of his own bombs.  Because game designer logic.  This doesn’t fit well at all with so much of the rest of the challenges in the game, where anything goes and there’s almost always several approaches that can work, some more obvious, some more difficult, but all viable.  

By the time I figure out what I’m supposed to do, I’ve used up 100% of my bomb arrows, and most of my ice and electric arrows as well.  I really should reset and just do the whole fucking thing over again, but I’m so annoyed with all the attempts where I didn’t pull something off perfectly, and had it screw up my run, that I just want to get it the fuck over with.  

I do it.  I drop the bomb on his head, and he takes two of these and then he’s done.  He summons one more great big bomb, but it comically rolls the wrong way and hits him, knocking him into the pit, and he is defeated.  I think, maybe we haven’t seen the last of him, but I hope so.  Fucker.

A chest appears, and it has the Thunderhelm.  I grab it, and I’m so ready for this to be done right now, I don’t want to figure out a way out of here, I just teleport back to Gerudo town, and switch into my girl clothes, and run straight to the Chief of Gerudo to give her the helmet.

This triggers another of Link’s lost memories, and we see a story sequence, where the champion of the Gerudo, the mother of the current chief, is talking to Link about Zelda, and it serves to narrate some tension that exists between the two.  Zelda is frustrated at her lack of progress in developing her powers to bind the evil power, which is supposed to be her destiny, and she’s annoyed with Link because every time he has to come to her aid and protect her, it reminds her of her failure.  She’s sleeping, exhausted, while Urbana, the Gerudo champion, explains this all to Link.  Then she uses the Thunderhelm to summon a huge thunderbolt, which startles Zelda awake.

Back in the present day, Gerudo Chief Riju says she wants to go deal with the Divine Beast Vah Naboris right away, and asks Link for his help.  Of course that’s what I’m going to do.

Next session.

After clearing that least shrine, it’s Blood Moon Eve. I can tell, because the night before a Blood Moon, there’s a hint of the music that plays, just a note, but if you’re paying attention, you can usually hear it.

That’s my cue to head back toward Washa’s Bluff and strip.  I’m not 100% sure if it’ll be tonight or tomorrow, so I need to hurry to get there.  I transport to the nearest shrine, on Satori mountain, and check the time — it’s 11:20 pm.  I glide over as fast as I can get there, and midnight passes before I land, but there’s no resurrection tonight, so it must be tomorrow night. 

I climb up onto the big mushroom where Kass is playing his tune again, and talk to him one more time so he can run me through the song to make sure I have it right.  I listen, save my game in case I mess up and do something wrong, and then build a fire with firewood and flint, and sit by it until the next night, purely in order to make the time arrive as quickly as possible.

The time comes, and it is raining.  I glide down to where the song says I should stand, and un-equip all my clothing. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to sit here all night, or if it only happens exactly at midnight, or what I should expect, but I don’t end up having to wait long, because almost immediately something happens, my gamepad starts rumbling, and the shrine emerges from the ground nearby, right in front of me.

I walk up and activate it, and go inside. It’s a combat trial, a Modest Test of Strength, and I am able to defeat this shrine Guardian no problem. I collect some weapons and my spirit orb, and when I emerge from the shrine, Kass is nowhere to be found. His accordion music is not playing, and he’s disappeared. 

I climb the big mushroom to see if he’s there, but he’s really gone. He left his diary behind, so I read it just in case there’s a new final entry, but nope, there’s nothing.

I decide to transport to Rito Stables to see if I can find him there.  He’s there.  Last time I talked to him, he almost started telling me about his past, something about the songs his song master taught him, but he stopped himself. I’m hoping he’ll tell me now.  But, no, he just says the same thing as he did before.  OK.

Well, I decide I’ll try investigating up the mountain near Rito village, and see if anything new is going on up there. The first thing I do is transport to the shrine near the Flight Range, and I’m hoping that the Rito who I am supposed to meet will be there this time, but he’s still not there. I must need to do something in order to trigger his arrival at the range, but I have no idea what.  If I go back and talk to the people from the village, maybe they’ll tell me, but for now I just continue on exploring.  

I figure maybe I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to do at Warbler’s Nest, and head down there, but I end up getting sidetracked and never quite get there. Instead I end up exploring around the northwest side of the mountain.  I come across a bokoblin skull cave, inhabited by 7 or 8 of them, and take them out, and then a little further north it starts going downhill and I come to a lake, where there’s a dock and a raft, with a korok leaf sitting on it, inviting me to take it out for a trip on the water.  I kill an octorock by the dock, and then head out. I have to drop one weapon, and everything I have is real good stuff, so I just lay it on the raft, pick up the korok leaf, and when I get to where I’m going I drop the leaf and pick up the weapon I put down.

First, I get to a little island with a pile of bombable rocks on it, and thinking it’s a korok seed spot, I bomb it. Instead of a korok seed, a windy updraft appears where the rocks I bombed were, and I ride it up with my glider.  I land on the side of the mountain and start climbing a bit, then notice a flower that is the telltale signature of a korok seed puzzle.  I find the seed, then glide back down to the island and continue rafting across the lake.

At the far end of the lake, I see an orange light, which could be a fire, or could be a shrine.  It looks too small to be a shrine, but as I get closer my shrine sensor starts pinging, and as I reach the other shore and explore, sure enough I see that there is a shrine just on the other side of a narrow crack in the rock.  I try squeezing through, but can’t fit.  I can’t bomb it bigger, either. I try everything I can think of, but nothing works. I wish I could magically shrink myself, maybe that would do it.  But there’s no ability like that that I know of that does this.

I think maybe if I go around to the other side of this hill I’ll find another way in, so I wander about and explore. I don’t find the entrance, but I do find a hot spring that heals me if I stand in it, so I replenish my hearts, and continue looking.  There’s another skull house with monsters living in it on the top of the hill, but I try to avoid messing with them, I’m more interested in figuring out this shrine. It’s night, and they’re asleep.  But I run into a well-armed moblin skeleton, who hits me real good with a dragonbone club, taking me down to half my hearts before I know what’s going on.  I kill it easily, and get a new fresh club.  But now that I’m badly injured, I decide to go back to the spring and heal back up again.

While I’m down there, I get disoriented, and so I head back over to the crack so I can make sure I know where the shrine is supposed to be so I don’t waste time looking for the entrance in an obviously wrong place.

I notice another pile of bombable rocks, and blow it up, creating another updraft.  I glide up it, and when I land I am on a ledge.  I can see down from the ledge into a dark hole, where there’s an orange glow from a torch or fire, and I check it out, and end up finding the way to the entrance for this shrine.

This one is pretty cool.  There’s a lot of dangerous looking spiky traps, but most are easily avoided.  I have to blow up some boxes to clear a path through a blocked corridor, then there’s a slowly spinning log bridge that I have to stay balanced on top of while avoiding stepping on spiky parts, and also avoid falling into lava below.  There’s a clear path if you are patient and let it rotate for you, and I cross without difficulty.  I blow up another barrier wall, and on the other side there’s four minor shrine Guardians, of the weakest variety, who I am able to take out easily with arrows.  They hit me a few times with their blasts, but only do a heart of damage.  The next part is a simple ice puzzle, I have to create ice platforms in the shallow water of the room in order to have something I can climb up to get at a chest and a switch that opens the door to the next room.

Finally, there’s a rolling spiked ball that I have to dodge, after which I find magnetic chest on the other side of another lava river, that I grab with magnetism, and a final test in the form of a final rolling spiked ball.  This one regenerates after the first one rolls down, and I discover after running into it on its second pass. So I figure out time freezing it will allow me to get by it easily.  I clear the shrine and get another spirit orb.

I check, and this is my 7th orb, so if I can find and clear one more shrine, I should be able to pray at a village statue and get another 2 heart containers, which will be a big help.

I remember that my shrine sensor went off by the shield surfing pro’s cabin, so I transport to the one shrine that I did find there, and then hike over to the cabin, walk in, and sit by the fire until morning.  Then I head out and look for the shrine.  I find it this time, after a bit of searching, behind some ice formations that I have to melt in order to get access to the shrine.

This shrine is another combat trial, and it’s a Major Test of Strength.  I’m very well equipped though, and am able to defeat this test, although it takes me two tries, and I have to eat a meal after taking a hard hit from its axe.  Once I have it down to its final tenth or so of its life bar, it starts shooting high powered energy blasts at me non-stop, and I learn to dodge them.  It doesn’t let up, though, and I can’t get close to it, so I equip bomb arrows, and finish it off with those.  It takes 4 or 5 bomb arrows to do it, which is annoying, because bomb arrows are pretty darn expensive, and they don’t seem to do as much damage as I think they should.  Maybe I should try hitting it with an ice arrow or Time Stop and run up and hit it with a heavy weapon next time.

I broke a few weapons in this fight, but the Guardian has a sword, spear, and axe, which are all very powerful, and then the shrine rewards me with a chest containing a very powerful two handed sword, which has a damage rating of 56, which I think is the most powerful weapon in raw attack power that I’ve seen yet.  Maybe I saw a 60, it’s hard to remember.  I get my spirit orb and clear the shrine.

I return to the cabin, and try the shield surfing challenge.  I’m not very good at it, and at first I don’t even know how to do it, but I figure it out, and after 3 runs I get a mediocre time of just under  a minute, which the instructor says is marginal but good enough for me to try a new course if I want to.  I decline, for now, as I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing and can’t improve much unless I waste a lot more rupees, which I don’t want to do right now.

During one of my downhill runs, my shrine sensor started beeping, so there’s at least one more nearby shrine that I can find in this area.

But for now, this is enough, and it’s time to return back to the village to cash in my spirit orbs for those heart containers.

Outside the shrine in the Forgotten Temple, I mull over my options for extraction.  Simplest, easiest, and perhaps best would be to transport out using the Sheikah Slate. But I would like to explore this area more, and see if there’s anything else to find.

I carefully explore the room where the shrine is located, and the only way in or out that I can find is the way I came in. I don’t find anything else in the shrine room, no weapons, chests, or anything else.  So I cautiously emerge from the shrine room, and destroy the first Guardian at the doorway, breaking a Dragonbone Moblin Club in the process, and gather a bunch of ancient technology parts.  Nearby I find a chest with 5 fire arrows in it. 

I’m still a long way to the main exit of the Forgotten Temple, and there’s at least a half dozen Guardians between me and freedom. I figure I may be able to advance to a point where I can fight one at a time, from a point where I’m behind cover from the rest of the Guardians nearby, and take them out one at a time. This will be a slow process, and the biggest disadvantage of this approach is that I’ll wear out probably 1-2 weapons per Guardian, and since these Guardians don’t drop any melee weapons for me to pick up to replenish what I break, I’ll probably run out of weapons by the time I get to the end, or if not I’ll be nearly depleted of arms, and vulnerable. All the ancient technology drops I’ll pick up from destroying these Guardians won’t be worth the price in weapons.

The only thing to do, then, is to make another run for it back through the gauntlet, and dodge their fire. I visually assess the route through the room that I want to take, and go for it.  

The key to dodging Guardian blasts is to run from point of cover to point of cover, if you can, and then when under cover, wait for a while until the Guardian stands down and resets.  If you can’t do that, you can dodge their blasts by listening for the audio cue that tells you when their charging countdown is up, and then change speed or direction.  The surest method is to jump right as the blast goes off, and or to touch the sprint button for a quick burst of speed for maybe a half a second.  The Guardians also seem to have a hard time tracking you if you are gliding at full speed, so they’re unlikely to hit you if you’re gliding when they fire, unless they get lucky, or unless you’re too close or if you’re moving directly away from them, so that they don’t have to traverse to hit you.

By doing short bursts of sprinting, you can avoid depleting your stamina meter, which is it important because you need that stamina to glide, as well. There’s a few sections in the temple where you need to glide, and you’re stuck if you run out of stamina.

Long story short, I pull it off and manage to escape the Forgotten Temple.  Getting in and out were both pretty exciting, and make me realize that I’ve come a long way in terms of skill and knowledge of the game, as well as power-ups from where I was about a month ago. This would have seemed all but impossible back then, where now it’s a challenge, but do-able with a little planning and forethought.

Now that I’m outside the Temple, I don’t have a lot of options. I can either try to climb out of the canyon, or I can walk along it for its length and see how far it goes.

It goes, it turns out, an extremely long way.  I walk seemingly forever through the desolate, mostly empty canyon.  I encounter very few monsters down here.  Most frequently I run into packs of 3-4 wolves, who, being predatory animals, will try to attack if I get too close. The best thing about them is that they’re easy to kill with a Sheikah bomb, and they drop raw prime meat. Best of all, if you kill just one, the rest will run away, much like real world wolf packs.  It seems like I run to a new group of wolves about every few hundred yards, and so I stock up on a lot of meat along the way.  I occasionally see Lizals, but they’re lying dormant, easy to spot despite being camouflaged, and I mostly avoid them.  Occasionally giant chuchus will pop up, but they are also easy to bomb, or simply outrun.

I continue running down this canyon for two straight game-days.  At one point, my sheika sensor picks up a shrine nearby, but it seems like it must be above on the rim of the canyon, so I just ignore it and move on.

Here and there, I find a couple of korok seeds, but they’re pretty sparse around here. But I’m also not looking that exhaustively for them, either, so it’s possible I could have overlooked some. But anything that looks like a likely spot for a korok seed that I check out, I find a seed.  I get up to around 145 seeds.

Eventually I come upon a Goron, who invites me to play his golf game.  For 20 Rs, I can smash a ball with a hammer and get it into a hole.  No thanks.  I don’t expect the reward to be worth the time spent, so I move on.  Somehow, I end up getting turned around and come back.  Well, OK then, fine, let’s play golf.  I use the Time Stasis power to freeze the ball, hit it, and my aim is pretty good.  My first shot goes off the course, but after that I get it into the hole in 3 tries, which, with the penalty stroke, gives me a total score of 5, and earns me 50 Rs, for a net profit of +30.  Yeah, very much not worth the time.

Moving on, I continue still further down the canyon, and it seems I’m now south of Rito village (I could see the canyon from the village spire when i was scoping out the surroundings) and closer to Gerudo Desert than I am to Rito village.

My sensor picks up another shrine nearby, and this one I decide to try to find. After a little triangulation, I climb up out of the canyon, and search, and eventually find it, well hidden under a large flat rock that I have to knock out of the way with time stasis and the free iron sledgehammer that I obtained for playing Goron Golf. Maybe it’s good that I stopped there after all.

This shrine is a wind puzzle, solved with wind generated by korok leaf.  The shrine starts out with a chest containing a korok leaf, and I have to leave a weapon behind to equip it. So long, iron sledge hammer.  The shrine is one of the largest I’ve been to, and involves platforms floating on balloons, spikes that can pop balloons, wind-driven turbine switches, a lot of vertical updraft, and a couple of baby guardians to fight. It takes a long time to clear the shrine, but I’m successful on the first try without dying, so it’s not very difficult to figure out what to do, just time consuming.

There are several weapons chests in this shrine, including a Thunderspear, but I still have a Thunderspear that I found elsewhere some time ago, so I leave it, but I collect my spirit orb, and emerge, uncertain of where I should try to go next. 

Coming out of the flight archery range, there’s a road leading further to the north.  I find a small group of horses and grab one to make it a little quicker than going on foot. 

I explore the rest of the road that lead up to here, and it doesn’t go too far — it ends at a little cabin. There’s a man sitting at a campfire outside the cabin, and I talk to him. He turns out to be a Yiga ninja in disguise, and challenges me to a fight.  I suspected he might be Yiga, based on his appearance, and am ready for him.  I equip my frost spear, spears being the best weapons to take against Yiga due to their range and speed, and it freezes him.  I switch to my Dragonbone Moblin Club, and finish him off with one blow.  Dragonbone Moblin Clubs do massive damage and are a great weapon, and I’ve picked up several up here, as the monsters keep dropping them.  My horse runs off, and I can’t find it.

I proceed to explore the cabin, and it’s abandoned. There’s a diary, which I read, and the place had been inhabited by a professional shield surfer.  Shield surfing is basically snowboarding, and I gather that at some point in the game I will likely need to use this skill, although I can’t see why it would be better than gliding. Shield surfing wears out your shields, and I hate doing things that wears out my stuff. But I guess it’ll be fun and cool when I get to the point where I need to do it.

Exiting the cabin, I find the horse, luckily it had just been right outside the cabin after running away when I fought the Yiga clan ninja.  I get back on him and ride him all the way back down the mountain road to Rito Stables to register him, and I name him Radish.  Get it?

Along the way, I stop frequently, and keep finding stuff to forage and korok seeds.  There’s an area on the map called Warbler’s Den, where I run into a mystery I can’t solve: a central raised platform of rock surrounded by five stone rings, each ring having one, two, three, four, or five “fingers” coming from the top of it.  I figure I’m supposed to fire an arrow through the rings in the proper order, so I do, but nothing happens.  Then I try counting down from 5 to 1, and still nothing happens.  I’m just wasting time and arrows. 

No idea what to do here, I decide I’ll have to just come back to it later sometime, and I go further on down the road.  I hear a Hinox snoring, and spot him to my right, just past the Warbler’s Nest area.  I don’t want to engage it, and move on.  I get to the stables, register Radish, and then transport back to the shrine in Rito village.

There’s a few missions for me here.  The guards are telling me that one of their soldiers is supposed to be at the Flight Range, so I should go there again and see if he’s there now.  I also talk to the wife of a Hylian couple who are here on their honeymoon.  The wife wants baked apples, and the man wants flint, so he can bake some apples.  They pay me well for both, and the man takes nearly all of my flint.  I get a lot of rupees for them, but I don’t really need it.  But it completes two minor sidequests easily.

A young Rito girl tells me a story about the mountain peak with the tall pine tree on it.  Her grandfather went up there one day and saw a huge white bird with “something important” in its stomach.  This story doesn’t make sense to me; how can you see what’s in a bird’s stomach?  I decide I’ll go out that way and check it out.

I’ll glide out, but first I want to climb to the very top of Rito village.  I do it, and it’s not easy, but I manage.  I find a korok seed and something else at the very top, I forget but I think it’s a weapon.  I look around and check out the surroundings.  There’s a few more stone pillars like the one Rito village is built on, standing out of the water here and there.  One of them has a small depression in it, and I see another likely korok hiding place.  I glide down to it and yep, it’s a korok.

From here, the easiest glider approach to the road that will take me to Flight Range will land me right by the Hinox.  I decide to try to sneak in and see if I can steal whatever he’s guarding, and maybe it’ll be something useful.

I get in close and manage to climb into his hand and he puts me on his chest.  There’s a good sword and a good bow and a halberd that’s inferior to everything I’m carrying already.  I take what I can, but nothing is really essential, as I’m already well equipped and fully outfitted. The next thing is I need to figure out how to get off the Hinox without waking it. I try gliding off, but this makes too much noise and wakes the Hinox.

There’s a thick stone column standing nearby, and I try to run behind it, hoping that the Hinox won’t see me and will go back to sleep, but it apparently knows where I am, and is trying to find me.  We play a game of hide and seek for a few minutes, I keep going around the column, keeping it between the Hinox and me, and it keeps trying to move around to spot me.  Eventually, I slip up and he sees me, and it’s on.

Alright, Hinox, you want to fight, I’ll fight.  I quick-equip my Dragonbone Moblin Club, a good shield, my best armor, and my best bow.  The Hinox is bending way over to get a good close look at me, and so I blast him right in the eye with an arrow, stunning him.  I run up and unleash a flurry of charge attacks from the DMC, which does massive damage, taking the Hinox down about halfway.  It gets back up and tries to sit on me, but I get out of the way, and then I nail it right in the eye with another arrow, stunning it, and I finish it off with a second flurry of charge attack.

This is the easiest fight I’ve had with a Hinox, and I’m developing a bit of skill.  The better equipment and powering up that I’ve done helps too, no doubt.

I proceed up to the Flight Range, and there’s still no one there. Puzzled, I wonder here my contact is.  I don’t have all day to wait for him, but maybe he’s only here at a certain time of day.  Oh well, I guess he’ll have to wait.

I decide to head toward the big pine peak, and see if I can find that big white bird.  This is a long trip, but I’m already about halfway there. It’s a lot of hiking and climbing, though, and along the way I find a few korok seeds, a couple of monster camps, mostly moblins and lizals but some bokoblins as well, all well armed, and pretty numerous. I fight them when I need to, and don’t really have a hard time taking them out.

I also encounter another Frost Talus, and fight it.  This one is a bit easier to take down. I defrost it with a fire arrow, then run up onto its back and hit it in its soft spot with the DMC.  It only takes two or three cycles of this to bring down.  It freezes me a few times, but only hits me good one time, and I have to eat a meal to replenish my life bar after this fight.

I get to the peak with the big pine tree, and the tree has a red ribbon tied around it. This seems significant, but there’s nothing interactive about the ribbon, and it seems that it is merely decorative.  I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen up here, so I wait a bit and look around, but nothing happens.  I re-read the mission text and the girl’s story mentions her grandfather was looking to the northwest when he saw the huge bird, so I look to the northwest, and sure enough there’s a pretty large bird flying in circles a little below me.  

I figure this must be the bird, so I pull out my telescope to have a good look at it and hope it’ll clue me in as to what I’m supposed to do here.  The girl’s story said that the bird was white, but this bird is only white on its underside, and the top side is grey.  It does seem to have a fairly big stomach, but I can’t see anything in its stomach, not that  I expected to be able to.

I wonder if I’m supposed to shoot the bird with the bow, but I don’t want to do it.  Besides, at the distance it’s at, I’m not likely to hit it anyway. I decide what I’ll do is save the game here, then try gliding up to it, and see if I can get close, and maybe I’ll be able to grab it out of the sky, or something. If that doesn’t work, I’ll restore and try something else.

I jump and glide down and I do get close, but I can’t grab it, and I just sort of fly through it.  Now I’m below it, and it’s still up there.  So I restore from my save point, and when the game resumes, the bird is gone.  I wait and wait, hoping it’ll come back, but it doesn’t.  Crud.

Needing something else to do now, I scope about with my telescope, and spot a plume of smoke rising in the distance not too far from me, about two peaks over.  I glide toward it, and get about halfway, then hike and climb the rest of the way.  It’s another cabin, and this one is inhabited, by none other than the shield surfing pro.  She invites me to try shield surfing, but I’m not interested in that right now, and turn her down.  I sit by her fire until dawn, and then check out a shrine that I saw not far from her cabin, a little downhill.

I get to the shrine, and solve it.  It’s another wind test. This one involves a series of wind generators that spin turbines when they are pointed at them.  I have to point them all in the right direction to make all the turbines spin to unlock the shrine master’s chamber.  This just takes a little trial and error, and I’m in.

Walking back toward the cabin, I pick up another shrine signal, but I can’t pinpoint it.  I try going to the very top of the mountain peak, but I still don’t see it anywhere.  But while up there, I do spot a nearby tower that I haven’t yet activated, in the adjacent uncharted territory to the east.

I decide to try to glide down to it.  This is a lot further than it looked, and I have to go through two stamina potions in order to make it without falling to my death.  But once I do reach the tower, I arrive already about 2/3rd of the way up, and getting to the top is easy.  I activate it and unlock the map for this region, which is called Hebra.

From Hebra tower, I can see at least two shrines nearby.  The one that seems nearer also has what looks like a Stables nearby it, so I decide to go to that one first. Gliding to it actually takes me out of the Hebra map zone, and into the next zone, which is still uncharted.  I’m only able to make it about halfway by glider, but this area is easy terrain, open grassland and gentle slopes, and I land a short distance from the stable, and run the rest of the way there.  It’s called Serenne Stable, and it seems pretty serene.  I talk to everyone and sit by the fire until dawn, then hike to the shrine, which is a bit further away than it looked on the map, but still pretty nearby. 

This shrine is another wind generator and platform puzzle. This one involve using wind currents to blow a ball around a course and into a basin, which triggers an elevator platform to lift you up to where you can reach the shrine master’s chamber. It’s not particularly difficult, and I think I found an alternative solution that bypasses most of the challenge. There’s a magnetic box that you’re supposed to use in some manner; I just used it to block the basin there the ball is supposed to roll to activate the elevator.  Then, rather than having the ball roll around the whole course, I put it right into the basin, about 99% of the way to where it’s supposed to go.  Then I go stand on the elevator platform, and use magnesis to lift the box, allowing the ball to roll home.

Having cleared the shrine, I transport back to Hebra Tower, and glide down to the other shrine I could see from there.  As I get closer, I can see that this one too has a stable near it.  This one is called Snowfield Stables.  The shrine puzzle here is much like the other one I just solved.

After clearing this shrine, I follow the road north out of Snowfield Stable.  The road is mostly downhill, and runs to the northeast, and gradually curves to the right, making it more easterly.  The terrain gradually changes from snowy to barren and rocky, and I eventually come to a vast chasm, when my shrine sensor starts going off.

I spend a few minutes looking for the shrine topside before I conclude that it is most likely down below in the chasm.  At the bottom of the chasm I see what appears to be a vast stonework that might be another maze like the one I found in Gerudo desert.  But when I get down there, I find that the walls for this one aren’t even taller than me, and it’s just a rough terrain of what’s left of stonework foundations that must have existed for thousands of years to be in the state they’re in now.

I can’t find the shrine.  I walk back and forth over the area where the sensor indicates it is, for the better part of a day, and can’t find it.  Finally, I give up and head south to see what else is down in this gorge.  The stoneworks goes on a long way, and eventually I get to the end of it, and find that I’m at another drop-off.  I glide down and discover that I’ve been walking on the roof of a vast building, and the entrance of which is now before me.  It is an area called the Forgotten Temple.  

I climb up the face of the entrance looking for a way in, and find it after a brief search, near the dead hulk of a Guardian.  I begin to cautiously enter and look around, and in the dim light I see more Guardian hulks, and then the nearest one lights up, and I run back out toward safety, when I’m lit up by 3 or 4 more Guardian target lasers.

I try the approach again, more cautiously this time, hugging the wall and staying low, trying to keep obstacles between me and the line of sight of the Guardians I spotted, trying to get an idea of where they were.  One is to my left just as you come in, another is straight ahead on a bridge, and I think there’s another two in there, one further back and to the left, the other closer and to the right.  There’s no way I can fight all of them at once with them all targeting me.

The options seem to be: to sneak through; to make a mad dash for it; or to find an approach that allows me to divide and conquer, fighting one at a time, from a position where I have cover protecting me from the rest of them.

I try the sneak approach first, four or five times, but each time one of them picks me up and lights me up, and I have to run back out for safety.  I’m quick and fortunate and make it each time, but it’s close each time, I dive for cover at the last second and just make it. 

Each time I get a little bit better idea of how the place is laid out, and it helps me refine my approach for the next run.  I observe that just past the entrance corridor, there’s a drop, and a large expanse, where there’s an  updraft.  I can glide across that, and get to a bridge where the middle Guardian hulk is.  If I get that far, I’m not sure what I can do; maybe keep running, maybe find a good cover spot where I can lay low and plan the next stage.

I go for it, and four or five Guardians all start tracking me with their lasers.  With the speed of the glider, their blasts all miss just behind me, and I land on the bridge with the central Guardian right next to me.  I shoot it in the sensor with an arrow, disrupting it, and start pounding it with my weapon, doing significant damage.  It only has 500 hit points, and I bring it down after blinding it with an arrow a second time.  As it happened, my landing spot perfectly shielded me so that none of the other Guardians were capable of targeting me, and with the central one destroyed, I am safe for the moment.  After the bridge, there’s a second expanse with another updraft, and another two, maybe three half-dead Guardian hulks between me and another wide hallway leading into a deeper chamber further back.

Considering how well that worked, I elect to go for the mad dash approach a second time, and manage to penetrate their defenses, gliding past their laser blasts, and land out of their range, and in the rear chamber I find the shrine.  It’s actually in a spot almost directly below the point where I had marked on the map my best guess as to where I was detecting it.  So I guess I am starting to get the hang of triangulation with the sensor.

I go into the shrine, and this one has no puzzle for me.  I am given a powerful fire sword and a spirit orb.  I decide to leave the sword, for now, because I have so many powerful weapons as it is right now, and I feel like I’m cleaning out the best stuff from every zone in the land without actually facing the major obstacles of each zone in turn, and if I don’t leave some of the good stuff for later, I’ll use it up on weaker, inconsequential enemies first, and then really be screwed when it comes time to fight the Divine Beasts, or Ganon.  Now that the shrine is unlocked, I can come back to it any time, and it will hold my weapon for me until I need it.

I guess while I’m waiting for the Blood Moon so I can stand on Washa’s Bluff naked and bring forth a new shrine, I guess I should check out the Illumeni Plateau.

I glide over from the highest nearest point of Washa’s Bluff, and climb up the rest of the way to the top.  It is dry and barren compared to Washa’s Bluff, no plant life but a few tumbleweed and dried out shrubs and some trees that died before they grew taller than Link.  I walk over to a rock formation and it comes alive.  Another Stone Talus fight.

I’m not carrying an iron sledge hammer, and it’s night, and suddenly three moblin skeletons pop up, and some kees, and a few chuchus to boot, and it’s a lot more than I was looking for, so I decide to transport out.  I teleport to Hateno village and go to my house, where there is always a free sledge hammer for the taking.  I swap it into my inventory, and then go to bed to sleep until morning, wake up fully refreshed, and teleport back to the shrine by the cherry tree on Satori mountain, and glide back to Washa’s Bluff, hop over to Illumeni Plateau, and fight the Talus in the daytime.  I have a pretty good fight, and it drops a lot of gems, as usual, but I score at least two rubies from this one, so it’s a pretty nice haul.

Scouting the rest of the plateau, I find nothing of interest, so I bring up the map and use my telescope to see what else is in the general area that might be worth checking out while I wait for the next Blood Moon. 

Past the Tabantha Tower, the most recent tower I’ve activated, the one with the evil goo, there’s a road leading further north, and I haven’t gone down it, so I decide to do that.

I glide down in that direction, and as I get closer I spot a stand of pine trees and a treehouse hideout, and I come in for a landing to check it out.  I’m expecting bokoblins, but see no one around.  This one is looking abandoned.  But suddenly, before I know it, three lizals are on top of me.  They have a chameleon-like power that allows them to blend in, and these ones are green as the grass, and I never noticed them until they were right on top of me.

I quick-equip sword and shield, and manage to take them out without getting too badly injured myself.  There seems to be no way up this treehouse, so I climb a nearby tree to jump off of it and glide down, and there’s a rusty halberd, a rusty clayomore, and a chest with a Solider’s Bow, which is a decent bow if nothing special.  I could have skipped this encounter.

Back to the road, it passes through a narrow gap between two tall rocks.  I smell ambush, and I can already see a lizal standing guard on the road leading into the pass. I glide down to the rocks above, and follow them along the road, and spot a second lizal, down below.  I decide to take this one out, and drop bombs on him until he’s dead.  I glide down to pick up the loot drops, and then three more skeletal lizals pop up out of the ground and surprise attack me, but I quickly take them down, and now I have even more loot.  A couple bows, a spear, a couple boomeranges, body parts for brewing elixirs, and a couple of skeleton arms.  I can’t carry all the weapons, so I make my choices and continue on.  

The road curves around to the left, and then continues west, going downhill.  Up ahead, I see yet another stable, and decide to check in.

This one is called Rito Stable, and is close to Rito village, home of the bird-people. Most stables have a shrine right nearby, but this one doesn’t seem to, although I can see not too far away at Rito village there is a shrine, and there’s another shrine visible a short distance away to the north uphill.

Kass is here, and sings me the song of the battle against Ganon from 10,000 years ago.  There’s a few other people to talk to, but not much especially interesting. 

I continue down the road, and come to a small foot bridge, cross it, and I’m in Rito village.  It is the tall stone structure that I had spotted from Tabantha Tower that I thought looked like a skyscraper-sized magic wand.  A path spirals upward around the stone tower, and all along it there are little shops and homes, and I talk to many Rito there.  They tell me about the Divine Beast above us, Vah Medoh, and how it appeared recently and is threatening.  They sent their warriors to investigate it but some were injured and some didn’t come back.   They are safe on the ground, but Vah Medoh attacks them if they fly too high in the air, and it’s demoralizing to be a Rito and not be able to fly very high.  The Rito are mostly reluctant to talk to me about their troubles, since I’m Hylian and an outsider, but they seem to recognize that I’m a warrior, and of good heart, so they seem to warm up to me a bit as I talk to more of them.

I go to the shrine here, and it’s a wind puzzle. There are fans, which blow turbines if they are pointed at them.  The puzzle is to arrange the fans so that they turn every turbine.  There’s also a treasure chest, which I grab, and after a little trial and error, I solve the main puzzle and claim my spirit orb.

I talk to the Rito elder, who asks me to help them deal with Vah Medoh, and in order to do that I need to find one of their soldiers.  I’m not sure where he is.

I try climbing up further, but the walkway ends, and then there’s a lot more stone towering above me.  I try to climb it and get nearly to the top, but run out of stamina and fall.  I catch myself and land on a part of the village where there’s a launching point that will take me to close to the other nearby shrine that I had spotted, so I decide to check that one out.  

I glide over, and it’s very cold, but with my warm doublet, ruby headband, and snow shoes, I’m comfortable.  I fight a few monsters, skeleton moblins and bokoblins on horseback, all well-armed, and then get to the shrine.  This shrine is another wind puzzle.  It’s a very tall shaft with platforms hanging in space, and each platform has a fan blowing upward, creating an updraft that I can ride up with the glider to make it to the next platform.  I nearly get to the top, and then get stuck, as there’s no apparent path to get to the last platform where the shrine master waits.  I pause the game and it displays the name of the shrine again, which gives me a clue about how to find a hidden path up to the very top, and I solve the puzzle.  

A little further on the road out of the shrine, I come to a small building. There’s a sign outside of it that says “flight range” which looks like a practice course for flying creatures to do archery.  I can see a number of targets from where I stand, and shoot 3 or 4 of them.  I expect I’ll receive something for this, but nothing happens.  Upon looking a bit further, I can see still more targets.  Apparently, I’m supposed to glide out and fire arrows while in mid-air.  This is tricky, but when you shoot an arrow while gliding, you have to put away the glider, and you begin to fall.  But time slows down, and you get a chance to aim.  But this burns up a lot of stamina.  So I guess the idea is to glide, see a target, quickly take aim and destroy it, then switch back to glider and get back to someplace safe to land.  There’s a lot of updraft on the course, so it should be doable, with practice.  I am not very good at this  yet, and screw up, but it’s night, and so maybe if I come back later someone will be here, who can talk to me about the challenge and give me some tips…