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Looking to where I can go next, the closest pin to my location is a short distance north, across a river. I head there to check it out. Before I get close enough to see what it is, I find another Korok looking to find his friend. It seems these guys are ultra common in this area. So far they’ve been easy to help, give me two korok seeds, and I have a working theory that they are there to lead me toward a nearby shrine that happens to be within a short distance of where the friend is camping. I’d like to clear another shrine, so I take the Korok to his buddy.

This time, I have to cross two rivers to get him there. I see a bridge, it’s a bit out of my way, but easiest way to go given that I’m carrying the Korok with Ultrahand. So I walk down river, carrying the Korok with me, and get to the bridge, cross it, and run into Addison. Addison wants help too, and this too is generally pretty easy, so I stop to help him. I put the Korok down, and go find a large rock that I can use to help him prop up his sign. He thanks me, and gives me his usual rewards.

I go back to my first task of helping the Korok. I tried assembling a little cart for him to ride on, thinking that might make it easier to cross the river with, but so far I haven’t needed it. I’ve just carried the cart with the Korok riding on it, all using Ultrahand. But there’s one more river that I need to cross, and this time the cart comes in handy. It floats, and I put it in the middle of the river, as far as I can reach with Ultrahand. Then I go swim out to it, and get on the cart, floating down river a ways. Then I pick up the Korok, unglue him from the cart, and put him as far out into the water toward the shore we’re trying to reach, and swim to shore, then pick him up from the shore with Ultrahand, and from there is just a little walk to get him to his friend.

At this point, an Octorock floating in the river wakes up and starts trying to kill us. I snipe it with the bow, and take it out, then grab the Korok and get him ashore. Fortunately the river current isn’t too fast and doesn’t take him far off downriver.

I get the Korok to his friend, but there’s no shrine nearby for me to discover. So there goes that theory.

I note that I’m in the area of Hyrule that I recognize well, the road from the Great Pleateau that leads to Kakariko Village and Hateno Village, through the broken mountain with its twin peaks. I feel like I’m at home in Hyrule for the first time. This area is one of the first parts of the map that I explored in BOTW, and feels more “home” to me than Hyrule Castle does, which in TOTK is so distorted by the changes to the map that it feels very different.

I look around, and spot a flying creature. It is large and looks a bit like a fish, not so much like a bird or a dragon. I spot another one, a bit further off, and it seems to be carrying something. I look at it with my Purah Pad telescope, it’s a bokoblin. Wow, so that’s something new.

I decide that I want to go back to that area that I had pinned on the map, before I got distracted by the Korok, and the most direct way is basically right under the zone this flying creature is patrolling.

I am feeling brave, so I just go for it, and when I get close enough that I’m spotted, I nock an arrow and loose at the creature, which drops the bokoblin. I’m hoping the fall will injure the bokoblin, but it seems that enemies are very resistant to falling damage in this game, just as they were in BOTW, and he survives the fall with almost no damage taken. The flying creature dies, however. I don’t like the look of the bokoblin, it is blue and seems to be a more powerful type, so I opt not to bother fighting it, and sneak away through some ruins that hide me from its line of sight, and I’m able to break off from the combat easily. Somehow I come across the dropped monster parts of the flying creature, and learn its name, it is called an Aerocuda. I guess kind of like Barracuda.

I re-check the map to find the pinned location I wanted to check out, and it’s still a ways off but not too much farther. I head that direction, and when I get there, it’s a tall stone pillar that I had spotted. Nearby is the same river I crossed with the Korok, and I’ve now crossed back over to get to this location. There’s a large, hollow tree stump at this point in the river, and I go in to check it out, and find a korok puzzle, a block that I have to re-assemble with Ultrahand, which is much easier to manipulate than the similar puzzles in BOTW were with the Magnesis ability.

I turn my attention back to the pillar, and try climbing it. I only have one Stamina wheel, and it gets me about 4/5 to the top, but I need to take an Elixir to get all the way to the top. I happen to have one, so I use it. On the top of the pillar I find what looks like a huge dandelion. I try picking it, but that doesn’t work. So I try hitting it with my weapon, which cuts it down, releasing one large, glowing seed. It falls slowly toward the ground below, and I jump off, intending to use the glider to land right next to it so I can pick it up. When I land, however, a chu chu blob spawns and attacks me, I turn to face it, and lose track of what happened to the dandelion seed, which disappears. I slay the chu chu, and look around for it, and it’s gone. I am annoyed.

Nothing I can do about it, other than reload the game and try again, but I decide to just accept it and proceed forward. The next place on the map that I had pinned is a bit of a hike, but I plot a course and run straight over the terrain, over hills and through trees, until I get to it. It’s a shrine, and I am interested in getting one more Light of Blessing so I can get another Heart Container or Stamina Wheel when I return to Lookout Landing.

But before I get there, I find something interesting. On the ground, there’s a circular pool of water, perfectly circular, about the diameter a humanoid would take up standing. It’s right in my path, and so as a get close to it, I check it out. It triggers a cutscene, much like those random map points in BOTW would trigger memories of Link’s amnesiac past.

This time, I see a vision, of Ganondorf summoning a large herd of Molduga, who stampede through a valley, apparently to attack the Hylian people. Rauru, Zelda, and another Hylian woman stand at the edge of a high point overlooking the valley, watching this happen. Rauru uses some power, which unleashes a massive blast of energy, which destroys the entire stampede of Molduga. Ganondorf recognizes this as a Zonai power, and muses that brute force alone will not be enough him to win, and he considers what his next plan should be.

OK then. That’s all the time I have to play tonight. Guess I’ll find that shrine next time.

Outside the shrine I just completed, there’s a little lost Korok not far away, looking to be reunited with his friend. I help him out, just picking him up and carrying him over by walking, using the Ultrahand ability. This is slow but involves no difficulty, and is probably easier than trying to build a vehicle of some kind. I’m rewarded with two Korok seeds for my trouble.

Near the Koroks, I spot a lady with a horse and wagon, and go talk to her. She is trying to get a load of stuffed sand seal plush toys to the children of Hateno village. I startle her, and her horse kicks the cart, causing the merchandise to go flying into the water. I offer to help, but she wants me to give her 20 rupees as a deposit in case I steal her wares, and I have to complete the task under a time limit.

Forget you, lady, pick them up your damn self then. I offered to help, and I have better things to do with my time.

I only hope that bringing toys to the children of Hateno doesn’t unlock something else that’s worthwhile down the road.

I look back to where I left the Koroks, and there’s a tall pillar with a platform atop it, with a long ladder to make it easy to climb up. I do so, hoping to get a good view and maybe it’ll be a good spot to glide from to get to something interesting.

At the top of the pillar, I’m looking down into the river which flows nearby, looking almost directly at a large boulder. I wonder, most likely there’s something to do here, perhaps I should try gliding to that rock, and see what happens.

But looking at my map, there’s already several pinned locations nearby that I would like to check out, so I decide to try to focus on finding and completing Shrines for the time being, since that is basically one of the only ways that I can earn permanent rewards.

I pick a Shrine location that I’d pinned and run towards it, but before I get very far, I see another shooting star fall from the sky. I try running toward it, but this time I don’t have a horse, and I can’t cover the distance before its shining beacon gives out, and I lose it.

There’s a shrine nearby when the beacon fades, and I go into it; it’s a combat challenge, a tutorial for throwing weapons. There are a few rusty halberds, and a Zainite soldier to practice throwing at. I hit him a few times, and earn a Zainite spear and a Light of Blessing.

Exiting the shrine, now I’m right by another Korok who wants to be reunited with his friend. OK, this is easy enough, and he’s right here. I just pick him up with Ultrahand and walk him over to his friend, and collect my two seeds reward.

Only, on my way walking over, I’m ambushed by some moblins and bokoblins who spotted me from their tower, and come over to fight me. I’m surrounded before I know it, and get killed. I respawn and try again, this time keeping more distance between me and the enemies, and deliver the Korok safely to his friend, earning another two seeds.

There’s another shrine near their camp sight, off the trail and back into a wooded area. I enter and it’s another combat challenge. This time, I’m stripped of all my gear, and have to win the challenge with the provided armaments: a shield, bow, 10 arrows, and a club.

There’s 3 or 4 Zonaite soldiers, one armed with a bow, the others with melee weapons. I have a fairly easy time defeating them, nailing them with a few arrows before they get in close to where I need to finish them off using the club. The club only lasts a few hits, before breaking, but I’m able to disarm another Zonaite soldier and take his weapon, and use it to defeat the rest of them.

Not bad.

There’s a treasure chest with a Zonaite weapon, and then I get another Light of Blessing. I’m up to 7 now, and if I get one more I’ll be able to cash them in for 2 more heart containers or some extra stamina.

Yes, please.

Outside of the shrine I just completed last time, I note on the map that I had actually set a pin nearby, not on the shrine location itself. I think there was some interesting rock formation that I wanted to check out. So I run off in that direction. As I approach, I notice a huge block of skyland falling down, and it lands in the field. I am curious and concerned. What if one of these falls on me, or what if they keep falling, and the entire sky world falls back to land on Hyrule and do massive damage to everything?

I don’t have long to ponder this, as night falls and a pair of bokoblins who were camping nearby notice me and run over to attack. One swings a stone hammer at me, while the other tries to hit me with a lit branch. I manage to fight them off, with some difficulty, sustaining some damage. After the fight concludes, another huge block falls from the sky. It reminds me of Tetris.

It doesn’t seem like there’s anything particularly interesting about these falling blocks, so I look at them for a bit and continue onward. A bit further into the field, I spot a small herd of horses, and decide to grab one to tame it. As I do so, I see a falling star fall from the sky. It’s right in the middle of my field of view, and a long way from where I am, so I use the horse’s speed to cover the distance more quickly. When I reach the shooting star fragment, to my surprise it’s right outside the entrance to an honest to goodness horse stable. Wow, how convenient!

I decide to register and board my new horse here. The inn keeper/stable master guy tells me that I have boarded horses with them in the past. I’ve heard that you can retrieve your horses from BOTW for use in TOTK, so I gather this is how it is done. However, I decide to board this horse, which I name Pony. I also notice our old friend Beedle is sitting nearby, but I don’t bother talking to him at this time.

I check Pony in, and walk over to check out a nearby shrine.

The shrine puzzle is called “Building with logs” or something like that. I need to use Ultrahand to cross a series of obstacles of increasing difficulty. The first three are easy enough; I simply use the logs as bridges and walk across the gaps to the next platform. The final challenge is a small body of water, with a current, and I use the logs to construct a raft, attach a fan that happens to be at the last station, and use it to propel myself across the water. Only, my angles are off, and I end up blowing the raft into the wall off to one side, where I get stuck. I try repositioning the fan, which gets me a little closer, but then I start going in circles. I try re-adjusting again, and get a little closer, this time I just wait for the circle to get as close to land as it will, and jump for it, hoping that I can swim against the current quickly enough to get the the shore before my stamina runs out.

I just barely make it, and earn the reward of a Light of Blessing.

Well, that wasn’t too bad.

I’m in an unmapped area on the Hyrule Plains, or adjacent enough to them that the terrain is pretty much the same. It’s time to explore a bit.

I only have a little time to play today. Outside the shrine I just completed in our last entry, I return to that chest I saw but couldn’t open, and this time I have an easy time of placing the platform with Ultrahand, and can open the chest easily. It gives me some minor item, arrows x5 I think, but I’m happy that I do seem to have gotten better with Ultrahand as a result of all the practice I spent in the frustrating shrine last night.

I am right nearby another tower, and I want to go check it out and see if I can get into it. It’s on top of a high rocky formation, which has additional spiked barriers around its perimeter. I climb up, hoping that I can get over the spikes, but there doesn’t seem to be a gap or gate anywhere. I am hoping that this is a fortress controlled by our Hylian forces, but before long I spot a Bokoblin on watch, and know that this is going to be a difficult area for me to get into at my current skill and strength level.

I cautiously proceed around the lip of the fortress, around the edge of the rocky formation, and eventually come to a bridge way leading down to a Bokoblin encampment platform, which is also guarded. I spot a good half dozen or more enemies and it looks like to clear this out I’ll need to have a better plan, or a great deal more skill than I currently do at evading damage.

I retreat back the way I came, and head toward another spot that I had marked on the map, a shrine off to the North of where I’m standing. Along the way, I come to another bokoblin tree stand, also surrounded by spiky brambles, and I engage them briefly, but they are equipped with fire arrows and it’s a little too dangerous, so I run away.

I hide among some trees, and one of them comes alive and tries to kill me. I switch weapons to one of my improvised stone hammers, and hit it, but it doesn’t do any damage, although it does seem to connect.

Maybe I should try hitting it with a firey attack, and see how that does.

But nah, fighting enemies is rarely ever worth it in this game, unless you have to do it to complete a mission. So I just run away again.

I am interested in seeing how to fight these guys, and what sort of loot they drop, but I will bet dollars to korok seeds that they are not worth fighting either, because so little in the game is worth it based on risk-reward. It’s fun to fight if you’re powerful and have some practice with the controls, but in terms of what you get for winning fights, it’s never really worth anything because the only stuff you get for your troubles is temporary and doesn’t actually make you any closer to completing the game’s primary mission.

So I continue running away, until I get close to the shrine I’m trying to reach. Before I get there, I find a little Korok on the ground, on his back, with a heavy backpack. So he’s one of those travelling Koroks who needs your help to get reunited with his friend that he got separated from.

I’m going to try to help him, but his friend is way the hell far away across a field, his smoke signal barely visible in the distance. And suddenly some more bokoblins and a moblin run up from their nearby camp and attack me!

This is pretty cool, because in BOTW encamped enemies wouldn’t really leave their area if they spotted you, and this always seemed to fly in the face of the nature of an enemy. It’s one thing if they defend their home from an intruder, or run off someone from their territory, but it doesn’t feel like they’re being evil when they do this. But if they simply spot you going by and not taking any aggressive action toward them, and yet they still come out to try to kill you, that makes them feel more evil.

Good on Nintendo for making this subtle change in the AI. I’m pleased.

But yeah, still gonna run away. I can’t help the Korok without killing a group of 4-5 bokoblins and a moblin, and I’m at a disadvantage until I get my skill and power up, so I run away like a weakling coward, leaving the poor Korok to what would almost certainly be a doomed fate. Except that, knowing the game design, I’m sure the enemies will most likely not do anything to him, and next time I’m back in the area, the scenario will have reset itself so that I can attempt the challenge again, and so, once again, nothing I do or fail to do actually matters in the greater scheme of things.

I think that’s a recurring theme in these Diary entries and one major criticism or flaw in the design philosophy of these Zelda games.

So I enter the nearby shrine, and it’s challenge is called “spinning things” or something like that. I wish I was better at remembering names and titles, I never can quite remember them exactly, and I can’t remember how to spell Zonaite the right way without looking it up, so this diary is going to seem semi-literate at best, but I’m doing the best I can, and there’s a lot of detail in these entries that I am trying to remember, so bear with me.

So in side this shrine, I’m introduced to these wheeled platforms that roll by from one side to the other. They seem like they would be dangerous if I were to get hit by one. There are three which go from one side of the room to the other, and then the room resets and they do it again. The middle wheeled platform has a treasure chest on it. So if I’m feeling up to it I can try to get on to this platform and open the chest before it reaches the opposite side of the room and rolls under the wall, scraping me off of it, which would probably hurt a lot if it happen in real life.

It turns out it’s a simple enough matter to jump on to the moving platform, and I easily open the chest. It’s almost not a challenge. The chest has a bundle of 5 arrows in it, making it a worthy reward for such a simple activity.

Next, I have to assemble one of these moving platforms. There are two wheels that I need to attach, so it’s really obvious I’m supposed to finish building this half-completed cart and use it. The room has an inclined, conveyor belt like floor section that is moving quickly enough that running on it isn’t going to work as a way to traverse it, not without an insane amount of stamina. But building the cart is pretty easy. I just have to get the wheels attached, then stand on the cart and activate the wheels by hitting one of them with a weapon or arrow, and as long as I’m aimed in the right direction, off I go.

This is also a fairly easy challenge. On the other side of the conveyor belt floor section, there’s a crank embedded in the floor, which opens a gate as long as force is being applied to it. I can push it manually with my own strength, but as soon as I let go, the gate slams down, and I can’t get through it.

It’s easy and straightforward to reposition that cart I made to run it into the crank, turning it, to open the gate long enough for me to run through. Possibly I might even use Ultrahand to glue the cart to the crank, and arrange it so that it permanently spins the crank, but I don’t bother with that; I just aim it to ram the crank, a bit off-center so that it will spin it in the right direction, and that works good enough.

I’m rewarded with yet another Sphere of Light. Now I have four, so I can cash in for a heart container or stamina wheel boost.

When I emerge from the shrine, it’s evening and growing dark.

Well… you’re not going to believe this.

Getting out of the underworld is EASY.

All you have to do is use the map to quick-travel. All levels of the map are accessible; you just have to use your eyes to notice the control hint on the screen, which tells you that the D-pad up/down will select the layer that you’re looking at on the map.

I figure this out after spending an hour or more in the underworld. I actually found it fun and rewarding to have the extra challenge, to actually need to use those foods and items that I had found, and to have some fear that I could actually run out of the stuff I needed most to keep me alive. I loved the unknown fear of not knowing how to get back to the safe and familiar area. But now I feel a little disappointed that it’s that easy to leave. I was expecting to have to earn the capability to get out, to have to fight my way up to the surface, to have to explore an extended time down there with little chance of survival and having to run away a lot and use my wits to their maximum, and find something that I would have to activate in order to be able to leave the underworld at will.

Instead it’s just a quick travel feature that I didn’t realize was given to me “for free”. This is how quick-travel can cheapen the game and remove opportunity for challenge. I would expect quick-travel options at some point, but let me appreciate quick-travel by not giving it to me so early and with so little done to earn it. Make me feel just how big that Hyrule map is.

Sigh. Well, whatever. I explored down there a bit more. I found an area where there was plentiful Zainite or however the fuck you spell it. I used up my stone hammers, but the combats with the bokoblins down there yield plenty of them, as they seem to be mining the stuff down there also. But I found that bomb arrows are even more effective for mining the stuff. They will destroy several blocks of the ore and drop all their yield at once, giving you many times more Zainite per action than pounding it out with a hammer weapon.

I also found these items called “poe” which are souls of some kind. They seemed important, but they also seemed like insects that you can gather as raw material. And there was a lot of them, so I grabbed all I could.

I couldn’t find anyone to talk to down there, or any clue about what I should be doing, so once I realized that I could just leave any time I wanted to, I decided to get back up to the surface. I’ll obviously need to go back down there again, at some point, once I learn more about what’s going on down there, and likely after I’m a lot more powerful. I will be much better off when I have a few more heart containers and some decent armor, and more supplies, especially light generation.

Without knowing more it seems like it’s going to be important to activate all the Roots of Light down there. Or Light Roots. Or whatever they’re called. Once they are turned on they brighten up the environment, fill out an area of the underworld map, and give you another quick-travel point. So probably once you light them all up, the evil power of the Gloom coming from below ground will be seriously weakened or destroyed. Beyond that, I expect as the story unfolds I’ll learn more.

I’m not sure what the right path is to do more story; I can look at the quest log and figure that out easily enough, but I’m just exploring right now.

Back at the surface of Hyrule, I return to the point near the chasm that I had jumped down. There were multiple points of interest within line of sight of this area, and I pick one at random and head toward it.

I pass by a little fortified zone full of at least a half dozen or more bokoblins and a moblin. It seems like this game must have been coded more efficiently to make it possible for you to have to fight more enemies at once. Which is a good thing. But I’m not powerful enough right now, and fighting is so pointless in a game where you use up your gear about as fast as you replenish it from these fights, nothing is permanent, and leveling up from combat only means that they throw tougher versions of the enemies at you.

It feels like a sisyphean treadmill, honestly. There’s no sense of progress other than the opening of the map and the completion of quests in this game. And yeah, that’s a criticism.

The thing I’m headed for is a shrine. I get there, and discover Addison, holding up another sign nearby. So before I go to complete the shrine, I help him get his sign erected, and he thanks me, gives me three rewards, all paltry, and then heads off to put up another sign somewhere else in Hyrule.

Another nearby rock formation has a treasure chest high up on a shelf, which I can’t seem to get to. I try using Ultrahand, but I can’t move the chest, and although I can put a platform right next to it, it doesn’t seem to want to open for me for some reason. I guess I just suck.

Oh well, it’s bound to be a crappy weapon that will last about 10 hits and then shatter, so who gives a fuck.

I go to the shrine. This one is another ultrahand challenge. It’s a bit of a tutorial. There’s these tent-spike objects that you can manipulate with ultrahand, and this helps you learn how those work. Not everything in the game world can be manipulated by ultrahand, and the things that can’t be manipulated, you can pin stuff to using these tent pegs objects. The pointy end will sink into the ground and anchor there. And you can attach other ultrahandable objects to them, so they end up being like anchor points. This is useful and I’m sure will prove important to solving many of the challenges ahead.

So, this puzzle takes a long time to figure out because I don’t know how the stuff is supposed to work.

First, I cross a bottomless trench, by jumping onto a platform that is rotating on an arm, which carries me to the other side of the trench. There, I find a floor switch, and a hittable switch. I stand on the floor switch, and a large section of wall in the chamber before me rotates around a 180 degree spin, and on the other side of the wall is a big orange bullseye.

There’s a chute coming out of the ceiling, and a ball drops from this chute, and rolls down the floor, and drains off into the bottomless pit, and then appears again at the chute, endlessly.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but evidently I need to get this ball to hit the bullseye.

On the ground there’s a couple of those tent spike anchors, and two sections of rod.

In the center of the floor is an object that I don’t understand, but I can’t control it with ultrahand, and the ultrahandable objects won’t stick to it. Eventually I figure out that when I hit the hittable switch in the room, this object rapidly spins. I deduce that the solution to the puzzle is to glue the ultrahandable parts together, and somehow attach them to this spinner, which I can then use as a baseball bat to hit the ball into the target.

It takes quite a bit of trial and error to realize that the anchor spike is the only way to get the log-shaped pieces to stick to the spinner. But once I figure that out, it’s pretty easy. I just have to get the angle and the timing right, and then I can hit that target.

I managed to do it on the 2nd or 3rd try, and open up the Spirit Light room, and collect my Light reward, completing the trial.

But there’s another room, locked, and the second target in the puzzle chamber must be the solution for it. This second target is more difficult, because there’s a section of wall hanging from chains, blocking it. The chains are unbreakable, but the hanging wall section is ultrahandable. Eventually I figure out that I can use more of those anchor pins to attach to the wall section, and pin it to the ceiling so that it is up and out of the way. This is really awkward and difficult because I’m so bad with the controls, but that’s the point of these shrines, to get you to figure out how to solve these puzzles in a trial that is challenging without trying to kill you.

So it take me a long, long, time to fucking pin that section of wall to the ceiling, but once I do, I figure the next part will be easy. Nope! The positioning is awkward; I have to change the angle of the “bat” that I created with the ultrahand objects, and the angle that the ball rolls in is really awkward. It’s like I’m batting lefty, and I am trying to swing at a pitch while standing in the batter’s box in a weird, oblique angle that makes it so that I almost have to hit a foul ball to hit this target. Most of the time when the bat connects with the ball, it doesn’t make good contact, and the ball rolls slowly, without enough energy to hit the target even if it happens to be hit in the right direction, which is only maybe 1 in 8 attempts, if that.

I fiddle with the positioning of the bat again and again, hoping to make the adjustment so that it will be easier and give me a better chance.

Eventually, I manage to do it, but it takes a good hour, hour and a half. And it’s frustrating. And for all that effort, the reward in the chest is an Elixir of Speed, which is a craftable item that I could make, and is a temporary item that I probably will never actually need to use, or will rarely want to use.

Totally not worth it. Fuck’s sake.

This is a cool game, and I know everyone loves it, you can’t say anything bad about Legend of Zelda without hordes of Zelda fanboys wanting to hunt you down for having a contrary opinion, but Nintendo could make the challenges better and make the rewards better. I don’t hate it, but I feel like it’s less fun, more of a chore, and has little to nothing to do with advancing the storyline, or completing the mission of the game.

I felt this way during much of BOTW, too, but I kept faith that all this stuff would be rewarded, like the shrines were going to be some kind of practice for a real world battle where I could use the abilities that I was training with. But really they’re just like little mini games built out of the engine’s physics systems, and they’re alright, but not when they’re ultra frustrating and give you so little in reward for the effort.

Could be it’s super easy in reality, and I just really suck at the game, but as I’m new to these things and learning the mechanics this way, I kind of feel like these kind of tutorial puzzles are supposed to be a reasonable challenge, with a reasonable reward for solving them, not a pain in the fucking ass with a jack shit reward that’s not worth it.

But because every Legend of Zelda game is supposed to be the Best Game Ever Made in the History of Video Games, I feel kind of guilty feeling like this. Only… I’m not wrong. I don’t think I am.

Well, it looks like I’m probably stuck down here for a while.

The underworld is dark and dangerous.

I have a bunch of those brightbloom berries that I can use to light up the immediate surroundings. These are pretty essential, and I hope I don’t run out of them before I can figure out how to get out of here.

Without them, it’s so dark I can’t see shit. It’s practically pitch black, and I could be walking straight into a wall and not really know it.

There’s patches of Gloom all over, and walking into it drains my life meter, and I can’t replenish health with food until I recover from the Gloom. I can do that if I’m in the vicinity of one of the underground travel towers. I tried fast traveling back to the one point I saw on the map that I could travel to, and it turns out that it was the underground light source that I had activated earlier, not a way back to the surface.

I’ve run into a couple of Bokoblin camps, and fought them. They are plentiful, they move pretty quickly, and they use bows. They can kill me if I’m not taking them seriously, and I’m pretty weak with only a 4-heart health meter, weakened by Gloom, and basically no armor.

Weapons are plentiful. There’s skeleton bokoblins and if you kill them their arms are a 20-damage weapon, which is far more powerful than anything else I’ve found so far, although they break very quickly. Living bokoblins and moblins seem to have a fire affinity, and will use fire. You have to watch out for that. I’ve also encountered some weird giant toad looking things that hop around and are a nuisance.

I found a couple of skeleton horses, and tamed one, and discovered that I can safely travel over pools of Gloom while riding them. So that is handy. But riding fast in the dark is bad. So I ride a bit, shoot off a glow berry arrow a distance ahead, explore and grab any forage I can find, and repeat.

I make my way around the perimeter of the area that illuminated when I activated the travel tower, and then pick a direction at random, and head to the west on the map, and after a bit of peril I find and activate another travel tower. Handy.

But how do I get back to the surface? That’s what I really want to do right now. I feel like I don’t really belong here just yet, but I’m surviving OK, and should be able to handle it down here as long as I don’t have to fight too much, and don’t go through all my supplies, which… I’m going to run out of food pretty soon and I’m going to be pretty screwed if I do, and I’ll also be pretty screwed if I run out of light source.

The forage here is different. There’s a plant that can confuse enemies, causing them to fight each other. Which seems like a good thing to put on an arrow, and then shoot into a camp and let things sort themselves out while I stand off at a distance and avoid getting into any fights.

There’s also bomb plants, which as you might expect, give you a form of bomb. It’s apparently pretty powerful, when I used one it really trashed the boko I hit with it, although that might have also been due to secondary explosions from an explosive crate.

And some kind of spore producing mushrooms, which I don’t know what those do yet.

I don’t know if I should continue to explore laterally, or maybe try to climb. There’s some elevated things that look like tree roots but are probably rock, since I can’t imagine tree roots being at this depth, given how far I fell to get here… it doesn’t seem like climbing would be a fast way out of here, and might take like hours.

When I exit the shrine, it is raining. But not a thunderstorm. The rain lets up after a short time. Near the shrine, there’s a rock formation, what looks like something that fell from the sky realm. I go over to investigate, climb it using Ascend, which works better in the rain than does conventional climbing, and find a fire seed plant at the top, and a rock, under which I find a Korok.

I take the vantage offered from atop this small rock to peer around in the dark using the Pura Pad’s telescope ability. I’m in the middle of a pretty much wide open field, with gently rolling hills and lush meadows surrounding me in all directions for a good distance. Off in the distance, there are numerous points of interest, and I try to pin as many as I can, but the Purah Pad doesn’t allow more than 6 or so pins. I spot several shrines off in the distance, and try to pin each of them. There are several towers, and some buildings, mostly ruined looking places, some interesting looking geological formations, fallen rocks from the sky above, and a Bokoblin camp or two.

Near the Gloom hole I passed by on my way to this shrine I just completed I notice that there is a hot air balloon, and I wonder whether that had been there before, and if so how I could have missed the thing. I walk over to take a look, and there’s another Hylian standing near the edge of the chasm. I talk to him, startling him, and he tells me he’s on the Chasm Investigation Squad, or something. He’s trying to discover what’s up with the chasms and the gloom, and is working with one of the guys who I talked to back at Lookout Landing, who is working with Hoz and Purah.

I decide since I’m here, I might as well jump down the dangerous looking hole and find out what I can. I leap off the edge and fall quite a long way. It is very dark and I can’t really see the ground below, which must certainly be rushing up to me at an unsafe rate. I unfurl my glider, and try to assess where I’m at, but it’s no good, too dark, and I really can’t see how much farther I might have to go.

I don’t want to run out of endurance so I drop again, risking everything, and then re-deploy the glider. I do this two or three more times. I pass through a sparkling mist about midway down, and then I get the idea that maybe I can take one of those glowing seeds and drop it, and it will help me see the bottom. I can’t quite figure out how to do this, though, but as I am continuing to fall I eventually see a light that I’m heading towards — must be the ground — so I pop the glider one more time and land safely.

So this is how I learn that TOTK has a THIRD map level, for the underground. I might have guessed, it wasn’t too much of a secret, really. But man is this game going to be extra super big.

It’s very dim, but the Gloom doesn’t seem to be too abundant right here, and I’m not feeling any ill effects. I wonder how I will return to the surface, or what I will end up finding down here. I look about and see some glowing fireflies, which I stealth sneak up to and capture. They’re a new species, native to the underworld. Then I spot something that looks like a large plant pot, almost reminding me of the fairy ponds from BOTW. It looks like I can walk up to it and do something with it, so I try to do that, and it lights up, illuminating a small part of the area surrounding it, and also fills in a bit of the map on the Purah Pad. So it’s a little like a Tower.

I wonder, can my Ascend power really take me through so much rock to the surface of Hyrule? Is that the way back? Or can I use the Tower transport system, even from way down in these depths? Or will I have to climb out? Or find a route to the surface through caves? How am I going to survive?

Well, alright.

It’s time for me to tackle the tower at Lookout Landing. I walk over, and I find Purah fiddling with the controls of the tower.

She activates the tower, and it lights up. All around the area, other towers also light up, all at once, as if on a network. A beacon of light streams out of the top of the tower, lighting up the sky.

The towers are activated. That wasn’t hard!

Purah tells me that I can update the map data on my Purah Pad if I visit the tower, and it will install the region that it has in its data banks. This will enable me to instantly travel to that tower, but also to have detailed map of the area around the tower.

So basically very much like the tower-map-fast travel system of BOTW, but updated a little bit.

Purah also gives me my glide wing back, and then tells me that they need me to go up the tower to scan the area with my Purah Pad to obtain an updated image of the terrain. So this is, I guess, why I can’t get the entire map of Hyrule all at once; I have to visit each tower, go to the top, and scan the land with the pad. There’s also map data for the sky level of the map, which is also updated. So Hyrule is effectively twice as big as in BOTW because there are two levels.

OK, so I go do that. I stand on a glowing section of floor in the middle of the tower, and it shoots me up, high into the air, all in a few seconds I’m maybe a thousand feet or more above the ground.

I’m on a tether, and the tether is like a data cable or something, the pad sends the data down the cable to the base of the tower, below.

After that, I’m free to fall, dive, or glide back to earth.

I’m very high up, and can see a long way. As I’m coming down, I try to look about and see what I can see.

I don’t try to move anywhere, because I want to test whether the winds will blow me about, or if I will just fall straight down; I fall straight down, right back into the hole at the top of the tower. At the very last instant, I use the glider to slow my descent, landing without taking any damage. Luckily.

I try going up the tower again, and it shoots me back up into the sky. This time, I test how fast I can move horizontally without deploying the glider. It’s not very fast, but I’m up so high that I can still manage to cover some ground. I don’t want to deploy the glider while I’m up too high, lest I run out of stamina meter and fall to my death. But maybe that works differently in TOTK than it did in BOTW for all I know. I’ll have to play around with it and test theories.

Looking around, nearby I spot a small (pond-sized) chasm in the ground not far from Lookout Landing. And not much past that, there’s a shrine. I decide to fall toward it and check it out.

I land in front of the chasm, and try to get close enough to look in. It’s pretty dark. Gloom is spewing forth from the hole in the ground, and I’m careful to avoid stepping in it. Nearby, there’s a small lean-to, with some building supplies near it. I spot a Hylian man, apparently resting in the lean-to. I go up to talk to him, and he tells me to be cautious about the Gloom, and its ruinous effects on your health. If you’re exposed it will drain your life slowly, and if you can get back to the surface, your health will slowly recover.

So, basically it’s kind of another environmental themed timer that prevents you from spending a lot of time in Gloomy areas, and forces you to hurry. So a lot like the cold and hot zones, but eeeeevil.

I continue to the shrine, and enter. The challenge is pretty simple. It involves manipulating large blocks of stone using the Ultrahand ability, and is a test of your ability to rotate and manipulate the shapes. There are two sub-challenges, and the idea is that you need to position the shape so that it will pass through a hole in the wall designed to accept the shape. This is like an IQ test for a 2 year old.

I feel like this is super simple but it’s still not entirely clear what I’m supposed to do with the shape once I get it to pass through the hole. At first I’m thinking I’m supposed to rotate the shape while it’s in the hole, using it as like a key in a lock. But that’s not it. I’m just supposed to take this long shape and pull it through an X-shaped hole, and use it as a bridge, laying it across a trench that I need to cross over to get to the next part of the shrine.

The second challenge is another block, this one is like two cubes that are welded together at the corners, creating an asymmetric shape a bit like a staircase. There’s a section of wall that I can use to position it to climb up, only it’s still not possible to climb up using conventional standard climbing techniques. It doesn’t take very long for me to realize that I can use the Ascend power, standing in the overhang of this block, and pass through the block to get to the top.

This gets me access to a chest with a potion of speed, and then I re-use the same block to get to the spirit orb and pass the challenge.

I have two spirit orbs now. Only they call them something else in this game, somethingsomething of Light or whatever. Same thing.

So that’s done. What next? Will the game tell me? Or should I just meander and screw around and figure things out?

I head up the way to Hyrule Castle like I’m supposed to. Along the way, I find more Hylians, standing around on watch. They’re part of Hoz’s search team, but they seem disorganized and inexperienced, and a bit aimless. They don’t really know what to do, but each of them tells me to continue a bit further onward, to the first gate tower, where I will find Hoz.

One of the guards is blocking a gate deeper into the Castle, and says I’m not allowed in without permission from Hoz. He doesn’t even trust me even though I’m Link.

I eventually do reach Hoz. There’s no combat or challenges to speak of. Hoz is relieved to see that I’m safe and asks me about the Princess. I explain quickly what has transpired, and then we both see Princess Zelda appear on a far tower, some distance away, yet unmistakably her.

She stands there for a brief moment, then turns into light and shoots off into the sky.

Hoz is amazed and we are all baffled. Hoz tells me that I must return to Purah at once to report what we have seen.

Huh? I just came from there. Can’t we just send a messenger? Or doesn’t Purah have another smartphone that we could just call her on??? Oh, OK…

So I head back, talking to the guards on the way, just to see if they have anything new to say.

Lol, and on the way back I realize I could have used the Ultrahand to open the great gate to the castle, instead of climbing over them like I did. Whoops. I forget these powers I have sometimes. But there’s always more than one way to do anything in this game…

On the way back, I talk to the guy who was holding up the sign of Hudson, and this time I figure out that he needs help holding the sign up. So using Ultrahand to grab a nearby piece of material, I use it to prop up the sign so it will not fall if he lets go, and then tell him to try letting go.

This works, he is happy that the sign is standing, and takes a moment to securely fasten it to the ground, and then rewards me with some rupees, and some food, and tells me he’s going to go everywhere and set up more signs. I have a feeling I’m going to end up seeing a lot of him… his name, Addison, seems to be a pun for “Add a Sign”. I think a lot of the names in the game are subtle puns. There was a guy in the search party back at the castle named “Sawtu” or “Saw, too” who also saw Princess Zelda when she appeared briefly.

After finishing with Addison, I return back to Purah’s and without wasting any time, run up and talk to her. She asks to see the Purah Pad, and says that we need to add map data to it, and to do that we need to activate a travel tower, which there happens to be one right here that they are working on completing…

Purah shows me around the town and explains the sleepover spot for resting, and a clothing shop that I can buy better clothes at if I want to, and then says when I’m ready to go up the tower, I can try it.

So I go around the area, which is called Lookout Landing, and I talk to a bunch of people. Everyone’s pretty helpful, in a tutorial kind of way, but also offering me useful information and items here and there that I might find handy later on in my quest.

I learn that the Upheaval is the term they use to describe the event that put the islands in the sky and revealed more of the Zonai technology and artifacts. This caused great rifts in the surface of the world, called chasms, and out of these chasms there is this stuff called Gloom, which is a red glowing smoke, from what I can tell. It reminds me of the Calamity from BOTW, but less oozy and gooey. But exposure to Gloom can make you ill, and there is some kind of yellow plant that can help treat the illness if you get it. There’s also a newspaper operating somewhere in Hyrule, I’m not sure where but it seems a lot of the people here are talking about Hebra, which has gotten even colder than it used to be, which was pretty darn cold as I recall from BOTW.

They are working on constructing a stable where I can board horses, but it’s not finished yet. Oh, and all the weapons in the world have decayed as a result of the Upheaval, I guess as an effect of the Gloom. So wherever I go, weapons are in poor condition, and in short supply.

There’s a royal shelter hidden below Lookout Landing, where there’s a cooking pot, a weapon supply store, and a bed I can rest in, along with a person named Nappin (ha) who can’t get out of bed because he’s so affected by the Gloom from when he went exploring in the Chasms.

I also learn from one of the people in the shelter that Lurelin Village has become dangerous due to pirates in the area.

I think that’s about it. I guess it’s time to return to Purah to do whatever it is we need to do with the Travel Tower so I can get the map activated on the Purah Pad.

As I proceed toward the outer gates of Hyrule Castle, there are two Hylian men looking at what appears to be a fallen chunk of skyland that has landed here beside the road.

I talk to them and they are curious about the upper world and concerned about Zelda’s safety and whereabouts.

I take a moment to climb up on the chunk of rock that fell from the sky; I find a Steward, who is stationed to work on producing Zonaite energy, er, stuff, I’m still not clear how all that Zonaite stuff works together. F me, it’s going to take me forever to remember how all that stuff goes together. Anyway, there’s a machine there that I can put stuff into to make other stuff, if and when I’m ready to. OK.

I climb down and head into the castle ruins. Just inside the outer gateway, there’s a guy holding up a sign post, advertising Hudson Construction. He tells me he’s very proud of the company that Hudson has created. Remember Hudson from the Tarry Town storyline in BOTW? He built that town, and now he’s charged with rebuilding all of Hyrule, and he has left stations of material staged throughout the land. Good for him.

Up in the sky, I notice the moon is a familiar shade of blood red… Oh good grief, has NOTHING I accomplished in BOTW been of lasting impact? We have the Blood Moon resetting the world again and again every so often? Oh FFS. Damn it. I did NOT want to see that. One of the things I really grew to dislike about BOTW was how meaningless everything you do in the game feels, because ultimately everything resets every Blood Moon. Every weapon and item you find is temporary, optional, and ultimately inconsequential. Every enemy you defeat doesn’t matter at all, except for the boss battles, because every Blood Moon everything goes back to how it was. Like Groundhog Day, with Link in place of Bill Murray. I guess it’s helpful to have some mechanic to reset the world so that you can replay parts of it that you enjoy, or unfuck something that you messed up so bad that you can’t proceed unless something resets the world for you. The worst thing of all is when a blood moon happens right as you were about to fucking finish something, clear out some area or whatever, only the shit you just killed two goddamn seconds ago gets resurrected because you picked the wrong fucking time of the month to do that part of the mission, and now you basically have to do it twice, back to back. But god damn it, I was hoping that they would have done something different in TOTK, to make it seem more than just BOTW 1.5.

Up ahead, I see a shrine, right there in the open, so I ride over to it. There’s a woman standing there, and I talk to her and then enter the shrine.

Why are there still shrines all over the place in Hyrule? Didn’t I discover and clear them all out in BOTW? Why are there more now? And why do they look different from the ones in BOTW? Who can say. It’s just a thing we do in this game. We go around, we find shrines, we go into them, we do the thing, we get the power.

All right. This one is a battle training exercise. I get to re-learn the basic mechanics to enable flurry rushes: the side hop dodge, the backflip dodge, the perfect shield parry move. I manage to do this pretty well, without too many mistakes, and defeat the little training bot on my first go.

Hold the Left Z-trigger (to focus on an enemy), then use the Left stick side to side (side hop) or back (backflip) when the enemy is attacking to enter bullet time and enable the flurry rush attack. Or press A to parry. The parry seems to be the hard one to pull off.

Well, OK. I manage to break a couple weapons, which is nice because it opens up some weapons slots.

Hey, I should probably use my powers to combine weapons into compound items, to free up more slots, shouldn’t I? I’ve been approaching the combat from a straightforward, BOTW purist mindset. I need to think about the new possibilities this game has given me with the new powers. How do I fuse items together, again? Oh hell.

I guess I need to re-learn how to do that, or look it up, or something. I need to not forget how to do the basics.