401 zelda breath of the wild - beating up the three hinox brothers

Dear Readers,

Up until now I had barely explored the mountains south of Dueling Peaks Stable. While searching for that shrine next to the river I got a taste of it and wanted to continue.

I started from the hot spring and continued roaming the mountains. I found lots of ponds, trees and hillsides that felt new and unspoiled by road construction or warp points. I kept an eye out for any new shrines and eventually I found a pedestal!

When I got closer, it turned out to be three pedestals! There was a stone plaque that told me about the three Hinox brothers that lived in the surrounding areas. Each one of them had an orb and I had to go to each area and beat them all up. It's a good thing I didn't have to take them all on at once.

They were all nearby. The first one I fought was at the Rabella Wetlands and he was surrounded by Bokoblins, many of whom just seemed to be chilling out. I haven't really seen them be chill like this before. Maybe it was because they lived so remotely. I beat some of them up before I took on the big guy. I managed to keep him on the mound he was sleeping on with lots of attacks and arrows to the eye. I defeated him handily.

I used a different strategy with the other two brothers. They were both at a much lower elevation than the area with the pedestals. They were both sleeping under giant skeleton rib cages so I just stood on top of the ribs while I rained bombs and arrows down on them. I beat them all handily. These other brothers didn't have any Bokoblins around them.

I gathered all the orbs, placed them in the pedestals and Tawa Jinn Shrine burst from the ground. No further trial inside — just a blessing.

400 zelda breath of the wild - tilting controls at toto sah shrine

Dear Readers,

I get the feeling this shrine was meant to be found earlier in the game but I find it now about 400 blog posts in with postgame experience and strength.

It was all about tilting the controller to make staircases line up with the path. Very straightforward really and it felt like an early game novelty. It also retained that sense of fun that an early novelty has.

I made my path, grabbed the treasure chests while I was here and got the blessing.

399 zelda breath of the wild - the hidden shrine in hickaly woods

Dear Readers,

I went to the Dueling Peaks Stable and took on the quest that two guys had, but they wouldn't give it to me unless I paid them 100 rupees for information. For a second I felt like Tingle from Rosy Rupeeland. 

I got their information and headed to Hickaly Woods nearby. It was where I came across my first sighting of a bear in the game. I also came across a Stalnox and picked a fight with it, knocking its eye out of its socket as much as I could. To recover from the fight I climbed a cliff to the east and made my way to the hot spring I spotted on the map. I took a nice long dip! I also dived into the ring of flowers for a Korok seed.

What I really needed to do in this area was follow the smaller stream and up its waterfall and gather the treasures from the cave at the top of it. There were some nice minerals and weapons here. The guys were pretty mad when I told them I had found it. At least I get to gloat.

While I was in this area, my shrine radar went off. I explored the mountains to the south to see if I could find it. I got a bit off course and ended up fighting a Guardian Stalker. I really didn't need to be up there though, as the shrine was right next to the tiny river I had to follow earlier. I didn't notice the rocks covering the cave it was in at first. I blew them up and went into Toto Sah Shrine.

398 zelda breath of the wild - conquering south lomei labyrinth

Dear Readers,

I decided to go and conquer South Lomei Labyrinth. I warped nearby and glided all the way in.

On the map it looked like it was just squares within squares, but it didn't show any gaps in walls and it didn't show any levels the gaps were at either.

The only enemies I found here were Bokoblins and Stalkoblins. All of the Bokoblins were on top of the walls of the maze, patrolling around for some reason. I wondered why they were doing that. There was no stopping anyone at the entrance.

I also came across the evil goop but I didn't find any eyeball to shoot.

I explored the maze until I got all the treasure chests. Some had weapons and some had rupees, which was nice.

I felt this was a bit easier than the other mazes I took on, but it seemed pretty mysterious. Navigating the passageways and gaps in the wall was challenging, even though it looks fairly unassuming on the map. I eventually got to the shrine at the centre of the maze and obtained the blessing.

397 zelda breath of the wild - the girl who fell in love with an orb

Dear Readers,

I recall meeting someone who was clinging onto an ancient glowing orb when I was exploring the coastline and I said I'd come back to them another time. I decided to go back to her now.

Her name was Loone and she was hugging and doting on a glowing orb that she named "Roscoe". The altar that housed the orb was nearby.

I was thinking maybe the tough times in this post apocalyptic world were too much for her and she took solace in this glowing thing. The poor girl.

I talked to her for a bit and she said what she really wanted was to see a small Guardian, a walking Guardian and a flying Guardian. If she saw those then she would forget all about Roscoe and daydream about Guardians.

She seemed hardy and hopeful after all, yet still quite a bit silly. I decided to indulge her request. I wasn't able to show her the entries in the Compendium though. I had to have pictures of these Guardians in my album.

I warped to the shrine outside Hyrule Castle and found the flying and walking Guardians pretty quickly, but it wasn't as straightforward with the little one. I tried taking a picture of a Guardian Scout III, but it wasn't what she wanted. I warped to the very first shrine I did, the Magnesis trial on the Great Plateau. Inside I took a picture of a Guardian Scout I and that did the trick!

I brought all three photos back to her and it made her extremely happy. She said she burned the images of the Guardians into her imagination and decided to daydream about them instead of Roscoe. I'm glad she acknowledged the fact that Guardians are too dangerous to approach casually. I'm sure she'll be ok! Maybe it's good to just daydream about certain things! That's food for thought!

With Roscoe freed, I brought it do the altar. Shoqa Tatone Shrine burst out of the ground and I went inside. It was a modest test of strength and I smashed up the Guardian to gain access to the monk's blessing.

396 zelda breath of the wild - solving the secret of the snowy peaks

Dear Readers,

I decided to explore this mountain that was between Faron and Gerudo Desert. It was called Mount Granajh. I was well able to climb it with my maxed out stamina and explore it with my Rito gear. It was very interesting to be in an area with temperature extremes so close together.

I kept climbing and exploring until I found a pedestal on the side of a cliff. Nearby was the remains of a hut with a diary lying around. The one who wrote it spent many many days trying to figure out the puzzle of the place and they were running out of supplies. The poor thing must've had an awful difficult time.

They left a very big clue to the pedestal and it was something about casting a cold shadow on it. Initially I thought it was about throwing the big snowballs that were lying around the place at it, but it turns out I had to hold one and cast its shadow at a certain time of the day when it was glowing. After a short time I eventually found that it was sometime in the evening before sunset. I held a snowball over my head and got into position that made the sun cast the snowball's shadow onto the centre of the pedestal. When that happened, Suma Sahma Shrine burst out of the ground! Hooray!

Inside the shrine was a blessing. That was a pretty satisfying puzzle to solve!

395 zelda breath of the wild - placing the laser in ishto soh shrine

Dear Readers,

This shrine had a very simple puzzle. There was a moving platform and a laser shooter I could carry around. All I had to do was put the laser on this platform and point it towards a direction where it would shoot the switch every time it passed it. This made the platforms shift up and down by themselves and I was able to access treasures and the monk easily. Nice little shrine.

394 zelda breath of the wild - the lady in the mountains who couldn't cook

Dear Readers,

While I was on my way to find Telma, my shrine radar went off, so I decided to ride her back to the area and look for it. My journey took me up a mountain that divided this area and the Gerudo Desert on the other side.

I didn't have to do any climbing thankfully and I was able to ride Telma all the way to the shrine. When we got there we found a lady who was cooking something badly. She told me about recipes that definitely wouldn't produce good food and it sounded like handy advice to avoid!

Near her was the shrine I was looking for. It was surrounded by a lot of trash with flies buzzing all around! It was like something from the real world! I went into Ishto Soh Shrine.

393 zelda breath of the wild - taming and naming telma the giant horse

Dear Readers,

I took on the quest about finding the giant horse. I went to the guy who gave me the quest and made my way west to the area where the horse was found.

On the way there, I had to put on my Bokoblin mask for the big gang of Bokoblin riders, and after that I had to put on my Lynel mask for the two Lynels I had to ride past. After that I found the giant horse.

It took a couple of attempts, but I was able to tame it. Just like when I tamed Blondie, I used nearly all of my stamina. 

I took it back to the stable and thought for a while. I considered naming it "Ganonhorse", since it looked a bit like Ganondorf. I couldn't use that many letters though. In the end I named it after Telma, the busty barkeeper in Twilight Princess. I'll think of her every time I take this horse out!

Telma is enormous and doesn't seem to have any limit to the amount of times you can do a speed boost. It's slower than the fastest, but it covers a lot of ground quickly since its strides are so big.

Riding it into enemies and other creatures is pretty devastating! Especially the goats, who die in one hit when they get in the way.

392 zelda breath of the wild - lomei labyrinth island

Dear Readers,

I thought I might as well take on this maze too, so I headed to the Akkala Lab and glided all the way to this island. It took most of my maximum stamina to get there. Glad I had it topped up to the max.

There were a lot of Guardians there and it was being patrolled by scary looking flying ones above it. They didn't give me any trouble though.

I had some trouble with regular ones on the ground and in some parts of the maze but I was able to handle them easily enough.

With the main ones out of the way I explored the maze itself. I explored the whole maze, even though it turned out I didn't need to do very much at all! Still, it was fun to do though. I had to use Magnesis a couple of times to shift metal boxes out of the way of some passages. Those tall pillars in the centre had tall empty shafts in them. Some had treasure chests, which was nice.

When I reached Tu Ka'loh Shrine I went inside for the blessing.

When I came out, there was a hole in the floor with wind blowing up from it. I became curious and went down the hole, which led to a massive basement below the island with disused Guardians scattered everywhere! It was really cool to see.

I explored the area and found that many of the Guardians were still alive and some were stalker ones. I had to be careful down here. I found a treasure chest that had  a diamond circlet in it. Apparently it had some protection against Guardians but I didn't take the time to see. I guess this would be a good place to come back to after every blood moon if I wanted to hunt Guardians.

This huge basement got me thinking about the lore of the place. Maybe the Guardians were tested here when they were built?

391 zelda breath of the wild - many guardian lasers at the forgotten temple

Dear Readers,

I thought it was about time to go explore the Forgotten Temple. I warped to Serenne Stable and made my way towards the entrance of the temple.

However, I decided to explore the rooftop first. It was really interesting. It was very quiet but it was a lot like when you climb on the roof of a big building and you see another side to it that you wouldn't normally be allowed see. There were a lot of weird structures up here but there was very little of anything else. I found a few Koroks around here alright but that was it.

After that bit of fun I made my way back to the entrance and parachuted down to go inside.

Immediately I was targeted by at least 3 or four Guardian lasers. I didn't have much time to hang around and explore so I moved as fast as I could through the temple, dodging lasers. 

After that ordeal I came across a gigantic goddess statue and Rona Kachta Shrine. I went in the shrine and got the blessing. I'm not sure why the goddess statue was so gigantic.

390 zelda breath of the wild - solving north lomei labyrinth

Dear Readers,

I was looking for another challenge and decided to take on this one. I ran along the top of this labyrinth once before but now I decided to take the challenge head on. I warped to the area and made my way to the maze while wearing my Lynel mask. When I got there I was tasked with making my way to the end as a shrine quest.

The shrine was right there ahead of me, but it was obscured by cage bars and by purple goop. I had to navigate the whole labyrinth with help of the Sheikah Slate. There were mostly Lizalfos enemies the various corridors, and I never really got lost or confused. The path roughly made a big circle, but the little branches did look a little intimidating. I found treasures at most corners of the maze and there were corridors at the compass points leading to other treasure too. I wasn't in too much trouble at all and I had a lot of good weapons to use here.

I eventually found the goopy eye and cleared the purple goop. Then I found the way to Qaza Tokki Shrine. Inside was a blessing.

The maze wasn't too difficult at all. It just took a bit of time and it was something I was looking forward to with a while.

389 zelda breath of the wild - flying through rings on eventide island

Dear Readers,

When I came out of the shrine, I met a Rito who was relaxing on the mountain. I had a very nice chat with them and they told me about this minigame where you fly through rings. I had a few goes of it.

It's kind of like Superman 64 or Nights Into Dreams where I had to use the glider to fly through rings and use updraughts to regain height. It was fairly challenging! On my first attempt I got about 11 and on my second I got over 30 but I still didn't get them all. I had my own stamina to deal with as well, so again I was glad I upgraded it to the max.

I only had two goes at it and the Rito gave me rupees as a prize. I earned more than what I had to pay for it. Might have another go later.

388 zelda breath of the wild - beating the eventide island challenge

Dear Readers,

I ran out of shrine quests and decided to go all the way to Eventide Island to do the challenge there.

I was here before but I decided to do the challenge later. Now that I have maximum stamina, I was able to just glide over there from Cape Cales without running out.

The trial started and my stuff got taken away. It was nighttime so I was already to a bad start, dealing with stalkoblins. I had to blow them up with my bombs and beat them up with their own arms.

I gathered as much food as I could — mushrooms, fruit, anything I could get my hands on. I blew up some more Bokoblins partying on the beach and stole their stuff.

I gained enough supplies to attack a Bokoblin base where I found my first orb. I carried it to the altar on the corner of the island. I chopped down a tree to form a bridge to it.

My second orb was around a Hinox's neck. I had to pick a fight with it to obtain it. I'm glad I waited until I had more hearts to do this. I took advantage of a lightning storm and left a metallic weapon under the Hinox's foot so it would do a lot of damage. When I defeated it, I brought this orb onto a hill where there was another altar but also another Bokoblin camp. I attacked them in their sleep and wiped them out. I took advantage of their cooking pot and hearty durians.

The last orb and altar was on the mountain guarded by a big enemy base. I had to fight many Bokoblins and a Moblin or two as well. I had to use stasis to knock the slab off the altar and the third orb was nearby.

Korgu Chideh Shrine burst from the ground on top of the mountain and there was just a blessing inside waiting for me.

I was very happy to get my stuff back!

387 zelda breath of the wild - massive switch at toh yahsa shrine

Dear Readers,

I forgot to mention that this shrine was what appeared when I solved the puzzle at Thundra Plateau. I went inside and I was surprised to see that I didn't get a blessing immediately, as it was challenging to uncover. 

In this place I was faced with giant cracked stone blocks and there were tons of them. The monk was above them behind a locked cage. I took out my bombs and started blowing things up. This was pretty fun.

I uncovered a big metal box, a massive pressure switch, and a treasure chest that had part of the rubber armour inside! That was a nice treat. I now have the full set.

There was another chest on top of a pillar I wasn't able to reach by myself, so I used the metal box to knock it off with Magnesis.

After that it was just a matter of laying the big box on the massive switch and that opened the cage to the monk. I had blown up all the stone blocks at that point so I had to move the box after I had used it to gain some height.

386 zelda breath of the wild - solving the secret of thundra plateau

Dear Readers,

With the thunder helm, I felt a lot more confident about exploring the Thundra Plateau, so I ventured there.

It was perpetually thundery here, so I figured the helm would be good here, but I didn't really see any trouble I could get into without it. There's that worry gone at least.

I got to a raised mound and saw some weird structures on top of it, each with their own colour. They seemed to correspond with the orbs that were lying around the place. There were hollows I could put the orbs into.

There were four orbs and the first two were easy enough to reach as they were on the raised mound. The other two were down from there and I couldn't bring them up by myself.

I noticed there were many Octoroks around, so I figured if I could set some Octo balloons to the orbs to raise them in the air. I could then blow them towards the platform with a Korok Leaf. I tried this out and had great success with it! It took a bit of practice alright but I got it!

385 zelda breath of the wild - another gerudo rescue in the desert

Dear Readers,

I had unfinished side quests with the Gerudo, so I warped back to Gerudo Town to see who needed help.

One of the guards went missing on her own mission to find the Great Fairy and I was asked to go find her. I was told about Moldugas and every other kind of hazard in the desert. When I warped out there, I prepared myself to take on another one of those creatures.

That was until I found the missing guard, half collapsed in front of the leviathan skeleton. I didn't need to venture out after all!

She was dying for a hearty durian, so I gave one to her. She recovered and thanked me before going back to Gerudo Town.

When I got back, I had all the problems in the town solved, so Riju gave me the thunder helm! Hooray!

When she gave me the helm, she got off her throne and went to see the sand seal that gives words of wisdom. Not sure why, but it is nice.

384 zelda breath of the wild - finding royal guard equipment in hyrule castle

Dear Readers,

Someone at the Riverside Stable wanted to see a piece of the Royal Guard's gear, so I went to Hyrule Castle to seek it out.

While I was at the castle, I decided to unblock one of the doorways in the library. I had to go in from the other side and make my way towards the goopy eyeball so I could shoot it.

Along the way I came across a rare Stone Talus so I had a long slow fight beating it up, collecting the gems when I was done.

I went exploring more hallways in the castle and came across an armory with a Moblin inside. Inside there were several pieces of Royal Guard gear. I took the shield and brought it back to the stable to finish the quest. I even sold it to the one who wanted it.

383 zelda breath of the wild - beating up the hinox at ralis pond

Dear Readers,

A Zora asked me to beat up the Hinox here so I went ahead and took it on. I don't fight Hinoxes very often!

It wasn't too difficult a fight. It is annoying when they cover their eye but I was able to fight and beat it without too much trouble. I got walloped a few times but I didn't have any emergency thankfully. It'll go towards the Hinox defeat score that Kilton keeps as well, so that's nice.

382 zelda breath of the wild - finding the missing zora wife

Dear Readers,

I decided to help the Zora family whose wife and mother were missing. Both the husband and the poor kid looked very troubled and didn't know what to do. The husband said she disappeared when the river was flooded and that she could be anywhere along the way, even all the way at Lake Hylia.

I took the hint from that and warped to the shrine on Hylia Island. I got on the raft and went sailing around the surrounding little islands, which was exactly where I found her! I was very fortunate!

She was in great spirits, catching fish. I told her about her family being worried and she immediately went back home to them. She was very thankful too.