Breath of the Wild, Part 6: I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

Today started with a new shrine! The challenge was called Bravery’s Grasp, and I’m not really sure how that applies to the shrine, but basically there was a switch in the middle of the room that changed the levels of platforms, and you have to keep changing the level to make it to the end of the stage. Again, I appreciate the ability to solve things in multiple ways, because even though the right way is to put this strange laser machine in a moving platform and have it do the work for you, if you don’t realize that thing can be picked up (like I almost didn’t), you can just hit it with arrows or whatever. 

Outside the Shrine, I ran into a woman named Moza who wanted to give me advice on cooking. All of her recipes were terrible - I mean, we’re talking like ore and metal parts being ingredients - but I suspect I’ll need them at some point.

Note: she did reprimand me for touching her cooking pot, but she didn't go this far. Just another example of all the little hidden gems in this game. (Also a good example of how you can use a pot lid and a ladle as a weapon.)

After that, I explored the rest of the canyon part of the Faron province, and to be honest, there wasn’t much there that I saw. I found a couple Koroks, a new kind of stone (luminous stone), and that’s about it. However, there was a really tall butte that I climbed and was disappointed to find nothing up there...until the rocks underneath me started rumbling and turned into a Stone Talus! It was scary, but this one was a lot easier than the Plateau one. For one thing, I have more powerful weapons, but more importantly, I started out on top of it, so I had to do less climbing overall. (Later, I ran into some more Stone Smaluses too.)

The last thing I did in this section was discover Lynels can shoot lightning! And even though I was hiding behind a tree, it still got me (and killed me). That’s hella scary.

From here, I decided to explore the area on the other side of the canyon. It was harder to explore satisfactorily because the side opposite the canyon was a slope, so there were less defined borders to make sure I saw everything. I did run into some mounted bokoblins on horseback, and it’s here I discovered that you can mount bokoblin horses if you knock one off. They’re not very fast, but being mounted does make fighting mounted enemies easier, so it’s nice in a pinch. It’s also nice if you’re in an area you can’t call your horse but want to move a little faster than by foot.

Another note about wildlife AI: I saw a fox stretch and yawn! That’s adorable and amazing. I couldn't find a picture of that specifically, so a generic fox will have to do.

Next up, I went south to a cliff facing the Faron Sea. I wanted to see what would happen if I climbed down. Turns out, there’s land down there! It connected to a beach area that I would’ve gotten to eventually. The beach area had several new items to get like palm fruit and a couple kinds of crabs, but it also had new enemies, including Octoroks and blue Lizalfos. If you manage to kill an Octorok, you sometimes get an Octorok Balloon as a drop item, which my brother tells me can really be used as a balloon. The Octorok was tough, but it’d probably be easier if I could figure out how to use my shield.

Back up in the canyon, a lot of my time was trying to take on a gang of mounted Bokoblin bowmen. I don’t recommend it. I eventually just had to run past them and hope for the best. 

Past them was a grove of trees with an enemy camp inside, a mixture of Bokoblins and Moblins. I believe these were the first live Moblins I’ve seen, and they’re kind of dumb but a lot tougher to kill than skeleton Moblins. I did it, though, after a lot of trial and error.

Then I went to the nearby archery camp and decided to try the guy’s archery drill. I also learned I can buy arrows from him whenever I want, which is very helpful. The drill was very tough, I didn’t complete it, and the reward is only horse gear, whatever that is, so I don’t feel a strong need to complete it just yet.

Down the road from the camp we’re these five strange statues of people with bowls in front. Four of the bowls had apples in them, so I put an apple in the fifth one and found a Korok. Then I took all five apples.

Like these, but five of them, and apples instead of shields.

Nearby was ANOTHER enemy camp, this time Bokoblins and Lizalfos. It was a bitch, but I got a really strong sword out of it, so it was worth it. 

I explored the rest of this area and, again, didn’t find much except some Koroks. So I went to explore the beach from the opposite direction, and the first thing I found was buried treasure! Sometimes there’ll be a chest sticking halfway out of the sand that you have to Magnesis out. It’s super cool.

It’s around here that I ran into two blue Lizalfos, and those things are a huge pain. They have really strong weapons to take, though.

Nearby was another raft, so I tried to explore the sea. It didn’t work; after going so far, winds pushed me back. I did, however, learn to steer and change speed, so it was a useful experience.

As I made my way back up the beach to Brunblitz, she slid down the slope into the water and I thought she was a goner. But it turns out horses can swim! Not when you’re on them, but she made it to the other side of the water with no problem.

But going to get her WAS a problem. See, I ran into skeleton Lizalfos with spears and it wasn’t pretty. 

The lesson I’ve learned from today is that I’m definitely not ready power-wise to be in this area yet. I would say a majority of my play time today was repeatedly trying to take on enemies that were too strong for me. But I love that the game lets me, and I love that defeating them is still doable even if it’s not easy.

At this point, I have explored roughly half of the Faron province. Tomorrow: the East!