Today’s post is the first in this series to cover two days, and that’s because I accomplished so little on the first day, it would’ve been absurd to give it a post to itself. You’ll see.
Ok, so I went back to the stable to get Blackwind and there was a guy there who wanted to challenge me to capture a wild horse and bring it back to him in under two minutes. Do you know who you’re talking to, friend? So I did that without breaking a sweat and got a purple rupee for my troubles.
Ok, on to Day 2. (See?)
I learned that if Brigo sees you standing on the ledge of his bridge, he’ll talk you down! That’s adorable, but also hilarious because his bridge is only five feet off the ground. Take it from someone who’s fallen to his death many a time: I couldn’t kill myself on that thing if I wanted to.
It was now time to time explore the southern part of this region, and as I crossed the Big Twin Bridge to get there, two things occurred to me. The first was that some place names don’t appear on the map until you go there, which is very interesting. The second was that the Little Twin must be nearby, which means Misko’s treasure is too. I beelined it for there and found a bomb wall hiding five chests with treasures inside and maybe a weapon too? Overall a good haul and definitely worth the—
Wait. What is this? Another bomb wall?! That’s right! And behind that was another chest. One that carried a Flameblade. A what? Flameblades are forged by Gorons. They glow red hot and can set things on fire. I’m basically freaking Azrael over here.
The southern peak isn’t very notable, but I did find the rocks to help me complete a Korok puzzle from a while back. It was a tough one because the hole was at the top of a slope. At first I tried to slowly push the rocks up, using the other rocks to hold them in place, but that only worked for a while. Eventually I had to resort to Stasising them and hitting them towards the hole.
I also ran into Stone Talus (Junior) and, just like with (Senior), I don’t know how it’s different from a regular Talus. Is this just a Dueling Peaks things or what?
And at one point boulders tumbled down the mountain around me and I don’t know what this was about. I’ve never seen it before or since and have no idea what caused it.
Back near Misko’s treasure cave, there was a shrine that I couldn’t find anywhere. It wasn’t on top of the cliff, it wasn’t on a ledge on the side of the cliff, and I couldn’t see any caves within the cliff that it might be in. I eventually discovered it quite by accident. As I was mounting a bear that happened to run by me - that’s right, you can ride bears in this game - I noticed a bomb wall across the river from me. Sure enough, that’s where it was.
The shrine inside was “Toto Sah Apparatus”, and it was very tricky. There were multiple apparatuses in this one and they all had a trick to them. The first one was controlling a simple straight walkway...but it had a chest hidden on the underside of it. The second one controlled three staircases, with the middle one on a slider. So you had to line up the middle stair with the other two, and then line the whole thing up with your path without having the middle stair slide out of place. And the final one controlled a...sculpture, for lack of a better word - a mass of pathways and ramps and staircases going this way and that. You had to orient it one way to get a chest (I’m pretty sure the first chest that I was required to get, for reasons I’ll get to), and then orient it a different way to get to the end...and pretty much any way you could orient it looked right, so it took some trial and error. Inside the chest was a small key you needed to get to the shrine exit, and I was shocked by this because I haven’t seen a small key anywhere else in the game and I kind of figured we were past this technology.
Back in the woods where I rode the bear, I came across another Stalnox. I tried many, many times to defeat it and I just couldn’t. I needed more bomb arrows, I guess. There was also a hot spring in the woods, which is nice because it heals you without using items or taking time away from you.
As I exited the forest, I noticed a...dam? in the river. No, not a dam, the wall of a fortress! Fort Hateno, to be exact. And there were SO. MANY. Guardians in front of it. I’d say probably a dozen, with another dozen or two stretching from there to the Dueling Peaks Stable. And of course there were a couple real ones, but they’re pretty easy to take out since they can’t move around. Just keep firing those arrows.
And with that, I am finished exploring West Necluda! But before I left, I did one last thing: talk to Hino again. I don’t remember why I did that, but he did tell me it was a full moon tonight and it “looks like it could come falling down any minute.” Nice Majora’s Mask reference!
With West Necluda finished, I made my way south to the region east of Faron. Since the nearest shrine was the one near Highland Stable, and now that I have what I assume is a top level (non-giant) horse, I decided to try the horse riding competition again. It took many tries and I almost quit, but I finally got it with one second to spare. I got an Extravagant Saddle for my trouble, which isn’t worth the trouble, to be honest.
On my way to Faron Tower, I met Meghyn and Nat, truffle hunters. There’s not much to say about them, but they seemed fun.
Faron Tower sucks, by the way. There’s an Electric Wizzrobe hanging around it who makes a swarm of dozens of Keese appear. So as you climb, you have both of those things trying to hit you, and climbing is pretty much a straight shot. No platforms to rest until near the top. It sucks.
And unfortunately, there weren’t as many surprises in the naming as I expected, but the one I did see was a doozy. In the far east of Hyrule, there’s an island; on the island are two named areas: Koholit Rock and Toronbo Beach. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? Neither do I, but I have some guesses. First you should know that Link’s Awakening takes place on KoholiNt Island, and the place you start the game is Toronbo SHORES. So either (1) Link’s dream in that game is inspired by this real life island or (2) these places were named after that story, meaning Link's Awakening takes place after Wind Waker and this game takes place even later than I thought. If it’s #2, that’s huge.
There’s also Lake Floria, which first appeared in Skyward Sword. It’s in roughly the same position as it is in that game, but if this game takes place after Wind Waker, it should be set in New Hyrule. Maybe it was named that because of its location on the map. Either way, I’m mostly excited because Farosh hangs out at Lake Floria and I need a scale from him. Since I’ll be spending a lot of time there, I’ll get plenty chances to obtain one.
Against my better judgment, I went ahead and unlocked Hateno Tower as well. This is the only time I’ll do this. My thinking was that since I’d already been pretty deep into it, I should just unlock it and then I won’t feel bad if I decide to go back for whatever reason. This was a mistake. Both of these regions are quite large, so it’ll be a long time before I’m even close to unlocking a new region. I’m also confused about what the names of these two regions are; “East Necluda” is written on their border. Are they both East Necluda? For ease, I’ll be calling them East Faron and Hateno.
Hateno Tower was covered in thorns, by the way. It was a thorn maze.
Anyway, tomorrow: East Faron!
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