Daruk's Protection also auto reflects the beams back at them.
And if a cliff is not steep enough, Gloom Hands climb it. THAT was a moment of terror.
They really are the opposite of Guardians. Visceral compared to mechanical, short range physical vs long range laser, bad to fight up close as safer to fight up close, small spawn radius vs far distance, essentially "random encounter tile" vs preexisting encounter, total HP damaging vs taking a chunk of HP off.
-Witty line-So I ran into Kliton and Kolton. I liked Kliton in the previous game. His obsession with monsters made him endearing to me, plus you could get some unique loot from him. I spent 3 minutes with Kolton and I never want to see him again. He's basically this game's Tingle, only wanting to become a Satori instead of thinking he's a fairy. At least it makes Kliton more likeable by having him support Kolton's dreams.
Koltin will give out all of Kilton's rewards from BOTW plus some new stuff, hunting Bubbulfrogs is pretty easy, and I think he'll always spawn at all stables/towns at night. Kilton is now running a fun lil museum in Tarrey Town.
Bewitching EyesSo here's my gameplan: I'm going to explore as much of Hyrule on my way to the Akkala Ancient Lab, try to open up as much of the map as possible, do as many Shrines that I come across, find Stables, and just try to gather as much supplies and side quests as I can along the way so that I don't get two-shotted by the enemies.
My favorite is ones where there's a switch that you have to hit something with a certain amount of force to actually make it activate. You can figure out the puzzle the game wants you to, if you want to..
Or, Cutting the Knot style, just shoot it with a bomb-fused arrow. Or throw a two-handed weapon with something heavy like a rock or wrecking ball attached.
There's also this one where you're supposed to get a ball through an obstacle course where you have to construct "rails" yourself. Or, you can just drop every weapon from your inventory on the ground, Ultrahand-glue them together end-to-end to make one really long pole and attach the ball to the end, and just hover it on over the gap to the end, since you only need Ultrahand to touch one piece to move the whole contraption.
So I found this Korok trying to reach his friend, so I had to help him. And it was a pain trying to get him to his friend because they were on different elevations. But when I finally got him to his friend and was about to collect my reward, a Lizalfos came up from the ground out of nowhere and killed me! So I had to do that whole thing all over again! And the asshole didn't even show up the second time, so the game just decided to fuck me over that time!
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Taking a Third Option... Drop in from the sky islands after launching with the Eldin Skyview. (Which is right next to the Woodland path, so I guess that one)
Probably the woodland path from the southwest leading into Goron City. You'll run into the Gerudo rare mineral merchant and the addicted Gorons trying to scam you on that route and nowhere else, which likely means that was the "intended" path. But again, the game's so open-ended that it doesn't matter much.
Right. I need Horriblin Horns, so time to start actually exploring caves.
I also still need Hinox Guts for upgrades as well. And there's still some quests I haven't done for armours.
One Strip! One Strip!Am currently exploring the Water Temple. And dude, Sidon actually accompanies Link for the temple this time! This is amazing! A complaint I had about the previous game was that while the current Champions would help us get into the Divine Beasts, they would get written out of actually helping Link stop it, even though it would have been more narratively compelling if they had accompanied Link in stopping them and the Blight Ganons. But if this means that the other Champions are going to help out like Sidon does, then I'm happy to see that Nintendo listened and gave people what they wanted.
So I finished the Water Temple. And the thing that gave me the most trouble was those damn water wheels. I tried everything one could think of, hitting it with weapons, using an ability to move it, using one of those water bubbles, but nothing was working. Turns out one of Sidon's abilities while partnered with him is that doing a charge attack will send a wave of water out, and that's what you're supposed to use to get the wheels to move. Which in hindsight makes total sense, but considering that I only just recently got access to Sidon's abilities, and that my first use for them was fighting a miniboss, it never crossed my mind that Sidon's abilities could also be used for puzzle solving. But once I found out what you're supposed to do, it didn't take long for me to get to the boss of the Temple, Mucktorok.
He was ugly and I already wanted him dead 10 seconds ago. In terms of his boss fight, the first half was easy, but the second half was annoying because he spills sludge all over the Arena, which tremendously slows your speed if you walk in it. And Mucktorok keeps making sludge to dive into to get away from you. Meaning that while you're trying to maneuver and clear out one sludge pile, he's making two more so you can't reach him. Fortunately what saves this from being a total pain in the ass is that the Water Temple's low gravity gimmick, you can jump high enough for you to shoot arrows at him in midair, where time slows down considerably so you can make your shot. Anyways, once he was defeated, I got my first partner Orb, Sidon's Vow.
Now, don't get me wrong, having a spirit version of a Champion to follow you around as your familiar/Stand/Persona is cool and all, but Sidon, your sister's spirit gave me an Auto-Revive with additional hearts on top of that in the last game. What you're bringing to the table isn't impressing me. And it's also not the best in combat. I swear he has the reaction time of a snail. Just hit the damn enemies already!
Finally, I went back to Lookout Landing, and Robbie was finally leaving to go back to the Ancient Tech Lab and once he left, I tried to get to the lab so I can get the Shrine Detector upgrade, but...
- During my first attempt, I ran into this lady who was trying to get this bottle in a pond with a recipe written by her great grandpa. Helped get it for her.
- Then trying to get back on track, I ran into a Korok, specifically one where he's trying to get to his friend, who's all the way down on the beach. While bringing him down to his friend, I noticed a cave. More on that cave later.
- Once I got the Korok down to his friend at the beach (via mostly just dropping him and letting him roll his way down), I was about to head back. But then I found another message in a bottle, this time one that's part of a sidequest where this guy's trapped in a cave and needs a rescue. Left to go save him.
- Once I finally made my way back to where I was before getting sidetracked, I found another Korok near that cave I noticed. Got that Korok and then entered the cave, thinking that it wouldn't be too big. It ended being so long that on the other side was a Shrine, which is what I am doing now. And that was everything I have to say during that play session.
Edited by AFan on Apr 3rd 2025 at 11:46:07 AM
Sidon's power has one benefit: it counts as water for powering up Zora weapons, and by Zora weapons I mean the Lightscale Trident. Fuse it with e.g. a Lynel horn and you can obliterate everything in the game.
Bewitching EyesSo I've finally made my way through the Rito area, and I don't like that you have to trek through weather that will kill you because it's too cold to get the armor that will allow you to survive the weather. Funny thing is that you get it in the same place where it was last game, Rito Village, but that place is covered by that blizzard. And considering how dire things are for the Rito, you'd think that they would put their blizzard surviving clothes somewhere in a more temperate area so more people can help them with supplies.
And I found the Lucky Clover Gazette HQ, which now allows me to do all the sidequests at the stables, including the one to get all the other Great Faries to open up. Now about how the Great Fairies are handled, I like that their locations are now visible on the map, so you know where each of them are immediately. What I don't like is that you have to start this whole sidequest just to even be available to get access to them, and that you now have to pay rupees for each article of clothing you want to enhance. 1. Why do Great Fairies even need rupees in the first place? And 2. In the last game once you paid the Great Fairies, every time you got your clothes enhanced it was for free. But with this change I worry that each upgrade is going to get more and more expensive.
Yes, they will get more expensive. I think the charging Rupees things is a reference to Link to the Past, where the Pond Fairy needed lots of Rupees to increase your arrow and bomb capacity. I agree its annoying. I also don't really like needing to do a sidequest to wake the Great Fairies up either.
As for needing Cold Protection to get to Rito Village, its just a switch up from the first game, where you needed Lava Protection to get to Goron City. You no longer need Lava Protection to get there, and there's plenty of options of Cold Protection, so I don't really see it as a big deal.
Also, if you go back to the Great Sky Island, the Shrine where you got Ascend, nearby there's an area with a big tree stump you can ascend to. There's some cold protection pants in a chest there.
There's a reason the game points you to Rito Village first. You also pick up the Geoglyph and Korok sidequests if you follow the road there.
Bewitching EyesThe Water Temple was by far my favourite, because yeah I'm one of those Sidon fans. It's a shame his ability is so disappointing...
People would complain that it isn't "Zelda" anymore and the ones that already do complain feel that way about BotW and TotK for abandoning the traditional Zelda formula. So making it a full-on jrpg would be more fuel for the fire.

Of the three, Ancient Arrows are the least preferred method because it leaves no materials to collect, which is crucial if you wanna farm Guardian materials for stockpiling Ancient Arrows and the Ancient Armor set from Robbie's lab. Shield parrying is the ideal method.