Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 29

Border Patrol

After one week without finding any new shrines, I had to be more methodical. And my main method was studying the map to find "empty" places, where I feel like there should be something, even if it's just a Korok.

This brought me to the edge of the world map a couple of times, because I had the suspicions that there could be something. But it was just all dead ends, literally. One of these places would be a small peninsula at the north of Akkala:

Judging from the map it really was a place, where I wanted to go, but there wasn't anything there and Nintendo just lazily stops you from going on in the middle of the place. They couldn't even wait for the spiked rock formations. And the rocks on the hill, when you're going back, are for some reason not climbable. Weird.

On my way through Akkala I also discovered a new place: the Shadow Hamlet Ruins. It really got me excited for a moment, because I suspected to find something there. But as with all the giant rocks around Death Mountain, this little ruin in the middle of them didn't seem to hold any secrets...

I also explored along the border of the Gerudo Desert and here I noticed, how weirdly shields behave on sand. I already thought that it was odd, how shields don't break during Sand Seal Surfing. But I get it that this would be super annoying, if your shield broke in the middle of the Vah Naboris battle or whatever. However, it seems like shields in general don't break, if you surf on sand. Also, even on small slopes you speed up quite a lot, so you can go relatively fast through the desert even without a Sand Seal. Well, at least it made me appreciate Shield Surfing much more in general, where I'm now using it more often to get around. Outside the desert this also gets rid off all those Royal Shields that you find everywhere.


The Breakthrough

Well, I had been groping in the dark for the longest time to a point, where my motivation to keep going through this game dropped significantly. It had been over a week of playing without finding any of the last remaining shrines. I was even activating the Shrine Sensor from time to time just to be sure that there wasn't anything around, with no luck either.

But then I finally had my breakthrough with the Dow Na'eh Shrine. It was located in an area, where I certainly felt like that there should be a Shrine around, because otherwise there is no quick access to the places around...

It's behind a waterfall at the center of the Lanayru Promenade. I was probably as happy as I was embarrassed, when I found the Shrine. While it's true that it's hidden behind a waterfall and I found it by climbing behind the water flow, there's also a tunnel right next to the waterfall leading right to it that I had completely missed...

Thing is that I have explored this area multiple times. I salvaged all the treasure chests in the water around here (there are quite a few) and I climbed around the ruins next to the waterfall many times to look for Koroks, but I never saw the tunnel during all this. To be fair, it's only really visible, if you walk right to it. Otherwise the perspectives might play tricks on you and you will miss it. But it was still a little embarrassing and showed that sometimes I'm not as thorough in exploring the areas, as I could and should be.

Anyway, it felt good to be back in a shrine, where these Portal-esque trial chambers really have this stark contrast compared to the overworld with visuals, atmosphere and even gameplay. I enjoy this quite a lot.

A shrine? Gotta bring out the good gear!

The shrine contained the "Three Boxes" trial and it was another one of these puzzles, where the name of trial gives the solution away. It might have been a little bit trickier, if it was named differently.


One More

My intuitions also led me to Mount Floria, because there was no teleportation point up there. I suspected that there might be a shrine hidden somewhere near the top of the mountain, but I couldn't find anything. This was one of these moments, where I turned on the Sheikah Sensor to be sure. And it did pick up a signal after all. I decided to turn the sensor off again right away to make it not too easy, where after a while I finally found the Tota Sah Shrine...

It was also near a waterfall, the one where you find the Great Bandit treasure south of the Dueling Peaks stable. I did explore this area before, just last week I've been going through the Hickaly Woods, but I've always missed the hidden cave. At least I'm glad that it was hidden in a cave behind a wall, so I probably wasn't completely blind, just not thorough enough at the time.

But I enjoy the challenge of finding these hidden locations.

The shrine was home to the "Toto Sah Apparatus" and the last part felt like using one of these boss keys from Skyward Sword. It's somewhat awkward to do with the Wii U GamePad, because you have to turn the entire controller around in your hands to position the sections. And with the lasts ection I don't think I even got the real solution. I didn't even use the loose staircase, the whole thing was lopsided and I somehow jumped to the goal.


So, now there's only one Sheikah Shrine left for me to discover! Coincidentally I also had one Shrine Quest left and naturally you would assume that they were related. Maybe another gang of Goron thugs would await me somewhere... But it turned out that I was simply missing the "Eye of the Sandstorm" Shrine Quest, where I had found the corresponding Dako Tah Shrine a very long time ago (see Entry 8). But this answered my question from the time, where I wondered, if finding the shrine caused the sandstorm in the area to vanish. The guy at the Kara Kara Bazaar basically confirms this, who's easy to miss, because he sits on some high chair above a tent. And he doesn't talk to you at night, which is why I probably missed this dialogue earlier. I was also curious, what would happen, if you find a shrine before the corresponding Shrine Quest, but it simply will be solved right away.

I guess, to find the last shrine I will have to trust my intuition again...

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 73/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 119/120
• Koroks: 625/900
• Talus: 36/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 77.00%