Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 10

This will be yet another entry without touching any of the four main dungeons. While I really wanted to head back to the Zora already, I was traveling in real life for a couple of days and didn't feel like doing anything major in the game during that time. So, I focused on more quests around the stables, which brought me to the Highland Stable at the Faron Grasslands, a paradise for horse fans. But not before another stop at the Great Plateau, where my quest to join the Yiga clan began.

Four Eyes and a Shop

There were still some shrines for me to find at the Great Plateau, where I've learned about their locations from the Lightroots below. For one of them you truly have to dig deep below the walls of the Plateau, where there is even a sturdier, black version of these breakable rocks. I've settled for a small hole through them, but I've also learned that it's fastest to dig through these large clusters with a boulder attached to a spear, where this works like the Drillshafts in Breath of the Wild.

The other shrine was in a cave behind the giant waterfall, which originally was a stash for the best weapons you could find during the tutorial. There might be a fourth shrine, but I haven't found it yet. And at the four original shrine locations you will now find chasms, where it's almost like the Gloom broke through the old elevator shafts left by the Sheikah...

Now, the Goddess Statue at the Temple of Time ruins implores you to find something at the flooded gate, where now you can drain the water and effectively open the Great Plateau up again for business. This leads you to another of the four-eyed statues, which deal in Poes, but here you first need to throw its eyes into the four chasms on the Great Plateau.

Well, I did exactly that and then wondered why nothing happened... But you actually have to follow the eyes down there and then bring them to a spooky, gigantic version of the statue, which resides under the Central Mine. Why didn't it say so right away?

Now I had to go back to all the chasms and throw the eyes in one more time, where navigating the Great Plateau is not as convenient as it used to be. You can go to the shrines that I've freshly discovered and use Ascend, but that's still far from the convenient travel points in Breath of the Wild. So, I often made use of the fallen rocks, where I let them lift me up a little via Recall and then I fly the way to my destination.

The reward for your troubles is either a Heart Container or a Stamina Vessel, your choice. I went with the latter, because I've already collected 13 hearts by this point, which was the threshold for obtaining the Master Sword in Breath of the Wild. And for a moment I thought that this might be the new Horned Statue, where you can trade Heart Containers for Stamina Vessels or vice versa, but that's not the case.

Instead, it expands the shop for Poe Souls, where you can also buy pieces of a dark set, which protects you from the Gloom effects. This sounds good, but so did the Froggy suit and you still slip with that one, it only lets you climb a bit longer. Maybe if you have all three pieces combined and enhanced to two stars, you will get full protection from Gloom or rain via the set bonus, but right now I'm a bit underwhelmed.

But there are two more of the four-eyed statues to find, probably to unlock the other two pieces. You can also re-purchase the amiibo stuff that you've gotten before, including the weapons, where I had a See-Breeze Boomerang from an amiibo chest and now I can buy another one with Poe Souls. So, this answers another my questions, because I didn't expect Cece to offer me such things, only the armor.

Trash to Smash

Speaking of weapons, while I'm not too far in the game and shouldn't expect to have overly strong weaponry, I'm convinced that the whole idea with the decayed weapons simply came to be to counter the possibilities with Fuse. If the weapons were as powerful as they were in Breath of the Wild, then you could just create really good stuff very early by fusing them together. So, that's why everything got decayed and only does around half the damage of what it did originally...

Like with the other abilities, Fuse is giving the player possibilities that they could only dream of in Breath of the Wild, but it came at the cost of convenience. It lets you make really good use of all your materials and create some potent weaponry, but they had to balance things, where you don't just find good weapons everywhere any longer.

What you also can't find everywhere any longer are chests in or on water, which is a good change. This is something that was really overdone in Breath of the Wild and they must have realized that people are probably sick of fishing treasure chests out of all the lakes and rivers. I don't want to jinx it, of course, but so far I have rarely encountered chests like that.

And what you find is still the usual garbage, where chests aren't usually worth the trouble. There are chests with armor pieces, but you often know in advance that these treasure chests have something special, because they were literally put on a pedestal, like Misko's caches inside caves. That treasure chests aren't worth your while was a big problem with Breath of the Wild, but so far it doesn't seem like Tears of the Kingdom has done much to improve this. Oh, another Large Zonai Charge, fantastic...

There are the Sage's Wills, however, so there is a new reward from treasure chests that seems to be a unique find, but I have no idea what they are good for yet, because I only found three so far. Still, I'm happy that there is something, even when it seems to be mostly confined to chests on sky islands / Zonai structures.

Join the Yiga!

There was one more place that I hadn't checked out at the Great Plateau and that's the old man's hut, which now got completely fortified by the Yiga. Sadly, it seems like some fortifications can't be destroyed, but it's easy enough to get in there anyway. Knocking on the door spawned my first encounter with a Yiga Blademaster, who was still doing significant damage, even with his decayed Windcleaver, but at least it wasn't a one-shot.

This earns you the Yiga Mask as a reward and that's a really cool idea, where I was actually hoping for such an item to be in the game, essentially as another "monster mask". It's not just that, however, because it can be upgraded and there is a full set. You can find a map of all the important Yiga locations in the hut as well, which gives you a good hint of where to look for the other pieces... So, the hunt was on!

Unsafe Travels

For the next Great Fairy, Kaysa at the Outskirts Stable, I had to find the flute player of the Stable Trotters, Pyper, who was said to be hanging at the Highland Stable. This is what had brought me back to the Great Plateau to begin with, because I was passing over the area to get there. I could have taken the Great Bridge of Hylia, but maybe let's save that for later....

Well, I tried to fight some of the Thunder Gleeoks around, because they don't cause extreme heat, like the Flame Gleeoks do, but my weapons did barely any damage. I actually fled down the chasm near Akkala Citadel, after the Gleeok there showed me who is boss.

Instead, I went over the geoglyph to the west of Lake Hylia and from there into the Taobab Grasslands. This is where you could originally find the Giant Horse, but there don't seem to be any horses in this area any longer. Instead, I was greeted by a Gloom Spawn and this caught me off-guard, where I couldn't climb anything in time... But you can just teleport to safety, should one of the Floormasters grab you.

In general, I like the idea of using the knowledge and expectations of Breath of the Wild players against them. This is something that Master Quest had done quite well with its dungeons, where the solution to a puzzle might escape you, because you're trying to solve it in a similar way to Ocarina of Time. And Tears of the Kingdom has the chance to lure you into traps, because you want to investigate a place that used to be a point of interest in the first game.

Also, I managed to beat the Gloom Spawn by cheesing it with Bomb Arrows. The first time nothing happened, but the second time...

It summoned Phantom Ganon, who looks just like Gibdorf, only completely made out of Gloom. He disappeared before I could do anything, though.

Faron Horselands

The Faron Grasslands were already quite horse-centric in Breath of the Wild, but maybe they are even more so in Tears of the Kingdom. You can find a lot of horses on the Grinnden Plains and I think that this might be where the horses from the Taobab Grasslands went. I was able to find a horse with five stars of speed there, which belonged to the best groups, where those could only appear near the Giant Horse or at Upland Lindor.

Hopefully, there is a more convenient spot to find, because going all the way around Harfin Valley to the Highlands Stable takes a while. Well, at least you don't have to pass any Lynels or horseback Bokoblins this time, though there are two of the latter at the Grinnden Plains, even an armored one... Fighting it makes me feel bad, because the best way to deal with it is a Bomb Arrow, but that's not nice for the poor horse below. You can just avoid them altogether, however, because they are a bit up north of the horse groups.

If you're looking for Malanya, you will find one of the new special horses instead: the Giant White Stallion. It's essentially a breed of the White Horse and the Giant Horse from Breath of the Wild. Since I've named those "Hylia" and "Demise" respectively, this one now goes by "Hymise". Its stats are the exact same as the Giant Horse, however, so it's really just a difference in looks. You can also have more horses than before, where you can unlock new slots from Pony Points, where I'm willing to experiment a bit more and bring in new horses.

It sucks that you can't see a horse's stats before registering it, however, and you can't register it unless you let one of your other horses go, where this is a problem if you want to compare before calling the new horse a keeper. So, I'm saving the game first and then reload if the newest addition isn't to my liking.

I'd like to find a horse with the best possible pull stat, where there is even a new mini-game at the Highland Stable by Blynne, who now wants you to transport a box while racing through goalposts. I'm having issues with this, however, because my horses tend to move sideways whenever they are pulling something, which is quite annoying... Maybe it has to do something with the temperament as well, but I will have to try different combinations.

Then there is the Golden Horse, of course, which I haven't found yet, but might have best stats on everything, making all the other horses obsolete. And I found out that none of this matters any longer a bit later, but we'll get to that.

Pirate Shores

At the bridge near where the Mounted Archery Camp used to be, you can find a pirate ship docked, which looks pretty cool and brings back memories of The Wind Waker. Now, throughout your adventures you will meet several people from Lurelin, who are all reporting that the village was taken over by pirates. And I've been wondering about this, where either those pirates are just normal Bokoblins and Moblins, or they went with something more creative. Like, it could have been Constructs wearing bicornes and eye-patches, paying homage to Skipper from Skyward Sword.

It's just the Bokoblins, of course... No eye-patches or anything. Too bad. But I really enjoyed the Monster Forces battle, where you join Flaxel, some Hylian soldiers, and Gorons to clear that ship. These are really engaging and so much more fun than just battling monsters normally.

 

Stable Trotters Reunion

After helping out Pyper with lighting up some tree, I got the last of the Stable Trotters, where now it's only a matter of visiting all the Great Fairies and bringing the troupe to them, where you have to get more and more creative with modifying their favorite wagon, "Breezer". For Kaysa you need to add big wheels to cross bumpy terrain and for Cotera you have to make it swim.

I suppose, for the last Great Fairy, Tera, you will have to make them fly, but I haven't been to the Snowfield Stable yet. And even if I can now unlock all the Great Fairies one after another, it's still quite expensive to upgrade everything due to their new "labor" costs. Together with the house building, it seems like Rupees will be even more valuable in Tears of the Kingdom than they already were in Breath of the Wild.

Akkalanya

You're told that Malanya can now be found in the north of Akkala and the Ancient Tech Lab there became one of the Yiga bases marked on the map, so I had two good reasons to return to Akkala and explore more in the upper regions. The Yiga put up warnings for anyone who goes near the lab, but this won't stop the brave Addison:

I noticed that the game actually installs these signs at the exact angle it was standing with your support and even remembers this, where this is some nice attention to detail and invites to either try your very best or to push the boundaries of what will be accepted here.

Anyway, that was piece number 2 of the Yiga set. In addition, you can discover a prototype for the Travel Medallion at the lab, which you can't use yet, as well as hidden diary from Purah.

You will also find Malanya nearby, where the Horse God has some extra functionality in the new game: you can now also upgrade the stats of your horses!

It doesn't let you do this with everyone, where Epona, the Giant Horse, and the Giant White Stallion are out of question, but it let's you upgrade the White Horse from Breath of the Wild. This requires you to cook certain foods, where this is a big incentive to collect as many recipes as possible.

But despite the efforts, it's a really good feature, where now any horse can become the very best. You don't have to look for horses with the best possible stat combinations any longer. Well, it still helps, but you can just pick any horse you like and then upgrade it to the max.

 

Shrine Shenanigans

There were also some fun shrines around the area, where one of them had a big jenga tower. But instead of going for the intended solutions, where you need to grab three blocks without collapsing the tower, I simply let it crash and caught the orb via the Ultrahand.

The shrine with the propeller in the middle had me confused for a while, because I couldn't find a good way of reaching the chest. Of course you can just always attach a rocket to your shield and move up that way, but I normally like to try the intended solution first, using whatever the shrine places at your disposal.

In this case I simply didn't move in the right way, but before I figured this out I tried all sorts of crazy things with the flame emitters, for some pretty effects...

Yiga Membership Club

I fought my first Lynel at Upland Lindor, which was still a red one, so the enemy scaling hasn't gone all too far, which is great. Either that or it's a fixed normal Lynel, but it's a weird one anyway, because it only wielded a Soldier's Spear... I've wasted several good weapons to defeat it, but didn't get much out of it, save for the materials. Well, there is also side quest by the East Akkala Stable which requires you to craft a weapon out of the antlers, so it wasn't for just that.

After the battle I gave one of those portable cooking pots a try, which you can get from capsules. Well, it's really not worth it, because it only let's you cook a single recipe before it vanishes... And I don't get why it needed such a limitation.

But the real reason I went to this area was finding the last piece of the Yiga set, which was relatively well hidden, mainly because I couldn't see anything thanks to the constant, intense rain. I know my screenshots are telling a different story, but believe me that I have received the bad weather copy of Tears of the Kingdom.

Whether in good or bad weather, I'm officially a Yiga now. I love how you still have the blonde hair with this outfit, doesn't attract attention at all...  But I'm excited to give this new outfit a try, given the chance. Glory to Master Kohga!

Progress:

• Memories: 7/18
• Shrines: 60
• Lightroots: 23
• Towers: 11
  
• Korok Seeds: 157
• Sage's Wills: 3
  
• Bubbul Gems: 27