Next stop on my list was the Lucky Clover Gazette, which led me to little quests all around the stables, one of which brought me to the place where you get the last ability and meet an old acquaintance. Finally, my tour led me back to Hateno, where I hadn't been since my restart.
X Marks the Spot
During my recent visits to the sky islands I had already found an old map, which marked a spot on my map somewhere in the northwest of the Depths...
I have no intentions of going there anytime soon, but on my travels I ran into another of those freaky fashion girls from Hateno at the Tabantha Stable, who also tells you about Misko's treasures. But this time she marked three locations on my map, even telling you what armor pieces you might find there, where the one at the New Serenne Stable scored me the Climbing Gear. Sweet.
Investigative Journalism
Well, I haven't decided yet which of the four former Divine Beast regions I'm going to visit first, but I knew that I should check out the Rito Stable in any case, since the game tells you in red letters to do so. It's where you can find the headquarters of the "Lucky Clover Gazette", a newspaper that is now going around the stables of Hyrule. The area around the Rito took another inspiration from Age of Calamity, where it's now all covered in snow due to the giant blizzard above the Hebra Mountains. But this is not what I'm yet here for.
The Lucky Clover Gazette is run by Traysi and if you don't remember her from Breath of the Wild, then that's okay. I probably wouldn't remember her either if I didn't replay the game just recently. You met her only briefly and she was the author of the "Rumor Mill", which you could also find at stables, but now she has expanded a bit. In the first game she was just one of the many randomly generated NPCs, where she lacks a bit of identity.
Penn makes up for it, hoever. He's the pelican Rito you've met earlier at Lookout Landing, and he is working for Traysi as a reporter, while you're tasked with supporting him in investigating various rumors about sightings of Princess Zelda at the different stables. I would be surprised if any of these rumors led to anything substantial, but it doesn't matter, because you're in it for the reward: the Froggy Armor!
This is everything I ever wanted for Breath of the Wild – an armor set that lets you climb in the rain. Well, I can already brew potions with some of the new sticky critters, which gives you the same effect, but of course having some armor that does the trick is always more convenient.
So, I quickly forgot all about the Rito and their snow problems (they should be used to it anyway), and just went back to all the stables where I have already been to see what I can do. The stables already became bigger points of interest for me in this game, where this is only adding to it.
I like how these type of quests are called "Side Adventures" in the Adventure Log, where they are not main quests, and not side quests either, but something in the middle. They are essentially side quests with some relevance to the story.
Some of those are really just small side quests, like where you have to find some white goats, who have been leaving a trail of pinecones near the Tabantha Stable. But other stuff seems to be more substantial, where you are also introduced to the music troupe and the Great Fairies, who now all reside near stables. This first brings you to Tera near the Woodland Stable, who is usually the last Great Fairy that you might find in Breath of the Wild.
Funnily, her new place is right at the old Military Training Camp, where she couldn't have possibly chosen an uglier place in Hyrule. But she also tells you where to find her younger sisters, which marks all four Great Fairy locations on your map. Well, I already knew about Cotera near the Dueling Peaks Stable, because I went past her when I headed to Hateno originally. And I've been at the Outskirt Stable, too, which is even where the band gathers. I love how the violinist is called Violynne, where all of the members seem to be named after their respective instrument.
As chance would have it, I had already found one of their other members when I passed through the Tabantha region to get to the Rito Stable, where he was crashed with a wagon in a hole and you have to get him out of there together with the wagon. This involved a series of failed attempts, but I had some good fun with this.
It first seemed a bit too easy to get to all the Great Fairies, but I suppose it takes more to unlock them all this time. For the trumpet guy you even have to visit Kaysa's old hood, essentially. And while it doesn't cost you any Rupees to unlock them, upgrading your armor will now. At least, you're now able to upgrade some of the DLC armor pieces from Breath of the Wild, where in my case I'm still missing the materials for the Royal Guard Boots that I found, but I saw that it can be done. This will give you a lot more options for wearing things in the late game, which is nice.
Back to the Great Plateau
There is another side adventure at the Outskirt Stable, where a dubious woman is looking for a blonde male who will help her to help her regal friend. It was clear from the beginning that this is just a Yiga, so I wasn't taking this seriously at all. When she said I that I should not be discovered by any monsters, I waltzed through the area like this:
Not that it made any difference... When she asked me to climb the Coliseum Ruins during rain, even though I didn't have a piece of the Froggy Armor yet, I expected her to lure me into the monster that now resides there, but this wasn't the case, luckily...
There is also a fun mini-game up there, where a Goron wants you to ring a bell, for which you get to use a lot of different stuff, including various Zonai devices. The two mini-games I have seen so far are really awesome, let's hope it stays this way.
Back to the obvious Yiga lady, she told me to go to the Great Plateau, to the edge of the Forest of Spirits, which was not a place where I wanted to return so quickly, because this is where I had my first encounter with the scary Gloom monster.
However, since I already had the idea that this monster might not be tied to a location, I carefully took a look around, where the worst I could find was another Battle Talus. So, I finally continued my exploration of the Great Plateau, where this time I even jumped down its chasm for some nice discoveries...
First of all, I instantly found some Lightroots around, which pointed me at other hidden shrines on or under the Plateau. I knew that I should have checked out that waterfall cave! But at the time I assumed that the shrines must be all somewhere on the surface, because they fell down from the sky. And then there is a cave where you need to dig into the wall of the Great Plateau, but I gave up on it on my first visit, because I quickly ran out of hammers and Bomb Flowers... and now I suspect the other hidden shrine is there, where I will check it out later. I really like how well hidden the shrines at the Great Plateau are now, but the location of new shrines wasn't the most important discovery down there.
The Power to Copy
The chasm at the Great Plateau led me to the Abandoned Central Mine, a place which the Constructs kept mentioning several times, where they urged me to go there first before they can give me something.
Well, it's where you obtain the last of the Zonai abilities: the Autobuild. It's essentially what I was hoping for and offers even more than just that. It basically remembers your Ultrahand creations and let's you re-create them on the spot. If the necessary parts aren't around, it will use Zonaite to create artificial replacements, where each part costs three units.
That's not even that expensive, even though I'd rather invest all of it into upgrading my Energy Cells right now, instead of
opting for some convenience. But later in the game this surely will be the source of a lot of fun and crazy nonsense, where it might make me forget about the Master Cycle Zero. Though, I have yet to drive something in this game that gives you the same level of control.
Ideally, there would be an option to directly use items from your capsules, where right now you would need to open them all one after another if you wanted to use them instead of Zonaite.
And I wonder how extensive this history will be. There must be a limit, but it saves every step and every mishap while you build things... At least by now I was able to figure out how to attach wheels correctly, where after a certain distance the glue changes towards the middle. You can mark things in your history as favorites, where this is limited to only eight, but you can also find schematics made by the Constructs and the Yiga to let you build certain pre-defined vehicles and contraptions. Let's see if this will be enough... (Update: the history has a limit of 30 items, which includes your favorites.)
Yiga Mining Corporation
You won't just be given this new ability and then move on, no, the Zonai mines in the Depths have all been taken over by the Yiga, where now you finally meet Master Kohga again, who is still alive and very jealous of your new ability. Plus, he is ready for some good old revenge for what you did to him in Breath of the Wild.
Now, I already had the feeling that the hole next to the Yiga Clan Hideout will probably lead you into the Depths as well, but it turns out that this chasm is actually how Master Kohga ended up down there in the first place. This also explains how the Yiga could build all these bases in the Depths so quickly, where they simply had a head start. They've been at this since the events of Breath of the Wild...
And the mini-boss battle against Kohga is even goofier than in the first game, where he tries to run you over with several different vehicle constructions. Unlike in Breath of the Wild, it doesn't seem like this will be the last time you meet him in the game...
Curiously, in the profiles Master Kohga gets listed as a Sheikah. While the Yiga are Sheikah, strictly speaking, shouldn't the game treat them as their own tribe by now? Seems a bit weird.
Lit Paths
Since other Constructs wanted to give me something once I've been to the Central Mine, I went back to the mine below Kakariko to find one of the ones in question, but what I found instead is that all my Brightbloom Seeds are still sticking around.
This surprised me quite a bit, where I also went back to where you first descend into the Depths to see if my trail of Brightbloom Seeds was still there... And it was! Again, there must be a limit to this, because I don't expect them to be there indefinitely. Otherwise you could technically plaster the whole world with these seeds and make the game crash eventually. But I dislike that there is no way of removing them. Why can't I just pick them up again?
I also dislike how short the reach of Ascend is at times. Whenever I'm in the Depths I just need to climb those huge mushrooms everywhere, but often Ascend doesn't let you go to the first layer of caps. Would be great if you somehow could enhance this, though it's really the only ability where I see the potential for improvement.
And I was able to confirm that the Poes do respawn, so you can just keep collecting them from the same good spots if you need more.
I'm also now a lot more curious about the statues, where you had to take a picture for Josha in the early game. I've seen other statues of a Zora and a woman holding a sword (very similar to the seven / eight Heroines) underground, where these statues truly might picture the different tribes of Hyrule. But then this would really mean that there used to be one more tribe here in the Depths that is still unknown to me, which is quite exciting.
Other than the Zonai, the new Zelda games have mostly focused on expanding upon the more popular tribes from past Zelda games, which was a good decision, but it's also fun to have some completely new beings every now and then. These here look like Kremlings, though.
Two Worlds
With all my exploration of the Depths, I've gathered a lot of Zonaite, enough to purchase all the refined stuff from both mines and add three more wells to my Energy Cell. This brought me back to the Great Sky Islands, where I haven't been in quite some time. So long that it almost made me feel nostalgic.
I fought the Flux Construct there for the first time, where by now it was way too easy and I probably should have given this a try right at the end of the tutorial for some kicks.
And while strolling around the island, I realized that this is actually one whole with the Hyrule below, even if the map treats it as its own layer. It's essentially parts of the ancient Hyrule, which presumably have been lifted up into the sky somehow. Many parts have even returned to the ground now, where you can find the sky island debris everywhere.
Some of it is pretty weird, though, like what you can see above. Here and there you can find these sky island rocks that have merged with the walls of mountains on the surface, which even left these patterns around them. This can't be explained with "it just fell down there", where I have no idea what has happened here, but maybe I have missed some explanation somewhere.
In any case, it looks like the surface Hyrule is merging with the sky Hyrule, where they also share a lot of the gameplay elements, like shrines and Koroks.
The Depths are entirely different, however. There you have no shrines or Koroks, but Lightroots and Poes. And while you enter the Depths via the chasms on the surface, there is still a clear disconnect here, where you can't just go back and forth. You need to teleport out of there. It's truly an underworld, while the entire rest of the game world represents your classic Zelda overworld, skies and caves included.
Army of Moldugas
From the Great Sky Island I could spot another geoglyph, the one that looks like a Molduga next to Batrea Lake, so this is where I went next. The memory is pretty awesome, which shows Ganondorf as the king of the Gerudo leading an assault on the Great Plateau.
One of the Gerudo uses a horn to summon this swarm of Moldugas that we saw in the trailers, which is quite impressive that the Gerudo used to be able to control these beasts like that. Then you get to see the whole light beam scene, where the final trailer made it look like it was all Sonia's doing, but it was actually Rauru with the support of both Sonia and Zelda, where Zelda was adding the most power, to the surprise of the other two.
A Thousand Distractions
At Batrea Lake you can also find a group of people who have food-poisoned themselves. The gourmet fan at the Riverside Stable has been waiting for them ever since the beginning of my adventure, and you have to help them out as part of the whole side adventure series with Penn. But you need Hylian Rice for this, where this is the second time I'm in need for this ingredient. I thought that you could simply get this from cutting grass, but apparently this only works in certain regions, like East Necluda. At least, I was 100% sure that you can get it from cutting grass around Hateno, because I did this all the time around my house in Breath of the Wild.
So, my next destination was set, where it was finally time to visit the fashion village again. Technically, I haven't even been there yet since my restart, so I was taking the same route through Dueling Peaks. The big difference was that last time I just went straight for my goal, while now I let myself get distracted on every turn, which is very easy in this game.
There is this fallen sky island near the road at the west base of the Dueling Peaks, where you have a shrine quest that involves making ice shapes in the right size. I was actually very surprised to learn that this is now possible again..! I've tried shooting Ice Chuchu Jelly into water before, but at the time nothing happened, so I simply assumed that it was like in Breath of the Wild, where you can't freeze water with ice weapons. But it does work in Tears of the Kingdom, where it creates these square platforms, though it's a bit finicky. This is still nice to have and actually the first time since Majora's Mask on the Nintendo 64 that a Zelda game let's you do this. Finally!
Once I arrived at the Dueling Peaks Stable, I was once more overwhelmed by the options. Cotera is waiting there, though I don't have the musician with the drum yet. Penn wants you to investigate something where the Yiga claimed to have kidnapped Zelda. Captain Hoz is leading an assault on Fort Hateno. A Korok wants back to his friend, once more. And there is fallen debris that leads you up to a sky island. I went for the debris, just to escape it all a bit...
It was yet another sky island with one of those rotating pushers, however, where it's really starting to feel like the copy pasted stuff in The Wind Waker. But at least this group of sky islands seemed a little bit more extensive.
Again you have to follow a green beam to a large gemstone, which you need to transport back to the shrine. The distance and height difference between the islands was quite significant, however, where I somehow managed to cheese myself over by putting a glider on the pusher, which threw me up in a different angle (it was a waste of a glider, though).
On the other end you get everything you need to build yourself a nice flying machine to transport the green gem, where I felt like a genius for putting this together, only to realize that I have no idea how to properly stop and land this thing, so I overshot and I didn't make it. And then I was too lazy to find a way back up again, so I decided to just join Hoz in the battle to do something useful...
There I have been utilizing all the crazy Zonai devices that I could loot from the Constructs at the river on the other end of the Dueling Peaks, where they had stuff like laser emitters. They also had bomb shooters, which was really awesome, but I've already used this one up. At least I still had some Flame and Frost Emitters from the shrine quest earlier, where using all this was quite fun, though depending on the weapon type it doesn't work to well. If you attach these emitters to one-handed weapons, Link just swings them around and doesn't aim the beams at the enemy at all. There really should have been more adjustments depending on what you have fused to your weapon.
Captain Hoz announces that they will be back after the next Blood Moon, where it seems that you can repeat these battles once every cycle, which would be awesome. Though, it's a bit silly that Hoz will just do the same thing for the rest of the game after he got such a big introduction.
And I'm not even done with half of the stuff that you can do in this area... I've already mentioned this before, but this game can be really overwhelming. Breath of the Wild was a lot more two-dimensional in comparison, which may sound like a bad thing, but it made the game more straightforward. You had this landmass with towers, shrines, Koroks, and bosses to find, as well as people with some side quests. In Tears of the Kingdom you have the same landmass with the same things, but you also get the sky islands, caves, transport missions, and more on top, where you can spend many hours just in the same place on the map, going up, down, below, and in circles. And this isn't even taking the Depths into the equation, which is this whole other world below...
The Dropoff Doctor and the Creepy Cave
After Fort Hateno you arrive at Calip's cabin, who used to be this doctor researching the ancient Sheikah Shrines in Breath of the Wild. He left a note that he has joined the Zonai Survey Team, which is when I realized that this is the arrogant dude who prevents you from going near the floating piece of the Ring Ruins. I should have never called him "doctor"...
Still, this raised my curiosity what is now to be found at all those creepy statues at the Robred Dropoff nearby, where this was my last stop before Hateno. It turns out that it's even more creepy statues, but this time in a cave...
This cavern was actually quite extensive, where it reminded me a bit of the caves in Twilight Princess, though those were much more interesting. As much as I liked the new caves early on, they all just look the same... and play the same. The novelty of them really has worn off by now.
I'm quite disappointed about this, actually, because the original teaser trailer for this game has painted this picture in my head of these extensive caverns with ruins. This is what I truly wanted from this game, but instead so far it all has been moving between two extremes with the underground: it's either these small, samey caves on the one hand, or the gigantic underworld on the other, where I find the latter too much and too alien. What I wanted was something right in the middle of all of this... And maybe there will be cave systems like that in other regions, but I don't want to get my hopes up.
You can find the Barbarian Helm in this cave, by the way, where together with the Fierce Deity Boots I'm already very well equipped for combat. Again, this feels a bit too easy compared to Breath of the Wild, where these items were either amiibo cheats or hidden away in the Lomei Labyrinths.
Back Home
After a long journey full of distractions, my horse Traversa and I finally had arrived at Hateno. This time I didn't have to leave my horse on the middle of the way at Fort Hateno, but otherwise I followed the same steps and went back to my former house, which is now Zelda's house...
Ah, this feels so good. I already knew about Zelda's "secret room", so I went there to get the hair band again. I expected that this would let me wear the Hylian Hood over my shoulders, instead of my head, but it's just it's own headpiece without any special effects, so it replaces the hood. Maybe it only works with the new Champion's Tunic, which Zelda is teasing in her diary. I totally forgot about that, where I will need to go back to Hyrule Castle to grab it...
I completed the Zanmik Shrine a second time, where you have this funny ball pit puzzle. Well, it's only really a "puzzle" if you're looking for the treasure chest... But with that I've actually caught up with the things that I had done before starting over, even if this wasn't much. And this seems like a good point to end this post, even though I'm still in the middle of that quest for the Hylian Rice on my quest for the Froggy Armor... Now, I'm sure that Hateno will offer countless more distractions before we'll get to that.
Progress:
- Shrines: 36
- Lightroots: 12
- Towers: 6
- Korok Seeds: 90
- Bubbuls: 16
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