Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 8

Having arrived in Hateno, I explored the town from top to bottom and got involved in a series of side quests. Afterwards, I went to the tower on top of Mount Lanayru, went to the sky islands above, found another memory at the Talus Plateau, finished some other quests that required Hylian Rice, and got some cool new armor, including the new Champion's Leathers.

The Unknown Hero

A lot has changed since Breath of the Wild in Hateno Village, where the most notable thing is the addition of a school, and the obsession with mushroom-based fashion in a part of the town, creating a bit of a hodgepodge together with the Bolson housings and the traditional housings.

Worten, the guy who used to hang out at the balcony of the Ton Pu Inn all the time, is now married to its owner, Prima. Manny has therefore moved on to stalking checking Ivee, the girl from the grocery store, where now you have to collect 10 frogs for him instead of 10 crickets. Well, not so much has changed after all, I guess...

What they all have in common is that NO ONE remembers you. I used to be a citizen of this small town! I'm the guy who drove you all mad with his loud motor cycle, remember? No? Not even Nebb remembers you, where I was worried for a moment that he wants to see more weapons, but the kids are into some superhero called "A-Zone" now, or "A-Zoom", or something like that... I don't recall. But gee, you would think that at least this kid remembers you after all that you've done for him.

Well, there is one guy in town who still does remember who Link is and that's Symin, who is now the teacher at the new school. The first lesson is about the Great Calamity, where the kids show some real wit and question everything he says, because it could just be a legend or a fairy tale. They want to see some sort of proof. So, he tasks you with taking a picture of the Calamity Ganon Tapestry, which you can find at Paya's place... I was just there the other day... I even pointed the camera right at it, but I didn't release the shutter... Ugh, okay... I'll do it later.

Now, once you bring it, this counts as solid proof to the children and the lesson can proceed. At the end he even talks about the events in Breath of the Wild, and references the hero with the legendary blade, as if Link isn't standing right next to them. Isn't he aware who Link actually is? Or did he simply want to avoid the children demanding proof that Link is really that hero...? Maybe this whole scene plays out differently if you already have the Master Sword back...

Teacher, I also have a question! What happened to the Divine Beasts after Calamity Ganon got defeated just recently? Where did all the ancient Sheikah shrines and towers go? I'd really like to know this!

Mayoral Madness

The school isn't the center of attention for Hateno, however, where it's located at the outskirts of the village, near Kilton's old landing spot. Instead, all eyes are on the Cece, the new fashion icon, who has taken over the Ventest Clothing Botique. The shy corner girl, Sophie, is her sister, who now has to take care of many more things outside her comfort zone.

Now, Keanu Reede, the town's mayor, is all but happy about what Cece is doing around Hateno with her ugly mushroom art. I actually had to go back to Breath of the Wild to check if this character already existed in the game, because I could not recall him at all. Well, he does, but he was completely insignificant, despite his role as the village chief, where it's nice to see that some minor NPCs are getting expanded roles.

But their quarrel calls for a new mayoral election, which leads to a series of different side adventures, where you have to investigate both mayor candidates. And this was fun.

There is a sequence where you have to follow Cece through the night, which is very reminiscent of following Mila at Windfall Island in The Wind Waker. It's a bit shorter here and Link doesn't make any cat noises, but I still really liked this part.

Another quests wants you to enter a closed shack, where most of the shacks in Hateno now actually can be entered, unlike in Breath of the Wild, which includes the one behind Zelda's house. But this is part of what I had envisioned for the Ascend ability, which made me quite happy, where for this you have to explore the wells all around Hateno, which are all connected via tunnels.

Down there I finally found the treasure chest that has been causing beeping noises from my Sheikah Sensor+ around Hateno for years! I'm kidding, of course, this is not actually the glitched chest (where people even have found ways of retrieving it in Breath of the Wild), but it's the thought that counts.

Otherwise you have to run around town to bribe people with mushrooms, who might be voting for Reede, while Reede himself wants to remember some recipe that might make the town trendy again with its old values of farming. Which brings you to the ranch near the lab, where the Retsam Forest is now infested with squirrels, which I found hilarious.

Of course it all comes together, where Reede and Cece really want the same things for Hateno, and you get a happy ending for series of nice and wholesome side quests all around the town. Well, you also get this..

Uhm, thank you...?

The legendary, one and only Cece Hat! I think this thing might protect me from the gloom monster, because I wouldn't go near anyone looking like this.

But Cece also finally opens shops and acts as this game's Granté, where you can repurchase all the secret armor items that you can find, e.g. from Misko's treasures, but for quite the price this time. I hope that this game simply won't have some arbitrary armor limit again, so that you won't be in need of selling anything ever. Yes, I'm still salty about that in Breath of the Wild.

But that the map now lets you place 300 pins, instead of just 100, gives me some hope. This is – of course – completely unrelated, other than the fact that the limit for armor also used to be 100, but hopefully they have increased this limit accordingly, because you will need the space for all the new things. And maybe even some extra for having the same pieces in different colors.

amiibo Analysis

Speaking of, one big attraction of Hateno has always been the Kochi Dye Shop, where they have the new feature of changing the fabric of your Paraglider. I've already collected a couple, where they get taken out of your inventory by Sayge, which is a bit weird.

On the hand it removes a quick overview of what you've collected so far... On the other hand it does not clutter your inventory of key items as much and you still have the overview where you need it the most. And it makes sense that he has taken them, where this is also true for other key items, like the Korok Seeds. But why doesn't it work the same with the horse gear? It already annoyed me in Breath of the Wild that half of the key items are the saddles and bridles. Wouldn't it be enough to have those at the stables?

Anyway, changing your Paraglider is really nice, where I remembered that amiibo will give you exclusive fabrics as well. And next to Link's house is what I call the "amiibo meadow", because I've always scanned my amiibo right there on the flat ground in Breath of the Wild. It was a real ritual. So, I decided to go there and do just that to give it a try.

So far, I hadn't used any amiibo at all, save for the Link from Twilight Princess and Wolf Link for some quick tests, where the former still gives you another Epona, on top of the one that already got imported from Breath of the Wild. Well, you also could get multiple Eponas before if you had both the Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Link amiibo or multiple of the same amiibo. And Wolf Link didn't work at all, it just threw a lot of meat at me.

But since I knew that you can now find the amiibo armor pieces in caves, I didn't want to scan any, because they feel very much like cheating in the early game, where it spawns a lot of stuff that I haven't found normally yet. However, I assumed that the exclusive fabrics could be gotten from scanning the amiibo at the Dye Shop somehow, but this is not the case. They are normal treasure chest drops, where they seem to be quite common, luckily.

Ideally, it would always give you the fabric on your first scan, where this would have multiple advantages. You could see right away which amiibo will give you a new piece of fabric to begin with, while it also prevents you from getting any of the armor pieces, given that you want to collect them for real in the game. Save scumming still works, though, where you simply save before scanning a given amiibo and reload if you don't like the result. Ironically, now I use this technique whenever I get one of the armor pieces, and not the other way around. It's upside-down compared to Breath of the Wild.

And it looks like most of the amiibo give you an exclusive piece of fabric now, even the ones who didn't have anything exclusive in Breath of the Wild, like the Bokoblin, or Archer Link. I really like the "Ancient-Sheikah Fabric" from the Guardian, for example, where I'm using this right now. Anyway, I will keep scanning the amiibo until I got all the fabrics, and then stop using them.

Link's house also used to be a great place to pick up sledgehammers. And in general, you often could find hammers and axes around, where all of this seems to be removed from the game in favor of the fused items. While it's nice to turn any rock and stick into a hammer in case you need one, I don't see why there shouldn't be any normal hammers around any longer. Plus, I often fail to find the necessary stones for axes whenever I need one...

Copy and Paste Archipelago

While following the quests at Hateno Village, the tower at the top of Mount Lanayru was smiling at me all this time. So, I just had to climb up there and activate it. I expected something bad, like a Frost Gleeok defending the top, but there was nothing alike.

In fact, this has been the only tower so far that I could just activate right away. The only hindrance was that you need double cold protection, but I still had some leftovers from the sky islands, which I made during the tutorial, and the warm pants, so that was enough...

Using the Skyview Tower, which is technically a modern version of the Sky Cannon from Twilight Princess, brought me to another group of sky islands around, where at first this seemed to be quite unique. You have drive up with some prepared flying vehicles, while Constructs on floating platforms shoot at you with arrows fused to rockets... I didn't even think of fusing any capsules to arrows yet, where they are giving me new ideas here!

But when I arrived at the top, I found an almost identical shrine quest to the one at West Necluda, where you have to fly the crystal out of a cave at the side of a sky island, and then bring it to an island with one of those rotatable pushers. What the hell? This is just bad and seriously bumming me out, because it's the level of laziness present in The Wind Waker, with all the near-identical reefs and fairy islands. I was looking forward to the whole sky setting so much, only to find the worst of Zelda's world design repeated here... Still better than Skyward Sword, though.

At least the whole flying machine transport worked better than it did the last time. I could directly re-create my vehicle from then using Autobuild, where it even gave me the option to replace the green crystal with Zonaite, because I didn't have it next to the other things at first. I don't think this counts, but it would be worth a try to just attach a crystal to something plentiful from a capsule and then autobuild this in front of the shrine. But I need to keep a mental note to always attach the crystal last to my creations, so I can remake them without it.

There is another diving ceremony nearby, where I experienced another absolute fail related to me not knowing what the R button does while gliding. I was just gliding down normally and couldn't even get close to the required time, where I remembered that during the first trial I was switching between dropping and diving to make it... And while this brought me closer, it still wasn't enough, but then I finally realized that you can just hold R again while diving to dive down really fast. "Ahaaahhh, now this I can do!" And before you knew it, I became the new record holder... at least according to the Construct, I'm sure people out there already have amazing world records for these mini-games.

But once you know how the controls work, the sky diving is really fun. And I'm amazed how many problems I had to figure out this one button... I will now have to go back to the first diving ceremony and beat the record there as well.

Masked Sages

Below where I was, I could spot a new geoglyph, the one that looks like one of the tears, so of course I had to go for this next, because I'm very curious to learn more about the past. This scene introduces you to these "Zonai Stones" and the sages of that era, but sadly they are all wearing helmets, obscuring their faces and voices.

These look a lot like the Divine Helms which you can get from the Champion amiibo (and presumably also find elsewhere now), where this is another indicator that the entire ancient Sheikah technology is highly derivative and based on the Zonai technology.

But this also looks like Nintendo didn't want to put any focus on these characters, only their descendants, as well as Rauru and Sonia. Well, maybe you will still see their faces in one of the other memories, or maybe they will be revealed in DLC later on, but judging from this scene alone it doesn't seem like we will get to know the other sages from the past.

Also, it seems like the Zonai Stones are initially blanks and then develop their power from whoever wields them. The Rito Sage, for example, touched the Zonai Stone and it carved the "wind" symbol into it. Sonia's stone gives you the power of time, which ultimately found Zelda in the beginning of the game. And Rauru has the power of light.

There is a fifth sage in this scene, who is the only one where the mask isn't obscuring her face: a Zonai woman, with an owl mask. She's the one who says the "you're not alone" line in the final trailer, where I've been wondering who that might be. I first thought it might be Riju.

She also is already in possession of another Zonai Stone, where together with the ones from Rauru and Sonia this makes seven in total, like on the mural. With Zelda's duplicate tear from the future, it makes eight, which supports the idea that the statue of the Eighth Heroine was meant to represent her from that era. Ganondorf also gets his hands on a Zonai Stone, however, where his is on his crown at the beginning of the game, but this could be one of the stones from the others.

Well, I'm sure I will find out soon enough and I always feel the need to apologize about theorizing mid-game, but it's part of the fun for me to write down my thoughts of how everything will come together at the end.

On a site note, you can also find a larger bay cave nearby and there I made good use of just throwing Frost Fruits into the water for traversal. Since you can also pick these ice platforms up with the Ultrahand, you could probably cheese a number of shrines just by building something with them, as long as there is water around.

Full Circle

Now, why did I go to Hateno to begin with? Right, I wanted fresh milk and some Hylian Rice, both of which can be gotten easily there. This let me solve one of the open side quests at Kakariko, for the Gloom-curing porridge, where now in hindsight it was very clear that this quest is supposed to send you to Hateno, since Lasli talks all about going there herself.

I also didn't need the weird stuff from the Poe statue, but the new "Sundelion" herbs that you can find on the (fallen) sky island ruins. That this can cure the Gloom effects is also something that you learn at Kakariko by studying everything around the Zonai research. Or by simply reading the description of the item... Well, good thing is that I had realized this before wasting some of the ingredients that cost Poe Souls.

While I was in Kakariko, I also did the funny "follow the Cuccos" quest, purchased some stealth armor, and took the picture of the Calamity Ganon Tapestry for Symin., so it was worth the trip. Back in Hateno I was a bit surprised to find someone in my, errhh... I mean, in Zelda's house:

It was the mayor's wife, Clavia, who was sweeping the place. A domestic help, great... Zelda was also quite busy with decorating the place, where the Picture of the Champions is one of the few things there still left by Link. She has added a lot of pictures of her own, where it's interesting to study them a bit.

You can see a golden horse, but also these rumored creatures at Faron, which are the talk at the New Serenne Stable. They don't look to be very large, so it's probably not that creature we saw in the first teaser trailer. Then there is the crazy flower lady for some reason, and a photo of the gourmet group, how sweet...

Oh, wait...! The gourmet group! They are still stranded at Batrea Lake with belly aches, which is where this whole detour to Hateno began. So, I immediately went back there and completed my fourth successful investigation with Penn, which scored me this baby:

The Froggy Sleeve! Yes! I can't wait for it to rain while I climb somewhere, so I can give this a try. Please, Nintendo, please also add this to Breath of the Wild! Like, right now! Patch it into the game, even if it's only on Nintendo Switch, I don't care, I need this!

Another improvement over Breath of the Wild comes with Octoroks. There are quite a lot in those woods and this was one of the most annoying enemies in the first game, not because they were tough or difficult, but simply because they were really annoying. But in Tears of the Kingdom you can just use Recall on their projectiles to drop their own rocks on them. This works most of the time and is highly satisfying.

Now, there was one more piece of armor to get for me at the moment: the Champion's Leathers, which Zelda mentioned in her other diary. She hid it at the throne room and since I've already been there, it wasn't a big deal to check it out. Some Zelda fan I am that I didn't recognize the torch puzzle on my first visit...

It does not put the Hylian Hood down, as I thought it would. How do you recreate the look from the artworks? Is there a second Hylian Hood item which is worn differently? Or wait... will this be the hood that Zelda wore during the intro? That would make sense and add a lot more meaning to that particular outfit... And in that case I already have an idea where to find it...

The Champion's Leather requires a "Light Dragon's Scale" to upgrade it, which brings me back to a theory I had back in February about how the game might handle light as another element in addition to the four we had in Breath of the Wild: fire, ice, electricity, and wind. Well, if it wasn't already obvious enough, it is now, where there is also a mirror Zonia device that I got from capsules. Can't wait to have some old-fashioned Mirror Shield puzzles.

But I wonder if the dragon really is just called "Light Dragon" or if the game is nice enough not to spoil the name for me at this point. I've been calling it "Hydron" so far, where it's probably something similar to the names of Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra, but with the Goddess Hylia in mind. I haven't gotten close to it yet, though, while you can see the other dragons a lot more frequently now. Or at least their routes now are closer to the more populated areas... 

At least Farosh and Naydra, I don't think I have seen Dinraal yet. Maybe Dinraal is in a similar position to Naydra in Breath of the Wild, where she was infected with Malice. Maybe Dinraal is trapped in the Depths somewhere, which is why Farosh and Naydra keep going down there... They might besearching for their friend.

However, I'm done with distractions now...! I'm going to search for Hestu, because I'm really annoyed by how many Korok Seeds I'm carrying and how little weaponry, but THEN I'm really done with distractions for real, and will be aiming at one of the four regions where the story continues... Probably getting distracted on the way...

Progress:

• Shrines: 40
• Lightroots: 12
• Towers: 7
  
• Korok Seeds: 101
• Bubbul Gems: 18