Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 14

After my adventures around Lurelin Village, I set my goal on the mysterious set of sky islands shrouded by thunderstorm clouds. This led to a couple of surprises, but also a different journey into the heart of the Lost Woods and to a certain legendary sword that you may have heard about. Spoilers ahead!

 

Into the Thunderhead

Last time I was headed right into the giant thunderstorm above the Faron region, where this is one of two persisting storms in the skies, the other above the Hebra Mountains, which I have been successfully avoiding for all this time now, probably to my disadvantage. But I can't help but follow my own curiosity, which led me right onto "Dragonhead Island".

And I didn't know what to expect there. I first thought that the whole place might be home to a Thunder Gleeok, but there is one already on the plateau behind Malanya Spring, which I could see in the distance while flying up there. And two of them so close to each other might be a bit much, so it had to be something else...

You can see quite a lot when you first approach the thunderhead, but this luxury goes away once you've stepped on the land, where then it becomes similar to the sandstorm areas, so you won't be able to see far. But I accidentally fell right into the hole that leads to the shrine, where you can also find another door that requires a certain amount of hearts to open it. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was around ten hearts and I had more than enough.

Behind that door you'll find the mask of Mineru, Rauru's older sister and the Sage of Spirit. I already knew her from the memories and saw that she has a Secret Stone of her own, where she obviously was one of the sages, but it wasn't clear what sage exactly. Also, "spirit" wasn't mentioned in the Ring Ruins translations around Kakariko, at least not in the first four.

You can pick up her mask and it will work like one of the green crystals that you need to carry to shrines, where a green beam leads the way. This already brings you back to the surface, but I've returned to this place later to explore it more, where there is an additional group of islands, called the "Thunderhead Isles".

And I really hope that there is something there to dissolve the thunderstorm, like you could do with the sandstorms in Breath of the Wild, because exploring this place isn't much fun with the lack of vision. It's a different experience, for sure, but it's a shame that one of the few larger sets of sky islands is obscured like that. It's also going on my nerves after a while.

On the other hand... the Thunderhead Isles are probably just the ever same boring sky islands without the thunderstorm, where it might be like exploring the Thyphlo Ruins now without the darkness. While it's nice to finally see something, it just doesn't have the same mystery to it any longer and in the end is just some ruins. And I think I've explored all of it already and couldn't find anything to make the storm stop.

Contruct Construction

Already while hiking around the Necluda region I noticed the new Zonai owl statue at the pond in the north end of Tobio's Hollow, but at the time I couldn't make much sense out of it. Well, I got my answer now and it reveals an elevator into the Depths, leading down to a construction site. As the Sage of Spirit, Mineru was able to live on for all these thousands of years, her mind residing in her own creation, where it serves as the head for a slightly larger Construct:

This is another case where trailer expectations hit reality. We have seen this thing in the final trailer and everything about it screamed "boss", something similar to Gohdan, because it came out of a wall. It also looked quite big. But by now I should know better and it's just the case of the Steward Construct all over again, where the trailer made it look to me like some giant Eyegore enemy. The exact same thing has happened here and with trailers for future Zelda games I will have to be very careful with such assumptions about mechanical beings.

You now have to assemble the rest of her body, where four mini-dungeons await you in the proximity for the limbs. The limbs are all put in boxes and for whatever reason it closes the entrance once you've obtained that box, where now you have to get it across various obstacles by attaching Zonai devices. You will transport the thing in all possible ways, making it drive, swim, and fly, where this overall has been fun.

And once you're done with it all, you're rewarded with a Construct companion, where you can mount and steer the thing at any time. You can also fuse things to its arms and the back, where each of these parts have a dedicated button. And that feels a bit like playing ARMS, especially since you can attach different weapons to each arm.

Mineru's Den

Once you've put together Mineru's Construct, your task is to use it to reach the Spirit Temple and obtain her Secret Stone. And I was absolutely ecstatic for a moment here. I didn't have any major expectations when going into the Thunderhead, but I found another sage there, one who is not on your initial radar and who gives you a cool robot mech, where the two of you are now headed to an additional temple...

Before the game came out, I was even hoping that bringing the sages back would lead to more than just four main dungeons, all in the same areas as in Breath of the Wild. I was thinking that Paya could be the Sheikah sage, for example... Well, they definitely did the Sheikah dirty in this game, but getting a Zonai sage with Mineru (since Rauru wasn't technically one of the six sages, he was the king) and your own Construct along with it is pretty sweet nonetheless. So, the whole situation made me very happy and excited.

But my happiness and excitement both didn't last long... First of all, the Construct itself is super weak and leaves you very open to attacks, unless you're blocking all the time. On the way I had to fight multiple black and silver enemies, while Link is just a sitting duck on top of that Construct, especially for Lizalfos spit. So, I often just dismounted and fought the monsters directly myself, because this is where I can properly dodge and do more than just two points of damage per hit.

It still has its use, where you can safely cross gloom on that thing and speed around with a propeller, which gives you a silly Naruto-style running animation, but the overpowered hover bike makes this obsolete anyway. Come to think of it, I could have saved myself the troubles and just flown to the Spirit Temple...

But this would have cut the whole part very short, because this was like the biggest tease in the history of the Zelda series and I cannot possibly in any way or form understate my disappointment with this. The Spirit Temple was the most epic dungeon in Ocarina of Time and here it looked like they are going to mix things a bit with the Shadow Temple, because this is in the dark Depths and there are Poes everywhere. I was thrilled to explore this dungeon... only to find a boxing ring from ARMS:

I'm not even kidding here. I know that I have made several ARMS jokes about the Constructs already, even before the game came out (see here), but this fight is literally just like playing ARMS. If you were to name the boss "Springtron", you wouldn't be able to tell any difference between the two games. Okay, true, there is one big difference: you don't have the stretching arms, which was always the best part...

But this entire fight was just one horrible gimmick experience. The worst part is that the "Seized Construct" gets its own Hyrule Compendium entry and the whole arena is covered in gloom. You can't take a picture from atop your own Construct, so you have to get down and try your luck. While there are some gloom-free spots, the boss will be right in your face, so it doesn't really help. You have to try to get some distance for a good shot and you only get one second, because whenever you take damage it takes you out of the photo mode... Ugh.

I swear, I took more damage trying to take a picture of this thing than in the entire rest of the game combined. Well... it was probably not that much, but it certainly felt like it and was just pure frustrations. Maybe I was doing something wrong here, maybe this is simply a photo you're supposed to get from Robbie (it won't let you make sculptures out of it), but boy was I pissed...

And during all this I had this thought in the back of my head that the game cheated me out of a proper dungeon. Sure, the part where you collect the limbs for a Construct was very much dungeon-like, but that doesn't count. If there's no dungeon map, it's not a real dungeon! Plus, with the Water Temple you also had the Wellspring Island before it, where this was already a dungeon-like area before the actual dungeon.

And the whole setting of the Spirit Temple was just so promising, I would have loved to get a whole dungeon in the Depths, where you explore the darkness with the light of Mineru's Construct. But instead all you get is a gimmicky boss fight. Well, at least you get to fight that specific Construct after all... It was just not the way I expected things to happen.

 

7 vs. 1

You get the full package from the Spirit Temple otherwise, though. There is a Heart Container to collect and there is another memory, which shows you the Imprisoning War in all its glory. Ganondorf has horns at that point, after the became the Demon King, to make him look more like a devil, but I can't take this seriously... On the contrary, if anything, it makes me question the whole thing in all sorts of ways.

Like, what's his relation to the Horned Statue? Can Ganondorf's horns be used as a fusing material if you defeat him? And why did he lose the horns when he became a mummy? Did he lose other things over time as well?

Ganondorf is sadly not the villain I was hoping for. It's simply a new incarnation for this version of Hyrule and he doesn't really know more than the other characters. He knew Princess Zelda, because she traveled back into the past, and Rauru told him about Link. So, he didn't know some other incarnations of Link and Zelda from an even earlier era and he is not aware of the Triforce, just like everyone else.

The fight itself was epic, however, where I love how active Zelda is in her new role as the Sage of Time. It was pretty awesome to see them fight all together, even if it was only briefly and even when most of the sages are sadly faceless (I guess they will keep this for the next Hyrule Warriors game).

In addition, you get Mineru's Vow, where from now on it let's you use her Construct as you please, just like Shadow Sidon. You can even use both at the same time, where I had been wondering if the game lets you do this... But it does.

And this would have been very inconvenient otherwise, because there are no buttons left to swap things quickly. So, if you had to go into the menu to activate whatever sage companion you need for his/her/its ability, then this would have been messy. But it can already get crowded with just the two of them, where I can only imagine right now how the game plays with all sages activated, so that might be a total mess as well.

Bypassing the Lost Woods

Mineru suggests to visit the Great Deku Tree next, because he can probably tell you something about where to find the Master Sword. So, my next goal was set, yet again postponing the actual dungeons, but at least I was going for another big milestone here. 

I've been to the Lost Woods before (see entry 6), but at the time I didn't understand what I had to do there. Now, I had the idea that maybe light can shine the way through, where using Mineru's Construct makes things easier, but this wasn't the case either, so I had to find other approaches...

There is another diving ceremony above the forest, where now I could get up there and complete the wingsuit set, but also try to dive down into the Lost Woods, where you can see a couple of shrines, but to no prevail... But this is when it hit me: maybe you have to go under it!

In hindsight it's even quite obvious, because there is a chasm right on the path into the Lost Woods. I've even been down there already, but I went into the opposite direction to the Lightroot below the Woodland Stable and then called it a day. I loved the idea of the horror forest filled with Evermeans, where it was a nice nod to what's above, but I didn't connect the dots, because at the time I simply didn't know that there are dedicated spots to ascend out of the Depths.

Well, the actual Lost Woods area in the Depths is a bit more horrifying than the Evermean forests, where I probably wouldn't have made it so early in the game anyway. But now I'm a lot healthier, better equipped, and also with a clear goal, so the game can only try to stop me. The best it can do is distract me, where in this case you have lots of Lightroots in a single spot.

The Yiga also lure you into another coliseum, where this time you only have to fight one Black Hinox. And this scored me the handy Korok Mask, where I'm sensing a pattern here and maybe these coliseums all will give you the different headpieces from the Breath of the Wild Expansion Pass, like Zant's Helmet. If this is truly the case, then Majora's Mask really might be well protected, which would be a good change... I also won't be using the Korok Mask for now, because I still enjoy looking for the Korok puzzles without any hints.

In the middle of this area you will spot some giant roots, coming down from the Deku Tree, as well as one of those Zonai towers that let you use Ascend to move back to the surface. So, I've found exactly what I've been looking for!

Inside the Deku Tree

Once you enter Korok Forest from down below, you are presented with a gloomy scene, where the whole place looks much darker and all the little Koroks are paralyzed and don't say anything. Oh, the poor, little Koroks!

The Great Deku Tree complains about stomach troubles, where as a fan of classic Zelda you might expect that he has swallowed a Queen Gohma. But it's actually worse this time, where there is now a chasm inside the tree, which goes all the way down where you've been before, inside the giant roots. The cross section of the Deku Tree must really look ridiculous, but whatever, there is no time to question the design choices, because the root of the evil is a Gloom Spawn.

If you have successfully avoided fighting these things so far, then you will have to face your fears now. Well, my first approach was super skilled and elegant... I've screamed in panic, loaded a save that I had made right before jumping down into this chasm, attached a bunch of rockets to my shields, and then let it rain Bomb Flower Arrows! Well, that was a bit unnecessary, because there is a ledge nearby where you can save yourself via Ascend, but I didn't pay attention to this on my first trip down there.

Well, it matters not, as long as I could help all the poor, little Koroks. And the Deku Tree, of course, whose main role this time is to tell you all about the Master Sword.

It starts with the first memory in your list, where Link and Zelda retrieve the Master Sword after another slumber, where its healing capabilities are highlighted... So, it explains why Link put it back there in the first place, since he still had it at the end of Breath of the Wild.

I was hoping that the first memory is more extensive, because I would love to see more of what has happened between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but these memories are always individual scenes and not a collection, so I didn't really expect it. There are still the scenes from the first teaser trailer, where Link and Zelda went spelunking with a Dondon through some giant underground ruins, where I would be quite sad if this didn't make it into the final game at all in any way or form... It feels like something that got cut, like an actual dungeon for the Spirit Temple.

The Dragon with the Sword Piercing

The Deku Tree then let's you know where you can find the Master Sword by marking it on your map. He states that he can sense it, but my theory is that he has a little Korok sitting in his ear, who has Purah Pad with a picture of the Master Sword and the Sensor+ set to it, where this is now linked to your Purah Pad... Not that it matters.

What matters is that I now have a point on my map and one that is moving. I already knew that Zelda became the Light Dragon and that she has the Master Sword, but I didn't know where to look. I think the point was at first even quite close to the Statue of the Eighth Heroine, where some Zelda theorists would lose it, and I simply assumed that it would stay there in the area above the Gerudo Highlands, where I haven't been yet...

But she is doing rounds and the next time I looked at the quest marker it was right above the Master Sword geoglyph. This felt like fate. There is no better location to go for it, so I teleported to the Thyphlo Ruins Tower and really met the Light Dragon, the first time since the tutorial.

I'm curious how the game handles this. Can you randomly run into the Light Dragon at any point and I simply never saw her until now? Or do you need to talk to the Deku Tree in order to make the Light Dragon spawn in the first place? This would be good to know for a second playthrough, but I'm guessing that it's the latter, because otherwise there wouldn't be a major incentive to go for Korok Forest at all, save for some shrines and side quests.

Anyway, the Light Dragon has the Master Sword for her horn and you can safely land on her to grab it. But first things first...

Gotta take that picture for Hyrule Compendium before the Master Sword is stuck in selfie mode! Though, I wonder what happens when you glitch-drop it somehow. In Breath of the Wild it essentially does a Fi, flies skyward, and returns to its pedestal in Korok Forest... Maybe it does something similar here and returns to the Light Dragon? It's details like this that I'm going to safely investigate once I'm done with the game (or feel free to comment – I don't care about spoilers in this case, because I'm not one for glitching and therefore not going to find this out myself).

Now, you have to hold onto the sword and what's easily the most adorable-looking dragon of all time, where this is now a test of stamina, instead of a test of hearts, like it was in Breath of the Wild. You need two full wheels and since I already had maximized all three stamina wheels, I didn't really have to worry.

And this is an awesome scene overall. Getting the Master Sword in Breath of the Wild was very classic and also quite epic, but this is truly something new, where they've outshined every Master Sword scene in the entire series. Pulling it from atop a golden dragon is really the peak, there is no way that they can ever top this. (Unless they make the Master Sword golden again in addition, like in A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds.)

It also gives you a new memory, the very last one, where you can see where the artwork for the upcoming amiibo is coming from and I now fully get why they've went with this one, instead of the other(s).

Zeldrana then leaves you at the Temple of Time in the skies, on the platform where the Master Sword time traveled, and hopefully I will see her again very soon. I still need some scales and stuff to upgrade my Champion's Leathers!

Shrine Forest

After obtaining the Master Sword, I had to go back to Korok Forest to talk to the Great Deku Tree again, who hasn't much left to say, and check some things. There is no "Place" interaction at the Master Sword pedestal yet. Good, very good. I couldn't stand another Trial of the Sword...

But Hestu also has returned to the forest, now that it is safe there again. It makes sense, of course, where he only hung out at Lookout Landing, because he couldn't return home. But it was so much more convenient to have him there... If you can meet the Light Dragon before speaking to the Great Deku Tree, I will probably just wait with saving the forest until after I've upgraded all my inventory stashes in the future. But since my weapon stash is already maximized, it's fine, I won't have to return here very often.

By the way, because there is so much open space in the vertically organized inventory now, I actually expected that the game would let you have 25 slots for each category, instead of just 20, but that's not the case, sadly... It's the same as in Breath of the Wild, but in the least you will have more space for bows this time, because there aren't the five other arrow types any longer. More space for all those Forest Dweller's Bows that you will find around here...

You can go and explore the Lost Woods, which brings you back into the areas where the Korok trials took place in Breath of the Wild, without the annoying trials, but with the same amount of Shrine Quests. It's not as interesting, however, where for example the "Test of Wood" path can now be skipped entirely, because you only have to find some golden apples, and you should have plenty by now. So, in the end you just explore the long, winded area around Mido Swamp for some treasure chests with junk. Or you don't explore it all, because the shrine is right there at the beginning and basically a freebie.

I don't blame them for trying something different, but they could have done more here. Why didn't they change the walkable paths through the Lost Woods entirely? There is this big chunk in the north of the woods that you can't access in both games now. Why not make use of this and let the play explore different routes? But this is just another nitpick...

The path from the entrance of the Lost Woods into the Korok Forest also works again now. There are no indicators, like there were in Breath of the Wild with the torches, but the path is the exact same and you can get through there with some trial and error. There is seemingly no real point in doing so, however, because I couldn't find anything along the way. I really just did this to satisfy my own curiosity. I guess, it's nice to have for those who are allergic to teleporting.

Proof of Sage

There were some Koroks still waiting to be transported to their friends near the Thyphlo Ruins, where I haven't been since the early game. The stronger Constructs there were also a good test for my new Master Sword. For some reason, its attack power is not displayed, but it feels about the same when you first get in Breath of the Wild (30). It also can still break, despite sleeping tens of thousands of years on a magic dragon, and then comes with a ten minute cooldown, exactly like in Breath of the Wild...

I never was a fan of that cooldown mechanic, because it gives you an incentive to wait things out, but in the least the powers of the sages don't take as long to recharge, from what I can tell at the moment. You can always use Mineru's Construct and Sidon's water powers don't take very long to recharge.

Speaking of, there is a small side quest around the Thyphlo Ruins, where you have to proof that you're in possession of the water sage's powers. That was a bit iffy, where it only worked for me after slamming a two-handed weapon on the ground to unleash the water attack... I guess you have to hit all six dragon heads with the water wave at once, but the game wasn't exactly clear about this.

Well, there is more to find there once you have obtained the other sages and that was my cue for finally moving on. And they've even added a new "road" at this area, which leads from the Thyphlo Ruins right to Goron City. I wanted to go for the Gorons next anyway (since three weeks ago), so this is perfect. Next time we will see each other on Death Mountain! For real!

Progress:

• Sage's Vows: 2
• Sage's Wills: 8
  
• Memories: 12/18
• Towers: 11/15
  
• Shrines: 88
• Lightroots: 55
• Caves: 57/147
  
• Korok Seeds: 276