Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 15

With the Master Sword in my possession once more, my path led me to Death Mountain. From the above screenshot you could get the impression that this is the game's finale and Ganon is awaiting you in the depths of this area, like he did on the NES, but we're just going to the Gorons... Here it was time for another sage and my second proper dungeon, as well as a plethora of caves.

The Glowing Eyes of Death Mountain

When you visit the Woodland Stable, you will already get warned that the Gorons are not in their right mind these days, where I was ready for a fight. Following the northwestern road to Goron City, I quickly came across a guard and I could put my weapon back, because they are not an actual threat... just very creepy.

The adult Gorons are all munching "marbled rock roast" all day long, where "marbled" is just a fancy word for "gloom poisoned". Their eyes are glowing red and they have nothing else on their minds than eating the weird dish, like drug addicts.

Passing past the guard, I was quite impressed with how much the area has changed overall. The lava lakes and rivers have all gone cold, leaving a giant mass of volcanic rocks, so you can walk around everywhere freely. The Gorons have been busy with mining operations, where there are new railways for mine carts everywhere, one even spiraling all the way up to the top of Death Mountain. The whole place is barely even recognizable any longer and it feels like you're treading completely new grounds.

These are the kind of differences from Breath of the Wild that I have been looking for, where for me this is on par with Hyrule Castle. Kakariko and Tarrey Town have also changed radically, but there I found  the original versions to be more appealing, while in case of Death Mountain it's simply very different, not necessarily better or worse. It looks more bleak, for sure, but there is also a lot more to explore and to discover than there was before, more than just caves and sky debris.

The first new building I came across were the headquarters of "YunoboCo", making it clear that young Yunobo has been quite successful in the recent years. I like how his company got founded right where you have first found him in Breath of the Wild, at the Abandoned North Mine, giving this some additional meaning. I also like how his company logo looks a bit like the Fire Medallion from Ocarina of Time, where this might have been intentional. It's more obvious on his new breastplate, or shall I say "stomachplate", where it didn't take long for me to meet the... new Yunobo:

The unconfident scaredy-cat has now turned into a smug thug, who is dressed up like a luchador, as a slight reference to the Goron wrestling in Twilight Princess. But he looks more like a pimp and that must be why Nintendo didn't want to show him in the trailers / promotional material. Well, they probably didn't want to spoil anything here and come to think of it... They did show him in the final trailer, didn't they?

You get to fight Yunobo afterwards, who is also clearly not right in the head as well, in an underground arena near his headquarters, where he charges at you with his fire ability. And that's what was shown in the trailer, where the weird leopard pattern on the aggressive Goron was simply his jacket. Now, that's hilarious.

Goron City has also changed, where there is now hot spring water flowing through the town, instead of lava, and they have decorated the place with glowing lights. This also adds a Mexican touch to the whole area and the Gorons probably did this to compensate the lack of light after the lava had gone. They even used glowing stones for the eyes on "Mount Gorushmore", but there is quite some irony to this, given the current state of everyone in the city...

Well, not everyone... The kids aren't on drugs yet and neither are the elders, the latter because they lack the teeth to eat the marbled rock roast, which I thought was funny. What do the younger and older generations in Goron City eat exactly? Gravel puree?

You are told that is has been years since the lava stopped flowing, confirming once more that multiple years have passed since the events of Breath of the Wild. The kids in Goron City didn't get this message, however, where they also haven't seen any growth whatsoever, just like the kids over at Hateno, Kakariko, and so on. There is still the annoying, little Dugby around, for example, but at least his side quest doesn't seem to be glitched this time, where he wants to find the ancient city of Gorondia.

In the German translation Goron City always has been called "Goronia", where this placed the idea in my head that you might be able to find something resembling the old Goron City from Ocarina of Time in an underground cave. This would have been some fantastic fan service, but the developers had something else in mind there... And the side quest with Dugby doesn't really lead to anything, you just have to go for a mine cart ride with him and then he disappears.

New Super Goron Bros. Deluxe

A couple of hits to the head help Yunobo become himself again and then he immediately joins you on your adventures, where the goal is to get to the top of Death Mountain. He doesn't go there himself to wait for you this time, no, the two of you are going together all the way.

And that's the spirit! Yunobo really makes Sidon look bad here, who only truly teamed up with you at the Water Temple, but left you to yourself for most of the way there. Yunobo on the other hand follows you everywhere within the Eldin region, where I completely tested the limits of this and explored a lot with him at my side, to make the most out of our time together.

He will even join the monster control crew battle that's in the area, which was pretty awesome. Well, the battle itself was not as interesting as the others so far, where here you only have to clear out a cave, but having Yunobo as part of the action made up for it.

We went to some underground hot springs afterwards to relax, even though he was too shy to join the fun. And there is now a nice BBQ place at Goronbi Lake, where you will meet a Goron chef and a Goron gourmet. The latter goes by the name of "Gomo", haha, and I like how there are some new character designs to be found here for the Gorons, because they have all looked too similar in Breath of the Wild. Technically, there were like three different models for the three different age groups and that was it. Only the more important Gorons, like Yunobo or Bludo, got some individual designs, so it's good that Tears of the Kingdom has added a little bit of variety to this tribe. Even if it's not much.

There is a side quest there, where you have to help out the Hylian meat merchant from Breath of the Wild, Mezer, by bringing some marbled rock roast for the chef, who wants nothing else. You're basically getting more drugs for the drug addict here, but what's even more questionable is how the game will handle this quest if you've already beaten the Fire Temple, instead of running around with Yunobo everywhere, like I did.

I will give this a try the next time and the Adventure Log only speaks of "rock roast", where I suppose that it will simply change the requested item to the normal variant. But there is another side quest afterwards, "Meat for Meat", where you have to bring him actual rock roast, after everything is back to normal, where this may seem a bit redundant then.

Anyway, I've wandered all around Death Mountain with the real Yunobo at my side, where I think this is limited to the region on the map that is covered by the tower there. You can go to the Gut Check Rock, for example, but not the Skull Lake or the Eldin Great Skeleton. Well, you can go there, but Yunobo will leave you, pretending to go searching for Zelda himself, while in reality he just waits for you to come back.

If you were able to bring him anywhere, I would have left off to Rito Village and the Hebra Mountains, just the fun of having two sage descendants with you at once. He said he wanted to go to "Death Mountain", where Hebra is deadly enough to be called that as well, arguably even more so than the actual one. But he isn't completely dumb and won't follow you absolutely everywhere. And that's fine, since there is already so much more bro time to have here than with Sidon.

Boom Bomb Battle

My bro time with Yunobo had to come to an end eventually, where after our tour around Death Mountain we finally managed to find the crater. That sure was difficult... Who would have thought that the top of a mountain is the high part, right, Yunobo? That's just so confusing... And I've actually been there already, before meeting Yunobo, where at first it's just a very shallow pit filled with those large marbled rocks. It did not at all align with the fierce gloom expulsions, which you can see from a distance, and it was pretty much harmless to be there.

This changes once you get there with Yunobo, where the gloomy rocks become alive and you're faced with another unique mini-boss battle, similar to the Sludge Like. Best take a picture now, because something tells me that you won't ever see the "Moragia" again.

I should talk about Yunobo's ability at this point, which lets him charge into things with high speed, even through the air. This will break any rocks and set things on fire, where this is probably the best bomb you will ever get in a Zelda game. It essentially shows how Breath of the Wild would have been if you were to get the Bomb Rune at Death Mountain and not already at the start of the game, because until now I was completely reliant on consumables, like Bomb Flowers or self-made hammers.

I really wish that I already had Yunobo when I was digging into that one cave under the Great Plateau... He makes any excavation so much more convenient. But like with the Bombs in Breath of the Wild, you are still better off to use tools for ore deposits and alike, because his ability will scatter the loot all over the place. It's still my absolute favorite of the sage abilities so far, where I will make good use of this.

And I haven't even mentioned the best part yet: whenever you are riding a vehicle, he will act as a cannon! This is so cool and works with everything, even the small hoverbike. And this is how you are fighting the Death Mountain crater monster, which is laughably easy to defeat, because you only need to hit each head once. What a waste...

It still makes you wonder what happened to Daruk's Protection. Is Yunobo so tough now that he doesn't need it anymore? He was somewhat special by being the only character in Breath of the Wild who has inherited one of the Champion abilities, where this was also a big part of his moveset in Age of Calamity, but that's all forgotten, it seems. Well, from a design standpoint they probably wanted to focus on the new sage abilities, where this would have clashed, but I would have liked to have at least a comment about why Daruk's Protection isn't a thing anymore, just like with the Divine Beasts.

Different Depths

Once the Moragia is beaten, it opens up a chasm into the Depths, where this is what I expected to find there from the start. Just one giant gloom crater, leading into the unknown.

At the bottom you will find more magma than gloom, however, where this is finally an area of the Depths that looks and feels different from the rest. There is a basic level of light coming from the magma and this alone already makes for a big difference. The Depths really could have needed different biomes like that, all over the map.

It's a shame that the developers only bothered with mixing up the new environments when you are on the way to a dungeon. This was true for the caves and sky islands around Zora's Domain, and now for the caves and the Depths below Death Mountain. But everywhere else – at least from where I've been – the caves, sky islands, and the Depths look the exact same, which gets boring very quickly.

The Master Sword glows near gloom, where like in Breath of the Wild it increases its strength, but it doesn't make the loud "BAM, BAM" noises any longer, where my neighbors will certainly appreciate the change, but I always liked the impact of it. (Update: it's still there, but Gloom alone won't awaken the Master Sword any longer and I probably was confused by the fused state.)

You can also fuse things to the blade, where the item then becomes "virtual", like the substitute parts coming from Autobuild, and disappears once the Master Sword loses its energy. In the fused there are these green markings on the blade, which looks reminiscent of the Great Fairy's Sword, at least to me.

Also, you will need flame protection down here, which is true for the all caves around Death Mountain as well. where I immediately bought the Flamebreaker Armor at YunoboCo HQ.. But one of the Light Roots required double flame guard, so I decided to buy the full set and also upgrade it for the Fireproof set bonus, just in case. This is super useful anyway, where for example you can just walk right through the projectiles of a Fire Like. And I can safely approach Dinraal now, which brings me to the next part...

Dragons and Insects

Dinraal isn't the only dragon around the Eldin skies any longer, because I've seen Zelda multiple times during my recent adventures. So, I just had to pay her another visit and you can land on her again for a ride. I guess that she is going all around Hyrule and I will definitely enjoy the full tour later on, but for now it was just fun for her goofy eyes alone.

XDDDDD

The important part is that you can simply slash at her for the dragon parts and collect them right in front of you. There is even a new material from the dragons, the spikes, which you can collect directly from their backs, more than one at a time. I was told in the comments that you can land on all the dragons now, where this method will be so much more convenient than shooting them with an arrow. It might not work so well with the claws and fangs, however, but it's still a lot better than before.

Now, for the Flamebreaker set you need Smotherwing Buttlerflies and those are not as common any longer with all the lava gone, where I've accidentally set my sensor to the Summerwing Butterflies and collected those instead, without realizing my mistake. It was fine, because you also need those for the new Ember set that I had just completed by exploring the hot caves around Goron City, which makes you look like a mix of Ganondorf of Loki.

The most interesting armor to upgrade, however, was the wingsuit, where this gives you the "Impactproof" bonus, preventing any fall damage. With this you're good to jump down from any height, as if you're playing Hollow Knight, which just feels so weird. Most of my early game deaths, in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, were the result of a fall, so I always treat heights respectfully. But now you can just hit the plus button, put on the full set and be free of worry. I don't think I will ever get used to this, which is probably a good thing...

Anyway, while waiting for one of the dragons to show up on a sky island above Death Mountain, I noticed that quite a number of Warm Darners and Smotherwing Butterflies simply appeared on the island around me. Maybe the game is looking for nearby ground to spawn them and since there is nothing nearby but the sky island, they will spawn very close to you. This might be a good farming spot for certain insects, but I haven't tested this extensively.

The Fire Temple

With the Flamebreak set ready to protect me from fire, I was fully ready for the temple named after the element. The place gets labeled as the lost city of Gorondia, which solves the mystery about the ancient Goron town, at least for the player, but it's left in a state where no one would ever want to live there, not even the Gorons.

You are greeted by Daruk, or at least his voice actor, who has taken over the role of the Sage of Fire from the Zonai age. There was a small leak by the Italian voice actor of Daruk last year, saying that he is voicing some distant ancestor in the next game, where this lines up.

You are also greeted by some chanting, reminiscent of the Fire Temple music from Ocarina of Time, but only the replacement version, where Nintendo has learned their lesson with this stuff. The music then evolves gradually, adding some of Daruk's theme and a lot of Vah Rudania from Breath of the Wild into the mix. This was fire and my gang was up for the challenge.

Your goal lies behind a closed gate with five locks, which are opened via gongs, where you have to find them at different points in the dungeon, which is very similar to the Final Trial in Breath of the Wild in concept. Most the dungeons in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom make you look for a number of key points, where it always was terminals in the previous game, but the big difference here in the Fire Temple is that this is a lot more sequential. There is an intended linear order and the (potentially) last gong can be found in a closed space near the boss chamber, where you have to drop down from above at the end and then open the gates inside.

Well, in my case I missed one of the gongs and had to go back up, but I really have to praise the design here. You can still climb everywhere and try to use Ascend, but they've managed to create a place that limits and funnels the players, despite the immense levels of freedom that they have. While I prefer freedom and non-linear design in video games, it can get a bit meaningless if you can just do everything in absolutely every order.

This always made the Divine Beasts, as well as the Water Temple, feel like a chore, where you simply have to check a number of boxes, but it doesn't really matter in what order you check those boxes. Now, the Fire Temple really makes you think about the way forward and in my case also made me challenge the boundaries, just out of principle. One time I was climbing up to two Constructs, who have been waiting to ambush you on the rails, where I have cheated myself out of a Tri Force Heroes-style mine cart battle, but it was still cool to surprise them like that.

Well... or you can just make a hoverbike and fly straight to the goals, but there are still some obstacles to overcome. So, overall I thought that the Fire Temple was designed quite cleverly and it will probably be among my favorites, at least when it comes to the dungeons in this new era of Zelda games, next to Hyrule Castle from Breath of the Wild. The Zelda team still has a lot learn here, however, and they really need to put a much bigger focus on the dungeons for the next game, as much as I love the open world approach...

They also need to work much more on the enemy variety. There are some Fire Likes to be found here, which is good, but overall it's just Constructs for the most part. It makes sense from a story perspective that the Constructs are guarding the place and therefore also have driven other potential enemies away, but it can be very boring to have some types of enemies all over the main dungeons. Speaking of Constructs...

Having Mineru in this part of the game is quite useful, because you can just walk through the magma with her Construct, where I've already made good use of that in all the caverns around Death Mountain. It's also useful that you can attach certain Zonai devices to the arms, where I made some good use of the hydrant in this case. I also love how the water bubble from Sidon's ability makes it look like a space robot.

The boss of the dungeon, called "Marbled Gohma", was another new variant of a classic enemy, where I'm sensing a theme here and Nintendo really wanted to please the fans here with these temples. Technically, this monster looked more like a Rocktite from Spirit Tracks, but I'm not splitting hairs and most people will be more familiar with Gohma. The fight itself was a lot of fun, mainly thanks to Yunobo's crazy ability, where he even shoots along the walls and ceiling with his fiery speed.

Judging from the final trailer, the boss of the Wind Temple will be some kind of Freezard, probably. But I'm going to find this out next and keep the Lightning (or Thunder?) Temple for last. I hope that both these dungeons and the areas around them will be equally satisfying as the Fire Temple and Death Mountain.

So, that's adding another stone to my Infinity Gauntlet, two more to go. However, there is a nitpick: Dark Yunobo has the same dark blue-green color as Shadow Sidon, where I was hoping that the color of these phantoms would match their Secret Stones, where you would have gotten dark red Goron ghost, so you can just keep them apart more easily. But maybe it looks less busy with them all in the same color in the end, so I may change my mind about this later on... Let's see.

Gen G

After freeing the Gorons from the curse of the marbled rock roast, everything will be back to normal again around Goron City. And the elders actually let the younger Gorons take over their establishments, like the inn or the smithy, now that they are finally being responsible again, which gives you a true sense of progression in all this. It's time for the new generation of Gorons to shine.

During this you can obtain the Boulder Breaker, Daruk's legendary weapon, which is also used by Yunobo, so it's not a single exemplary this time around. I must have completely missed the same part for the Lightscale Trident, where I will return to Zora's Domain later to also get one made, because I want the pictures for Hyrule Compendium and taking them off someone's back doesn't look so nice. They are arguably also a bit more valuable this time, because coming around good base weapons isn't as easy as it was, though they still might not be worth the diamonds, especially when you now need three.

Otherwise, I think I should be pretty much done with the area, where I've been inside all the caves I could find. I liked the quest with the two salamander lakes, which have appeared after the lava was gone. At first these seemed like a nice easter egg, a simple reference to Vah Rudania, but it actually leads to the Vah Rudania Divine Helm. On top of that, when you tell Yunobo about this find, they are recognizing the Divine Beasts here. The wording is a bit weird, because they only talk about "a Divine Beast", and not Vah Rudania specifically, but that's still more than what I got so far from the game about this whole topic.

One of the caves, at the Deplian Badlands, was also truly dark when I first fell into it. I'm not sure if this was intended or some kind of glitch, because it started to get the same foggy lighting as the other caves after some exploration. And it's a shame that it did, because this is really how most of the caves should be like. You don't have some magical base light level in a real cave, it's just darkness, except when there's magma. Twilight Princess got this right, so why not this game?

While the Depths already offer this type of gameplay, the Lightroots really counter that, especially once you've learned how to quickly get from one root to the next. And it's much more fun to throw the Blightbroom Seeds at cave walls, it's just rarely ever necessary.

Then there is also a new quest line around the Leviathan bones, where at first I thought I found some very unique Korok puzzle, but that was sadly not the case. There's the weird Guardian-obsessed woman from Breath of the Wild, called Loone, who is now obsessed with these "cute" skeletons. She is a real loonatic, heh! You first meet her at the East Akkala Stable and she moves to the Eldin Great Skeleton from there, where you have to insert a missing eyeball into its eye sockets for her. I'm not exactly sure what those eyeballs actually are, they look more like joints, but they are certainly not eyeballs and weren't there in Breath of the Wild... But I like the idea, where next she goes to the Hebra Great Skeleton, which lines up with how I'm planning to tackle the rest of the dungeons.

The huge storm cloud above the Hebra Mountains awaits, which will be my next major goal. But there is something else I want to investigate first... There always is...

Progress:

• Sage's Vows: 3
• Sage's Wills: 9
  
• Memories: 12/18
• Towers: 11/15
  
• Shrines: 100
• Lightroots: 60
• Caves: 74/147
  
• Korok Seeds: 300

By now, I have started my second row of Heart Containers, where one can be 20 hearts long, instead of just the 15 from Breath of the Wild. This is after 100 shrines and three temples. I've also found about half of the caves and 300 Korok Seeds, where I would estimate that I have done at least 50% of the game, though the map completion will be lower due to the Koroks.

And I would be completely ecstatic about the amount of stuff there is to do in this game if it wasn't for the lack of free time. With how things are going right now, I probably should have taken a sabbatical for Tears of the Kingdom, instead of two weeks of vacation, where I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's just so much. I certainly wouldn't mind if the next 3D Zelda game were to scale things down again, maybe with a small new top-down installment in between.

On the bright side, this game will entertain me for the weeks and months to come. As a Zelda fan, you can really just feast on the series alone by now, if you're including the time sinks that are the Hyrule Warriors games. It only becomes a problem when you might want to play other games as well...