With my adventures in the Gerudo Desert and Canyon coming to an end, there was one last stop remaining at the edge of these areas: the Yiga Clan Hideout. Afterwards I was exploring parts of the west, both in the Depths and on the surface, where I wandered back into the Coliseum Ruins to finally settle a score. This led me to a quest to find all the pieces of the Awakening armor set.
Yiga Yiga Bazaar
Since Link successfully invaded the Yiga Clan Hideout back in Breath of the Wild, they finally installed doors... And you won't be able to enter, unless you're wearing the full Yiga gear. The Yiga Blademaster at the entrance recognized me as a fellow blademaster, but I was told that your status doesn't really make much of a difference in this place, save for some altered dialogues and some discounts. As long as you got the Yiga armor you should be good to go.
The tapestries with a flame symbol at the bottom are a bit on the nose, but overall the place became a lot livelier, just like all of Hyrule. I didn't really know what to expect here, but the last thing I expected was probably a Yiga bazaar, where you can purchase bananas, the different Yiga weapons, spikes, and even entire vehicles.
You have to leave quite a bit of money for the latter, but I simply wanted to see what happens... The "Gloomdredger", which is one of the spiked, three-wheeled cars, costs 500 (with the Blademaster discount), but you can also get the "HOVERDOOM MK. 3" for only 50 Rupees. These two vehicles are commonly found at the abandoned mines in the Depths, but here you can also take them for a ride on the surface.
The second option is not much only cheaper, but also much more useful for the Gerudo Desert. The vehicles are delivered to the front entrance of the Yiga Clan Hideout, where you can freely make use of them afterwards. But of course they won't stay there, so you will have to buy them again... And it's probably not the best idea.
Though, by now things are also looking a bit better on the money front, mainly because I realized at some point that I just can sell excess monster parts. In Breath of the Wild this was a bit of a no-go, because you could trade monster parts for Kilton's own currency, "Mon". But Poe Souls now are the secondary currency, while Kilton's brother Koltin isn't interested in monster parts, so I can just sell of whatever I have in the hundreds already. Plus, you're also getting more stuff from defeating monsters with the new horns and all that.
Selling minerals is usually the best way of making lots of money, but here I'm always hesitant, because you need a lot of those for enhancing armor, especially all the amiibo items. So, I only tend to sell them when I really have lots of a kind.
As said before, Tears of the Kingdom is by far the Zelda game to have the most use for Rupees. Shopping for armor, enhancing armor, purchasing new containers for your house... These three things alone will eat up thousands and thousands.
Back to the Yiga Clan Hideout, one guy tells you that they are disguising themselves as trees to fool Link... Is that what the Evermeans are supposed to be? This can't be right, since you can literally chop them up and in the Depths they also come covered in Gloom. I'm curious...
But I like that drawing of Link that you can find everywhere in the base as a warning. To them the hero really must appear like some demon, who destroys their bases, cuts down their comrades, and just can't be stopped. Well, excuse me.
Thunder Helm 2
The biggest surprise in the hideout was easily the big prize. Last time I was wondering whether the Thunder Helm will return in this game or not... And I promptly got my answer: it will not. But there is the new Lightning Helm, which looks exactly the same and works exactly the same. And the only real difference is that it was made by the Yiga, copying the Thunder Helm from when they had it in their hands during the events in Breath of the Wild.
It's their prized possession now and only the best can earn the right to wear it, where the Yiga Clan Hideout essentially became the Gerudo Town of this game. You need to wear full disguise in order to enter it and you will be thrown out when you take the disguise off. And by proving yourself worthy you can earn a helm that protects you from lightning, which you can also wear within the hideout without dropping your disguise.
The difference is that you now need to play a mini-game to earn it, where you have to defeat a number of Yiga Footsoldiers within one minute. It's quite fun and easy, where in my case I used to strong spear to easily best them.
You will have to play it multiple times, because there are more rewards than just the Lightning Helm. There is Yiga Clan fabric, where you can show the entire world how much you worship Master Kohga, but also the new Earthwake technique.
This lets you perform the geyser attacks of the Blademasters whenever you don't have any weapons selected, which is a really cool idea. This reminds me of the Fist Ring / Expert Ring in Oracle of Ages & Seasons, where you can punch as long as you don't have any items equipped. Same thing, really, though here it's a lot more convenient to use.
Speaking of shrines, on the other end of the Yiga Clan Hideout you can find one right next to the chasm. I got worried for a little bit that there might be none in the proximity, but for the most part Tears of the Kingdom has done a good job of placing shrines right where you need them, so you have quick access to important places. You can also enter the hideout now from this side, where I suppose it doesn't matter from which side you approach the base initially.
Zoom Through Gloom
The hole behind the Yiga base is where you first fought Master Kohga and it's how he found the Depths in the first place, after he had fallen down there. Just like the giant hole below the old Gerudo Tower, this one essentially used to be a chasm already in Breath of the Wild, but they got treated as bottomless pits in the previous game.
I don't even think that Tears of the Kingdom has any "bottomless" pits in its game world, except maybe at some of the world borders to the north and west. You still have them inside shrines, but I don't recall anything like the hole behind the Yiga Clan Hideout. These are all chasms now and the Depths themselves don't have any abysses either, other than what's a natural part of the terrain. There are much deadlier holes there, though, like this one:
This is near an enemy camp and I've accidentally fell into it, because I was approaching while aiming with the bow and didn't see it. It's just Gloom in there and I had no idea how to get out, so I've simply loaded my last auto save, kind of like a soft Game Over.
Anyway, when I've jumped down into the "Yiga Clan Hideout Chasm", I was expecting something special at the bottom, but it really was just a bunch of supply drops, where this is how they get their bananas into the Depths.
And the surrounding areas didn't really offer anything special as well. I've activated over a dozen more Lightroots, where now I'm guessing that there might be a total of 120 in the Depths, the same number as Sheikah Shrines in the base game of Breath of the Wild, which would be pretty awesome. This would also mean that there are 120 Shrines of Light on the surface, but of course there are more shrines to find in the skies this time.
You can also find Stalhorses down here, where usually they are used by Bokoblins, but you can also encounter some wild ones. It's super fun to ride them through the Depths, where they are also immune to Gloom, but sadly the terrain can make this a short trip and I'm quickly back on the hover cycle. It's the same problem with any wheeled vehicle, really.
But this is the most that I've been using horses for quite some time... Well, you can't bring them to the Gerudo Desert anyway, where I've spent most of my time lately, but even everywhere else I couldn't be bothered. This was very different in the early game, but the easier access to Zonai vehicle stuff kind of made them obsolete. I even got over 1400 Zonaite by now, so I can easily build whatever whenever I need it without touching my capsules.
My Energy Cell is also completely blue, all 45 expansion slots filled, where I'm not processing the Zonaite any longer. And there was probably no need to process as much as I did, because you can find a lot of Crystallized Charges in the Depths, mainly from re-battling the main bosses
Apropos, my main activity in the Depths is just fighting bosses by now, where I also found several of the temple boss arenas, including two Queen Gibdos, not far from each other. I already know of a third location and it would be a bit repetitive if each temple boss were to re-appear thrice. But they also drop special "building pieces", like a wing of the Queen Gibdo, which you can fuse to your shield for example. So, having more than just one source at a time might be a good thing.
Also, in case of the Queen Gibdo, taking pictures for Hyrule Compendium may offer a better quality within the Depths, since it's actually a bit brighter than in her chamber and there is no Sand Shroud. There is also no rain in the Depths, which is always a plus and where taking pictures really became the new climbing in Tears of the Kingdom.
Everyone who has played Breath of the Wild has experienced this at least once: whenever you start climbing up some cliff walls, the game just loves to suddenly change the weather to rain. Climbing frankly isn't as important any longer in Tears of the Kingdom, since you can basically just fly all the time, where I've lost interest in getting the whole Froggy Suit a long time ago. I will still get it soon, once I've went to the last stable, but it hasn't been as much of a priority as it would have been in Breath of the Wild, where sadly the suit doesn't exist.
But the rain can still be very annoying, at least when you're trying to take nice photos for Hyrule Compendium. You're placing a weapon with the Ultrahand in just the right angle on some nice and clean terrain. The sun is shining perfectly on the object, lighting it up in a way that it looks very sharp and good. Now you just have to position yourself correctly and release the shutter, just a second... But all of sudden it gets dark and rains for three days straight! And the worst part is that this just keeps happening. The game knows, just like Breath of the Wild knew best when to disrupt your climbing sessions.
Blupee Burrows
The Depths are just pure repetition, there is no denying that. It's all just mines, Yiga bases, groves, bosses, and Lightroots, copy and pasted all over the inverse terrain. So, to find something unique within all of this certainly was an ecstatic moment and it's right below the place where you could find one of the few unique entities in Breath of the Wild, Mount Satori...
A cherry blossom tree, glowing right in the middle of the dark Depths. There are also some Blupees around, which run into holes around the area, where I don't know yet if there's anything special that you can do here. But it certainly felt special in itself.
This inspired me to continue my exploration in the much more beautiful surface world, with a bit of tour to the east of the Gerudo Highlands. There is an Ascension Point that puts you right on Kass's old loft at Washa's Bluff, making a bit melancholic. I also really missed his accordion when I was at the Birida Lookout Chasm, for example, and I will finally go to the Rito soon, where maybe he is still there.
There is truly something absent in the game without him playing the accordion all over the world, but I can also appreciate when there will be still some nice reasons left to go back to Breath of the Wild, other than the Master Cycle Zero. And I've already criticized how it feels a bit too much like Breath of the Wild whenever some of the old piano pieces play at certain places, where I would be a hypocrite if I now want to meet Kass again, just like in the first game. But he should have some new tunes by now...
Well, I didn't really discover anything all too interesting around Mount Satori. The cherry blossom tree is now just one of many... It still reminds me of the days where I brought Satori to the Outskirts Stable just for fun, and from there to anywhere in Hyrule.
There is even now a side quest at the stable, where an old man wants you come to the stable first on a Stalhorse and than on anything that isn't a horse. The dialogue seems to be unique depending on what you ride on, where maybe there is also the possibility that you can still go there on a Satori somehow. If Koltin could really turn into a Satori, where maybe you could summon him at any cherry blossom tree for a ride, then this would be a worthwhile reward for completing a collectible quest. I've got over 100 Bubbul Gems by now, so I'm on my way to find out.
Link's Gleeokening
Since I was back at the Outskirts Stable and I now had an effective protection against lighting strikes, thanks to my best friends from the Yiga Clan, there was no excuse for staying away from the Coliseum Ruins any longer. It was time to fight my first Thunder Gleeok.
And I was wrong before, the heads aren't actually weak to Splash Fruits, even though this would have been a nice detail. I guess, the fusion simply increased the attack power enough for one-shots at the time, but with a weaker bow I had no luck. Black Bokoblin Horns did the trick for me this time and Gibdo Bones do seem to cause a lot of damage, so you don't necessarily need any elemental weaknesses to take down the heads quickly.
The coliseum really makes this a fun fight, because the different floors can protect you from the dragon's attacks and you can also use Ascend to quickly gain height and go into slow-motion aim mode. In the last phase the lightning strikes caused several upstreams after a while, which helped a lot with getting high enough.
Well, this battle was so much fun that I did it twice in a row... Not really willingly, because it took me so long to figure out how to get to the treasure chest below the coliseum that a Blood Moon ruined my peaceful time there. Well, I was mainly searching for a cave entrance, after I didn't understand how to open the obvious entrance inside the ruins... To my defense, I don't have Misko's hint for this particular chest yet, where I finally found my first pieces of the Awakening set, the trousers.
The side quests for the other two pieces were already in my Adventure Log, though, so I made it my next goal to complete whole set. And I don't think that I would have solved the new puzzle at the Thundra Plateau without Misko's hint. It's quite clever and was a good reminder that those giant mushroom-like rocks are actually not rocks, but trees. That's something you may not even have discovered in Breath of the Wild, because it's not of much use there...
Anyway, this is where you find the Mask of Awakening, by far the best part of the set. And if you know about this spot, then you can get it easily very early in the game to enjoy all cutcenes as what I call "Toy Link".
The final piece is at the Ancient Columns and that's probably the easiest one to find by accident. But the Flame Gleeok nearby might make you so nervous that you probably won't find it without knowing what to look for.
You don't have to fight the Gleeok in order to obtain the piece, as long as you approach the ruins from the steep side to the east. But I did it anyway, where I had a bit of an Age of Calamity moment, because I ran into a Silver Moblin while fighting the Gleeok, which can be a hurtful distraction.
The giant fireballs the Flame Gleeoks shoot down at you during the final phase also create an equally gigantic updraft, where you can go even higher than them. I somehow missed this when I first fought one at Spectacle Rock, but it makes sense that there is a way to ascend with all three forms. The game can't really expect you to build a vehicle in the middle of the fight, like I did the last time...
Well, I can now proudly present the full Awakening set. I love it! It will take a while to upgrade it, though, because not only does this require plenty Star Fragments, but also tons of Luminous Stones. This is one of those examples where you really don't want to sell the minerals, even when you already have plenty.
For getting Star Fragments the best way seems to be using a Skyview Tower at night, where I've went to the one at the Thyphlo Ruins, which brought me to another sky tablet. This one crashes all the way down into the Depths through a chasm, close to the Gleek Den.
And since the recent Gleeok fighting business went so well, I gave the Gloom King Gleeok there a first try. That was a nasty one, where I had some real troubles during the final phase this time, which cost me two whole fairies, but I defeated it anyway and completed the Twilight set as well. Now I'm only missing a piece of the Hero and the Time sets and then I should have all of the amiibo armor, without using my amiibo to get them. It's a lot more rewarding when you've searched and fought for them.
Golf Cart
There are two new mini-games at the Tanagar Canyon, where I was in the neighborhood after collecting the last piece of the Awakening set. One game is hosted by a Rito and a Goron, where you have to catch objects. Not too much fun, where I hope that this won't offer any unique rewards. The other is at the Tanagar Canyon Course, where the "Boom Bam Golf" used to be, another one that I didn't like all too much.
But there is no Stasis in Tears of the Kingdom, so instead your task is now to carry the golf ball as far as possible, where you can prepare a vehicle for the task, similar to the racing mini-games at Tarrey Town and Lurelin. This is super simple and beating the advanced course scores you 300 Rupees the first time with a 20 Rupee entry fee, so that's 280 Rupees, which is pretty great.
Anyway, these activities brought me all close to the Tabantha region, where I was supposed to go there back when the game started. That's the last big unexplored chunk for me. But there is something else I want to check out (again) before I go there and add the last sage to my entourage...
Progress:
- Sage's Vows: 4
- Sage's Wills: 13
- Memories: 14/18
- Towers: 13/15
- Shrines: 124
- Lightroots: 105
- Caves: 104/147
- Korok Seeds: 369
- Schema Stones: 10
- Yiga Schematics: 21
- Old Maps: 15
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