Since last time I was mainly busy searching through the skies and the Depths, where I was successful with hunting down all Flux Constructs and Froxes, but not with finding all of the Old Maps yet...
Searching the Skies (Once More)
My first goal was to find the Hero's Shield, or "Sea-Breeze Shield" how it's now called, which was the only amiibo item I hadn't obtained yet. As a reminder, I had decided to only use the amiibo for getting the fabrics and discover all the armor pieces and weapons on my own, where most of them are hidden in the Depths.
The Old Maps help you to locate them, so I thought that it would be a good idea to look for the ones I'm missing first, because one of them should lead me to the Sea-Breeze Shield. Hit two birds with one stone. So, I've basically just went back to most of the sky islands, now with the Sensor+ set to treasure chests to see what I've missed.
I also put the Korok Mask on, but this was mostly pointless, because I realized that whenever there is a Korok on one of the smaller sky archipelagos, then its spot is marked with a tree. It's different for the bigger islands, however, and you never know, where I wanted to be thorough.
And my thoroughness went so far that I've actually went all over the rocks of the sky diving trials. There's nothing there, but I found it very interesting that these islands were fully designed with the Ascend ability in mind:
It almost makes it seem like Nintendo had originally planned to make this part of the mini-game, where you have to climb up the sky islands first. It's even what I thought that these islands were there for, when I first saw them and learned about the Ascend ability. But there is no reason to ever do this, where it feels like something is missing here. Not sure if this would have been much fun, though, but it was fun to take a closer look.
There is a new mini-game that I've found at Eventide, however, which probably doesn't appear until after you've completed the pirate quest there, which is why I didn't notice it the first time. The host is once more Mimo, who ran the Paraglider Course at the same spot in Breath of the Wild, but they've made him team up with Branli, the guy studying "Bird-Men" in Breath of the Wild, another mini-game character. That's a cool idea and they both are now obsessed with the Zonai Wings, where they want you to land one in a circle in the middle of the ocean.
It's fairly simple, but a bit off, where I've managed to hit the exact middle, but it still gave me some distance. Not sure what part of the wing they are looking at... But it's an easy 80 Rupees nevertheless.
Mindless Maps
Anyway, my search for the Old Maps didn't really yield many fruits. I've found a couple, but none of them led me to a new location. And this is a big problem with this collectible. There are 31 in total, which is the same amount as the number of Treasure Maps in Phantom Hourglass, fun fact. But unlike those, or the Treasure Charts in The Wind Waker, you can already find the treasures before obtaining the corresponding Old Maps.
It makes sense, of course, with a world of this size you don't necessarily want to stand in front of treasure chests that cannot be opened yet, like the Goddess Chests in Skyward Sword. That would be frustrating. But in my case it made obtaining the Old Maps completely pointless and unrewarding, because for the most part I already had found the corresponding treasure.
The idea probably was that you explore the skies first, find the Old Maps, and then venture into the Depths to collect all these treasures. But the sky islands are so disconnected from the rest of the world that you really have to go out of your way to get to them. Meanwhile, for the Depths you only have to jump down a hole and then go, where it's easy to get caught into the exploration loop down there.
Finding all the Old Maps is not as straight-forward – I'm still missing two of them and grew a bit desperate. I even went back to the sky dungeons, where it's amazing to see the Stormwind Ark without the storm around it:
There were some missed treasure chests on the outskirts of the flying ships, but only with some Zonai devices in them... It's not what I was looking for, but to be fair, it would have surprised me to find something so far in the off.
Similarly, there are these tiny sky islands in the middle of nowhere, mostly above Hyrule Field, also with treasure chests on them. I've mentioned them before and they come with something like Large Zonai Charge or even only a Large Zonaite, where it seems like the game wants to troll you. But I suppose it would have been the even bigger troll if some unique reward was hidden on those..
Well, in any case, I was at a loss and I'm currently assuming that the last two Old Maps might be on fallen sky islands on the surface, where it won't be as easy to locate them. And in the end I found the Sea-Breeze Shield all on my own by noticing a grove on the map that I had yet to visit.
So yeah, the Old Maps are useless... You can probably find all their treasures on your own just by studying the map of the Depths and looking for the typical places that come with treasure chests, like the mines or the groves.
Dowsing the Depths
Studying the map of the Depths is then what I did for the most part afterwards. I've decided to look for the last missing Flux Constructs and Froxes to score two more medals, where there weren't any Flux Constructs left in the sky, meaning that the rest must have been down in the Depths. And Froxes only appear in the Depths.
In theory, it should have been easy enough to spot the rest of them by looking at the terrain. Flux Constructs have a circle around them, because they are always on these round platforms. And Froxes are all found in a wide and mostly flat area, where you immediately know when you get close to one. Flux Constructs are also easy to spot from a distance thanks to their red search beams, which really stick out in the dark.
So much for the theory, but in practice it took me multiple hours to find them all. The rings around the Flux Constructs on the map can be subtle and there are some cases where the flat Frox terrain may not be as obvious. For example, this is where I found the last one:
This is an area at a cliff wall, so I've missed that a couple of times. And I only saw it in the end, because I had changed my thought process, where I started looking at which chasms had Froxes nearby, so maybe one of the chasms may lead me to the last Frox. And it did...
It was a long road until then and I've flown over most of the Depths to get there. At one point the fans and the steering stick on my hover bike even dissolved... I didn't know that they could do that! It makes sense, all Zonai devices dissolve eventually. Rockets do so very quickly, while gliders, balloons, and emitters disappear after a short while. I suppose, it's the same for everything, only that this took about half an hour.
I've also learned that you can use the new Dazzle Fruits (and probably any light projectile) to instantly kill stal enemies. That's another thing that I want in Breath of the Wild. They are the most annoying thing and this is so useful, where I really wish that I had found this out sooner... I should experiment more with all the different materials (and Zonai devices), instead of just sticking to the Breath of the Wild basics.
While flying through the Depths in desperation I also did pay more attention to some other things, mainly all the pristine weapons on those rock piles. I've learned that they won't be replaced until you take them from the shadow figures, where removing them with the Ultrahand is enough, as long as the shadow goes away. I first thought that whatever weapon you get is predetermined by the location, where I honestly would have preferred that, but it turned out that they can become better, but not until you have taken them once.
And you also need to shatter their corrupted counterparts for the intact weapons to appear. I couldn't find any pristine Forest Dweller Swords, for example, but that's only because the Breath of the Wild player in me was too hesitant to ever use them, because there was a limited amount in the previous game. But that's not the case any longer, you can always find at least one on top of the Great Deku Tree.
Then there are these small enemy mines without any treasure chests, which I've always ignored so far. It turned out that this was a mistake as well, because they often come with the elemental Lizalfos and I had a good chance of obtaining a tail from them, much better than on the surface. This might have been a coincidence and I was simply really lucky, but it would make sense if the chance of rare drops is higher in the Depths, since all the monsters are gloomed and therefore more dangerous... More risk, more reward.
More Medals
Anyway, I got two more medals for my boasting rights now, where I really like the design of the one for Flux Constructs:
Now, there are two more left, Taluses and Hinox. Those can be found both in the Depths and on the surface, but also in caves, which makes them the most difficult to locate them all. They also come in the highest numbers, where the Taluses are the worst with 87 in total. Plus, they can be easy to miss when they are still in the ground, especially now that Stasis+ isn't a thing any longer.
Luckily, they are always active in the Depths, where the same goes for the Stalnox, because otherwise finding them all would be a nightmare. I'm even quite confident that I got all of the bosses in the Depths by now. Maybe there are one or two missing, I can't be entirely sure, but my focus will be on exploring the surface world of Hyrule from now on... When I'm looking for all the Koroks, I should come across all overworld bosses eventually.
Progress:
- Side Adventures: 59/60
- Side Quests: 122/139
- Korok Seeds: 650/1000
- Old Maps: 29/31
- Recipes: 103/228
- Map Completion: 86.39%
Remaining Medals:
- Taluses: 76/87
- Hinox: 63/69
Flux Constructs: 35/35Froxes: 40/40
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