Tears of the Kingdom Adventure Log, Entry 30

At the heart of Hyrule lies Lookout Landing, your base of operations. This is where you get most of your main assignments, but also a variety of trophy items, where I have my eyes on those. There were more Hinox to hunt, Taluses to crush, and wells to find, which is what I've primarily been up to for the last two weeks. But I also found the missing Old Maps, as well as lots of Koroks on the way...

Missing Maps

After the long grind for materials in order to enhance almost all armor, I was in need for a quick win. And in case of the Old Maps there were only two left to find for me, so this seemed like a good goal. Previously, I thought that those might be somewhere on the surface, at fallen sky islands, but I couldn't find anything new here. So, I moved away from this assumption and returned to the skies to look for them there once more.

on a sky island, looking at the dawn, standing right next to a hoverbike

Essentially, I just kept flying from island to island again with my sensor set to chests. I also went back to all the Flux Constructs, because I was afraid that I might have missed one of their treasure chests after the battle. But this wasn't the case.

In the end, one was left at the South Hyrule Sky Archipelago, at the island around the middle of the east side, with its chest hanging quite high up, which is probably why I had missed it before. And the last one was at the small waterfall island near the Zonaite Forge Island. Nothing spectacular, this was just a place that I've kept ignoring during my other search efforts.

Old Map - A very old map that shows a marked spot. What could be there?

Of course, at this point neither of the maps were pointing at anything that I didn't have yet, so this was purely for the sake of completion and having all 31 Old Maps in my inventory. As I said, I wanted a quick win and this was it.

Highest in Hyrule

During my search for the remaining Old Maps I even went up to the star island above Lookout Landing, even though there weren't any treasure chests on any of the others. You never actually have to go there, because the respective tablet has already fallen down at the beginning of the game, but it might be worth a visit anyway, because it's actually the highest point where you can stand on, even above the Room of Awakening, something around 2600 on the z-coordinate.

standing on one of the stone leafs of the star island, looking down on Hyrule, right next to a Travel Medallion

I decided to place my third Travel Medallion there, because this is a cool place for sky diving, you can even go down into the Hyrule Castle Chasm from here for an extra long (and epic) dive. Or you can just plummet down to Lookout Landing, though sadly this doesn't seem to be an area that gives you Star Fragments on a reliable basis (I've yet to get one here) or else I would use this spot more often.

Curiously, if you fast fall directly into the Emergency Shelter, then the game even will have trouble with loading all the assets, where the room looks a glitched for a moment:

Goddess Statue floating in front of some naked brick walls

It will all have loaded before you can do anything, though. Speaking of glitches, I've encountered my first noteworthy glitch after all this time. I was in the Sage Temple Cave and tried to duck through the grate there, which clipped me inside the wall, so that I was stuck inside the wall and had to teleport in order to get out:

These type of clipping errors are commonly used for speed-runs, of course, so this wasn't anything special. But it was still weird to experience this myself, because I normally don't try to force such errors and Nintendo games in general are usually very robust, so that these things don't happen to you accidentally all too often.

You might wonder what I was even doing back in this cave to begin with, since I already got all the Bubbel Gems a while ago... And this brings us to the next topic:

Those Who Remain

There were still two hands full of giant monsters to hunt, six Taluses and four Hinox to be exact, so I made it my next goal to find them all, to obtain the last two medals from Sergeant Sergeant Master Sergeant Gralens. And this search was pretty much all over the place, where I only could exclude the sky islands. There could have been some left in the Depths and some caves, so it wasn't just a matter of scanning the surface for anything that I might have missed.

I wish I could exclude the Depths at this point, because I've spent so much time searching down there already and it all looks the same. A new version of HyruleGuessr based on Tears of the Kingdom won't be any fun with the Depths, that's for sure... But at least you can spot any of the bosses from a good distance, because they glow with Gloom and the Taluses are all standing, so you don't have to thoroughly cover every square meter down there to not potentially miss anything.

Now, I always mark the position of defeated bosses on my map (where I wish that it would do this by default as map feature), so in case that I really can't find the very last, I could always quickly compare it with online guide maps. I don't really want to do go there, but you never know. And doing this helps in other ways as well, because I can see on first glance when I've already defeated a boss. In case of the Depths I can also theoretically use this to determine possible locations of any of the remaining giant monsters, because they are distributed quite evenly, along with all the other "attractions" down there.

And I managed to find one more Black Hinox this way, near the Secluded Coliseum. According to my Hero's Path, I only went through the Bubinga Grove nearby, going straight for the treasure, so there was a gap where I might have missed something. Figuring this out felt pretty good, but this was the only hit so far.

All the others I've found afterwards were on the surface and I was quite disappointed in myself by how sloppily I've been exploring the new old Hyrule, because most of them where quite close to places where I've been before. I blame it on the fact that I've already spent so much time in this world in Breath of the Wild, where my motivation to turn every stone once more was pretty low. But I was still left dumbfounded by how unobservant I must have been at times.

For example, one Hinox was resting at Upland Lindor, at a small forest patch. Right next to this forest patch is a hill with a Korok puzzle that I had already solved a long time ago, but for some reason I didn't see the giant monster close by. But this is nothing compared to the Stone Talus right next to the Horse God Bridge:

ascending through a Rare Stone Talus at said bridge

I had crossed this bridge multiple times before – you have to do it at least once for the Giant White Stallion, which I found very early in the game. And there is even a Korok puzzle only two meters away from the Talus that I've solved before. But for some reason I never saw it and also didn't activate it by accident, even though I must have gotten very close... It is hilarious how stealthy these giant stone monsters can be. And how blind I am without the Stasis+ rune. I would use the sensor to find them, but the problem is that there are multiple types and I can't set multiple targets at once.

Well, this showed me that they could be possibly hiding anywhere, even at places where I've been before. My worst fear is that the last ones are hiding inside caves, which is why I've started to re-explore some of them. It even helps that my Hero's Path has started to delete from the beginning, because this now leaves gaps where I've been early, which is where I'm more likely to have missed something, because I've been too focused on the shiny new things.

Right now I still have exactly one Hinox and one Talus left to defeat. Where are they are hiding? Are they true masters of evasion? Or were they simply saved by the blinders that I must have been wearing while playing this game? Stay tuned to find out...!

Going Well

While I haven't completed my medal collection yet, I was able to find all of the 58 wells for another side quest. And this is something that happened at the sidelines, while I was searching for the bosses, where this was mostly straight-forward and these wells are usually near ruins.

For some reason I missed the Mabe Village Ruins Well, however, even though I've been there before. And for the last one I was using the sensor, where this worked very nicely, because similar to the Shrine Sensor it only targets the wells that you have yet to visit. So, I basically just had to keep going until it beeped at some point.

This point was the Dronoc's Pass Well, which was out in the open right next to the T-junction that leads to the Flight Range and the Hebra Trailhead Lodge. That's not exactly my favorite area, so I wasn't surprised to have overlooked this well there. I was surprised about the reward that you get from Fera, however...

Just One More Sign...!

One thing where I absolutely have no sense of progression is Addison with his signs. I keep running into him and every time I think that this must be it, this must be the last time, only for him to say that he's off to put up more.

Yes, I'm aware he was right next to a shrine... Maybe I need glasses, okay?!

But I can feel it, there is truly only one sign left this time! I bet it's right next to the last Talus and Hinox, where they are all having a party together... Too bad that I wasn't invited.

Unlike the boss monsters, however, I haven't marked any of Addison's locations on my map. There aren't enough markers available to do both anyway. But if I were to use a guide map to find the last one(s), then I would have to use my incomplete Hero's Path to figure out the locations where I wasn't doing some circles. I'm confident that this won't be necessary, however, because Addison is easy enough to spot, certainly easier than some of the Taluses.

Korok Flow

The area where I've actually made the most progress since the last time is Koroks, where I've went up from 777 to 888 Korok Seeds. And yes, I'm stopping to write my progress posts at such numbers on purpose. Next stop will be at 999!

But for real, this has been going well as well. There is just something relaxing about riding my hover bike close to surface while donning the Korok Mask, and stopping whenever it goes "yehee!" In many cases I can already see the puzzle even before the mask reacts, where the most obvious ones are the giant block statues. But I like how they often recreate things from the nearby environment, like the windmills at the Tanagar Canyon:

a static windmill made out of stone blocks

These monstrosities of a puzzle often look quite out of place, but at least this way they can be seen as some Korok artistry. And not all of the Korok puzzles are as easy to spot, where for some you still have to thoroughly explore the environments, like many of the acorns.

a Korok with an arrow right above his head

Or the occasional single stone somewhere. I even discovered that every of the new Bokoblins fortresses has a Korok on top, which I never noticed before, because I simply assumed that they wouldn't place Koroks into enemy camps. But I have to let go of such assumptions if I want to find all of them.

Another wrong assumption was that there aren't Koroks hidden inside caves, because I've found at least two exceptions with the Leviathans by now. And maybe these are the only exceptions, but I cannot be sure of this right now. The last Koroks will be the hardest to find, but I'm determined to not look anything up on the internet, no matter how long it takes, because I will only regret doing so. Once I've found the last Korok, this game will probably be done for me.