Earlier today I've been a good boy, who was following the game's directions into Jabul Waters, clearing some of the first main quests there. So, for the rest of the day it was time to test my boundaries again, which brought me high up on Hyrule's mountains, both hot and cold.
It started in Kakariko, because I wanted to check out if there's anything new in the dojo. Well, yes, there was one new level based on the water dungeon, where I suppose that every main dungeon will add a new test.
And then I thought that I should give Eldin Volcano another try, where it's easy enough to go up there via a Crawltula, maybe a little bit too easy. It's ridiculous how far this echo lets you climb, I could go straight to Goron City afterwards:
The Ocarina of Time memberberries are strong in this game, though they've mixed some of that Breath of the Wild feel in there as well. I especially like how all the Gorons look unique, which wasn't the case with the River Zora.
Anyway, I ventured out to the west border of the map from there, where I found the Fairy Flower accessory in a cave. And from there I explored more of the west part of Hyrule Field, scratching the border of the Gerudo Desert, well knowing that my next destination lies behind it.
Around there I found my favorite variant of the acorn mini-game so far, a rocky area with some Mini-Moldorms in it. You can easily ignore those and if you don't have to deal with the enemies as much, this mini-game is really fun. It's what I wanted out of this – a test of quickly traversing the environment with your echoes. Well, I suppose that dealing with enemies is part of that test and things will get more reliable with better echoes, but I could have done without that part.
Also, while exploring I really miss the Hero's Path from the previous two games and I keep hitting X on the map for this feature... like all the time. Sometimes I can't tell whether I've been to a cave or on a ridge before, because you can come into an area from pretty much every angle and things can look a bit alike. And in those cases it would be nice if the map gave you information about where you've been exactly. Maybe this even gets unlocked later in the game, because it makes so much sense to have this...
During my tour yesterday I came across a bombable wall at the northeast of the forest and I remembered this cave, so now that I have the Bomb Fish I could finally enter it. To my surprise this turned out to be not some optional cave, but the Hebra Mountain Trail... And I couldn't resist.
This and the Eternal Forest are the only areas that Nintendo hasn't used heavily for their marketing, in fact there was only one scene with Zelda freezing in the snow and that's it. We didn't know anything about this beforehand, not even the name, so it's the most exciting part of the game to explore for me. It was also subjects to lots of speculation from my end.
One of my suggestions was that this is now called the "Hebra Mountains", instead of Death Mountain, and this turned out to be right, which is interesting. It's still quite deadly there, however, because you are taking freezing damage.
But then I thought that the name probably wasn't the only Breath of the Wild inspiration here and that you should be able to bypass this with fire. So, I carried around an Igneozol and this allowed me to explore even further and fight the basic enemies. The snowmen, called Snomauls, here seem to be the replacement for the Pokey, where the different ball parts of the part start flipping around individually. The Leevers from the Yarna Desert also return here, but come now in white.
My main goal was to find some signs of civilization. Since this is now Hebra Mountain, meeting the Rito could have been a thing, which would make timeline theorists go haywire... Another possibility were a comeback of the Anouki from Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, or the Yeti from Twilight Princess.
Eventually I found a mysterious hut, which is called "Condé's House" when you save your game there, but there is no one there currently. Well, judging from the inside it's definitely not the Rito:
Whoever lives here seems to be in Christmas mood, much like the stores in the real world right now. This is the first time a Zelda game features something like a Christmas tree, which is curious... And judging by the paintings on the wall, this Condé character and his family are probably closest to the Yeti from Twilight Princess.
It's (probably) not the Anouki, because they didn't have arms, their bodies were like a mix of reindeer and penguins. And since this seems to be only one isolated family, a callback to Twilight Princess or something new entirely feel like the most sensible answer. I have yet to find out, because I was not able to proceed much further.
Behind the house is also something that looks like grave, so it's all very mysterious at the moment... But it's not like I'm supposed to be here yet.
Still, I found some peppers on my way, which can be cooked into a chill-proof smoothie, so that made it possible for me to fight the Moblin camp nearby. With a Golden Egg you even get freeze resistance as a power-up, kind of like the set bonus effects from Breath of the Wild. I have yet to obtain any outfits and was hoping to find something against the cold here, but that wasn't the case, so for now the smoothies will have to do...
However, beyond the Moblin camp was just a cave with a very big Moblin, a Lvl. 3 Sword Moblin. I've already met one in the Eternal Forest yesterday, but didn't bother with defeating it, because it appeared way too strong. You can't even pull off their shields with Bind, like you can do with the Lvl. 2 variants or Link.
But here I tried cheesing it with fire, which worked eventually and earned me the first echo that I cannot use. It requires five triangles and the Y button simply gets greyed out in that case. But I also got the Energy Belt for my efforts, yet another accessory, where this one lets you earn more energy from fighting shadow monsters.
This is as far as I went here, so I haven't reached the mountain top yet. It also didn't seem trivial at this point, because you can't use water blocks in the freezing cold and the top is much higher, surrounded by huge trees... In hindsight I could have tried the Crawltula again, but that didn't work the first time there either.
In order to warm up I returned to Eldin Volcano to explore its top a bit instead. I should have done this before going into the Hebra Mountains, naturally, because the fire enemies that you can find here are more potent. Especially the Fire Octos seem useful (they are even what I had used to defeat the big Sword Moblin in the end, so there was some back and forth between the two areas).
Anyway, there I've finished my third stamp card already, where the prize was my third Fairy Bottle. And I've done some side quests with the Gorons: the gliding mini-game and the fireworks stuff. It's hilarious that you can summon them everywhere now.
I'm going to have too much fun with this... But I think that's enough of a detour by now. If you look at my map, then you will see that I've uncovered most of it, the big exception being the Gerudo Desert:
So, I will definitely go there next and proceed with the story. Tomorrow I probably won't be able to play much, so the next entry will happen on Sunday, I guess. Just to let you know.
From what I have on the map, it doesn't seem like there will be a Lanayru region anywhere. There is the Eldin Volcano, like in Skyward Sword, and there are the Faron Wetlands. But then you have the Hebra Mountain, the Jabul Waters, the Suthorn Forest, the Gerudo Desert... This feels like an oversight to leave out one of the goddess regions. Or it might be intentional and there's more to it, since Nayru is the Goddess of Wisdom after all. But if it's an oversight, they probably should have called Hebra Mountain "Mount Lanayru" instead, or the Gerudo Desert the "Lanayru Desert".
It's also curious how the Hebra Mountain is shown in green. It might simply because of the trees, or maybe there will be a way of thawing away all the snow... But right now this looks like another oversight.
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