Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 36

Star Fragment Farming

Overall I have taken a pause from Breath of the Wild for the last month, but now and then I returned to farm some Star Fragments, usually to do something at the side while voice chatting with people. So far I have been gunning for Silver Lynels, but because the drop rate of Star Fragments is so low (around 5%) and because you have to wait for a Blood Moon to do it again, it felt quite stagnating.

This is why I was trying the Dueling Peaks method, which you often see on GameFAQs as a recommendation for Star Fragment farming. All you have to do is warp to the Shee Vaneer Shrine on top of the Dueling Peak, get to the top and observe the sky towards the northwest between 9PM and 2AM. You want to look between the Great Plateau and Hyrule Castle:

Don't look at Lake Hylia or the swamp area, because otherwise the Star Fragment might drop into the water and disappear.

Anyway, at first this method didn't work for me at all. I had luck in the first night, but then I didn't get any more Star Fragments. This had me frustrated, because this method seemingly wasn't more effective than the Silver Lynel fights, while standing around and waiting for nothing was super boring...

But I was doing it wrong. I made the mistake of skipping to the next night with a fire right after 2AM. And that's where the mistake was. You have to skip to the next morning first and then skip to the night. And voilà! A Star Fragment! In fact, this method was so effective that I got one Star Fragment on every single night. With within a few hours I was able to farm all the Star Fragments that I still needed for the amiibo armor and more.

When one falls, just mark it with your scope and teleport to the nearest shrine. The Star Fragments usually dropped around Wahgo Katta Shrine for me and were very easy to collect. And contrary to some statements that you might find, this works on any moon phase, even during a Blood Moon:

Just make sure to bring a Flame Blade. This way can quickly ignite a fire on top of Dueling Peaks and it will also keep you warm so that you don't have to equip any warmer clothes.

Well, I now got enough Star Fragments to upgrade all remaining amiibo gear, including the ones from the new Link amiibo released last Friday. And this concludes my efforts to upgrade all armor in the game, so the DLC may come.


Current Progress:

• Koroks: 710/900
• Map Rate: 84.28%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 35

Today I finished another milestone in the game: completing all side quests. I was missing two of them and since I didn't want to look them up on the internet, it took me quite some time to find them. Well, one I could locate methodically, but the other really was just found after running around aimlessly for one week.

The Fickle Goron

The first side quest was called "Death Mountain's Secret" and I found this relatively quickly after the last entry, about one week ago. I counted, how many side quests there were in each individual village and I noticed that Goron City didn't have all that many. So, I decided to search the area.

And that's when I found that Dugby, a Goron Kid at the Goron Hot Springs, actually shows a red exclamation mark, when you approach him. However, nothing really happens, when you talk to him. He mentions something that he said in the hot spring and whether you understood it or not, but he never repeats it and he never goes back into the hot spring. It doesn't create an entry in the Side Quest menu and I was at loss, what I'm supposed to do here.

At first I thought that I had to listen to him from a hidden position, similar to how it's done in a few other side quests. But that doesn't work. I even tried positioning the nearby minecart on the tracks right above the Goron kid, so I could listen from there. But no results.

I got really frustrated with this, trying to figure it out for about two hours. I then went to the Daqa Koh Shrine nearby to get the Drillshaft from a secret stash. The Drillshaft is the best mining tool in the game and I was happy, when I found the stash a while ago. It's really useful.

Well, the surprise came, when the side quest automatically solved itself afterwards. Apparently Dugby hid the Drillshaft there and wanted you to find it by telling you about it under water. I might have talked to him earlier in the game and ignored this, but there never was an entry in the Side Quests section of the Adventure Log. This only appeared, when I solved it in the end. This is, why I missed this side quest for so long... And it feels like this is glitched somehow. (Update: it seems that this weird behavior gets triggered by finding the Drillshaft before ever talking to him.)


My Hero Ignorance

Well, I was left with only one Side Quest, but no clue where to look. I got very close to looking it up on the internet several times, but I resisted the temptation and then just accidentally found the thing all by myself today. It wasn't even anything special. It's just a girl, who sits at a tree near the Outskirt Stable and for some reason I never noticed her. Well, she looks kind of camouflaged there and another reason was that the Outskirt Stable already had two side quests and I only thoroughly checked all stables with one. Still, it was kind of underwhelming similar to my last Hinox, because it wasn't that hard to find and I've just been going blind there, as so often.

But it's done now...

At least she gave me a Star Fragment, so that's very useful. On my journeys I also got several Star Fragments dropping from the sky. And of course I kept fighting Lynels after every Blood Moon. But I still need at least 31 Star Fragments to upgrade all amiibo gear, so there's lots of grinding left to do, if I'm in the mood for the game.

I also didn't find many Koroks in the meantime - there's still a little under 200 of them left. But I will wait for the first DLC, because it probably will be a lot more fun to look for the rest using the Korok Mask.

So, this concludes this series for now, until the first DLC arrives!


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 76/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Medals of Honor: 3/3
• Compendium: 385/385
• Koroks: 706/900
• Map Rate: 83.95%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 34

Horsing Around, Part 3

Because I didn't have any luck finding any better horses, I checked out HylianAngel's excellent Horse Guide to learn what's actually possible. I have been looking in the right places (at Upland Lindor and Taobab Grassland), but I didn't know that it's just not possible to find a horse with all fifteen stars.

To sort things out I've been ignoring all horses that don't have the five Stamina, but then you won't get the five Speed as well. In fact the best possible outcomes in that case are either five Strength and three Speed, which is what I currently have for Hilda, or four Strength and four Speed, which is like Epona with better Stamina.

A horse with five Speed can have only two stars of Strength at best, as well as three Stamina. Anything with only three points of Stamina would have been ignored by me previously, but since I now knew what I was looking for, I found a brown horse like this at Taobab Grassland:

I gave her the highly original name of "Speeda" and she will have to do for now. I do want to have at least one horse with maximum Speed, while Hilda with her stats then covers the other maximums. I might also try to find a blue horse or a pink horse with the same stats as Speeda to name her either "Midna" or "Styla" to keep the princess naming convention. But on the other hand I like the look of a normal brown horse combined with the Knight's Bridle and Knight's Saddle. And overall I would prefer it, if you could collect more than just five horses. With the three special horses in the game, it doesn't leave much room for the "random" horses.

Otherwise I'm probably done with this feature of the game. I'm not using horses that often anyway and since there's so little room to embrace any kind of variety, it's just not that interesting.


Completing Hyrule Compendium, Part 2

This is done as well. I had exactly eight Fauna / Creatures pictures left and as I thought those were mostly just different types of sparrows that are found in the different regions. I only got the Golden Sparrow in the Eldin region previously and these were the ones that I was missing:

• Common Sparrow
• Red Sparrow
• Blue Sparrow
• Rainbow Sparrow
• Sand Sparrow

They are scared off easily, which is why I never paid much attention to them, let alone take pictures. You need either the Sheikah Stealth gear or some Stealth effect food / potions to get close for good shots.

Otherwise I was missing Bladed Rhino Beetles and Seagulls, which both weren't hard to figure out. But with the Bladed Rhino Beetles I was convinced that I had found some west of Satori Mountain earlier in the game, which doesn't seem to be the case. You can find them in the Necluda region, though.

The very last entry with the number 066 completely eluded me, however. I had no idea, what it could have been, but luckily it's not like you have to consult the internet or guides to figure this out, since you can just buy any missing pictures. So, I bought the last one from Symin at the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab. Turns out it was a Fairy... Those don't appear anymore, if you have five or more in your inventory, and since I haven't been using them anymore, they essentially vanished off my radar.

You also receive the Classified Envelope containing Sheikah porn for your efforts... It's another useless trophy item in the Key Item inventory, but I guess it's nice to have something that tells you on first glance that you have completed everything.

(However, with the DLC the Compendium should also get new entries, for example for any golden tier enemies or even new bosses. Unless it's really so that you can only find gold tier enemies in Hard Mode and Hard Mode will simply leave out the red tiers, while the new dungeon won't have any new bosses. It will be interesting to see, how Nintendo handles this.)


Other than 202 Koroks, all that's left for now are two remaining Side Quests (still no clue) and grinding about five dozens of Star Fragments for the amiibo gear.

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 698/900
• Medals of Honor: 3/3
• Compendium: 385/385
• Map Rate: 83.29%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 33

This is what I call action!

Hello, my name is TourianTourist and I'm addicted. To fighting Lynels. The combat in this game is just so good, it never seems to get old. And they really turned the Lynels into the mightiest enemies in the Zelda series. It's so much fun to fight them, I'm actually looking forward to the DLC and any potential Golden Lynels.

In some places you can even have some really amazing fight scenes, when one of the three dragons appears in the background or even right above you. This might happen in the East Deplian Badlands with Dinraal (see the picture above), at the East Gate of Lanayru Road with Naydra and on top of the Gerudo Highlands with Farosh. There's another place, where you can have Farosh in the background while fighting a Lynel - and that place turned out to be crucial for my current journey.

Anyway, I didn't have much luck with getting Star Fragments from Lynels these days. I actually had more luck with them dropping from the sky. But with one Lynel I was lucky and got two at once. This has happened before and helped me quite a lot with my upgrading progress. Right now I have the Tunic of the Hero set fully upgraded, so it's three more sets to go. And I will keep going. Luckily I have so much fun fighting the Lynels that I don't mind. I even stepped my game up and I now hunt for the majority of Lynels after a Blood Moon...

I even marked them all with swords on my map to know where they all are. I did the same with all the Talus (using the ore symbol) and all the Hinox (using the skull symbol), so my map is now filled with all the strong monsters on overworld, where I barely have any stamps left. (I did not mark the ones in Hyrule Castle or otherwise I would have used all 100 stamps up.)


Medals of Honor

Talking about monsters... My big achievement today was finally collecting all three Medals of Honor. I did get the one for slaying all Talus about a week ago and the two last Talus were the following:

Crenel Hills Stone Talus
South Koukot Plateau Stone Talus

I also found one of my last shrines at Crenel Hills, I just didn't explore the whole hill at the time. So, I found this one quite "quickly", after I had realized that I haven't been to the north side of the hill yet. The other one was at Gerudo Canyon, not far from where I also found one of my last shrines. But I'm pretty sure that I've met this Talus earlier in the game, while exploring the area, I just ignored it, because I didn't know that defeating them all would get you something.

Anyway, afterwards I was looking for the last Hinox for exactly one week (keep in mind that I'm only playing a few hours in the evening). I was convinced that it had to be a Stalnox, because a Hinox is too easy to spot as that you could possibly miss one. So, I even kept targeting Stalnox with my Sheikah Sensor+ and I wandered around pretty much everywhere during the night. With no luck. Well, that was because it wasn't a Stalnox, but just some plain red Hinox at Kamah Plateau:

This one is not even hard to find...! I more or less stumbled over it on my way to the Lynel on the hill right behind him. Well, I did notice the empty place, while studying the map, so I thought I should check it out, before going to the Lynel. I thought that the supposed Stalnox might be there and I just missed it in the jungle. So, I was quite surprised, when I found out that all along there has been a fat red Hinox up there. It's surprising, because I've already fought the Lynel close by multiple times (I usually went there via Riola Spring, though). I also got all treasure chests in the area and I've found Koroks all around Kamah Plateau. But I never saw the Hinox. Funny, how it goes...

But it doesn't matter anymore, because I finally got all three Medals of Honor:

They don't seem to be good for anything other than bragging rights. So, consider this as bragging or whatever. But I really do like, how the Key Item menu is arranged currently. All the horse armor sits perfectly aligned in the second half of the inventory screen. Too bad that it won't stay this way, though. As far as I know, there are still two more trophy items left for me to get, while you also keep the 459 useless Korok Seeds in your inventory. And there will be the Travel Medallion with the first DLC Pack. So, the Key Items menu will be two pages long and leave some horse saddle orphans on the second page... Almost as if Nintendo wants to troll everyone, who is a little obsessed with order.

I still think that it would have been a good idea to have a separate Horse Armor tab (using the horse icon from Hyrule Compendium), it would simply look better and after all those aren't "key items" anyway. Nintendo also could add five more sets of Horse Armor to fill an entire page, because right now the horse customization options feel pretty limited compared to Link's armor collection (I've also added this to my list of suggestions for improvements).


So, what's left other than over two hundred Koroks? I still haven't found the two remaining side quests despite going through all villages and stables again and again. Those might be located somewhere else then. And it really seems like I have to take pictures of various sparrow types for Hyrule Compendium. But now that I have finally found all overworld bosses, I can focus on these tasks.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 686/900
• Medals of Honor: 3/3
• Compendium: 378/385
• Map Rate: 82.21%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 32

In my last entry I told you, how lucky I was with getting Star Fragments from fighting Silver Lynels - it even felt like a 50% chance at the time. But it looks like I'm down on my luck, I haven't gotten any Star Fragments from Silver Lynels in a while now, even after fighting over a dozen of them. According to this research the chance of getting a Star Fragment is at 5% - so much for my estimate. It's even lower with amiibo, where it's at 1% or 2%. Talk about grinding!

At least my collection of Savage Lynel Bows is getting more impressive every day. Meanwhile I had a total of eight of them with the Five-Shot Burst weapon bonus:

Combined with over 800 Shock Arrows and over 100 Ancient Arrows I could probably destroy an entire army of Guardians. Bring it on, game!

Since I got asked this, after a Blood Moon I usually fight the same four Silver Lynels: the two at Oseira Plains (near the Ishto Soh Shrine) and the two in North Akkala, north of the Spring of Power. I've also went through the Deplian Badlans yesterday and fought all four Silver Lynels there, but this area doesn't have an easy access via warp points and there is a long walk between each Lynel. This reminds me, when I made my first tour around Death Mountain, desperately looking for a shrine. Well, there wasn't one here. I still hope that the second DLC will provide some additional shrines in certain places, because some areas really could use the warp points.

I don't like fighting the Lynels in cold areas, because I'm restricted to that ugly Rito Armor, but sometimes I just go for the three in Tabantha Tundra anyway. The ones on top of Gerudo Highlands seem rather impractical, so does the one at Tarm Point. And I usually forget about the one at the Purifier Lake and any others that I haven't mentioned here. But if I ever want to speed things up with the Star Fragments, I'd probably go for them all. Right now I'm still focused on other tasks than just the grinding.


Dog Chests

While the Silver Lynels weren't as generous this week, I did have some luck finding Star Fragments by feeding dogs, though. I didn't know this before today, because I never really bothered with befriending dogs besides feeding them maybe once or twice. Turns out that the third time is the charm. Then they bring you to one NEW treasure chest each, which weren't there before. While I don't like, how this "breaks the rules", because chests normally don't just appear out of nowhere in this game, the dog chests at Lurelin Village and the Snowfield Stable did give me a Star Fragment each, which is nice.

Hero's Path to Nowhere

My main goal this week was still finding the two remaining Hinox, Talus and Side Quests, but I didn't have much success on that front. I only found one more Stalnox at the East Akkala Plains. I keep studying the map for "empty spaces", ideally ones that are named, but mostly I just end up in areas that really seem to be completely empty. Taafei Hill for example. Or the Zodobon Highlands. Okay, the latter has one of the Zora Stone Monuments, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be anything up there on the hill, not even a Korok. And that's kind of frustrating, but at least the East Akkala Plains didn't let me down.

Right now I could really use the Hero's Path Mode to see, which areas I haven't explored in full detail in the last hundred hours. When the first DLC gets released, it's probably too late...


Completing Hyrule Compendium, Part 1

Since my search for the remaining side quest stuff didn't go so well, I focused a lot more on completing Hyrule Compendium and gradually improving the picture quality:

My goal is to only buy the pictures at the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, if it's really necessary. I already had finished the "Treasure" section (no big deal, it only has four entries) and the "Monster" section, where I had to buy the picture for Master Kohga a while ago. This weekend I completed the "Materials" section, as well as the "Equipment" section.

For the "Materials" I was only missing the Big Hearty Truffle, where you can find some around Mount Satori or the Minshi Woods. For the "Equipment" I had to track down the following weapons:

• Traveler's Claymore - can be found on the field east of Dueling Peak's Stable
• Spiked Moblin Club - got that from a Stal Moblin
• Serpentine Spear - Bokoblins use them at the horseback archery circle near Hateno
• Forest Dweller's Sword - at the Test of Wood
• Spring Loaded Hammer - completely forgot about it

However, there were also four Weapon pictures that I simply couldn't get anymore and I had to buy them:

• Lynel Spear
• Mighty Lynel Crusher
• Mighty Lynel Spear
• Mighty Lynel Bow

The entire Mighty Lynel weapon series is out of reach at the end of the game. It seems like you can't obtain any of it, since the only remaining Blue Lynel in one of the Hyrule Castle Gatehouses doesn't drop its equipment. There's still the Red Lynel on top of Ploymus Mountain, but it only ever uses Sword, Shield and Bow, so you can't get the Lynel Spear or the Lynel Crusher. I only have a really bad picture of the latter (see the above image) and won't be able to improve this for now, which is a shame.

Maybe the DLC will help and you can find all types of Lynels with all the weapons in the Trial of the Sword. However, like with Eventide Island you will probably lose all the equipment, as soon as you leave the trial. Since this Trial of the Sword doesn't take place in the "real world", you wouldn't be able to bring the weapons outside for some nice photos. And it's not even clear, if you actually can use the Sheikah Slate inside the trial.

Apropos Eventide Island, I went back there looking for some of the weapons and for some reasons all the treasure chests on and around the islands were back, containing early game weaponry like Soldier's Swords. I'm not sure, if this is a bug or if this is intended, but it keeps happening. It would be cool, if you actually could repeat the trial just for fun. Then I even would understand, why the treasure chests keep coming back.

Anyhow, now I'm only missing eight "Fauna" pictures in the "Creatures" section of Hyrule Compendium. At least half of them seem to be tiny birds like Sparrows, so I will keep donning my Sheikah gear for the sneaky snaps...

PS: I found my 666th Korok at Eastern Abbey. This can't be coincidence, I still don't like this devilish place from the early game, even though it's a complete joke now.

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 668/900
• Talus: 38/40
• Hinox: 39/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Compendium: 377/385
• Map Rate: 80.72%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 31

Horsing Around, Part 2

I've done a little more horse stuff today. First of all, I just now realized what the entries 002 and 003 in the Creatures section of the Hyrule Compendium are... I had this open space between "Horse" and "Lord of the Mountain", but I never put any thoughts into it other than that I was obviously missing something here. Now I want to complete the Hyrule Compendium and I realized quickly that those had to be the two special horses, which I named Ganon and Zelda. So, I took them out and brought them back to their original habitats for a nice photo shoot:

The entries are called "Giant Horse" and "White Horse". And this should essentially confirm that these are all the special horses that you can get, other than Epona.

I also found a better Midna at the Taobab Grassland, where the Ganon horse photo shoot took place:

I don't like the all white mouth, but it appears that certain places really give better horses with five star stats. Problem with Taobab Grasslands is that it's a looooooooong way back to the next stable and that's after you took care of the two Lynels and the horde of riding Bokoblins.

A better spot seems to be the Upland Lindor, where you can get safely and quickly to either the Serenne Stable or the Tabantha Bridge Stable. I did find a better Hilda there:

Again it's the exact same stats as the blue horse, where I would like to find a horse with better speed somewhere. I might have to opt for a different color to get that five stars on speed. It can't be coincidence that the blue and black horses all give similar stats all the time.

Also, ideally there would be a horse with full 15 stars, if that's even possible. I guess, I have to experiment more and see, how things go. Again, it would be helpful, if I could actually check the horse stats before registering it.


Loser Lynels

The Blood Moon rises! Yay! This means, it's time to smash some Lynels again! I had significant luck with getting Star Fragments from Lynels these days. Almost a 50% chance. It still will take quite some time to collect enough for upgrading all the amiibo armor, though. So far I've only upgraded the Cap of the Hero, which cost one Star Fragment on each step. For the rest I will still need a total of 44 Star Fragments. Eight more with the upcoming amiibo in June. Yikes. This is even worse than any kind of grinding that Hyrule Warriors asked of you.

At least fighting Lynels is a lot of fun and I'm getting better and better at it to a point, where I might not even get hit once even without using Urbosa's Fury or Daruk's Protection. With these two abilities they are a joke anyway, but I use them mostly on the clubbed Lynels.


A Talus and a Hinox

So, I've found one more Talus and one more Hinox:

East Daval Peak Stalnox
Darb Pond Igneo Talus

I suppose that all the remaining Hinox are in fact Stalnox, because the other Hinox types are hard to miss and I should have been everywhere by now. I might not have paid attention to one or the other Stalnox on my travels, though. The game doesn't register them as enemies, as long as they are "sleeping", so the Sheikah Sensor+ won't target them and they don't get highlighted by the Stasis+ field. They are a mere decoration and that makes them hard to notice sometimes.

And targeting these enemies with the sensor is problematic in general, because there are four or five different types for them. Other than than the Stalnox there are Red, Blue and Black Hinox. And there are Stone Talus, Luminous Stone Talus, Rare Stone Talus, Igneo Talus and Frost Talus... You can't just keep going through all these all the time, that would be annoying.

At least with the Igneo Talus and the Frost Talus they are regional. Igneo Talus only seem to appear Death Mountain, which is where I could locate a fifth one using the Sheikah Sensor+.

So, it's a 2:2:2. Two Side Quests left, two Hinox left and two Talus left. I still have no clue about the missing side quests, but I will figure it out eventually. I was trying to find a pattern in the stables, where some have two side quests and others don't. But no luck with that either... If you have any ideas, please don't tell me, I want to find it out on my own!

And yes, you will be able to tell me after this post, because I want to return to normality with this blog soon.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 652/900
• Talus: 38/40
• Hinox: 38/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 79.40%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 30

It's the last day of April already and just now I managed to find and complete all 120 Sheikah Shrines in Breath of the Wild. Took me long enough, but this speaks for the game!


Horsing Around

One of my side goals is finding good horses and so far I didn't have much luck with that. Other than the three special horses, I want a black horse named "Hilda" and a blue horse named "Midna", after I had named the white horse "Zelda". But problem is that I keep getting the exact same stats:

Four strength, three Speed and four Stamina. This goes for both the black and the blue horses. It seems like the best that I can get, which is a little disappointing. I've been told that there are places, which give better horses, e.g. the Taobab Grassland, where you can find the Ganon horse. But I didn't have any luck there either, it usually starts with having lower Stamina.

It also doesn't help that you can't see the exact stats of a new horse, unless you let one go. That's somewhat annoying, ideally you could check the stats before replacing another horse, since you never can be sure, if it's really better.


Empty Areas

I've been looking for the last shrine and I arrived at a point, where even Sheikah Sensor+ on Treasure Chests doesn't give any readings anymore (other than the "ghost chests"). So, from time to time I was activating the normal Shrine Sensor, but that didn't really help me either. Nothing on the radar.

My target have been areas with nothing much to be found, like Mount Faloraa for example. Sometimes I would find some new Koroks, with certain named areas it's also likely to discover a Talus or Hinox. But sometimes it seems like there just isn't anything there at all.

Probably the most extreme example would be a part of the Faron Jungle, the Damel Forest and Dracozu River. Everything around this section has lots of stuff, including many Koroks, some Sheikah Shrines and more. But in this particular part of the jungle there's nothing to be found other than some treasure chests. And I have checked this area multiple times now, where I've climbed all the treetops looking for hidden rocks, balloons or windmills just in case there really still might be some Koroks there. What I found were three small caves behind destructible walls... Each of them got me excited for nothing, because there were just some ores inside.


The Final Shrine

Now, I've spent lots of time running all over Hyrule looking for the last shrine, where my intuition, which successfully led me to the previous two shrines, didn't help me this time. Even activating the Shrine Sensor every once in a while didn't help. So, I asked a simple question:

"What's possibly the worst place, where the last shrine could be hidden...?"

The answer was simple: Hebra, of course! And so I went back to the Hebra Mountains, where I just wanted to let the Shrine Sensor do its magic. However, I then switched back to the Treasure Chest Sensor, because I still was missing some chests around a certain area and funnily enough that's what brought me to the final shrine, the Maka Rah Shrine.

It's at Lake Kilsie. I stumbled over a new Korok in the hills above the lake and then heard the typical shrine cave music below me. I went down to check to find the shrine behind a crack in the rocks:

You now have to look for the real entrance to the cave, which is easy to miss. But discovering this shrine certainly was fun.

The trial was named "Steady Thy Heart" and it was an entertaining little trial, where you open gates and find some sort of threat after each one. I liked it and I'm happy that my last shrine was cleverly hidden and also not some mere Blessing.

One last time... before the DLC.

Other than getting the last Spirit Orbs, you also receive something else for completing all 120 Sheikah Shrines. The reward awaits at the Forgotten Temple, which is nice, because you can also use the big Goddess Statue there to do the last prayer.

If you don't want to know, what the reward is, stop reading now! To me this wasn't a surprise, because I had been accidentally spoiled about this on Youtube, but I don't want my blog to do the same for you. So, if you don't know yet and keep the surprise, stop reading!

It's the "Tunic of the Wild"!

If you already have all the amiibo tunics, it might not feel particularly special. But it's nice that players without any amiibo can still get a traditional tunic. Also, fully upgraded it does give the higher defense value and unlike the amiibo tunics you also dye the whole outfit, if you want to:

(Pants were not dyed here.)

It also has a "Master Sword Beam Up" Set Bonus... Which doesn't strike me as that useful. To be honest, for the longest time I didn't even know that you can "throw" sword beams with the Master Sword. I would have preferred it, if the sword beams came with each strike similar to the Windcleaver. Then this set bonus might even be useful.

Well, before the game came out, I was afraid that in the end you might just end up with the Master Sword, Hylian Shield and the traditional tunic, completely tossing the new look aside. And while I was right, the amount of time it needs to get all this stuff is pretty significant, so most of the game will still celebrate the diversity that Link can have. And nothing beats the Climbing Gear, imho.

Another Armor Upgrade

The rest of the day I spent upgrading the last set of armor. And I was right earlier this month (in Entry 24), when I upgraded all the other armor and speculated that there has to be at least one more piece of gear in the game that needs the claws of each dragon. That really was the case.

Other than that it needed Courser Honey Bee and Energetic Rhino Beetles. The bee hives were found quickly, pretty much every forest area in the game has some. The Energetic Rhino Beetles on the other hand were a little bit trickier and you need 15 in total of them. Don't give any to Beedle! As far as I know, there isn't anything gained from this anyway, other than him not being annoying for a little while. Him asking for the beetles really gets in the way of his business...

Anyway, there seem to be lots of them in Akkala and with the Stealth Armor equipped they are easy to grab. Unless some Yiga Blademaster suddenly spawns right in front of you and scares it of. Or some Stal enemies. Or it starts to rain. Or they just fly off on their own. Or, or, or... For Hylia's sake, the randomly spawning enemies and the rain are already annoying enough, but it's ten times worse, if they get in the way of your prey.

The last armor set also requires all different dragon parts of all three dragons, where I only was missing some of Naydra's. So, I spent the rest of the time on Mount Lanayru, waiting for the thing...

By the way, to farm the dragon parts I'm using the Twilight Bow that you can get with the Zelda Smash amiibo. It shoots in a straight line, so it's the best way to accurately target whichever part you need.

For the fourth upgrade it also costs a Star Fragment each, but luckily I have saved some, instead of already wasting them all on the amiibo gear. By now I've fully upgraded the Sheik's Mask, which took TEN Star Fragments in total. TEN!!!! The amiibo tunics don't seem to be as bad, but I still lost some motivation to "grind" for these. But I did get quite couple from defeating Lynels, so that's good.

I've also kept collecting amiibo gear, until my inventory was overstuffed, because I wanted to know the maximum. You can have a total of five pages of armor, which is enough for all the individual armor that you can get in the game and via amiibo. There isn't much room for having dyed duplicates, however.


What now?

I guess, I'm now finished with the important parts of the game, but there's still things left to do. Other than a total of 255 Koroks, I have still two Side Quests left to find, as well as three Talus and three Hinox for the Medals of Honor. And I have to complete Hyrule Compendium, but I have been doing a lot for this at the sidelines and I'm only missing a few entries.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 645/900
• Talus: 37/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 78.74%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 29

Border Patrol

After one week without finding any new shrines, I had to be more methodical. And my main method was studying the map to find "empty" places, where I feel like there should be something, even if it's just a Korok.

This brought me to the edge of the world map a couple of times, because I had the suspicions that there could be something. But it was just all dead ends, literally. One of these places would be a small peninsula at the north of Akkala:

Judging from the map it really was a place, where I wanted to go, but there wasn't anything there and Nintendo just lazily stops you from going on in the middle of the place. They couldn't even wait for the spiked rock formations. And the rocks on the hill, when you're going back, are for some reason not climbable. Weird.

On my way through Akkala I also discovered a new place: the Shadow Hamlet Ruins. It really got me excited for a moment, because I suspected to find something there. But as with all the giant rocks around Death Mountain, this little ruin in the middle of them didn't seem to hold any secrets...

I also explored along the border of the Gerudo Desert and here I noticed, how weirdly shields behave on sand. I already thought that it was odd, how shields don't break during Sand Seal Surfing. But I get it that this would be super annoying, if your shield broke in the middle of the Vah Naboris battle or whatever. However, it seems like shields in general don't break, if you surf on sand. Also, even on small slopes you speed up quite a lot, so you can go relatively fast through the desert even without a Sand Seal. Well, at least it made me appreciate Shield Surfing much more in general, where I'm now using it more often to get around. Outside the desert this also gets rid off all those Royal Shields that you find everywhere.


The Breakthrough

Well, I had been groping in the dark for the longest time to a point, where my motivation to keep going through this game dropped significantly. It had been over a week of playing without finding any of the last remaining shrines. I was even activating the Shrine Sensor from time to time just to be sure that there wasn't anything around, with no luck either.

But then I finally had my breakthrough with the Dow Na'eh Shrine. It was located in an area, where I certainly felt like that there should be a Shrine around, because otherwise there is no quick access to the places around...

It's behind a waterfall at the center of the Lanayru Promenade. I was probably as happy as I was embarrassed, when I found the Shrine. While it's true that it's hidden behind a waterfall and I found it by climbing behind the water flow, there's also a tunnel right next to the waterfall leading right to it that I had completely missed...

Thing is that I have explored this area multiple times. I salvaged all the treasure chests in the water around here (there are quite a few) and I climbed around the ruins next to the waterfall many times to look for Koroks, but I never saw the tunnel during all this. To be fair, it's only really visible, if you walk right to it. Otherwise the perspectives might play tricks on you and you will miss it. But it was still a little embarrassing and showed that sometimes I'm not as thorough in exploring the areas, as I could and should be.

Anyway, it felt good to be back in a shrine, where these Portal-esque trial chambers really have this stark contrast compared to the overworld with visuals, atmosphere and even gameplay. I enjoy this quite a lot.

A shrine? Gotta bring out the good gear!

The shrine contained the "Three Boxes" trial and it was another one of these puzzles, where the name of trial gives the solution away. It might have been a little bit trickier, if it was named differently.


One More

My intuitions also led me to Mount Floria, because there was no teleportation point up there. I suspected that there might be a shrine hidden somewhere near the top of the mountain, but I couldn't find anything. This was one of these moments, where I turned on the Sheikah Sensor to be sure. And it did pick up a signal after all. I decided to turn the sensor off again right away to make it not too easy, where after a while I finally found the Tota Sah Shrine...

It was also near a waterfall, the one where you find the Great Bandit treasure south of the Dueling Peaks stable. I did explore this area before, just last week I've been going through the Hickaly Woods, but I've always missed the hidden cave. At least I'm glad that it was hidden in a cave behind a wall, so I probably wasn't completely blind, just not thorough enough at the time.

But I enjoy the challenge of finding these hidden locations.

The shrine was home to the "Toto Sah Apparatus" and the last part felt like using one of these boss keys from Skyward Sword. It's somewhat awkward to do with the Wii U GamePad, because you have to turn the entire controller around in your hands to position the sections. And with the lasts ection I don't think I even got the real solution. I didn't even use the loose staircase, the whole thing was lopsided and I somehow jumped to the goal.


So, now there's only one Sheikah Shrine left for me to discover! Coincidentally I also had one Shrine Quest left and naturally you would assume that they were related. Maybe another gang of Goron thugs would await me somewhere... But it turned out that I was simply missing the "Eye of the Sandstorm" Shrine Quest, where I had found the corresponding Dako Tah Shrine a very long time ago (see Entry 8). But this answered my question from the time, where I wondered, if finding the shrine caused the sandstorm in the area to vanish. The guy at the Kara Kara Bazaar basically confirms this, who's easy to miss, because he sits on some high chair above a tent. And he doesn't talk to you at night, which is why I probably missed this dialogue earlier. I was also curious, what would happen, if you find a shrine before the corresponding Shrine Quest, but it simply will be solved right away.

I guess, to find the last shrine I will have to trust my intuition again...

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 73/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 119/120
• Koroks: 625/900
• Talus: 36/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 77.00%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 28

What's on the horizon? Nothing at all. While I have used every evening this week to play the game, I didn't make any significant progress. And with that I mean that I still haven't found any of the three remaining shrines. I arrived at a point, where I'm inclined to actually use the Sheikah Sensor to find them, because I currently have no clue, where I should be looking. It almost feels like there's a super secret place somewhere that holds three shrines... On the other hand I did find lots and lots of treasure chests and Koroks and I also went on the offensive against all types of Guardians.


Canyon Crawling

I made another tour through Tanagar Canyon up to the Forgotten Temple, where this time I took out all of the Decayed Guardians to explore the inside of the temple in detail. This was kind of fun, trying to take them out one by one without getting hit by the others.

For some reason I had the feeling that the next night I will get a Blood Moon, so that the entire place is filled with the Guardians again. And my guts didn't betray me, the Blood Moon really came, but luckily I was done with exploring the place by then. I did find multiple treasure chests, as well as lots of Koroks on top and around the temple...

Nearby is the Serenne Stable, where by now I'm trying to pay attention to all NPCs, just in case I'm missing some valuable information or even a sidequest again. And one of the persons leaving the stable was talking about the "Forest where the Master lives" to the south. I have no idea, which forest he means. It could be the Giant's Forest and simply reference the Hinox there, but I followed the whole road southwards all the way to the Dalite Forest, where I didn't find anything important.

Because I spotted another Korok formation on the map near Vah Naboris, I went on to the Gerudo Canyon, where I honestly thought that going up the Yarna Valley would lead to a shrine. I hadn't explored this small valley yet, but in the end it just lead to places, where I already had been...

Castle Crawling

Highlight this week was exploring all of Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle Town again, this time with the Sheikah Sensor+ active, where I've been looking for all treasure chests in and around the castle. And there were lots of them.

I've also destroyed almost all the Guardians, which was a lot of fun and didn't even cost me a single Ancient Arrow. All those Savage Lynel Bows that I had gathered from fighting them really came in handy here. Especially the ones with greater Attack power or Five-Shot Bursts do devastating damage, if you combine them with either Fire, Ice or Shock Arrows. I tend to use Shock Arrows, because they make the most sense when fighting machines, but they also do more damage than Fire and Ice Arrows. I have a stock of over 500 all of these types, so I can fire at will.

Anyway, if you shoot a Guardian in the eye, it takes about six shots of this combination to take them down. So, it's a good way to destroy them and unlike in the Forgotten Temple I didn't have any time pressure here after the job was done. The Blood Moon won't be in effect, as long as you stay in a dungeon. It will keep coming back every night, but as long as you stay inside Hyrule Castle you can keep exploring it with all enemies gone.

And the atmosphere is really great. Since most of the game uses ambient music, having an actual music theme play makes certain places even more impressive. In case of Hyrule Castle the main chorus reminds me a little bit of the Ballad of the Windfish from Link's Awakening, it's just darker and more epic. But I'm always fired up, when I'm visiting this place, humming the theme alongside the game. Nintendo really did a great job with this "dungeon".

So, I kept exploring the castle, looking for all treasure chests, scanning everything with Stasis to find Koroks and fighting my way through all the enemies. Ideally I did this so thoroughly that I never have to go back there again.

With some of this I was reminiscing, how much things have changed over the course of the game. It's not just that I can easily take care of all enemies in the game, but also my perception about some of the items. Early in the game I thought that Stasis was the least utilized / useful ability in the game and by now I'm using it the most. I still rarely use it for its actual purpose, but freezing enemies for a short time and "scanning" the environment for anything that can be moved is invaluable.

It's similar with two-handed weapons. At first I thought that they were at a big disadvantage over the other weapons, because they are way too slow for the damage that they deal and they leave you exposed to enemy attacks. But with three full Stamina Meters you can make good use of the whirling spin attack, where this does so much damage in a short time that even all the silver enemies can be defeated quickly with this technique. Using them is still a risk, but it can be worth it.

Apropos weapons, after I was done with my "Hyrule Castle Mega Tour", I found out about the Royal Guard's gear sidequest... So, I had to go back to Hyrule Castle after all. I did like the idea of the sidequest, where I was looking for all the pieces of the Royal Guard weaponry, which are hidden in different places all over the castle. But it turned out that you only need the sword, which was somewhat disappointing.


Koroks, lots of Koroks

I did find quite some Koroks during my castle tour, even one where I would classify this as a new type of Korok puzzle that I haven't seen before...

Near the Castle Gate, below the Observation Point, there is an emblem with arrows sticking to it. You can see them glimmering from a distance and if you shoot an arrow yourself at the thing, a Korok turns up. I probably have to keep looking for arrows in the environment now... For example hose targets near Hateno Village came to mind. Or the gateways to Kakariko.

During this part I wished that I could just use the Sheikah Sensor+ to target Koroks to make sure that I really have all of them in and outside Hyrule Castle. I can do this with treasure chests and I really enjoy it, when the sensor finally becomes silent and I have "cleared" an area. But with the Koroks I can never be sure, unless I really manage to find all 900 of them. And without any help this might be quite difficult and time intensive to do it all. I don't want to look at guides or maps in the internet, so I would prefer having some ingame help, where a Korok sensor would be the simplest and best solution.

It's also kind of ironic, how I'm unwilling to use the Sheikah Sensor for the Sheikah Shrines, which is its main purpose, while I can't use it for Koroks, where I would be willing to.

2-in-1

This week I made many tours through various other areas including the Tingle Islands, Faron Grasslands, Lurelin Village, Lake Floria (again), West Necluda, Goron City, Hebra Mountains and more... And by now I've gotten exactly two thirds of the Koroks, 600 of them. I'm just afraid that it ends the same way as with the Sheikah Shrines, where I'm unable to find the last couple ones without any help, because they could be anywhere. I probably have to come up with a more systematic way of exploring everything, if I really want to do it all on my own.

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 73/76
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Shrines: 117/120
• Koroks: 600/900
• Talus: 32/40
• Hinox: 33/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 74.68%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 27

Far Sighted

Currently I'm on the lookout for my final four Sheikah Shrines and I found the first one right away. I was on my way to the Akkala Citadel Ruins, when I spotted the Sah Dahaj Shrine from atop the Akkala Span bridge. Thing is that I probably had spotted this shrine multiple times before in the game, but didn't bother to go there ealier, because I thought that it would be easy to find somewhere around Akkala or the east side of the Death Mountain. But in reality it's in a nook, where you can only see it from the right angle. And when I explored the Death Mountain area above it, I was distracted with other stuff...

It does contain the "Power of Fire", another puzzle where for some reason the shrine has a lot of leaves growing everywhere. It's seem a little odd to have these leaves in this ancient technology construct, but whatever...

Afterwards I took my time to fully explore the Akkala Citadel Ruins, now that Ancient Arrows are cheap to get and the Guardian Skywatchers aren't the biggest threat anymore. But all I found were some more Koroks. I also returned to the Ordorac Quarry to see, if you can find anything in the "maze" guarded by Skywatchers, but there wasn't anything. So, this "maze" really is completely pointless, because you can simply go around to reach the Spring of Power or any Koroks around the area.

And then I was at a loss again... Where to look? I'm very close to give in and just use the Sheikah Sensor to find the last three shrines. But that almost feels like using a guide and I don't want that. On the other hand I'm still short ten Hinoxes and ten Talus. And those guys take space.

Even though I've been everywhere, truth is that there are still nooks, hills and places that I haven't explored yet, where I probably should have been more systematic, instead of running all over the places. At least I kept marking the positions of defeated Hinox with a skull symbol and the positions of defeated Talus with an ore symbol on my map. This way it's easier for me to identify places that are still untouched.


Ghost Chests

Other than looking for the last shrines, I'm busy following the Sheikah Sensor+, which is targeting treasure chests. That takes the most of my game time currently, because depending on the area there can be lots. Akkala seems to be an extreme example, where there don't seem to be many chests around. The ocean and the Lake Floria area on the other hand have so many sunken chests, you might as well be playing the Wind Waker.

But it's really satisfying, when the sensor suddenly starts being silent and you have found all the chests around the area. Unless of course the sensor targets a glitched chest, which it does in several locations. So far I found these:

• The Woodcutter's Hut at the Great Plateau. This happens, when you get the Warm Doublet directly from the Old Man. Otherwise there would be a chest in house with this item, where the game now keeps targeting a chest that you can't get.
• East of Aris Beach there is a chest stuck underwater.
• The chest game in Lurelin Village.
• In Hateno Village between the Dye Shop and the Inn the sensor goes off, but there's nothing to be found.
• At the waterfall leading from Rassia Lake to Lake Floria the sensor also goes off, but there's nothing to be found.

I thought that the last two were just me being too blind to find them, but apparently I'm not the only one with this problem, if you look at this topic on GameFAQs about these chests (yes, I was so annoyed that I actually looked it up).


amiibo Luck

... or lack thereof. I have to say that I'm not too happy about this whole amiibo thing. I like scanning them on a daily basis to get stuff, but I don't like receiving the same Royal Shields, Royal Bows and whatever over and over again. So, I'm more and more using the save scam trick to get what I want, even if it takes several tries. But at least I finally got my first Biggoron's Sword and my first Hero's Shield today, as well as another Bow of Twilight.

The gigantic sheath for the Biggoron's Sword looks odd, though. They just should have used the one from Ocarina of Time 3D.

Now with all these rare items this is, how my current house decoration looks like:

The Ancient Bladesaw on the wall is the best, because it actually keeps spinning and gives off blue sparks while doing so. In general I like using gear that glows for the displays, where the Sword of the Sages and the Bow of Twilight were good matches.

I also stopped selling the duplicate amiibo armor pieces, where I have this weird random number generation phenomenon of getting trousers most of the time:

But it's good to know that the armor menu can have at least five pages. With the upcoming Link amiibo for Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword (which have been officially announced in this week's Nintendo Direct by the way) and any potential DLC outfits I was worried that there might not be enough space for everything. Now I only need the amiibo to give me Star Fragments to upgrade it all...

But I've learned that Silver Lynels also might drop Star Fragments occasionally. It's probably as rare, but it's helping.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 72/76
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Shrines: 117/120
• Koroks: 528/900
• Talus: 30/40
• Hinox: 30/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 68.56%