#i was trying to unlock akkala lab's furnace

[sunnidear]

HATE legend of zelda botw

[dont-ever-forget-the-tears]

While doing sidequests for Link’s new Zora friends, I spotted a new shrine and travelled north to reach it.

Once I’d completed that, I set my sights even further north, because there was a large island in the middle of a lake, and I wanted to check that suspicious shit out. After I glided over there and met Hudson from Hateno Village, I realised I had accidentally found the Akkala region of Hyrule. (Not to be confused with Akala Island from Pokemon SM.) Hudson was looking to build a town there, and I helped him out a little, right up until he said he wanted me to bring him a Goron. Since I had no intention of heading off to Death Mountain anytime soon, I left the place and followed the road. As I expected, I came across another stable. I found Pikango there, and he pointed me to another memory spot to the west, which another NPC told me was the Spring of Power. Before heading there though, an NPC told me about a lab to the east, so I went to check that out first. I met this guy there:

A Sheikah named Robbie who had Link strip naked so he could check the scars on his body to make sure it was really him. ...Okay. Like Purah, he needed his furnace lit to run a machine that could create weapons and armour based on Guardian tech. Of course, the blue fire required was some distance away on a path filled with monsters, and it was pouring with rain so I decided to come back to this later. I rode off to find the Spring of Power. There was a spot in the right area guarded by flying Guardian things. Instead of walking through the place they were guarding, I went around and then flew in on the spring from above, heheh. The memory there was one of Zelda trying to awaken her power. She talked about how hard she’s worked trying to awaken her powers with zero success, and it was super tragic:

:( :( :( After that heartbreaking scene, I moved further north and found this guy:

...He really loves monsters. He’ll trade his own special currency for monster parts, and you can use that currency to buy things from his shop! Even further north I met some Gorons and had to do a minigame to reach this shrine:

And I spotted the Din dragon!

Of course, I was too far away to get it to drop a scale, so I continued onward, skirting around the northern end of Death Mountain. When I found my way back to a road, I followed it to a new stable. There I found Pikango again, who pointed me to a new memory spot to the southeast. It took a bit of searching to track down the exact spot, but when I did, it was a much less hearbreaking memory of Zelda talking about flowers with Link. Well, okay, it still tugged my heartstrings:

But she tried to feed him a frog at the end, so it was much more lighthearted. :) I continued down the road I was on and found another stable near the bridge to Tabantha. A guy there told me how I could find a Great Fairy by looking down from Tabantha’s Tower, and PIkango told me where another memory was. I hunted that out first. It was about Zelda examining a shrine, wondering how to get inside. And then Link showed up and she got mad and yelled at him for following her:

Obviously this one was pretty early in their relationship. I went to activate the tower and then found the Great Fairy:

...She came on pretty strong. I continued following the road and found another stable pretty close to Rito Village. Kass was there and he was feeling homesick so close to his home. He wanted to go back to see his wife and kids, but he needed to fulfil a promise to his teacher. And he wouldn’t tell the details of that to Link just yet:

I continued on to the village, because why not. I met this guy:

Ugh, hello unnecessary gender roles, not nice to see you again. I felt better in Zora’s Domain, where they had female Zora among the soldiers... At least it gives me a greater appreciation of Kass for defying the gender roles of his species...

I immediately fell in love with the music in Rito Village. It’s a slow remix of the Dragon Roost Island theme. :) The atmosphere was very different from Zora’s Domain because none of the Rito knew who Link was. And I found Kass’ kids! He has five adorable daughters. :’)

Their leader, Kaneli, realised that Link must be a Champion because of the Sheikah Slate, but then he was like “no, what am I thinking, the Champions have been dead for 100 years” and figured he must be a descendant instead. But because of this, he felt that Link would be able to deal with their Divine Beast, Medoh. Two Rito warriors named Teba and Harth had tried to confront Medoh earlier, but Harth had been injured, and Kaneli was worried that Teba would try to face Medoh on his own. He sent Link to find Teba’s wife, who told him that Teba had gone to the Flight Range, and pointed him to a platform below that he could take off from. That platform triggered a Revali flashback for Link.

Revali was... kind of an asshole. He was super salty about Link being the big hero because of the Master Sword even though Revali saw himself as being much more capable. He suggested they “settle” things with a fight on Medoh, and then smugly pointed out that Link had no way of getting up there on his own and took off. Jerk.

Anywho, instead of heading off to find Teba, I thought I should backtrack and do some other things. First I bought some cold resisting clothes from the store at Rito Village and upgraded them at the Great Fairy Fountain. I needed to search out some materials for that... Then I went back to the Faron region. Since I had an idea of what to do with the yellow dragon thanks to my encounter with Naydra, I headed over to Lake Floria to nab a scale from it:

Of course, I knew I needed to drop that in the corresponding spring, but I had no idea where that was. But then I remembered back to... some Treehouse footage, I think it was? Back before the release of the game. They were following one of Kass’ shrine quests, the one about the “serpent’s head” and there had been a goddess statue that they had avoided approaching at the end. I assumed that had to be the spring I was looking for, and headed over to the forest area Kass sang about. But I remembered that the path was loaded with annoying Shock Arrow wielding Lizalfos, so I went around the forest instead and approached from the back. I love that I can do this. I found the serpent’s head and the Spring of Courage and was able to unlock a new shrine without having to kill a single monster!

Next, I returned to Zora’s Domain to finish up a bunch of sidequests I’d left behind after I got distracted and went exploring. I had to locate one guy’s wife, because she’d been swept downstream during the trouble with Ruta. I was sure that I’d seen a Zora out in the world somewhere before, and I thought it might have been at one of the stables, so I checked all the ones along the river. ...So it took a little while before I found her again at Lake Hylia. Hilariously, she’d completely forgotten that she’d been swept away and people would be worried about her because she was too busy fishing. I also did this quest that involved following a letter downstream for a young Zora girl. Whoever found the letter would supposedly be her “soulmate”. The results were... not what I expected:

Even knowing that younger Zora look younger than Hylians even when they’re the same age/slightly older doesn’t stop me from cringing at this. They could’ve made her even a little bit taller than the other Zora children to make it less uncomfortable. As far as I’m concerned, they’re both teenagers. ...At least I hope so.

At least she’s got her priorities straight. There was an area of the map I still hadn’t explored, so I went to go check that out. I activated the Hebra region’s tower, and found a new stable. And there I found a girl who had this to say:

SO OF COURSE I HAD TO CHECK THAT OUT IMMEDIATELY.

Amazing! Unfortunately...

Too bad. :( My next bright idea was a dangerous one: since the only memory I had yet to collect was the one at Hyrule Castle, I decided I needed to go there. After getting some ideas about how to enter the place from a stable, I opted for the “Zora” option of approaching from the moat and swimming up the waterfalls.

Of course, finding the memory wasn’t an easy task. There were Guardians and Malice to avoid and I had only an old photo to go off of. Eventually, I found my way to a very special room: Princess Zelda’s bedroom. The most interesting thing there was her diary, which was a heartbreaking read detailing the progression of her relationship with Link and her feelings of inadequacy because of her failed attempts at unlocking her power. :(

Then I finally found the memory I was looking for directly above her room!

This pretty gal was watching a bunch of people working on the Guardians when her father came out to criticise her. He felt that she wasn’t doing enough to awaken her powers and forbade her to have anything to do anything with the ancient technology and commanded her to focus only on her training. It just breaks my heart. She was trying so hard and achieving nothing and she just wanted to do whatever she could to help even if she couldn’t use the goddess’ power!!! :( And then he had to go and be an even bigger asshole:

Ugh. :( Near the memory point, I found Zelda’s study and her research notes, in which she talked about her study of the ancient technology with Impa, Purah, and Robbie. After this, I decided I should probably get back to what I was doing, and went to meet this pretty birdie:

He didn’t believe Link could help at first, and wanted him to prove himself by shooting arrows at targets while flying on updrafts. It was remarkably easy.

Yeah, about that... Anyway, he gave Link a modified bow and Bomb Arrows to use and they took off to deal with Medoh.

Once again, Link got to ride on his new companion’s back. Medoh had a barrier up, but there were cannons on the outside. The plan was for Teba to draw their fire while Link destroyed them with Bomb Arrows. It was less difficult than dealing with Ruta, imo. Once they were all destroyed, the barrier came down, and Teba had to retreat because he’d been by a blast from a cannon and his leg was injured. But first he wished Link luck and gave him a feathered thumbs up:

Link landed on Medoh and was greeted by Revali who was still pretty dickish. Once again, Link had to go through Medoh activating terminals until he could activate the final one and the boss appeared: 

The samey-ness of the bosses and dungeons is one of the few disappointing aspects of this game, even if it does make sense... It was easily defeated and Revali’s spirit was freed. He “supposed” he should thank Link, and was a jerk:

But he still passed his special ability on to Link and perched Medoh above Rito Village to fire it’s laser at Hyrule Castle to help him in the battle to come, even if he did say that Link only beat the beast that killed him because he was lucky.

Link returned to Kaneli, who gifted him with Revali’s Great Eagle Bow at Teba’s suggestion.

About that...

After that, there wasn’t much of importance to do in Rito Village. But there was a sidequest involving Kass’ daughters. I had to chase down four of them to get them to sing with their sister at the Warbler’s Nest, and then play the song they were singing on the nearby stones to get a shrine to appear:

After that, I was ready to move on again!