Now on the surface, I met up with Purah at Lookout Landing, and she gave me a completely unnecessary recap of what I already knew. 😛 She wanted me to go to Hyrule Castle to look for Zelda, but I wanted to explore a bit first! So I started looking around for shrines.
The first shrine on the surface required me to rotate some oddly-shaped items, and it didn’t take me long to clear it.
However, the next one gave me a lot of trouble. I had to build a contraption using various parts, but nothing was working. Eventually, I did complete it, but only after realizing I could merge one object to something else even though it didn’t let me “attach” it. Kinda sneaky. 😛
Back outside, I saw some large stones falling from the sky. So I climbed onto one of them and used the Recall ability to send it back up into the sky. It took me to a sky island with a treasure chest. But after grabbing the treasure, I realized that I couldn’t get down!
It was obviously too far to jump and survive, there was no body of water to dive into, I didn’t have the sailcloth yet, the stone I came up on was long gone, and none of my abilities were of any help! I was trying everything I could think of, including using a wing without a runway. Nothing worked.
After seven deaths, I remembered that I could teleport out of there. 😛 But at this point, I decided that I should get back to my quest…at least until I got a sailcloth. I didn’t want this to happen again. 😛
When I encountered a bunch of materials outside, including four wheels and a fan, I knew I just had to make my first car!
I “drove” it around for a bit, until it started rolling back downhill. I used the Ultrahand ability to pick it up…and I accidentally destroyed it a few seconds later. 😛
After that, I found another shrine. It was a combat shrine (not my favorite type), and it had tutorials on combat moves…most of which I already knew from Breath of the Wild. But it provided a good refresher course.
I then moved on to Hyrule Castle. It’s nice being able to walk through there without Guardians everywhere! (So far I have not seen any Guardians in the game.)
When I climbed to a certain point where some other characters were gathered, we all saw Zelda from a distance. But then she left in a surprising way that confused us all. It didn’t make sense!
I returned to Lookout Landing (which seems to be the base of operations for Hyrule). I told Purah what happened, and she gave me some suggested places to look for Zelda now. But first, Purah and Josha activated the towers…and gave me a paraglider! Yesss!!
Josha showed me how to use the towers, but it is a bit uncomfortable because these mechanical tentacle-like things (think of Guardians’ legs) reached out and…grabbed me.
It was kind of awkward. And then I got launched into the air to scan the ground to update my map of the area. So towers are a bit different from Breath of the Wild, even though they still result in you receiving a map of the area.
I cleared another shrine and activated another tower on my way to Rito Village, where a blizzard has buried the bird village in snow.
One interesting thing about this game is that the kids from Breath of the Wild are now older. So the sisters that recited the song in BotW now run some of the shops in TotK.
And Tulin, the boy who always used to go to the flight range for target practice, is now a young Rito warrior. (Even if he does sound like Slippy Toad now.) 😆 So apparently this game doesn’t take place immediately after Breath of the Wild, but it’s clearly several years later.
Speaking of Tulin, he went to go investigate the cause of the blizzard. It was suggested that I should join him to help out, so I headed up to Hebra Mountain.
At one point, I made the mistake of sleeping at an enemy camp after defeating the monsters. There was a blood moon as I slept, so the enemies were back and promptly knocked me halfway down the mountain (and draining almost all of my health). Mental note: Don’t do that again.
I eventually met up with Tulin, and I helped him recover his stolen bow. We realized we had to head up to the giant storm in the sky to see what was causing the blizzard. (Is it not the storm itself causing it? 😉) So I started climbing a series of floating islands that went wayyyy up into the sky. Tulin also helped out with his wind gust ability, which is useful for sailing across long gaps.
At the top, I found the Wind Temple…which is a giant ship.
My job (with Tulin’s help) is to unlock five locks to proceed. It reminded me of the terminals in BotW. For all that I’ve heard about Tears of the Kingdom’s “traditional” dungeons, this still seems more like a divine beast to me.
Some of the locks took me a while to figure out (or find), and I even had to return to Rito Village at one point (because I ran out of food that protected me from the cold). I sold some stuff to buy some winter clothes in the village before returning, and then I was able to clear all of the locks.
Opening the locks unleashed a giant boss. I won’t show a picture of it here (I don’t want to spoil everything for those of you who haven’t played yet), but it was a fun boss to battle. Once it was over, I earned a heart container, Tulin got a tear of the kingdom, and I learned a new ability.
The blizzard ended, and the snow melted from Rito Village. At this point, I stopped for now. But I’ll resume my game again soon. I hope you’re enjoying the game, and these entries. See you next time!
By the way, my first TotK video is coming soon!