The Last Two Seasons
There’s a hidden underwater passage in the north part of the Sunken City, and passing through leads Link to the Mt. Cucco area. There, he finds another portal to Subrosia. Shortly after passing through, Link gets run over by a couple Subrosians and drops the roc’s feather. The Subrosians steal the feather and leave Link a worthless bit of ore. That’s not going to do, so Link has to chase the Subrosians to get it back. Of course, they’re perfectly happy with their end of the trade, so while they’re going to bury the feather, they’re not going to be inclined to give it back, which naturally leads to another stealth mission, this time with two people on the lookout. The treasure spot’s obvious, but they actually need to bury the feather and vamoose before Link can dig it up.
The other important thing to get while down here is the power of spring in the Rod of Seasons. That tower was walled off in the temple, so Link needs to finds a hidden passage to inside the walled-off area, where he meets the Spirit of Spring. Spring opens up the flower buds that will give Link a boost to the top of a nearby cliff.
Returning to Mt. Cucco, Link comes across Moosh for the encounter he’s meant to help with. Moosh wants bananas from the mountaintop, but since he and Link are bonded, there’s no actual need for Link to go get them. I did it anyway so I could play with this game’s Flying Cucco, who’s a lot more limited than the one in Link’s Awakening, but still quite fun. After he gets his coveted bananas, Moosh lends his flying abilities to help Link get the key to the next dungeon.
We’re not done with Subrosia yet, however. There’s another portal Link can get to at this point, in Eyeglass Lake near Horon Village, that takes him to eastern Subrosia. Here, Link can meet a Subrosian who collects signs and can somehow tell how many of them Link has destroyed. If Link talks to him after destroying 100 signs, the collector will do a fakeout like he reset the game, give Link a ring to mark him as a sign-destroyer (no powers, just another slot on the list filled), and tell him not to do it anymore. Heh.
Getting the power of Autumn requires another little bit of questing, and in hindsight, it probably was supposed to wait until after the next dungeon. First, Link needs a bomb flower, which he can find after navigating a bunch of lava islands in the southeast corner of the map. The bomb flower’s needed to clear the rocks blocking the way into the Autumn Tower, where Link meets the final spirit. Autumn fills pits with leaves, and turns the giant mushrooms ripe for picking lifted out of Link’s way. At last, the Rod of Seasons can go through the full set.
Wrapping Up the Trading Sequence
While still in Subrosia, Link can get two more things. First, the market is selling member’s cards to the Horon Village shop, which allows access to the backroom with valuable items, and then a treasure chest game that awards random rings. Second, Link can have the iron pot filled with lava soup, which is needed to continue the trading sequence.
Next to Mt. Cucco is Goron Mountain. The seasons have made the winter unusually cold, which is of course making the gorons miserable, especially Biggoron, who’s too big to come inside out of the cold. Biggoron gladly takes the lava soup Link has, which gets him over his cold, and gives him a Goron Vase. Also in the area is a goron who’ll give Link the second ring box, so he can carry three rings at once and swap between them. Finally, there’s a couple Gasha seed soil locations in this area, and one of them’s really good; I got a heart piece and some great rings from it.
Speaking of, a note about rings. A lot of them come from random sources, like Gasha nuts, dropped by Maple, or the treasure chest game. Some come from treasure chests, and others (like the sign ring mentioned earlier) are given almost as a proto-achievement system. I did a really poor job of tracking which rings came from which source; they all got jumbled when I went to appraise them anyway. I ended the game with over 40 rings, and since this is the first game of four, I’m not terribly worried about the holes in the list.
The last few legs of the trading sequence can be handled now. Ingo in the Sunken City collects vases, so he trades a fish for the goron vase. The fish goes to a man who’s been trying to lure his cat out of a tree; Link gets the megaphone the man had be futilely using. The megaphone can wake up Talon, who’s sleeping in a cave on Mt. Cucco and gives Link a mushroom for waking him. Syrup, Maple’s mentor in the Sunken City, needs the mushroom to make potions (so where have the ones Maple’s been dropping come from?), and trades a wooden bird for it. There’s a clockmaker in Horon Village who wants the bird to finish his clock, and trades engine grease for it. Finally, the engine grease goes to the guy playing the Song of Storms near the windmill, who gives Link his phonograph. That’s it for trades, although cashing in on it will have to wait.
Next: The dungeons say dragons and unicorns, but we’ve seen Aquamentus.
