Lizard Looters
There’s a man named Rafton southeast of Lynna Village in the past who’s embraced his destiny by working on a raft, and Cheval’s rope is exactly the key thing he needs to finish it. He says he’ll let Link use the raft when it’s done, but he’ll want a chart if he’s headed out to sea. Ralph shows up and mentions a “weird guy” who might help, then runs off again. Back in the future, Ricky’s hanging around outside the city, having lost his gloves yet again. They’re not hard to find with the shovel, and after that, Ricky helps Link navigate to visit a familiar mapmaker in a fairy costume riding around on a balloon. Link pops Tingle’s balloon, and agrees to be his friend, so Tingle gives Link the chart he needs. Ricky finds Tingle annoying and hops off, leaving Link to find his own way back down.
Link goes back to the past and back to Rafton. The raft’s ready to set sail, so Link heads out. It works quite well, except as Link approaches Crescent Island, he gets caught in a storm and washes ashore, unconscious. While he’s out, the tokay, the island’s lizardfolk inhabitants, steal a bunch of his stuff: His sword, shield, flippers, power bracelet, roc’s feather, shovel, seed bag, and the Harp of Ages. The bombs were also either stolen or washed away. Rosa from Subrosia is here, and takes Link’s shovel back from the tokay who stole it and gives it back to him, but Link has to run down the rest of the items.
Most of the tokay are sufficiently abashed when confronted about stealing Link’s stuff and give it back with no issue, but one of the Tokay has decided they’re his and sells them back to Link for various types of seeds, including scent seeds, which he doesn’t have any of yet. Fortunately, there’s a minigame on the island where Link has to throw meat to columns of tokay that parade down the sides of the room (and are too lazy to pick it up as they pass, so the timing has to be exact), and he can win a tree sapling of the type he needs. It gets planted in the past, and Link finds a portal to go to the future to harvest the seeds, and then back to the past to finish buying his stuff back [1]. While exploring the island, Link finds a tokay chef whose nose is stopped up and is actually grateful to the stink bag because it opens his sinuses and gives him back his sense of smell, and he gives Link tasty meat in return.
Moonlit Grotto
With all his stuff back, Link can now go to the third dungeon, Moonlit Grotto, which is located in the future on the island. The dungeon has a central mechanic where Link needs to smash four crystals; at this point I’m so used to the idea of “see thing, interact with thing, cause necessary effect” that I never stopped to question why he’s doing it or what it accomplishes. I did notice after smashing the crystals that there was a treasure chest with a Gasha seed in a room in a clearly accessible place, but I didn’t connect it to smashing the crystals. It turns out what happened is that there was a rotating door tile in that room, and smashing the crystals caused it to fall through to the floor below, and that chest to appear. The dungeon’s miniboss, Subterror, is a burrowing creature who’s immune while underground, so Link needs to use the shovel to dig him out and then beat him with the sword before he submerges again.
The dungeon’s treasure is the game’s ranged weapon, the seed shooter. The shooter can be fired at an angle and the seeds it shoots can bounce of walls a couple times, leading to a number of new puzzle tricks, perhaps best exemplified by a pair of rotating walls that Link has to set up properly, then stand in the right place and shoot at the right angle so his seed passes through the two walls to hit a switch. Shadow Hag, the dungeon’s boss, is also tricky: she disappears if Link turns to face her, so he needs to reflect seed shots off the wall to hit her behind him. Once she’s down, Link claims the next Essence, the Echoing Howl.
The Maku Tree says the next essence is to the northwest of Lynna City, but first, Link needs to find a way off the island. Fortunately, Dimitri is there, with some tokay debating how to eat him. Link convinces them to eat ember seeds instead, and in thanks, Dimitri gives him a ride back to the mainland.
Next: How high can you get?
[1] The timeline placement for these games has been inconsistent, even from official sources. One of them, the one in Hyrule Historia, has the Oracle games taking place between A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening, with the same Link in all four games. In that case, given Link’s experience with the tokay here, it explains why he wrote his name on his sword and shield, which served him quite well when he was shipwrecked and washed up on Koholint Island.
