Explorer’s Crypt
En route to the graveyard dungeon, Link can find the last of the golden beasts in spring, a golden darknut. With that victory, Link returns to the old man who gave him the quest in the first place for his reward: a ring, which appraises to the red ring, which doubles sword damage. At this point my ring box was pretty well set: the red joy ring for double rupees, the L2 heart ring for emergency health recovery, and the green ring which increases sword damage and decreases enemy damage for boss fights.
The dungeon in the graveyard is the Explorer’s Crypt, and has some challenging puzzles. Notably, there are rooms where if all the lights go out, Link is taken back to the start of the dungeon. He can stop the trap by defeating a poe in a nearby room. The two poes turn out to be the dungeon’s miniboss, where in addition to attacking Link, they try to blow out the torches around the room. Link has to avoid the attacks, keep the torches lit, and fight back against them. It’s a lot to deal with, at least until one of the two is defeated and Link can focus on the remaining one. The treasure is the roc’s cape, an upgraded jumping item that lets Link glide short distances. Of course, the jumping puzzles make the holes Link needs to cross correspondingly bigger.
The dungeon boss is Gleeok, completing the reimaginings of the original game’s dungeon bosses. It’s only got two heads, but the heads will try to reattach themselves once Link’s knocked them off, only failing if Link’s hacked off the other head first. Once both heads are gone, Gleeok starts hopping around the room, so Link needs to use the roc’s cape to float to avoid being stunned when it lands. All in all, it’s a lot simpler than the dungeon’s miniboss. The seventh essence is the Seed of Life, and the Maku Tree can’t tell where the final essence is.
Before leaving the graveyard area, there’s a heart piece Link can get now that he has the roc’s cape. Now, despite the Maku Tree’s lack of helpful information, the last essence is probably in that large unexplored area in the north where the Temple of Seasons used to be. There are a couple portals to Subrosia in the area. At the first, Link finds a cave where a Subrosian is tossing things into a volcano trying to get it to erupt. Always the helpful one, Link tosses in a bomb, which does the trick, altering the terrain back on Holodrum’s surface. En route to the second portal, Link can find the final heart piece. Going back to Subrosia through the second portal, Link finds the final dungeon hidden in a volcano.
Sword & Shield Maze
The dungeon’s called the Sword & Shield Maze after its map design, but it could just as easily be the Fire & Ice Maze for its terrain. Link has to walk over ice, jump over lava, fight fire keese, and memorably, near the end of the dungeon, toss ice crystals through holes to the basement to freeze the lava to give him a path to the final boss. The miniboss, called Frypolar, also ties into the fire and ice theme, transforming between a giant fireball and a giant snowball. The snowball is vulnerable to ember seeds, although each time it’s hit by one it transforms back to the fireball, making for a long fight.
The treasure is an upgrade for the slingshot, allowing it to split its shot into three, with some puzzles requiring the triple shot to activate groups of statues or light groups of torches quickly. The final boss is the only unique dungeon boss in the game, Medusa Head (AKA Medelock). Medusa Head has a petrification attack derived from its namesake, plus fireballs and optic laser beams. It’s vulnerable to being stunned with Pegasus seeds (heh), then whacked with the sword. After it’s down, Link can claim the final Essence of Nature, Changing Seasons. That’s an odd one, given how much the seasons have been fluctuating already. But anyway, he now has the full set, and the Maku Tree summons him to give him a huge Maku Seed, which will let him breach the magical barrier around Onox’s Castle.
Onox calls Link out from a distance, saying that even with the huge Maku Seed, he’s still no match for him. He invites Link to a final confrontation, should Link wish to prove him wrong.
Next: The mastermind revealed.
