On the upper level of the Rito village, Link finds Medli, an attendant-in-training to Valoo. She gives Link the letter from the chieftain to Komali and tells him where his room is, then asks him to meet her at the entrance to Dragon Roost Cavern afterward. Link leaves and finds Komali lying in bed, holding a red ball. He wants nothing to do with Link, and giving him the letter doesn’t change his attitude any. Komali says Link’s in the letter, which just raises all sorts of questions. The chieftain wrote the letter and gave it to Medli before either of them met Link, but Link’s mentioned in the letter, and Medli decided to hold on to the letter until Link showed up and the whole sequence makes no sense. Anyway, Komali doesn’t think going to see Valoo in his current mood is a good idea, and he doubts Link can calm him down.
Getting through to Komali wasn’t going to happen, so Link leaves to meet Medli as promised. The area they meet used to be a small spring, but Valoo’s tantrum knocked a boulder to block the source of the spring, causing it to dry up. Medli wants to go to a shrine near the top of the mountain, but with the bridge out and the spring gone, needs Link to toss her into the wind to make it across. With his help, she flies to the far ledge, and gives Link a bottle before making her journey up. Link uses the bottle to gather some of the remaining spring water, which he uses to refresh a nearby withered bomb flower. Then the bomb from the flower blows up the rock blocking the spring (which takes good timing to have the bomb blow up when it’s close enough to the rock, but before it goes into the water), allowing Link to cross the chasm. Once across, he needs to use bombs knock down two statues to form platforms to cross a lava pit, allowing him access to Dragon Roost Cavern.
Being the first real dungeon, Dragon Roost Cavern takes the time to teach the player some of the basics of dungeoneering. Some, like lighting torches and pulling blocks, are familiar to people who’ve played other games in the series (particularly the games on the N64 for the 3D versions), but there are some new wrinkles. Some pots contain water that cause lava to temporarily cool into walkable platforms, and there are a couple times Link needs to cut ropes to cause a platform to fall. Wooden panels over doors can be broken with the sword, or if they’re too thick for that, burned away. Enemies hide in pots and have to be lured out. And even the familiar puzzle elements have new twists: there’s an enemy that curls into a ball when it takes damage that, at one point, Link needs to hold down a switch to open the chest with the boss key. The rats are back, and King of Red Lions contacts him somehow to tell him they’ll sell him stuff if he attracts them with bait. Finally, there are pots that Link can jump in to quick travel between points in the dungeon. The one near the beginning is open, but later ones have to be cleared.
The path through the dungeon manages to be obvious even as it loops around itself, punctuated by sequences where Link goes outside to walk on the mountain to the next entrance to the dungeon. During one of the outside paths, Link comes close to Valoo’s roost. Nearby, Medli’s been captured by Bokoblins. Once they’re gone – plus a Moblin that gets dropped in to join the fray – he lets her out of her cell. She tells him that Valoo’s tail reaches into the mountain, and there’s a monster in there bothering it, and that’s why he’s so upset. She leaves to tell her people what’s causing Valoo’s bad mood, and gives Link a grappling hook to help navigate the rest of the dungeon. For the most part, at least for this dungeon, it’s not really a hookshot, but instead lets him wrap a rope around something to swing across pits below.
The grappling hook gets a workout during the boss fight against Gohma, who’s been reimagined with a longer body: more like a scorpion than a crab. Gohma’s apparently been the one annoying Valoo, but the first phase of the fight involves Link using the grappling hook to pull Valoo’s tail, making Valoo drop a giant rock that crushes Gohma and cracks its armor, so Gohma’s apparently been hiding after tormenting Valoo. Once Gohma’s armor is completely destroyed, Link can use the grappling hook on its eye directly – its most hookshottish use – and pull Gohma closer and hit the eye with his sword. It doesn’t take long before Gohma dies, dropping a heart container and causing the lava pit it was crawling out of to cool off.
Valoo is pleased no one’s bothering its tail anymore, and the cloud around the mountain clears up. Medli brings Komali to meet Link on the beach, and Komali’s apologetic for how he treated Link before, and gives Link the red ball – Din’s Pearl, which was what Link needed from the island. Valoo says “Use the wind god’s wind” in Hylian, and Medli or Komali thinks it might mean for Link to visit the nearby wind shrine. Komali runs off to meet with Valoo, and after thanking Link, Medli follows.
Next: They’re all talking about a feeling, of a taste that’s in the air…
