Link now has 21 minutes to navigate the Temple of the Ocean King all the way to the bottom. With two new items at his disposal, pretty much every floor he’d previously visited is somehow different. There’s a Courage Gem he can get on the first floor by shooting an eye switch from a grappling hook tightrope and a chest with a Wisdom Gem appears on the second floor when a switch is hit by a bombchu. Floor three is totally different – Link can completely skip rounding up Force Gems and just slingshot his way to a different exit. Bombchus can open up an alternate exit on floor four that lets Link skip most of floor five. (Floor six is the same as before, but it’s “run to the door, draw the symbol, leave”; not much to do to make that simpler.) I did the same thing as before – one run to explore, one for reaching the checkpoint as fast as possible, and got my checkpoint time down to 45 seconds.
With the extra items, Link is able to do the next set of floors without backtracking. The grappling hook lets him cross from the west to the east side of the seventh floor, getting the crystal there on his first visit. On the eighth floor, a bombchu can hit a switch without Link needing to bring a crystal up from the ninth floor. So, Link can grab the crystal from the seventh floor, carry it down two levels, and have all the crystals without needing to backtrack once. There’s also a Power Gem Link can get on the seventh floor. (One more shortcut that I didn’t use: Link can get a key on the third floor that he no longer has to use to get a Force Gem, and use it on a door here to get a faster exit from the seventh floor and some extra time from a yellow pot where he comes in on the eighth floor. However, using the checkpoint exit takes away the key.)
When Link puts the crystals in the pedestals in the right order, the safe room becomes an elevator, leading him down to the tenth floor. (Ever helpful, Ciela notes the rumbling of the safe room moving, and that we’re in a different place than we were before.) The Phantoms on these last floors are gold, and move like the normal blue Phantoms – but if Link is spotted, they teleport to his location. The tenth floor lets Link kill the Phantoms by smashing them with rolling boulders, then navigate a central maze filled with Phantom Eyes to reach the exit at the center. The eleventh floor has an exit right near the entrance – but the area it leads to on the twelfth floor has no way out with the items Link has. So, he has to solve a puzzle involving stepping on four floor switches to open the other way forward. (One of the skeletons on this floor gripes about not being able to use the D-Pad. Surprised he made it this far.)
The twelfth floor has another Force Gem puzzle, with one Phantom patrolling a central area carrying one of the Gems. The other two are in chests, and as soon as Link opens each chest, another Phantom spawns nearby. Plus placing the first two Force Gems causes Wizzrobes to spawn (although if Link simply tosses the Force Gems into the safe area and waits to place them until they’re all there, the Wizzrobes aren’t a concern). The final floor is weird – the timer still counts down, but there are no Phantoms or other enemies or even hazards, and there’s a red pot Link can use to make a safe zone. More importantly for now, the northeast quadrant map is here, so Link can finally explore the full sea.
The northeast quadrant has the final Golden Frog to give Link a warp symbol. There’s also another Traveler’s Ship, this one overrun by monsters. Once they’re gone, the ship’s owner, the Man of Smiles, comes down, and as a reward, gives Link a treasure chart and the Hero’s New Clothes, starting a trading sequence. The Hero’s New Clothes go to the hero on the Prince of Red Lions, in exchange for a kaleidoscope he jokes was a gift from his sister. The kaleidoscope goes to the Ho Ho Tribe in exchange for a guard notebook, which goes to Nyave for a Wood Heart. Searching the seas, Link finds another Traveler’s Ship in the southeast, this one run by the Old Wayfarer, who’s looking for more food because he didn’t realize mermaids ate so much. He takes the Wood Heart and invites Link to visit him on Bannan Island, where he gives Link the Swordsman’s Scroll, teaching him the Great Spin Attack.
Link can revisit the Man of Smiles; the reward for saving his ship again is a Prize Postcard Link can send off in the mail to enter a drawing. It’s better to lose this drawing – the consolation prize is a ship part, while there’s no prize for winning. I “won” three of the four days I tried. It’s not worth it.
The uncharted island in the northeast quadrant is Maze Island, where Link is challenged to solve a maze, hitting gossip stones en route to the prize chests in the center. There are three levels of difficulty, and prizes are a Wisdom Gem, a treasure chart, and a heart container, along with another Wisdom Gem Link can get along the way. Finally, Link can salvage a bunch of treasures, including two new maps from the game on Harrow Island, and two that are technically in the northwest quadrant but only accessible by coming over from the northeast.
Next: Raiders of the lost kingdom.
