Skyward Sword: Desert Ruins

Near the barricaded entrance to the Temple of Time, there’s a timeshift stone that reveals a pair of Technoblins bothering a robot. Once it’s cleared, the robot says if Link needs another way into the Temple, there’s an underground connection in the Lanayru Mining Facility. Marking that on the map, he notes that the map is inaccurate and fixes it for him. The desert becomes green, and the large ruins area gets filled in a lot more. Link takes a cart over to the exit back to the Mining Facility entrance, activating a Goddess Cube along the way.

The robot’s alterations to the map show the ruins as they were. There are three concentric circles with twelve spoke lines connecting them. Only a few parts of the ruins are above the sand, but the rest are buried shallowly enough that Link can walk on them safely. The number of beacons Link can place on the map is increased to five to aid in navigation. In a timeshifted area, Link finds the power generator that will open the way into the Mining Facility. But for the generator to work, Link needs to activate the three remote power nodes hidden in the area. Fi sets them as a dowsing option and he’s off.

One of the power nodes is simply hidden behind a statue that falls over when Link chucks a bomb into its basket. To activate the power node, Link needs to hit a Timeshift Stone in the next cave over, then stick his sword in and turn. The other two are in bigger areas. Both require a timeshift to drain the area of sand. The Ampilus in the area revert to their egg forms, which are still electrified and can be used to power the mechanism to open the gate to the power node. One is not much more involved than that; the other has a large gap between the main area and where the gate mechanism is, so Link needs to use the Beetle to bring the Ampilus egg across.

With all three nodes activated, Link can use the power generator to open the way into the dungeon. It has three wheels, which have to be turned to the positions of the corresponding power nodes (each one is marked with a symbol so you don’t have to guess the order) and pushed in. Once this is done, the facility entrance rises out of the sand in the center of the area, with a large staircase leading up to it. There’s a hidden cave path in the area that leads to a heart piece; there’s more here, but the targets in the area don’t respond to being hit by the Slingshot.

With the dungeon unlocked, it’s time to head back to the sky to take care of business there. There are three Goddess Cubes Link can grab. One has a silver rupee, one has a Heart Medal that makes hearts drop more often, and the last has a heart piece, giving Link another full heart. Most of the treasures Link needs are available now, so after a fair bit of farming to get everything, he can upgrade:

• The [wooden] Banded Shield to a Braced Shield for extra toughness,
• The [iron] Reinforced Shield to a Fortified Shield for the same,
• The Hook Beetle to a Speed Beetle that has a faster travel mode, and again to a Tough Beetle that can fly longer, and
• The Bug Net to the Big Bug Net that makes catching bugs (and birds and Tumbleweeds) easier.

Now that Link is up to double-digit hearts, it’s time to look into infusing potions. The potion seller’s husband takes any bugs Link catches and uses them to upgrade potions. The hard part of this is catching the bugs, which Link has to move up on very slowly lest he spook them and cause them to fly/run away (and in some cases, he can squish them). For the heart potion, the first infusion makes it restore all of Link’s hearts, and the second infusion makes the bottle have two shots. This gives several options, the simplest of which is to effectively have six potions available (more than any game other than Majora’s Mask). Alternately, he could take advantage of doubling up and use one or two bottles for Revitalizing Potions to heal his shield, or just leave a bottle or two in the Item Check for extra other items. I went with the first option, three Heart Potion++s, plus the Braced Shield, Treasure Medal, Heart Medal, Life Medal, and Large Seed Satchel.

And there’s one last thing – at the Lumpy Pumpkin, the owner/bartender has a new job for Link: help his daughter (Kina, the waitress) carry pumpkins to the storage shed. And of course it can’t just be a matter of pick up pumpkin, bring it down, repeat until done. No, it’s a full-fledged minigame. Kina challenges Link to carry a stack of five pumpkins that tilts and wobbles. And the shed is way off to the left, but Link can’t turn, just move forward, sidestep, and by combining the two, move diagonally. It eventually gets done, and Link’s one step closer to being clear from smashing the chandelier.

Next: So, about that barricade…