The Dueling Peaks region is much bigger than the Great Plateau, with many more Koroks to find. New ways of finding Koroks include rolling a boulder down a hill into a depression, jumping fences on horseback, and more of the apples-in-bowls. There’s also pinwheels that spawn archery targets for Link to shoot, and sets of three apple trees, two of which have apples on the same branch and the third has apples on many branches and Link needs to pick the ones that don’t match. There are some really hard climbs, especially when trying to get to the top of the Dueling Peaks. One Korok is in the hunting ground of a mobile Guardian; gave me a chance to practice Perfect Deflecting their laser right back at them. (I first tried the stationary ones near the shrine on the Great Plateau; I expected to take multiple tries to get it right, but went 3/3 my first try.) There are also several Stone Taluses in the area, and by the end I became pretty adept at killing them. One had the vulnerable outcropping as a tail rather than a hat, so Link stood on its back and fired arrows at the outcropping.
Atop the namesake peaks, there are a pair of shrines with similarly named monks, Shee Vaneer and Shee Venath, and the same trial name, Twin Memories. They each have a tablet with the same message, “The shrines atop these peaks share a connection – their memory the answer to the other’s question. Commit a memory before you start, lest, a failure, you will depart.” The other common feature is a 5×5 grid of depressions, with 5 balls set in them. The trick is to move the balls to match the starting arrangement of the other twin shrine. This is one of the few times I’ve intentionally used the Switch’s screenshot feature.
Because I don’t have too much to say about exploring this time but want to leave getting to Hateno for another post, I’m going to rant for a bit about two things that I greatly dislike about the game. First, rain. Rain means Link can’t climb (well). When Link has to climb to get where he’s trying to go but it’s raining, there aren’t really any good options. The first thought is obviously to create a campfire and wait the rain out – but as I learned at Camp Freedom, lighting a campfire in the rain is a tricky thing. Go off and come back when it’s drier? Okay, that works sometimes, but if there’s a significant time (and/or stamina-boosting food) investment to get where Link is and little to nothing to do in the immediate vicinity, that’s not an appealing option. Try anyway and hope to make enough progress between slipping? Might work for very short climbs. Hopeless for long ones, especially when you’re halfway up already. The best thing I’ve found is to leave Link clinging for dear life while I walk off to take care of real world things and hope nothing horrible comes along and eats Link in the meantime.
Aaaand that’s leaving out thunderstorms. When there’s lightning in the area, it’s always within a few dozen meters of Link – the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder are simultaneous. If Link’s unfortunate enough to be wearing metal armor or carrying a metal shield, weapon, or bow (and even once you realize this it’s easy to forget one of them), he becomes a living lightning rod, and the few hearts he can have at this point aren’t going to keep him alive if he gets struck. I think my absolute lowest point in the game so far was when a thunderstorm came up while I was fighting a Stone Talus. Climbing up on its back was out of the question because rain. Even if it wasn’t, doing damage was out of the question because I only had metal weapons left. I got a lot more practice dodging the flying fists of death than I ever wanted, or needed.
Second, in Ocarina of Time, Hyrule Field during the Young Link era would endlessly spawn Stalchildren. In that game, it was… well, the one time it truly mattered, it was a welcome diversion while waiting for dawn to break and Hyrule Castle Town to lower the drawbridge again. Here, Stal- versions of Bokoblins and Moblins irregularly spawn at night, and after the first couple times I was thoroughly sick of it. Rather than limited to one area Link only really passes through on the way to the real objectives, they’re fscking everywhere outside the little pockets of civilization. The fight is considerably more complicated; Link has to smash the body, then destroy the skull before the body can reform, and if there’s multiple, none die until they all do (and they’ll all go after a single head, which was comical once). (Headshots kill them in one shot, but it’s not worth it.) Weapons still break against them. Link can’t light a fire to wait till morning while they’re around (Ocarina Link could bust out the Sun’s Song and they’d crumble with the dawn). And they don’t drop anything good. I’m not afraid of Taluses or Stalnoxes, but I’ll run from a Stalkoblin. When it’s an option; they don’t care about the “already in combat” thing and will pop up just to make things worse.
tl;dr: Rain is the death of fun, and the Stalfos apocalypse, much like Stalfos, should stay buried but won’t.
To end things on a better note: enemy camps will often have explosive barrels; enemies will throw them at Link if needed. However, if Link can sneak up on them, he can unleash his inner Bolshevik Muppet. It’s quite gratifying to find a giant skull with Bokoblins and a couple explosive barrels, shoot a Fire (or Bomb) Arrow inside, watch the inferno, and go in and pick up anything neat they left behind.
Next: Be it ever so humble…
