There are three sidequests left in and around Goron City. A Gerudo merchant is looking to buy 10 chunks of amber, and pays more than Link can get selling them to a shop. A Goron taking a hot bath talks about a treasure he hid that turns out to be a Drillshaft weapons that’s good for smashing ore. Finally, a Goron’s been asked to defeat all the Igneo Taluses around the region and there’s one he can’t get. Once Link takes care of it, the Goron asks to buy the achievement for 100 rupees and I mean, sure, I’ll take the rupees, but it’s really not that hard to kill an Igneo Talus and the only thing harder about this one is it’s harder to get to for Link whose fireproof status has stronger limits than the Gorons’.
There’s a mine cart in the city, and Link can hop in, drop (round) bombs in the basket at the rear (the first one has to be kicked in; Newton’s first law pushes the rest in while the cart is moving), and detonate them to ride to Shora Hah Shrine. The challenge is called Blue Flame, and requires passing the fire from a torch at the beginning to a bunch of torches, along the way dealing with inconvenient waterspouts, having to move pieces with Magnesis, and little Guardians to fight. The final part reminds me of getting into the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time, only there’s no Din’s Fire, so Link has to stand in the circle of torches and use a spin attack with the lit torch to light them all at once. (If he misses one, waterspouts come on and put the torches out.)
Off the road between Goron City and Death Mountain, there’s Daqa Koh Shrine (“Stalled Flight”). The challenge here is simple: there’s a big stone block on a section of floor that periodically jumps up, sending the stone block upward and its electric generator connects with something on the ceiling to open the gate. So Link needs to get sent in the air along with the block, paraglide to land on it, Stasis it to stay in place, and paraglide through the gate before it opens. Back near the Foothill Stable, Link can find Sah Dahaj Shrine (“Power of Fire”), which is another “burn everything to clear the path” shrine.
In the northwest corner of Eldin, there’s a shrine on a pillar that a trio of Gorons has adopted as their training ground. The leader’s blocking the entrance (and sneaking around him isn’t an option), so the only way in is to play their minigame, which leads me to the surprised revelation that there haven’t been just a whole lot of minigames in this game. I found one in Hateno Village to shoot deer for rupees, and now this one, and that’s it. The goal of this game is to climb the pillar in three minutes and collect 100 rupees along the way. The time limit’s generous, rupees plentiful, and there are lots of places to rest and recover stamina, so it’s pretty hard to fail. Link completes the challenge, enters Gorae Torr’s blessing shrine, and collects his spirit orb.
The final shrine in the area requires tracking down a Goron who’s gone to Gorko’s Tunnel, and the hardest part of the whole bit is finding the place. Link does eventually find it, and the missing Goron, who’s passed out from hunger, so Link needs to get a rock roast from the bottom of the hill and carry it back up while enemies along the way hassle him (and if he drops the roast, it’ll like roll all the way down the hill into the lava). The roast brings the Goron back to life and he uncovers Kayra Mah Shrine. The challenge is called Greedy Hill, and also involves running up a hill while obstacles – in this case balls rolling down – try to send Link back down. There are rupees to tempt Link, and I actually got a fair few. (I tried coming back for more, but they don’t respawn. Never waited out a Blood Moon to see if they’ll respawn then.)
At this point, we’re probably out of wholly new tricks to find Koroks. There’s some variation like moving a rock to match other rocks in the area, but everything is at least reminiscent of other ways. Near one of the Koroks, there’s another memory location, and they’re still novel enough for me that I see the glowing spot and wonder what the heck it is. This one is a flashback to Zelda (not Mipha?) patching Link up after a fight against a crapton of monsters, including multiple white Lynels. The music associated with the Blood Moons plays as Zelda notes that the monster attacks are increasing in both frequency and intensity [1], which suggests Ganon may be about ready to return.
(Around this time is when I did the second Trial of the Sword.)
Next: It doesn’t let you drop the moon on your enemies. It may be even better than that.
[1] Incidentally, in the game, as Link defeats more and more monsters, the ones he’ll face get stronger as well. Around this time is when I got that maxed out, with every monster in the game set to its maximum difficulty. This meant silver damage-sponge enemies where in just about every enemy group, and all Lynels with a few special exceptions were silver as well. I was already less than enamored with this game’s combat system (Lynels and “Test of Strength” guardians are fun to fight and that’s about it – and silver Lynels are honestly pushing it), and having those enemies everywhere didn’t help matters.
