Forest of Shenanigans and Pants Shitting

Sidenote: For a brief second here I used my Wolf Link Amiibo, because I am a sucker for any game that let’s you have a dog as a party member/team-mate. Fallout, Persona 3, EarthBound – just gimme a puppy. However, he immediately ran off and started slaughtering everything in sight, killing bokoblins in a single hit. So, I reloaded without summoning him, as I didn’t want the game to start off too simple. Totally summoning him later though.

Big Buck Hunter Hyrule

Forest of Spirits

I head towards the smokestack sitting just outside some small ruins in the middle of the forest, with a fire and another cooking pot. Not far away is the Old Man, scouting some boars for hunting. He asks that I crouch so as to remain silent and not scare away his prey. After watching him fire a few arrows and hit nothing, I notch one of my own and attempt to take down a boar. It takes a couple of hits, but I manage it – and look, it dropped the very generic sounding “Raw Meat” that I needed!

Let’s make this seafood fry, eh? I walk back over to the fire and cooking pot, and use a nearby Torch to light it. I grab the fish, the red pepper, and the meat from my inventory and throw them in the pot. I like the little cooking jingle that plays every time. I like that I cooked the right thing even more: the Spicy Meat and Seafood Fry. Woo!

Before I collect my reward from the Old Man, I decide to give cooking a couple of other things a shot. I go ahead mix up another Fruit and Mushroom Mix. Then I get a little curious – you’re not supposed to combine something inedible with food, but it can’t hurt to see what happens. I grab an Apple and a Bokoblin Horn and throw them in. The cooking music is…less than cheerful, and the game won’t even show me what I ended up making – just some censored monstrosity.

Worth it.

No living being could maintain a beard like that in the wild.

It’s gotten late, and the Old Man has left his hunting spot to come back to the campfire. I talk to him, and show him the dish. He happily hands over the Warm Doublet right there, doesn’t even take the food from me. Probably because he can’t eat it because he is definitely a ghost.

Now, I could head back to the mountains and continue my shrine hunting…but there’s a lot of forest to explore, and I’m already here… After finding the first Korok, it couldn’t hurt for me to spend a little more time exploring the area, and even re-examine some of the places I’ve already been for what I might have missed.

I use the campfire to wait until morning again – skeletons are still annoying and eat through weapons way more then they should – and then I explore the forest around the campsite. I climb a few trees and find some Bird Eggs. I find more boars and gather some more meat. I also kill a squirrel and a couple birds, leaving behind acorns and Raw Bird Thigh for cooking. Just for reference, that means we have fish, poultry, and “meat.”

I find a tree with roots large enough for me to walk under, with a mound of leaves underneath. Hmmm. The leaves look out of place, like they aren’t just a part of the environment. The game has been pretty straight forward with some of the physics stuff, so I run back over to the fire and drop one of my more well-used weapons to pick up a torch, which I then light and walk back over to the leaves. Not long after and the leaves all burn away, leaving only a rock. When picked up, another (less chatty) Korok, and another seed to give to this Hestu fellow.

It's like if leaves were a Scooby Doo villain.

Back near the campsite, I see a weird rock formation begging to be climbed. At the top is another rock, which when lifted…Korok!

…Fuck there’s like hundreds of them, aren’t there? My completionist ass won’t be happy until I find them all. *sigh* Yay?

The paths wind through the trees up hills and through valleys. Deeper in, I come across giant trees, or at least what’s left of them. Some have been hollowed out, creating a tunnel in the middle of the forest. There’s a…pinwheel in the middle? I approach, and touching it triggers a chime and causes the pinwheel to teleport further away in a poof. I repeat this two more times until…Korok! No rock lifting required.

North of the giant tree’s I see a bokoblin camp in a small clearing. I haven’t really weaponized my Remote Bomb’s just yet, and I’d since I basically have an infinite amount, let’s see what they can do. I climb to a decent vantage point atop the giant trees. Three bokoblins, one on a tower and the other two paired together on the ground. I sneak over towards them and back up another tree. My first attempt misses the mark a little, but it doesn’t end up mattering - upon noticing the bomb, they both rush over to inspect.

Dance, puppets, dance.

Boom goes the dynamite, or however these magic glowing things work. They fall for it a second time as well. After that, I just take aim at my remaining foe – who by this time has noticed me – and watch as the chest switches to that pleasant golden color I’ve come to love. I net a nice Opal.

I’m somewhat close to the northern edge of the forest, so I turn around and explore in the other direction. As I near the forest’s southern border, I see the cliff that was the path I took down when I first awoke. I also see a pile of bombable rocks, with a chest containing Amber beneath the rubble. Lots of precious stones but still not a single rupee. There’s a joke about millennials hating diamonds in their somewhere but I’m too lazy to write it.

Then I see something kind of weird...off in the distance, a glowing green light. I can place a pin on it, obviously, but the mountain it’s coming from is off-plateau, so out of bounds for me for now. I change the marker to a stamp - I’ll have to check that out later.

I love shit like this.

A little further northwest I spot a clearing, unlabeled on the map. There’s a decent amount of resources around it – I gather up mushrooms, apples, even some honey. Nothing too fancy but, pleasant. As I continue to gather items, the ground starts to shake. And then a giant boulder in the middle of the clearing, near where I am standing, starts moving. And then the music changes.

What the fuck is happening?

A BIG ASS FUCKING ROCK MONSTER IS WHAT

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK

Of course, my immediate response is to immediately start running around like a spaz. My fingers having completely forgotten the button layout, Link start whistling and then crouching while running into a wall.

HELLO GAME COULD YOU PLEASE STOP
DOING THIS TO ME THANKS

That’s a mood.

According to the Boss health meter at the top of my screen, this thing is a Stone Talus. The location is also noted. It looks like a large boulder with several smaller boulders acting as its arms and legs. Arms which it is currently firing at me in rapid succession. There’s a smaller black rock on it’s back, maybe a weak spot, but I’m not exactly going to get closer to check.

I am in no shape to try and fight this thing. So I run, back towards the Old Man and presumably safety, all the while dodging giant boulders being flung at me by a VERY angry rock monster. Eventually the music calms, the health meter vanishes, and I’m safe again.

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Heart Containers: 3
Koroks Found: 4
Shrines Completed: 2
Warm Doublet’s Earned: 1
Rock Monsters Awoken: 1
Boulders to the Head: 1