Making Ice Pillars & Flying Old Men - Screenshot Roundup 17

In Which I Risk Hypothermia, Multiple Times

And we're back!

After activating and descending into the shrine, the name of the final trial and rune appears.

Cryonis Trial

  ~Keh Namut Shrine~

So freezing again, but like, temperature wise. Okay. I walk over to grab my new rune: Cryonis! I can…make pillars of ice. But only in water. That seems…really specific. I guess they can’t all be
exploding bombs and time-stopping powers.

I feel like the lame Wonder Twin with the water powers.

My first puzzle is scaling a wall, with a pool of water in front. Simple enough – I activate the run and aim it between me and the wall, and see a phantom column take shape, showing me where my placement will be. I hit the button and make my first column. There’s kind of a nifty pattern on the side, but nothing else special about it. I climb up (I can’t climb the metal walls because they’re too slippery, but a giant block of ice is fine. Go home game, you’re drunk.) and over, down a ramp into another pool of water.

There is now a gate blocking my path, but no switches or buttons to hit to raise it. Hmm. Water is still covering the floor, and the game can’t expect me to use anything else in this shrine… I try and aim the pillar so that it forms under the gate, and the game isn’t stopping me from making it so… It forms and lifts the gate with it! Kinda cool but still really specific. Without water this rune is pretty much useless.

Such versatile combat applications.

Under the gate and around the corner is…a robot! I try and use Cryonis on it...which does nothing, of course. Although the pillar DOES block some of its laser shots. I quickly run up and destroy it with a spear before it has a chance to shoot at me again. I collect its parts and move onward down the hall.

To my left is the entrance beyond a barred wall, and to my right…some kind of teeter-totter type thing. Again, water is all over the floor, so it’s not too difficult to figure out. I make a pillar on one end of the platform, and it lowers the other side enough to allow me to climb up to the higher end, which is now high enough to climb the wall. Woo!

Once I’m up, I can see the monk’s cage just across a bridge, no more puzzles. But first, I see a chest on a ledge I missed when I was fighting the mini-robo. I jump down and make an ice column, climb up, and get a Traveler’s Spear. I then walk back up to the monk and finally free him, earning my fourth and final Spirit Orb. Finally.

Mount Hylia

WHERE DID YOU EVEN FLOAT DOWN FROM?!

I exit the shrine and am treated to an immediate cut scene of the Old Man flying in on his paraglider again… But from where!?!?! I am at the highest point of the surrounding area! And I am NOT buying that he floated down from that fucking mountain top. Whatever. He is ready to…tell me some stuff. Okay. He gives me some cryptic instructions for where to find him next, and then he fades away into flames. I CALLED IT. FUCKING GHOST.

He essentially told me to meet him at the place on my map where the four shrines intersect. X marks the spot. And that spot is…the Temple of Time. Fitting, I suppose. But, I’m not quite ready to move on to the next part of the game – I’d like to finish exploring the plateau before I leave it. I take a second to explore the area around the shrine. There’s a nearby frozen lake with a wooden chest at its center. Well, not frozen, but apparently cold enough to injure and kill me if I stand in it for too long.

Spoiler: The water is very cold.

Once I respawn, I turn on my Cryonis rune, and aim a pillar at the chest, lifting it out of the water. One problem down. I make two more columns, between me and the chest, and that seems to be the limit – making any more than 3 will cause the first one to be destroyed. I fall into the water on my first attempt, but then Link clears the gaps between them, but only just barely. I retrieve an Opal from the chest before hopping back across to land.

I spot a chest behind the shrine on a rampart on the plateau’s edge, so I walk down from my perch and climb up to it. It’s another (and I believe the last) Expansion Pass chest – Bomb Arrows. I see a path going down behind the shrine, and the map looks like it circles around to a bridge where I can cross the river and get back to the temple fairly quickly.

This is what these are for, right?

On the way, though, I see something kind of weird on another rampart – a big chunk of ice. Hmm. I could probably try to drag a lit torch or something over here, but…let’s put some of these special arrows to use finally. I switch to a weak bow and my Fire Arrows and aim at the ice…and it melts! A little bit. It takes 4 arrows total to get rid of all the ice, and then I’m left with a sparking bundle of leaves to interact with. Korok! I’m not sure melting ice counts as a puzzle but whatevs.

The River of the Dead

I make my way down towards the bridge, but don’t cross just yet. There’s a path leading along the bank of the river I’d like to explore first. Along the way I’m attacked by a few Ice Keese and Ice Chus. The chus are particularly annoying – if you attack them while they’re frozen, they explode on death and freeze you if close enough. I also see a few paths up towards the shrine and Mount Hylia, though with not much of interest on them.

Always check behind waterfalls.

Once I’m close to the start of the river, I spot a cave leading to a treasure cache behind the waterfall, with a Soldier's Broadsword and 3 chests, Containing a Spiked Boko Bow, Arrows, and Fire Arrows. Yay, exploring! I exit the cave and follow the river back over to the bridge to cross. It’s really only half a bridge, and then a door acting like a bridge, and then nothing. The door is metal though, and there’s an identical one on the other side of the river. I grab it with Magnesis and finish the bridge and cross. To the left is a path taking me to some non-frozen land, and what looks like a giant tree fort of bokoblins. Have to come back to check that out later – I really want this paraglider first.

Aside from a non-working guardian, this side of the river is just more keese and chus, and the occasional skeleton at night. I climb up and explore the hilltop on this side of the river, but aside from what seem to be a camp of bokoblins off in the distance, it’s a pretty quiet walk. Once I’m near the entrance, I see the raft I noticed earlier, and that the bridge leading to it is destroyed. I don’t see anything big and metal to make a bridge with…I throw on Magnesis, maybe something is under the water right? Well, not a bridge, but a chest. 2 actually! Both Ambers. Then I realize I probably just need to use Cryonis to reach that raft.

Idiot.

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Heart Containers: 3
Korok’s Found: 8
Shrines Completed: 4
Bridges built: 1
Ghost Prediction: Accurate
Mountain: Climbed

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