Breath of the Wild first playthrough log part 14

Currently at 102 hours played.

Now I'm finding a bunch more koroks in the Faron Woods/Lake Floria area that I haven't found yet... this place is so dense and confusing compared to the other areas. Also I'm going crazy trying to find this one shrine... then I see an orange glow on the reflection of the water... AHA! It's behind the waterfall!

Now exploring more of East Necluda... got 3 balls from 3 sleeping Hinox enemies and put them in the 3 glowing pedestals to make a shrine appear.
.. Found a broken heart-shaped pond...

Found Kass with another riddle at Hateno Beach...

At 17 of 24, this rock will point toward its retrieval.

At first I was like, "wtf this makes no sense", but then I thought about it some more... lol it's another shadow pointing somewhere at a certain time of day puzzle.

Decided to go back to Gerudo and get the snow boots back before exploring Lanayru Mountain... but now the guy with the snow shoes wants me to get him a picture of the Eighth Heroine's sword in exchange for both pairs of shoes... I came across that before, but forgot where it was... It's up in the really low visibility part of the Gerudo Highlands somewhere... didn't take me too long to find it again.

Then I explored West Gerudo Ruins in a sandstorm... the sandstorm removes all your minimap/map access and makes you feel completely lost... found the shrine that the 7 heroine statues scattered around the desert are all pointing towards... and found a few more shrines and the 4th Great Fairy... as well as the Leviathan bones in the desert.

Just realized... I like how certain NPCs talk about interesting locations in a way that subtly guides you to where shrines are. It kinda reminds me of the old man hints in LoZ.

Woah... east of the Great Fairy is a location named "Arbiter's Grounds"... or at least what's left of it... I think the desert sand must've risen above nearly the whole thing at this point, cuz you can only see the top tips of the structure coming out of the sand.

Okay now I'll go to Mount Lanayru... I haven't really explored this area at all, except for that one time I ran through it on my way to Hateno.
Got to the top... found the ice dragon Naydra, trapped on the mountain by Ganon sludge.

I guess Naydra is supposed to be your introduction to the dragon spirits... This is a whole event sequence where you have to shoot the Ganon sludge off of Naydra while it's flying around, and then it teaches you how to get scales from it.

A bit more Lanayru exploration... went along the east cliffs and got to Horon Lagoon, and found another Kass riddle... blow up the rocks to clear a path for the wind gusts, and then ride the wind all the way across and land on the pedestal.

Then I went along the ridge on the east edge of Lanayru... there's absolutely nothing here lol... went all the way up to where the Tingle Islands are.
I guess now I'll complete the Tarrey Town quest, since I now have access to all the towns...

Wow, Hudson got married to a Gerudo... Finally that priest Zora has a purpose now.

While I was at Zora's Domain, I decided to do a quest to find a lost zora kid... Went to the Bank of Wishes and found her... she wants me to follow her love letter down the river to find the person who is responding to her letters, and convince him to come and meet her. I use this as an opportunity to grind for fish and octo balloons while going down the river. The letter bottle just keeps going... at some point it gets to that big lake with all the lizalfos enemies, and gets stuck on some wooden structures... I'm not even sure if it's going the right way now... but it eventually washes up on Mercay Island, and there's a young Hylian boy there... Link convinces him to travel to Zora's Domain.

Tarrey Town now has an armor shop that sells a bunch of armor that I already got from shrine quests... So there really isn't any one-time-only armor that you could sell and lose forever.

There's a family who has a problem with their daughter eating nothing but cake... at night you can hear a convo through the window, the family is arguing and yelling at each other... The neighbors are complaining about them... It's a quest where you have to bring them a certain healthy cake recipe for the daughter.

Went back to the Plateau... there's still some stuff here I haven't explored yet... a bunch of chests on the sides of the plateau too... I dropped off and found Outskirt Stable and my 90th shrine... This stable looks like it should've been really easy to find right at the beginning of the game, but I passed right by it somehow. A bunch of sidequests here... I finally found a regular Moblin Club that I needed for that kid's Weapon Connoisseur quest in Hateno...

I just noticed, when it's raining in Hateno Village, almost everyone is inside now... and some people have unique dialog that you can only get when it's raining during the day... Also I didn't know that you could eavesdrop on those 2 gossiper NPCs.

There's also a big colloseum nearby Outskirt Stable, at the south end of Central Hyrule... with a Lynel battle, and a bunch of Lizalfos and other enemies around the sides of it.