Breath of the Wild first playthrough log part 3

I went back to Kakariko through the main horse path, and that's when I spotted the big Korok that I missed before... This Korok, Hestu has a little quest where I have to get his maracas back from some bokoblins... and after that he lets me trade Korok seeds in exchange for gear slot upgrades.
After I do a few trades, he says he's going back to his home in Korok Forest, which is somewhere north of Kakariko... he says you can find it by following Hylia River.

I encountered this weird blue rabbit... found out that shooting it gives you rupees.

Tried taming a white/blue horse near the Dueling Peaks stable...
These 2 NPCs in a stable are talking about about Misko's treasure and the hint on how to find it.

The little twin steps over the little river. My cave rests above that river's source.

Misko hid the location of that treasure in some kind of strange secret code.

Now that I have more stamina, I was easily able to do the 2 shrines ontop of the Dueling Peaks... these 2 shrines have a linked puzzle where you need the hint from one shrine to solve the other one.

Found another stable at the SE side of Hyrule Field. An NPC there talks about the different methods of getting into the castle...
- Goron style: just charge through the front gate with superior stamina/speed/strength and ignore everything.
- Rito style: fly across the moat from the north mountain. I guess that's what I did just recently.
- Zora style: swim across the moat and up the waterfalls.
- Gerudo style: ride a horse through the field and kill the guardians from a distance with arrows... that sounds like the hardest method.
- The way of the hero: Go through bravely and destroy all enemies in the area.

I like the idea of going with that last one... I guess that's what I'll do when I'm ready to beat the game for real.

Now I'm just exploring around Hylia River trying to find this Korok Forest... and check out whatever shrines and stables I find along the way... Hylia River pretty much borders the Hyrule Field region and goes up into the Lanayru area, then splits off into the Great Hyrule Forest moat and Zora's River.

Oh wait... I spotted Hestu just as I ame out of a shrine. He got lost on his way to Korok Forest, and lets me trade a few more seeds in before he leaves again.

lol this shrine quest is fun... a shrine is surrounded by a flower garden, and this woman yells at me whenever I trample the flowers. It's just a little maze where you have to get to the shrine entrance without stepping on them...

This loading screen tip has me intrigued...

If you befriend a dog, it may lead to something interesting.

On another bridge on Hylia River, I saw an NPC getting attacked by blue bokoblins... Followed her to a stable and a shrine after rescuing her.

Wetland Stable
There's a bird character playing Epona's Song on accordion... he's talking about the ancient songs of Hyrule, and offers to play you the melody of the hero 10'000 years ago... it's a similar scene to the story that Impa tells you, but in different words and with cool music.

Quince tells me about a strange mountain on which a bunch of animals appear at a certain time... he befriended a dog there, and found a big glowing beast... He says the dog saved him from being attacked by the beast... This was at Satori Mountain, to the west of here... on the other side of Hyrule Field.

Some kid says there's a secret escape route from Hyrule Castle called the East Passage, made for the royal family.

That accordion-playing bird character, Kass, tells me about how his cousin is a shiekah... No wonder he knows so much about history.

I started to explore a bit of Hyrule Field... tamed a slow horse and registered it, and then started running away from guardians while trying to head towards the Hyrule Field Tower, which is way over to the west end.

It's pretty easy to cut their legs off and defeat the guardians when you have some decent cover to hide behind.

Made it to Mabe Village ruins... barely dodged the guardians and got to the tower.

I found another shrine that looks to have underwater stuff... at this point I still thought there would be a Zora Scale... so I decided now I may as well go up Zora's River and start the first divine beast quest.

I really love this rainy atmosphere... and this whole Zora's River path feels like a callback to OoT's Zora's River, but a lot longer and way more treacherous. I also found some big Zora history monuments on the walls from doing a little bit of exploring off the beaten path.

History of the Zora, Part One: The Eternal Zora's Domain.

Learned that Zora's Domain was created out of stone masonry so that the Zoras could live in a place with clean pure water.

All of the people in Zora's Domain think of Mipha as a hero who died trying to pilot the divine beast Vah Ruta... The old Zoras here all still remember Link from 100 years ago, and they blame him for Mipha's death. The younger Zoras like Prince Sidon don't care about that, and want Link's help in regaining control of Vah Ruta.

Some weird Zora girl at the inn seems to know Link very well... she calls him "Linny" and acts like she's Link's girlfriend or something.

That Zora who was trapped on Lanayru Tower earlier, he made it down by diving off into the water... now he has a diving sidequest.

Another old Zora here named Kapson... this one actually doesn't hate Link... he's a priest and says he's interested in performing a wedding ceremony.
King Dorephan, Mipha's father, doesn't hate Link either, and agrees with Sidon that they need Link's help to fight Vah Ruta, since it requires the use of shock arrows to disable its weapons, and Zoras can't handle electricity very well.

Link regained his memory of Mipha as he looked at the statue again... Sidon knew about the secret love affair that Link had with Mipha, and gives Link the Zora Armor that Mipha made for him.

Sidon says I'll need to get some shock arrows from a powerful monster called the Lynel up on top of Ploymous Mountain, east of Zora's Domain. To get there, you can use the Zora Armor to ascend the waterfall as a shortcut. He says to meet him at East Reservoir Lake after I get 20 shock arrows.

After talking to everyone in Zora's Domain, I decided to leave the rest of this quest for later, and instead I started wandering south of Zora's Domain towards the unmapped region below Lanayru. I passed by the East Reservoir Lake, where Vah Ruta, the giant elephant-shaped divine beast, is shooting water out of its trunk and causing the non-stop rainfall.

Fought a Hinox enemy for the first time... it has its own boss music and health bar like the Talus, but I found it to be very easy.

There's some really tall mountains around here... I climbed way up, and got a good view of the whole Lanayru region and saw Death Mountain in the distance, which looks even bigger than these Lanayru mountains.

I'm near Kakariko Village now, in between the mountains... East Lanayru Gate, leading to a place called Lanayru Promenade.
This place reminds me a lot of the narrow mountain paths in TP. There's a lot of really cool looking architecture here... and a lot of tough moblin/bokoblin archer enemies... I only explored a little bit of it... Found a shrine hidden in a cave only thanks to the shrine sensor.

Later, I ran into my first Lynel battle... I can't beat it... It's so ridiculously strong... Ran way after dying a bunch of times.

Now I'm taking the high road... I end up in this snowy mountain area with low visibility... snow wolves, like in the snowy area of TP... this might even be the same area as TP's Snowpeak region. I also saw this huge ice structure that I had no idea what to do with...

Finally, climbed over the other side of the snowy mountain and found Hateno Village to the south.
This place has some really fancy looking houses... it's much more out in the open than Kakariko, which is hidden in the mountains. I wonder how this place never got attacked by guardians.

Hateno is pretty big... there's even this big ranch area with a bunch of animals you can kill for food, with absolutely no repercussions... and there's a deer-shooting minigame you can do for rupees.

The residential part of town is pretty big too... I have no idea where to even start.

This shrine quest immediately has me intrigued... so I climbed back up to Lanayru Mountain and followed this NPC's directions to a shrine that contained climbing gear.

Back to Hateno... Wow there's SO many characters here... A lot of them have sidequests, but even the ones that don't still have a lot of interesting dialog and personality quirks... I just have to talk to all of them.

lol this one girl in a shop, is standing in the corner of the room... when you ask her why, she says "I like this corner".

The little kid characters running around have some really cute adorable animation quality to them... I especially like this one kid that recites the construction worker's theme song...

Someone is demolishing an old abandoned house, and you can make an offer to buy it for 1000 rupees.

This one NPC has some interesting lore about Lanayru Mountain... that's where you can find the Spring of Wisdom. Zelda went to that spring for purification 100 years ago, right before the calamity happened... That spring is now engulfed in ice... I don't know if I passed by that place or not.

Whoa... this one kid leads me towards an interesting statue... it's like an evil hell version of the goddess statues, it offers to switch around your stamina/heart upgrades in exchange for money. The kid thinks Link is weird for talking to a statue.

This windmill couple is interesting... The woman, Ralera, came from another town, south of the Bridge of Hylia (which I haven't found yet).

Finally, found Hateno Lab way up on the highest hill by the bridge... stopped here for now.