Breath of the Wild first playthrough log part 7

Currently I'm only at 60 korok seeds and 35 shrines... it's insane to think how much of the game is still left...

Found more Zora lore... the white scale has a long has a long history of protecting the Zora.

Upland Zorana has a lot of luminous stones... I'm basically just exploring the mountains bordering Zora's Domain now, before heading back west to Woodland Stable... I still haven't done much of the east border of Akalla/Lanayru/Necluda yet either...
The Lost Woods in this game feels like OoT's Haunted Wasteland, with really creepy music...

At first you just have to follow the direction of the sparks coming from the torches... but then later there are no more torches... do I have to follow the trees with faces on them? No... You still have to follow the wind... I don't have a torch with me that I can carry... but I can see the little particles in the air being subtly blown by the wind... that's enough to get me through it, but it's a very slow method.

Found the Master Sword grove, and the Korok Forest... wow that was easy. The Deku Tree has a voiced cutscene here... and trying to pull out the Master Sword makes you lose all your hearts.

It cuts through bravado and superficial enhancements. Only true strength can draw it from its resting place.

Main Quest - The Hero's Sword

I guess I don't have enough hearts.

There's a lot of koroks here... but a lot of them hide when you get close. Only some you can talk to. There's some little shops inside the Deku Tree.

The sword pedestal, with its easy to see sunbeam acts as a landmark for the center of the forest. All the paths from here branch out into the Korok Trials. And also there's a free shrine right near the Deku
Tree... it has a really clever puzzle where you have to pay attention to the symbols on the wall.

Trying to climb above everything and go outside of the designated Korok trial paths just makes you get lost and sends you back to the entrance of the Korok Forest... There's also a designated magic warping tree that warps you out of the forest altogether, just in case you want to backtrack to the outside of the forest but didn't get any fast travel points nearby.

To the west, there's a quest where you have to follow a korok without getting caught... This Korok wants to try and make it through this Trial of Courage on his own, and knows the way to go, but will go back and force you to restart if he sees you following him.
Oh god, this is actually kinda hard... sometimes it gets hard to see him in the fog, and if you wait too long you'll be unable to know where to go at all... okay it's actually not that hard, once you know to anticipate when he's going to turn around and walk toward you, and you just hide behind something when he does that...

Next I did the Trial of Wood. It's a linear path full of fire enemies, and you have to get through the whole path while wearing only wooden equipment and not let any of it burn up. That wasn't very hard.

Then the Trial of Second Sight. The hungry trees show the way... this is what I originally thought the Lost Woods path was supposed to be... This trial teaches you to use Magnesis to search for the metal objects in the mouths of certain trees... this is a very useful trick for when you need to find certain metal things that blend into the landscape (and also using Stasis to highlight any movable object is very useful too, especially for those korok rock circle puzzles)... Then there's a part where you have to ride a raft across a lake of sludge, while taking a certain weapon that was found earlier and putting it into the tree's mouth at the end... This trial felt very Zelda-like.

Done with the Lost Woods... Next I decided to explore more around Lurelin Village... Went along the southern coast of West Necluda and Faron.

Found this weird NPC who fell in love with a glowing orb that I need to activate a shrine... She says she'll only give me the orb in exchange for a photo of every type of guardian.

I also went to Eventide Island... this is a unique challenge where Link loses all his equipment/clothes/items/food and you have to solve the shrine puzzle (put 3 glowing orbs into the 3 glowing pedestals around the island) and survive with only the materials you can find on the island... one of the glowing orbs is ontop of a sleeping Hinox. I didn't know at the time that you could grab the orb without waking the Hinox, and instead I tried and failed a few times fighting it... decided to save it for later.

Also found a horseback archery minigame... wow this is hard... I put a star stamp on the map here so I can try again later.