Week 4: Divine Beast Vah Ruta

 This most recent week was easily my most productive so far. I travelled all the way from the Great Plateau to Kakariko Village, where I received the Main Story quest from Impa, and then Zora's Domain where I would begin the quest to conquer my first divine beast, Vah Ruta. Along the way I completed a couple more shrines, climbed two Sheikah Towers, allowing me to see more of the map, and unlocked a couple more weapon slots using some of the Korok Seeds I had found.

Map of my travels starting at the Great Plateau, passing through Kakariko Village (yellow) and ending at Zora's Domain (green).

Last post I mentioned how much I enjoyed travelling through the area between Kakariko Village and Zora's Domain, but while I did try to take in the surroundings, I mainly sprinted through the area in front of Zora's Domain as quickly as possible. I was not sufficiently prepared to fight the Master Mode enemies and they could all kill me in one hit so I wasted no time running past them, not retaliating with any bow shots of my own, to make sure I reached my goal as quickly as possible. 

The entrance to Zora's Domain

Once I reached Zora's Domain I was tasked to collect shock arrows as they are effective in calming down the divine beast and would be needed to begin the dungeon. I had completely forgotten about this part of the quest and now that I had been reminded, I was concerned. Collecting shock arrows seems easy enough, but what the quest is actually asking me to do, since I had no money to purchase the arrows, was fight the mini boss called a Lynel. Lynels are some of the strongest enemies that can be found in Hyrule and I was certainly not ready to fight an upgraded, Master Mode version of one. I figured that even if I were to spend some extra time getting more hearts and better gear, I would still likely get killed in one hit so I just decided to throw myself and current gear at it to see how it went. 

The Red Lynel I fought on Ploymus Mountain near Zora's Domain.

I tried several times, getting progressively closer to defeating the Lynel, but due to the fact that any attack the Lynel landed could end my life instantly, I had to be extremely cautious, decreasing the number of hits I was able to get in. This meant that each fight lasted quite a long time and that every time I died, several minutes had been wasted. Eventually, I managed to avoid being hit for the entire fight and defeated the Lynel, allowing me to run around the arena and collect the shock arrows that had been stuck in the trees. 

Now that I had the arrows, it was time to begin the encounter with Vah Ruta. I rode on the back of Zora Prince, Sidon to get close to the beast, allowing me to fire arrows in intervals after protecting myself from the ice chunks hurled at me each time. Once I had landed all of the arrows that I needed to calm the beast the constant rain that had been pouring down on Zora's Domain as a result of the beast's anger stopped and I was able to climb inside to begin the dungeon. The dungeon inside Vah Ruta is very straightforward, with only a few water/ice based puzzles that I needed to complete to reach all of the terminals required to begin the boss fight. Once I activated every terminal, I headed to a final, larger terminal to begin my battle against the Scourge of Divine Beast Vah Ruta, Waterblight Ganon.

This fight was easier than the Red Lynel on the mountain due to its more predictable and easily countered attacks and the far larger windows of vulnerability. I still had to retry the fight a couple times because I died in one hit from its attacks and the periods of invincibility between each attack allowed it to heal a significant amount relatively often. With less failed attempts than against the Lynel, I defeated Waterblight Ganon, giving me the blessing of the late Zora Princess, Mipha, allowing me to revive myself upon death once in a while, as well as the Divine Beast Vah Ruta's assistance in the game's final fight against Calamity Ganon. 

I'm pretty happy with this week's progress as I managed to complete the pretty difficult goal I set for myself last week and now have a lot more tools to help myself in future parts of the game like Mipha's Grace. I don't have an exact plan for next week's post, but it will probably involve heading towards the Divine Beast Vah Medoh in Rito Village. Thanks for reading!