We may have mentioned in a recent post that, allegedly, Faron’s Silent Realm is the easiest of the four in the game. We can’t yet opine on the remaining two, but we are here to attest that Lanayru’s Silent Realm left us weeping even more than Faron’s did.
Entering the Silent Realm
To begin, we returned to the northern save point of the Lanayru Desert and began plucking the notes of the latest entry in our musical repertoire, Nayru’s Wisdom. We do not, shall we say, have the knack of strumming the harp. Itzal tried, Demelza tried, Itzal strummed once more. And getting into the Silent Realm was, say it with us, the easy part.
These trials, we learned, assess certain qualities in Link. Faron tested Link’s courage; Nayru has a clipboard poised to jot down the hero’s marks in wisdom. Accordingly, advised our trusty guidebook, the key to Faron’s Silent Realm was not to panic and in Lanayru’s, to be clever. Perhaps the latter explains why we received this screenshot a scant 40 seconds into our first attempt:
We persevered, however, collecting tears by rolling into trees, strategically moving mine carts, and scaling leafy walls. And, um, watching a video on the Internet.
Zelder Tip #1: During your hunt, the petals in the corner of the screen change color as the 90-second grace period between Guardian attacks ticks down. If you find yourself near a tear with petals to spare, use that time to survey your surroundings and scout out your next target before collecting the tear in front of you.
Zelder Tip #2: When Link is consulting his map, the clock is stopped. (We consulted the map a lot.)
Zelder Tip #3: Don’t forget to set beacons to alert you to where it’s safe for Link to walk.
Tears finally gathered, we were rewarded with the Clawshots, with which Link can grapple himself here and there to places he otherwise couldn’t reach. In function, it’s like the Hookshot we remember from earlier games in the series.
(We puzzled over why Clawshots was plural. Turns out the Clawshots is – are – not a grappling hook, but rather a set of clawed gloves. We will probably still think of the Clawshots as singular, however. We’re stubborn that way.)
We grappled around the immediate area until Itzal was the b-word (that is to say, bored). Might have been a grand total of two grapples, which is the extent of his patience, which meant we left one treasure chest unclaimed and one Goddess Cube unstruck.
Into the Lanayru Caves
After that, we headed to the nearby sandfalls and put our grappling to better use: heading up the falls to the Lanayru Caves.
Once inside the caves, we discovered one of those hard-working Gorons working hard, as is their wont. This particular Goron, named Golo, was interested in ancient legends and dragons, and providentially he just happened to have a small key to help us in our quest for Nayru’s Flame. We grappled around the caves until we reached the Ancient Harbor, where we saw a small watercraft at the dock. There was not a drop of water around it, but! Clue! We didn’t need Fi the Obvious to point out the Timeshift Stone on the ship. Our next step was clear.
Back to Skyloft
But before moving on, we dashed back to Skyloft to visit the restroom in the Knight’s Academy and to do some shopping. We’re certain all heroes have similar priorities.
At the bazaar, we bought a Sacred Shield, reputed to protect its bearer from fire and electricity. Furthermore, it repairs itself when damaged. Unfortunately, the Sacred Shield also has a shorter durability bar – don’t we all – and so we opted to buy a shield-repair potion, having no idea how long the shield took to self-repair. (We’ll report back on this later. Um, maybe. Perhaps we will forget, the way we usually forget that we even have a shield at all.) (Itzal would like confess here that he thought buying the shield was a lame use of time and money and, after the one time (he thinks) he used it, thought this even more so…and then he read this post about the shield repairing itself, so maybe he used it and it was injured and it repaired itself and, well, he was wrong. Which he will forget by the next time he carries a shield.)
There’s one thing we don’t forget, however, and that’s sharing our suggested cocktail pairing of the day. In commemoration of earning the Clawshots, we recommend a White Clawshots Paloma. No, wait. The Clawshots are plural. Have two. Or four, since the recipe makes about that many.