We are planners. Whatever we’re doing, we like to have a plan – and usually a list, to boot. And so it was that we planned to complete the Sandship Dungeon in a single visit, then share our escapades with you. Further, we knew the Sandship would be all about Timeshifting, so we chose a cocktail to highlight the change between past and present. We secured a hard-to-find ingredient for said cocktail and plotted a dramatic photo staging.
Thus, planned and provisioned, we started our day with enthusiasm and confidence.
We also started by making, perhaps a bit too early, the first of our planned cocktails.
In homage to the shifting sands of time, we wanted a traditional drink for which an updated version existed. We found one in the Diki Diki, refreshed for today’s tastes by the clever folks at Modern Tiki. Somewhat to our surprise, we pronounced the traditional version tasty, if a bit boozy. Even Demelza, who typically eschews cocktails with a brown liquor base, found it lovely.
So far, so good, right?
Well, not so fast.
To begin, we transported back to the Surface – courtesy of an Amiibo, we admit – armed with heart potions, a Life Medal, and a “we can do this” attitude. We will advise the reader who isn’t familiar with or can’t remember this part of the quest for Nayru’s Flame, that the Sandship dungeon, on a challenge scale of easy-peasy to throw-down-the-controllers-in- despair, is merely ho-hum. Although completing the dungeon’s four levels requires a lot of back-tracking, for once the dungeon map is easy to find and straightforward to read, and the puzzles require thought but not hair-pulling.
The sub-boss, Scervo, is not particularly demanding and perhaps even likable, as robot skeleton pirates go. Just ask Fi, who expressed her admiration for him! Harrumph. Guess it’s an artificial lifeform thing.
Speaking of annoying – okay, we were speaking of Fi, but that is the very definition of annoying – what’s with the Skipper saying, “Things look dangerous, I’ll just wait over here in my rowboat, Link, while you do all the work”? Aren’t captains supposed to go down with the ship? Doesn’t that carry the codicil that they be on the ship precisely when things look dangerous? Harrumph, we say, again.
After Scervo’s defeat and our subsequent reward of the Wooden Bow (finally; what’s a Zelda game without a bow?), we located and triggered the ship’s hidden Timeshift Stone to send us and the Not-So-Good Ship Lollypop back into the past. Unfortunately, shifting time also restored the ship’s pirate crew in the form of Bokoblins, who encased the stone in a cage and barred the door to the ship’s belowdecks. (We are not sailors, so our language may not be seaworthy, we own.)
Bokoblin archers are less trying when one is oneself armed with a bow, so it wasn’t long before we had the run of the ship. Mostly. Some Arachas needed gust-bustering, true, and there was an Electro Spume that gave us some trouble. Switching time revived a Beamos, which was passing annoying. And yet. We marched on, rescuing the Skipper’s crew and retrieving in fairly short order the Squid Carving, this dungeon’s puzzle key-piece and the shape of which was a clue to bossy things to come.
All this traipsing about the dungeon ship requires one to shift from the past to the present, so we drained our glasses of the original Diki Diki, and, when the opportunity presented itself to strike the Timeshift Stone back to the present, we updated our drinks. Now, it’s true that we had to return to the past and back to the present more than a few times, but once we had tried the modern Diki Diki, which we deemed still more tasty than the original, we stuck with it. It wouldn’t have done to swap drinks every time we swapped time, now would it? (Er….)
Zelder Tip #1: If throwing a bomb at the Electro Spume isn’t doing the trick, try instead rolling a bomb across the sand.
Zelder Tip #2: If you find yourself in a room with Technoblins and Beamos(es) both, take out the Beamos(es) first. Then fuss about with any loitering Technoblins.
Zelder Tip #3: Certain barrels on the ship contain arrows; bash ’em around when you need to restock your quiver.
Zelder Tip #4: The Tetris-lock in this dungeon is worse than those that came before. Try pushing ZL to see the lock’s interior without the Squid Carving blocking your view.
Eventually, as the saying goes, we did a thing. And, having done it, we found ourselves at the door to the room where we were certain the dungeon boss would be found.
The room was a big letdown.
We stood around for a while, Link yawning and shuffling his weight from this foot to the other, waiting for something to happen – dramatic cutscene, intimidating music, large caption with scary name under threatening boss-beast – until finally Demelza consulted the online resource she carries with her everywhere, thereby learning that we had to go Outside. Topside. Whatever, we’re landlubbers, haven’t we admitted? Outside we went, braving giant tentacles along the way, to the deck of the now-sinking ship.
Yay! Dramatic cutscene, intimidating music, and large caption with scary name under threatening boss-beast: Abyssal Leviathan Tentalus.
We made this same trek to the outside three times.
We no longer said yay. We no longer felt yay. Instead, to paraphrase the Hobbes of another Leviathan, we found each attempt at the boss to be nasty, brutish, and not nearly short enough.
(Zelder Partner Tip: If you value your life or your friendship or both, during the Tentalus battle you should limit your speech to terse, quiet notifications that hearts have fallen below three and potions should perhaps be consumed.)
And then Itzal quit. Sure, first he swore a lot and nearly threw the Joy-Cons, which have nothing whatsoever to do with joy, at the television. And then he quit. So much for our plan to write a single blog about the Sandship.
To calm Itzal down, we subsequently played a bit of Link’s Awakening, about which you can read in the next post, because, you see, we haven’t yet gone back to defeat the Abyssal Leviathan Tentalus. And we might never do so, because Itzal might have a stroke, but at least we have the semblance of a new plan.
Meanwhile, we will enjoy those Diki Dikis, past, present, and future! You can peruse the recipe(s) here.