When Demelza and Itzal were young – okay, hardy-har-har, we know that opening phrase begs a follow-up line like “when dinosaurs walked the earth” or “humans had not yet discovered fire” – but seriously, when we were young, we enjoyed solving little hand-held puzzles in which one moved plastic tiles around on a slate. Think of it as the prehistoric equivalent of a Rubik’s cube.
Having consulted Wikipedia, which occasionally is more reliable than our memory, we learned (remembered) that the little slate was typically called a Fifteen Puzzle or Game of Fifteen, because the slate was four-by-four with one empty tile slot (16 minus 1 being, after all, 15). The puzzler slid the tiles around to arrange them in the proper numerical sequence.
To return to the subject at hand: it turns out those puzzles were great training for the game’s final dungeon, Sky Keep! Finally, something from our youth, something non-electronic, something without rage-inspiring horrors, that we can apply to our game! We quite enjoyed ourselves in the Keep.
Entering Sky Keep
Link enters the Sky Keep by Clawshotting his way over from the red-eyed bird statue by the waterfall plateau in Skyloft. The Keep lies directly below the Goddess statue and its surrounding garden area, a fact that will become important in a few hours (mere minutes for the clever blog reader). Link obtains the dungeon map right away, and without having to defeat a single meanie! We like knowing where we’re going from the outset, so things are already looking good.
Then comes the terminal, which is arranged as a three-by-three puzzle with eight tiles representing eight large rooms[1] in the Keep and one space left blank for moving the tiles about. (So, it’s not a Fifteen Puzzle, it’s instead a Game of Eight, and we rapidly became glad of that.) Naturally, the three pieces of the Triforce are scattered about these rooms. And so are a few old friends, traps, tricks, and enemies.
By all means, jump right in, Link!
Navigating the Keep
One can divide the dungeon into three parts: Rooms 1-3, Rooms 4 & 5, and Rooms 6-8 (each of which contains a piece of the Triforce. This allows you to stop for snacks and drinks at the end of each portion of the dungeon.
At first, we followed the as-ever-very-fine zeldadungeon.net turn-by-turn navigation instructions online. This got us as far as the room just before the room containing the green Triforce piece. Where we died. Zelder Tip #1 – bring as many heart potions as you can, and when you get to the room before the Green Triforce Room, shoot the Bokoblin archers FIRST, as they are quite adept at killing Link.
Anyhow, we died and had to Go Outside, such that when we returned, we were confused about the path back to the room before the room (such being the room where it actually happened, for you Hamilton fans). This might be because Itzal has the attention span of a gnat. Or it might be because Demelza offers such useful navigation tips as “the direction you are facing is always north” when confronted with instruction to go, say, east, west, or north, and Itzal (having the attention span of a gnat) flouncing about with abandon.
ANYHOW, when we returned and waltzed through the dungeon, we quickly retrieved the green Triforce piece by moving the rooms on the terminal to accommodate our return, but then we were out of sync with the zeldadungeon.net turn-by-turn guidance. (It’s not like the GPS lady could recalculate our route when we deviated from the set course.) We were forced to set the iPad aside and figure it out for ourselves, just as we had as wee tots playing with our little plastic, non-electronic puzzles.[2]
And we did it.
So there. Take back your joke about dinosaurs or discovering fire. Sometimes it pays to be old.
It took us just over five hours to complete the dungeon, including bathroom breaks, cocktail crafting, and snacking. This felt like the Good Old Days, not just of our puzzle-solving youth but of Nintendo Playing Past. There are a couple of areas in the dungeon that are difficult (see: we died in the room where it happened and had to Go Outside) but overall, this was a fun and fitting run-up to what promises to be a smashing ending.
A few tips gathered along the way
Here are a few tips gathered along the way, as curated by Demelza:
- There’s a Goddess Wall at the first bird statue after the swinging platforms. Or at least, we found one there (your results may vary), and Itzal drew a smashing picture of a heart, which we badly needed.
- When confronting a Deku Baba, don’t forget, as we initially did, that bombs serve perfectly well to defeat the snapping enemy and far more safely than sword-flailing.
- Stabbing the Lizalfos worked better for us than slicing this way and that.
- When you’re moving the Timeshift orb on the platform on rails, waiting to uncover a blue target you must shoot with your bow, don’t push the platform all the way to the end, or the target will get covered up again before you’re in a place you can shoot it. Speaking of the orb, place it at the end of the platform furthest from you as you face the rails the platform must traverse –north, says Demelza decisively – so that it opens up that blue target while you’re in shooting range. (P.S. The photo above was taken before we learned this particular tip. Do as we say, not as we first did.)
- North is always the direction you’re facing. (Demelza was in charge of compiling this list, so this tip is going on whether Itzal likes it or not.)
Actions have consequences
In the end, the Triforce pieces are reunited, Link gets all emotional and mushy, and – spoiler alert (again) – the Goddess Statue falls from the sky and crashes (neatly) into the Sealed Grounds and on top of the Imprisoned! Wow! Who saw that coming!
The Imprisoned seems FINALLY to be truly imprisoned, in that he’s dead. Link gets even mushier as he chats with Groose and The Old One. And, miracle of miracles, Zelda emerges from her hiding place, umm, the safety crystal where surely she’s been helping out, even though we have it on good authority (hers) that she was sleeping while Link was doing all the work, and then more mushiness. Everything is grand and this game must be over! Yay!
Enter that creep Ghirahim, who kidnaps Zelda and skips away through the Gate of Time, to a past when his lord and master, Demise, is not yet dead, and OH MY GOD WHY DIDN’T THIS OCCUR TO ZELDA AND IMPA! Haven’t we been careening through time for weeks now!
Worse still, Ghirahim plans to use Zelda to revive his evil master. She cannot be pleased at this turn of events.
So much for happy endings; poor Link must now face off in what promises to be a battle royale. Sigh.
To sooth his nerves (and yours) we suggest a cocktail of our own imagining, the Tri-fruit Triforce.
[1] Each of the rooms has smaller, umm, chambers inside it. We called them “rooms” and “chambers” and sometimes “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.” It’s easy to get confused shouting at your partner about the room or chamber or wherever you are standing. Well, it was easy for us. As Itzal noted (yelled): Stop editing my word salad!
[2] Luckily, there are shortcuts you will open as you move through the maze.