Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Legend of Zelda, Second Quest, Part 1

After a busy couple of days at work, I finally had the opportunity to sit down this evening and start the second quest in the Legend of Zelda. I'm a bit nervous about this quest, because (to be completely honest) I don't remember a thing about this incarnation of Zelda. Not where the dungeons are, not where the heart containers are, not where any of the items are, nothing! This could be a long slog through...


The first thing I did was (as always) grab the sword from the old man, whose job it is apparently to stand in a cave and hand out wooden swords to would-be adventurers with pointy ears. Just how one goes about getting a gig like that is beyond me. Does he get paid by the hour? What are the benefits like for this? Do they have a 'Sword Hander-Outers' union? These are things that I think about (no, wait, please don't leave...I'll be more normal. I promise!)...


After I grabbed the wooden sword...Where to go? I went to the old standby location for the first dungeon back in the first quest, and lo and behold, it was the same thing in this quest. The first room to the right of the entrance contained some Goriya who dropped the first boomerang once defeated. Sweet! Now I have something that uses the B-button! As the dungeon progressed, it became abundantly clear that I wasn't in Kansas anymore, Toto. One of the rooms contained Dodongo, the boss from the second dungeon back in the first quest. Just a normal room monster here? Oh boy, things are going to be fun...The dungeon layout turned out to be the letter 'E', which triggered the memory that (if I remember correctly) some of the dungeons spell out the word Z-E-L-D-A. Ok, so at least I remember something. The boss of this dungeon turned out to be Aquamentus, who was just as easy to defeat as in the first quest, so I left that dungeon victorious. I'll take the small victories where I can, because it's not going to get any easier from here.


After that, I spent a lot of time roaming around the overworld, looking for anything that might be useful. I admit (in my nervousness) I reverted back to an old trick I used back on the console, which was to open the money-making game cave one screen to the left of the starting screen, and used it to make some cash with the second controller save (after I won money, save it and start again, if I lost money, reset and try again). I know, I know, it probably messes with the purity of the game, but I was desperate, and this made me feel better. No cheat codes, no walkthroughs, I just used a friendly save system to make some money. After I had enough to go buy the blue ring, I went (on a whim) to where the blue ring was found before, and instead of the shop selling the ring I found the entrance to the second level. Great, but I still needed to find the ring...I roamed around for a while, heading toward the eastern side of the map where you found the letter to the old woman in the first quest (not there) as well as the secret passage to a cave. Woohoo, this actually was the place to buy the ring! At least that went well. With new blue ring in hand, I roamed around some more, hoping to stumble upon a heart container I could get, to no avail. I did manage to kill enough enemies to have the cash to buy the blue candle (60 rupees, from the same vendor I made the purchase from in the first quest). Equipped withe blue ring, new candle, and a bit of confidence, I decided to tackle the second dungeon.


This dungeon was a bit more difficult that the first dungeon (who would have thought that?), in that there were the mummies, a couple of the rabbit-guys (easy to kill with a bow and arrows, which I didn't have) and a bunch of the red knights you can't damage head on, only from another angle. Sorry for not having the real names of these creatures, I'm a bit tired right now, and don't have a lot of time and energy to look up the technical names. Hopefully you get my point. Anyway, I stumbled onto the whistle (the major treasure from this dungeon), and later on found the map to the area, which confirmed my initial memory of spelling the princess' name (this dungeon was shaped like an 'A'). I also ran into a Manhandla (who I very luckily dispatched with one bomb, or he would have eaten me for lunch), the third dungeon boss back in the first quest, in one of the rooms. As you can see, they've turned up the heat a lot in this quest. The devs weren't messing around. The boss happened to be a two-headed Gleeock, who was surprisingly tough for a hero with 4 hearts and a wooden sword. I managed to beat him with less then half life remaining, gladly scooped up the heart container (yay, 5 hearts, now I can go try to find the White Sword), and grabbed the second piece of the Triforce in the next room.


That's where I called it quits for this evening. After spending quite a bit of time roaming the overworld, and getting through two dungeons, I'm feeling a bit tired and am going to call it a day. I hope you're enjoying my trials and tribulations, and please stop in again soon. If you feel like it, leave me a comment, question, criticism, outright flame, I don't care...It's nice to know your stuff is being read. I'll be sure to write again soon, as I foresee a bit of free time in the next couple of days.

1 comment:

  1. It's too bad that aren't more comments here. This is a fun thread for me to be reading between tasks at work today. I remember finding level 2 while looking for the blue ring as early as possible in the 2nd quest, also. And the letters had me wondering until I found the 'Z'. I still don't remember what the other three (well, four) dungeon shapes look like; it will be fun to rediscover that.

    You mentioned the two-headed dragon being tough with a wooden sword, green clothes and 4 hearts, and it reminded me: the first quest was pretty tough the first time around, too. If you don't know the secrets (like I didn't the first time through - I played with the green clothes until I found the red ring in dungeon 9 the first time I played) it's pretty tough. I think I had the wooden sword until dungeon 6 or so... I got to a point where I couldn't win. that's when I got desperate and started searching everywhere for items to help.

    The first quest is

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