Well, it's not that I haven't TRIED to get into a new dungeon/temple recently!

This has been my journey on Friday: I want to be around the 40 or 45 figure mark before conquering a new dungeon. It sounds easy enough, right?

Well, in order to sort of "upload" or save copies of your possibly unique photos to Miiverse (like one character playing a harp for the first time I can remember in the whole game), I didn't realize you need the GAMEPAD to put it inside a Tingle Bottle. Ugh! Mine ran out of battery power this afternoon. Then I like to recharge it with the system powered down (OCD?). So, it might not be ready until tomorrow, and then I'd like to play another session on Sunday.

In between collecting the statues, I finally got to one of the temple locations that's marked on the map. (Spoiler) It seems like a GHOST talks to you in a cutscene (End spoiler). Then, all you know about the next step is finding the character who plays the instrument on the big stone that's blocking the temple entrance. Easy enough, right? The last place I saw him was in the woods. So, go talk to the Great Deku Tree. "You're looking for Makar? Well, he's hiding right now. It's probably a waste of time to be looking for him."

After saving and powering down, I searched online to figure out his location. Swing into this waterfall that shows musical notes. Well, no musical notes were visible, but you can swing inside that waterfall, which looks solid to your regular eyes. You get that far to figure out ... he's not inside.

OK. I guess they're FORCING me to complete the temple with the boring item that only solves one puzzle that I've seen in the entire Great Sea/ocean, instead of something helpful, which could lift me up to a bunch of places on islands that are inaccessible right now, since you're supposed to "grappling hook" onto them, except for how your regular rope and hook aren't up to the job. Why would that be possibly the final upgrade you can get in the game?

Anyway, I knew which picture I wanted for #40 on my list: Valoo the dragon. Slight problem? I went to the island where he's sitting all the way on top, and the stairs where I reached him before are BROKEN/missing! I ran through pretty much every room in the dungeon, trying to remember an alternate route. You just can't get very close to him for whatever reason. People say they got the photo by looking up from the broken stair section and just capturing the side of his head (not sure if he's even looking your direction, which is supposed to be one of the criteria). Then, other people say not to even get on the island. Just look up from your boat, zoom in as close as possible, and that will be good enough.

I can try that on Sunday. Afterwards, I wanna go inside a TEMPLE! Yeah, I'm a little too cranky about not accomplishing that yet. My file is up to almost 50 hours now.

But wait! I know how there are variations of the character Tingle, and something about statues of him. You actually need a complete set of these Tingle statues for his fourth variation to appear in the game. Somehow, in the GameCube version, you could link up a Game Boy Advance, and there was a "Tingle Tuner" feature for finding invisible treasure chests inside the dungeons. What I've been noticing is that there are empty spaces carved out, or platforms floating in space for no apparent reason, and all I had to was to place a regular bomb there to make a treasure chest materialize?!! Without Zeldapedia and YouTube, I'm not sure if I would have known that!

With the pictures, I'm not sure why I'm stressing over wanting all 134 figures on the first attempt at beating the game. It's almost like they knew you'd want to stretch it out over two playthroughs? I guess it started to bother me how Valoo might not be possible to collect this time around. I did miss that dungeon's boss, but he's coming back again. I'm not sure about some of the other bosses. One comes out of the bricks on the wall, so he may be back inside the wall again (now inactive).

I know how to remove the barrier for the Earth Temple (the location with the uninteresting item). I'm assuming there might be another ghost who asks you to find a character who I've already seen (before the ghost told me to be looking ... if that makes sense!). Then you teach this person a song that you only learned once yourself. Luckily, the GamePad tells you the songs that you've learned, but I didn't have it active tonight when I was trying to do something as simple as changing from night to daytime. I forgot that song already!

You know what else? There's a place where I removed a barrier to a cave/grotto. Inside of this grotto, there's a sign telling you about another hole/grotto in the ground. Really? You have to enter a hole that's inside of another hole? I know they were allegedly rushed to finish this game, but that seems kind of unique in the whole Zelda series.

So, it's been a frustrating portion of the game. I've been having some weird interactions with other characters. One girl who was kidnapped sympathizes with the pig ("Moe") who held her hostage. His letter says he's going to eat her for dinner. She sees that as a sign of his love. Are you kidding me? Is it supposed to seem like this girl is really stupid and could get herself in trouble? You have to complete that task to be rewarded with a piece of heart, but it made me feel really awkward.

I guess that's all for tonight. Even 70 hours might not be enough to finish this game! It's just good to know how to find everything. That's kind of the weird thing, too. Nintendo has to walk the line between telling you exactly how to do something and then you somehow figuring out there's a treasure chest on that unused platform which you never have to jump on to complete the dungeon!