And then there was one. One! Just one Sage left!

And not only that, but I’ve upgraded my sword using a couple of Master Ores, and I managed to find the Blue Mail (which was in the Swamp Palace, even though some people on MiiVerse told me it was in the Ice Ruins – pfff, idiots).

On top of that I’m also most of the way through the final remaining dungeon (bar, I presume, Lorule Castle), which happens to be the Dark Palace. It’s a bit confusing, and very dark, but the enemies are a complete walkover. It would seem that despite the name and perceived level of evilness the dark suggests, this is intended to be a dungeon done much earlier in the game. Not that it matters!

More not-actually-aimless wandering led to the accidental discovery of Turtle Rock, and the completion of it. The actual dungeon was very small, but involved several “layers” on each of the two floors and was actually quite complicated.

It was pretty easy though, brain-twisty puzzles aside, and the boss was easily seen off.

After that, I set about looking for entrances to other dungeons, finding my way to the Dark Palace (which had a rubbish stealth section before it – mercifully, it was easy and very short) and whatever the one in Lorule’s Lost Words equivalent is called. Triggering the weather vanes outside will make getting to each of these easier later on. While in those woods, I found a guy who wanted to sell me “a treasure” for 888 rupees. Since I have a billion rupees, I said yes – and he gave me a golden bee which I passed on to Bee Guy for a Bee Badge. Apparently, bees won’t pester me any more. Not that they ever did, mind.

This is slow going. Not that slow going is a problem, and it’s actually mostly my “fault” as I keep getting sidetracked looking for treasure and stuff – only to be disappointed that I don’t have the Titan’s Mitt to pick up big rocks. Well, sorted that by getting the mitt from the Desert Palace. Now (I think!) I can reach everywhere, as I’ve all the weapons too.

But I’m ahead of myself. Before the Desert Palace (which, like in Link to the Past, was “split” into several sections inside and outside the dungeon – and in this game split across both Hyrule and Lorule) I completed the Ice Palace. It wasn’t hard, but was substantially harder than I was anticipating at this still-relatively-early stage in the game. Enemies were taking 4 or 5 hearts off with a single hit, so I had to be careful. Thankfully, there’s a supply of fairies in a central thoroughfare so I could frequently heal up without much trekking. Then I remembered – you can do dungeons in any order, so it stands to reason I might hit a hard one early, which is what I suspect I did. In addition to the enemies, the puzzles were a bit brain bendy too, so yeah.

After that, the Desert Palace was a complete walkover.  Even though I forgot I had the sand rod several times so temporarily struggled with the scarab things and buried chests. Old age, eh?