I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess recently, and as you probably read, I did some stuff. More importantly, some cool stuff. I got up to the Gerudo Mesa, repaired the Bridge of Eldin, and uncovered the Cave of Ordeals. I’m pretty excited with these ventures, so I thought I would write about them.
Gerudo Mesa
Gerudo Mesa is located on the far southeast side of Gerudo Desert. The map to the left displays the locations of Poes, but Gerudo Mesa is just around #14. (I went to the mesa in the daytime, so I didn’t actually notice that there was a Poe there.) At first, the mesa may seem impossible to scale, but you just have to find the floating Peahats (plantlike masses hovering around) in the sky. These actually serve as Clawshot targets, and are a means of making your way up to the mesa. What you really are there for is the gigantic stone pillar, though. After approaching it, you must ask Minda to warp it to the Bridge of Eldin portal.
The Bridge of Eldin
After you warp the stone pillar through the Bridge of Eldin portal, you will have fixed the bridge, and now you can run across it. Originally, it was destroyed by a team of Shadow Beasts, but they really just teleported it to the Gerudo Mesa.
Protip: If you still can’t find the Gerudo Mesa after my directions, just look straight ahead (the Hawkeye helps) and you should see the stone pillar. It’s pretty big.
The Cave of Ordeals
After ascending Gerudo Mesa and fixing the Eldin Bridge (it always really annoyed me that I couldn’t cross that bridge. There were three large bridges in Hyrule, and I destroyed two of them.) you come to the Cave of Ordeals. You don’t need to do anything but warp back to the Mesa with the portal provided by the Shadow Beasts, because the part of the Bridge of Eldin was blocking the entrance to the cave.
When you enter the Cave of Ordeals, it turns it to be a dank and dark cave. (Who would have guessed it?) Within each room is a group of enemies, in a large pit that you have to jump down into.
Protip: when you enter each room, you normally can peek over the side of the cliff and get a sense of what you’ll be facing. (But watch out for archers. I took some damage by peeking over the side and getting hit by some Fire Archer Bulblins.)
There are fifty rooms in total, with enemies ascending in difficulty in each room. After each multiple of ten (10, 20, 30, 40, and 50) the Great Fairy will reward you by releasing fairies at each Spirit Spring. (Ordin Spring, Faron Spring, Eldin Spring, and Lanayru Spring.) if you reach the 50th floor, the Great Fairy will fill a bottle with the Fairies Tears, which replenishes all of your health and temporarily boosts your attack damage. In addition to that, she gives you the power to collect the Fairies Tears at any one of the Spirit Springs.
A Cave of Ordeals-esque area also appeared in The Wind Waker, which came out in 2003, three years before Twilight Princess and the Cave of Ordeals. That area, called the Savage Labyrinth, has around 50 floors as well, but completing the Labyrinth through floor 31 is required for the game. The entrance is located on Outset Island, (the first island in the game) as opposed to the Gerudo Mesa, which is a later area in Twilight Princess.
The Fortress of Helixity 