Five items from Oracle of Seasons used to find a hidden treasure.
Dragon Key: Amid the rocky peaks and bottomless pits of Goron Mountain there is a small patch of ground reachable only with the help of a flying companion. Riding atop the flying panda Moosh, Link can reach this hard-to-reach location and earn the Dragon Key as a reward for his perseverance. The key is required to stop the flow of the waterfall that covers the entrance to the Dancing Dragon Dungeon.
According to legend, a great dragon so disliked their heirs that instead of passing down some of their great wealth to their newly independent children, the dragon hid their hoard at the end of an impossibly complex trail of secrets and clues. To even find the start of the trail, one must have a dowsing rod made from silver that once was part of the dragon’s vast hoard. Many claim to have knowledge on the whereabouts of such rods, but few offers are credible, and even less are safe.
Treasure Map: In Oracle of Seasons, the treasure map is an optional purchase from the member’s only basement shop in Horon Village. The map shows Link the locations of all four of the jewels needed to unlock the gates of the Tarm Ruins. While jewels remain unfound, they show up as sparkling sprites on Link’s map of Holodrum. Link can find all four jewels without the map, but the completionist in me feels a desperate need to buy all the unique items, regardless if I need them or not.
After following riddles and implications, the trail will lead to a vast library that supposedly contains the map for the final leg of the trail. Unfortunately, the map has been purposefully hidden without reference or clue, so seekers must think of a way to find the map’s location. The librarians that manage the vast collection are also loathed to let anything and anyone leave the library's doors, as they are quick to remind all who enter that it is a reference library, not a lending library.
Pyramid Jewel: One of the four jewels that act as keys for the Tarm ruins. Link can usually find the pyramid jewel at the end of a flooded side-scrolling cavern found by diving in a pool near the entrance to the Dancing Dragon Dungeon. In a Linked game, the jewel is dropped in a difficult-to-reach ledge by a bat monster sent by General Onox to stop Link from obtaining all four jewels. The monster could have done their job better by just taking the jewel into one of the many places Link cannot actually reach, instead of just placing it where he will eventually be able to grab the jewel, but game design and real-life logic are most often at odds.
Part of the great difficulty of finding the treasure is the persistent rumor that only the lucky may find the entrance to the hoard. At one stop on the map, seekers must cast a die and follow whichever direction is shown on the die. Did the great dragon simply include a gate that keeps three-quarters of all seekers out, or is there more to this cast than can be seen with the eye?
Round Jewel: The round jewel is another one of the Tarm Ruins keys. This one is given to Link by an Old Man after he crosses the halfway mark on his quest to gather all nine Essences of Nature for the Great Maku Tree. This is a nice way to ensure that players cannot enter a zone without first conquering the prerequisite challenges and earning their various rewards. As an adult looking back on this sort of hard progress stop, I feel it is a bit heavy-handed, but when I first played this game as a kid I accepted it at face value and was just happy to receive a new cool mysterious jewel.
Those who succeed in passing the test of the cast die find that the dragon truly believed that only fools rely on luck to make any sort of decision. This knowledge is invaluable as the final challenge before the dragon’s treasure hall is navigating a labyrinth filled with locked doors. Each lock must be presented with a symbol and a number, and each lock has some clue to help the deserving seeker advance, but each lock also has dire consequences for offering an incorrect guess.
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Fun fact about the treasure map, it is a translation of a real map of a real place that is real special to me, and it uses fake script from a real movie that is real special to me. Sorry for the annoying sing-song paragraph you find yourself in, I just like to play with words sometimes.
Brownie points to anyone who can recognize the real-life location or script used on the map. Bonus brownie points for those who can correctly identify both.
Be prepared for a bunch more dice in the coming weeks. Once I started that mini-project, I had to see it through and draw all the dice from the standard seven dice set for d20 based RPG’s.
Welcome to March 2021. March 2020 was full of surprises, so I am hopeful that less problematic news pops up during this month. I’m pre-writing this post, so I may have totally jinxed it for everyone.
Here’s to a rising tide that lifts all ships. Be like that tide, be excellent to everyone.
-Ceph
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