Kids These Days

Head back towards Link’s house when you want to move on in the game. Rusl will tell you that he left something for you in your bedroom. Hopefully it’s not another one of those freaky love letters. That creep, you’ve told him to knock that off!

Before you head inside, talk to the girls for a makeshift slingshot lesson. When you’re done with it, be sure to lock onto the spider on the ladder leading to your home and shoot it before heading up. When you reach your house, open the chest in front of you to find your Wooden Sword. Yay!

’Please, sir! May I have another!’

Talk to the girls outside and tell them you’ll show them all about swordplay. They’ll give you a rundown on the basic sword attacks that are available to you.

• Horizontal Slice: Shake the Wiimote from side to side.
• Vertical Slice: Shake the Wiimote up and down.
• Stab: Hold Z to target, tilt the nunchuck analog stick forward, and shake the Wiimote.
• Spin Attack: Shake the nunchuck from side to side.
• Jump Attack: Use Z-targeting and press A.

Super Monkey Brawl

After slashing your way through combat training, a monkey will come and lure all the little children out towards the lake area where Ilia washed Epona. You’ll have to head past it, into the Faron Woods, to find the monkey and the last child, Talo, that’s been chasing it. Unfortunately, there’s a gate in your path, so head back and mount Epona to follow the path. When you reach the cave that Epona refuses to go into, take a left and head into the clearing there to find a hippie salesman. Damn hippies! This one’s all right, though, as he’ll give you a lantern for free, all as part of a ruse to sell you lantern oil when you run low. An astute economist, this one. Little does he know that you’ll take his lantern and buy your oil at Walmart for 75% of his asking price! Sucker!

With the lantern in hand, head back to the cave and walk inside. You’ll have to kill the Audrey II outside the cave; just lock onto it and swing that Wiimote to do the honors! It’ll drop a seedpouch; grab it and throw it to restore your slingshot ammo. In the cave, swing your lantern at the stone pillars to light them up as you move along. You’ll also need to use it to burn through any spider webs that you spot. When you come to a fork in the path, head right to find a chest with a 10-Rupee spot in it before moving further down the path to reach another exterior area.

Five pieces? What the hell? All our Zelda math is going to be screwed up now.

There are plenty of monsters here for you to fight, so feel free to get after them with a vengeance. For the most part, simple slashes will kill them quickly enough, but don’t forget your jump attack and spin attack. The spin attack is also handy for cutting patches of grass down, since they’ll sometimes restore your health. There’s also what appears to be a jumping puzzle on the western side of this area, but before you frustrate yourself trying to jump it, take our word on it and just ignore it for now.

The gate in the southeastern corner of the zone is locked, so head through the northeastern passageway to find a small cave. If you open the chest here, you’ll gain the Small Key, which you can use on the locked gate in the previous area. Lighting both of the pedestals on either side of the chest will reveal another, hidden chest, which contains your first Piece of Heart. You’ll need to find five of them to make a full new heart container.

Rescuing Telo

You may need more lantern oil before heading into this next area. Well, you actually won’t, but if you want some, you can return to the hippie for a refill, but it’ll cost you 20 rupees. Or, you can just unlock the gate leading to the Temple and grab some oil from the parrot-vendor there; it’ll cost the same amount of money. You can even get away with stiffing the parrot of his fee, but he’ll attack you if you attempt to visit the shop again. You can appease his wrath by dropping the money into the box underneath his perch.

When you’re ready to free Telo, head up the ramp towards where she’s being held prisoner, defeat the monsters, then slash at the cage until she and the monkey are free. With that done, you’ll return to the village and make ready for your trip to Hyrule, but not before herding some more goats! There are 20 of them in all this time, and your target time for getting them all in is three minutes. You don’t appear to get anything special for beating that time, though.

You Meddling Kids

So these guys get kidnapped and probably killed...who exactly loses here?

Before you head out to Hyrule, Ilia horsenaps Epona and takes her to the spring for some special rubbing. Whoa now! Before you can follow her, you’re forced to let some of the rugrats borrow your wooden sword. Way to be responsible there, Link. Now you’re going to have to answer for all their splinters.

Anyway, hand the sword over and head down to the spring. Ilia won’t let you through the gate, but Talo will fill her in on the deets. You have to crawl to them through the little tunnel that can be found in the small clearing near the exit to your house in order to make it to the spring. Just head back to the path leading to your house and check the eastern wall to find the tunnel. After all this trouble, Ilia basically insults you by telling you not to try and do anything too hard for you while you’re on your journey. Man, if we were Link, we’d give her what-for for all this running around, but apparently all he can do is stand there, mute.