Just north of the Great Hyrule Forest, with its bright and cheerful Korok Forest and spooky Lost Woods, lies another wooded area where no chirpy Koroks can be found waiting for their “Mr. Hero” to come. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to hide there; finding a Korok at Thyphlo Ruins might be an impossible task and they might have to wait for an eternity. Thyphlo Ruins is, after all, quite literally the darkest corner of Hyrule.
The trees at Thyphlo Ruins are so old that they let no sunlight pass through their branches, so when Link enters the Ruins, he can’t see anything. Or, well, he wouldn’t see anything if there wasn’t a torch and small fire conveniently left for him at the entrance. Perhaps the Sheikah Monk who tells Link that a Shrine awaits him in the darkness left them for him.
Link trusts what his intuition tells him and lights the torch so he can explore the ruins. Without it, his surroundings will stay pitch black. Not even the light coming from his Sheikah Slate or an illuminating bomb produced by his Remote Bomb Rune will help him much.
When Link carries his torch, he does his best to follow the direction that the standing torches’ old, bird-like beaks are pointed towards, or else he might end up lost. The difference between getting lost in here and in the Lost Woods, though, is that if Link goes astray in Thyphlo Ruins, there’s no giggling Korok to be heard in the background, and Link won’t mysteriously get back to where he started. You might end up lost for real unless you make it a habit to start a small fire on top of the bird-torches’ heads as soon as you encounter one. The hours can pass by quickly in here and whether that is intentional or not, well, that’s up to you and Link.
That doesn’t mean that exploration is not encouraged here; on the contrary, if Link is courageous enough to not follow the stone birds’ path, he might be awarded with a Fire Rod, a Flamespear, or perhaps an opal. If he’s lucky, he might see a deer skip past him. If he’s unlucky, he might run into wild wolves and Keese. If he makes the same mistake as I did, trying to fight said wolves with a torch, the fire will go out and he’ll have to look out for two, tiny glowing canine eyes in the darkness.
Since vision is limited, it can be a good idea to pay more attention to surrounding sounds. Thyphlo Ruins is something like a larger island with ancient columns and, well, ruins overgrown with moss, so water is never too far away. Water is almost always fun but this is a dark place, and this time I’m not referring to a lack of light: The water here may not be just water but something thicker, and wading through it is difficult. If you’re not paying attention, it might pull Link down and eventually drown him.
So, our hero does his best to stay away from murky waters and follow the standing torches’ direction. Soon after stepping deeper into the ruins, a snoring Hinox can he heard. Fighting a Hinox in daylight is already a challenge, so defeating one in the dark will be no picnic — but channel your inner Hero’s Spirit and keep pressing on, and there will be a nice reward waiting for you at the end.
The Hinox will eventually wake up as Link gets closer, and like most Hinoxes in Breath of the Wild, it carries something valuable. This something happens to be an orb to activate a Sheikah Shrine. After Link defeats it and collects the orb, he knows he’s close to the Shrine that the Monk told him about earlier.
Although it might be a bit difficult to see in the darkness, Thyphlo Ruins shares some architectural resemblance to the Zonai Ruins in the Faron region. The huge dragon carvings in the stone will certainly make adventurers suffering from ophidiophobia (the fear of snakes) uneasy, given their serpentine appearance. The dragons don’t only serve as decorations, however, as setting vines and dry leaves on fire will make the growing plants light up a particularly large dragon in one of the dark corners of Thyphlo Ruins, if only for a short moment. Snake haters may not be having the best time, but pyromaniacs will have a blast.
Why Thyphlo Ruins were left to be forgotten remains a mystery. Perhaps the architectural style went out of fashion, or perhaps no one could bother taking care of all those torches and dragons. What is clear, though, is that no one has been here for a very long time. You and Link were probably the first ones to have had the courage to step into the darkness and come back successfully. As someone who’s afraid of dark spaces in real life, I can proudly say I’ve explored Thyphlo Ruins at least twice and might return one day for more visits. Perhaps you will too?
