Zelda Extreme Challenge Four: The Stepladder and the Lizard

Originally I was going to try to take on the Dragon today. I very quickly decided that I would like to have more bombs before trying that.

Conveniently, I think level four is the closest one to the starting screen, so we can make it there easily. I've always thought the raft was kind of a cop-out item, since it doesn't really do anything except open level four and another container heart.

Shooting Keese with arrows is still annoying...

And it's such a waste to use a key on this door, but the challenge says we have to..

Our first dark room of the game! There will be plenty more to come, but we won't be able to light them up until we finish level seven.

And with some kill counting, we can bomb a couple Vires without wasting anything.

...And then immediately get hit by a Vire in the next room. I had to use these Zols to check where my kill counter was since I'd lost track.

 Bubbles and Like Likes... Usually annoying, but I don't think they'll give us too much trouble in this swordless/shieldless run (unless we get eaten by one without any bombs in reserve).

We got what we came for, so let's save and quit and move on.

And we will absolutely need to max out our rupees for what is to come.

The Lost Hills are a pretty awful maze... No wonder they were never included in another Zelda game. But before we head up them...

I have to follow up on a hot tip an old man gave me!

The risk of dying to a Lynel was totally worth this pointless joke.

I'm not sure if everyone knows that there's a secret staircase under this Armos! Of course, it still leads into level five normally...

After bombing a path through the next two rooms, we'll kill five Pols Voice, leave the labyrinth, and come back to kill four more. Next enemy is a guaranteed bomb drop.

Hello Blue Darknuts. I really don't want to deal with you guys...

Unfortunately, we still end up running out of bombs with one Darknut left to go.

So let's head back here to get some more bombs. Including a random drop I get in this room, we're all stocked up again.

I swear I'm not usually this bad at bombing these guys... Part of me also wonders if it would be cheating or not to just clip though the blocks instead of killing the enemies in this run. Either way, I doubt I could do that without a sword.

We kill two of the Darknuts in this next awful room before we have to leave.

God would I ever. Sadly this is really going to eat into our wallet.

And yet it still takes me 11 bombs to kill the last four Darknuts. I don't know what's wrong with me today...

Recorder get, no more need to deal with Blue Darknuts today.

This was just two rooms of Gibdos, and we're already bleeding rupees. Guaranteed I'll have to gamble before next time.

The rules of the Extreme Challenge state that we have to kill every boss, but we don't have enough bombs now... If we don't get lots more soon, we'll have to come back to this labyrinth later.

Thank god for guaranteed bomb drops.

And fortunately we can 'hide' from these Darknuts on the (invisible) water. Or lava. Or blood, I'm not sure what that red liquid is.

I was hoping for a random bomb drop from them. I was disappointed.

On the one hand, guaranteed bomb drop. On the other hand, we have nowhere near enough to finish those Dodongos, and we're almost out of rupees. At least we have the Recorder so we can come back quickly next time.

There's a (well-known) easy strategy for killing Digdogger: Lay a bomb, immediately blow the Recorder, immediately lay a bomb.

Of course, a bad shot from that statue nearly wrecks my chance, and more importantly, nearly knocks my into the container heart spawn position.

It might have been a mistake to come into this room, but we have enough rupees to spare if we use the last of our bombs.

So there are three rooms left to visit in the Lizard and three Dodongos to kill for next time.

And after that... either the Dragon or the Demon, I'm still undecided.