Tears of the Kingdom: Players fed up with Iun-Orok Shrine even though they know the solution 

Many The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players continue to give up on the conventional way to complete the Iun-Orok Shrine and are instead devising their own simple methods. This could be related to the fact that even if you know what to do, it still requires a great deal of perseverance.  

Please note that this article contains spoilers about various solutions to the final puzzle in Iun-Orok Shrine, including the method that is generally regarded as the “correct” solution. 

The majority of shrines in Tears of the Kingdom will display the theme of the puzzles within immediately after the player enters. For example, the shrine with the Forward Force theme has a number of Big Wheel Zonai Devices placed throughout, which gives you a hint at what you’re supposed to do. At the same time, it’s also possible to complete many shrines while completely ignoring the point of the puzzles that block your path.  

There’s one shrine, in particular, that has players giving up on finding a solution based on its theme. In the Tabantha area, located in the west of Hyrule, you will find the Iun-Orok Shrine. The theme for this shrine is “The Right Roll,” and the fundamental way of solving its puzzles involves rolling spheres down slopes in order to activate switches shaped like targets.  

The final puzzle of this shrine has three different sized spheres that players can use: small, medium, and large. There is a slope that curves to the right but ends slightly before the wall where the switch is located. Hitting the switch will open the wall, allowing players to reach the goal of the shrine. The standard approach that most would think of is to combine the spheres with Ultrahand and then roll them down the slope. Of course, you need to decide which spheres you will use and how to combine them.  

However, we continue to see players from all over the world ignoring the theme of Iun-Orok Shrine and tackling the puzzle in their own way. One Reddit user uses Fuse to attach the sphere to a weapon and then throws it at the switch to activate it. There was also a player on Twitter who used Ultrahand to lift the spheres above the switch and then simply dropped them. The spheres managed to activate the switch by clipping it on the way down. It was like a machine quickly reading a key card as you swipe it. This shows that it isn’t necessary to have the spheres hit the switch with a lot of force. 

Other methods that ignore the shrine theme have also been discovered. In a video posted by another Reddit user, the player begins by connecting the three spheres and rolling them like intended, but fails when the spheres go in the opposite direction of the switch and fall off the slope. Possibly because they found that approach too troublesome, they then decided to hurl a Rock Hammer at the switch, activating it, and then heading to the goal. It turns out you don’t even need to use the spheres to hit the switch in the first place. Another user in the thread noted that they were able to activate the switch using an arrow with a Bomb Flower attached to it. It appears that as long as it’s a weapon that can break rocks, then it will be able to activate the switch.  

Anoher player mentioned that they understood what you needed to do to solve the puzzle in line with the shrine’s theme, but still decided to give up on it after things didn’t go well. There are three different sized spheres that can be combined with Ultrahand, making four possible combinations depending on if you use two or three spheres. On top of that, you then have to work out where on the slope you will release them and from what angle. It takes a lot of trial and error to find the right combination that will activate the switch. 

It’s possible that players came up with alternate methods to the one described above via a flash of inspiration or perhaps by throwing their weapon in desperation while they continued to fail to solve the puzzle. On the other hand, you can also find players that stuck to the theme of the shrine and kept at it until they finally rolled the spheres to the switch. One of the conventional ways to solve the puzzle is to connect the medium and large spheres and roll them down the slope. However, it’s very difficult to adjust the placement and angle of the spheres, and there may be other combinations or ways of rolling the sphere that also work.  

Just like many other shrines in the game, Iun-Orok Shrine can be completed with a variety of different approaches. But what makes the shrine interesting is that even after you work out what to do, it still requires a lot of perseverance, and this is why plenty of players have given up on the “correct” method. 

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-06-10 17:44 JST)