Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Hyrule Warriors - True 100%

When it comes to Zelda, I am an extreme completionist. I've completed everything in the entire Zelda series with the sole exception of the 999.99 seconds Cucco Run in A Link Between Worlds, which still makes me unhappy that Nintendo decided to put such an insane challenge in my favorite series. But at least Hyrule Warriors won't be another exception, even though this game is a real time sink (but a fun one). After a staggering 380 hours I achieved the following:

  • all characters on Level 99
  • crafted all badges
  • collected all Heart Containers and Pieces
  • unlocked all weapons and costumes
  • got all 120 Gold Skulltulas
  • unlocked the Master Sword seal
  • cleared Legend Mode on all four difficulties
  • scored "A" rank on every Adventure Mode battle (one exception)
  • achieved all medals

The one exception is the "A" rank for the Boss Rush level on the Rewards Map. Easily the most difficult mission in the game and you can only take ten hearts of damage, which Ganon can subtract with one single blow. This is the matter of the right character choice and quite some luck. But unlike the Cucco Run I feel that this is doable and I will probably be looking at full "A" ranks everywhere soon.

Until the DLC arrives of course, so this is only a temporary 100%. And I'm certainly not unhappy about this, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming updates. And even though I've pretty much done everything, I'm still playing the game. One goal, which still remains, is crafting "perfect" weapons for everyone. For this I have to clear at least one Legendary seal with every weapon type, which takes its time (though the new "Rack up your K.O. count" missions really help). So far I've done it for Lana's Book, Ganondorf's Great Swords, Zant's Scimitars, Cia's Staff and Wizzro's Ring. Fi and Ghirahim will probably be next.

I also try to get a nice setup on these legendary weapons. I really enjoy having Bombs+ and Materials+ on them. The Elemental bonus is also nice and useful except with multi-element weapons like the Lyra. So, I try to have at least these skills. I'm currently undecided, if I also want Stars+ and Sockets+ or if I rather go for more Strength skills. But I guess, the looting is fine. And I certainly hope that the upcoming DLC and updates will provide some challenges, so that these near-perfect weapons will come to good use. Though I already made good use of them in Hero Mode. With level 99 characters and legendary weapons the difficulty is just right.

What would also be nice, is the ability to replace existing weapon skills. That certainly would help a lot with crafting the weapons, you want. But maybe in an update... because that's supposedly a normal feature in a Warriors game and some fans might ask for it. Right now I had some luck using gold empty sockets potions on Network Links. For example it gave me a completely black five star Scepter of Souls for (my favorite) Cia with six sockets. It seems rare to get more than six sockets from a Network Link, sadly.

But I don't count the weapons as part of the 100%, because they are not permanent. You can always (accidently) sell them, so the only weapon seal, which counts, is the Master Swords'.

(By the way, making backups of savegames on the Wii U is a hassle. You need an external hard drive, copy the ENTIRE game (I have the digital version) and then delete the copy of the game with the exception of the save file. I miss the old Wii times, where I just can copy the save file on a SD card. In any case, this is not a savegame, which I want to lose. But I'm not even sure, if making a copy on an external drive is any good. If the Wii U gets damaged and needs repair, it probably won't be compatible afterwards, because Nintendo keeps everything very restricted. And this is just another example, how unfriendly the Wii U is. As much as I love its games and the GamePad, Nintendo needs to learn to make things easier and simpler for everyone.)

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