Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 12

Done. 100%. Just right before the end of the year, I've finally completed Breath of the Wild in "Normal Mode", where I finished the final task of collecting all 900 Korok Seeds. This massive journey of a game started in early March and lasted for over 600 hours according to my Wii U, which is a lot, probably a lot longer than for most people. But keep in mind that I usually let the game run while writing this blog or even while doing other things at home, so it's not all pure game time. And I haven't been using any guides, so I kept searching through the wide landscapes of Breath of the Wild again and again in order to find all Sheikah Shrines, overworld bosses and Koroks, instead of clearing everything more efficiently in few swoops.

The Champion Diaries

When I first played the new DLC, the Champions' Ballad, I was kind in a hurry, so I didn't pay much attention to the new dialogues that they added around the four Champions. Kass points out that you should talk to the important persons in the respective towns, but I didn't take the time for this until later. Turns out that for each Champion you can find their diaries and read about their thoughts at the time, which adds some interesting details.

Some of it is fun, other stuff is completely weird, though, especially the part, where Link seemingly was able to best Hylian Knights at the age of 4. If he was around ten years old (like in Ocarina of Time), I wouldn't mind that fact, but four year old Link doing this seems rather extreme. But whatever.

Also, with Revali I had hopes that his diary might redeem his character a little, but instead it even made him look like a bigger douche...

Another nice detail is that you can hang the Picture of the Champions, which you got from Kass, in your house, next to your bed (this only seems to work, when you're finished with purchasing all parts). This was a surprising and beautiful little moment.

Looking for Koroks in All the Right (and Wrong) Places

After leaving my four walls behind, I donned my riding suit to embrace the wild with my brand new bike. This "riding suit" used a Korok Mask instead of a safe helmet (as if Link would ever need that), because it was time to hunt those last little wooden friends. 67 Koroks were left for me to find and I got them all in less than two weeks.

The Master Cycle Zero was a big boost of motivation for that and helped tremendously in exploring the vast areas. To me this was like a completely new way of experiencing the world of Breath of the Wild. But to be fair, I rarely ever used horses, because they seemed inconvenient and they often have a mind of their own. They are very nice to travel swiftly along the roads, but you rarely find Koroks at the roads, you find Koroks by leaving the designated paths and by exploring in all the corners. And the bike really helps with that, because you can summon it absolutely anywhere outside of the Gerudo Desert, Death Mountain and for some reason also Rito Village and Zora's Domain. But if you're in some rocky mountains, you can just summon it and go faster. You don't have to worry about it falling into an abyss, because you can just summon it again right away. It just makes exploring everything so much more fun, convenient and faster.

Otherwise my strategy was using a combination of the Korok Mask and Hero's Path Mode, two features from the Master Trials DLC. I kept studying my path for gaps in the last 200 hours and then I would explore these gaps with the Korok Mask. Often this would lead to nowhere, empty hills with nothing but dirt and rocks, but in the very least the Master Cycle Zero helped covering all that ground quickly. In other cases I hit the jackpot, for example I found three Koroks at the entrance to Gerudo Canyon...

The Master Cycle Zero even prove itself useful in one of the Korok puzzles:

Going by bike (or horse) also prevents random spawns like the various Stal enemies, which is a blessing. One of the most annoying things while looking for Koroks have been the ridiculous amount of Stals popping up every two meters. They either just drain your weapons or you have to take them out inconveniently with bombs. Sometimes, when you leave them in the middle of a fight, the battle music also keeps going on... All that really helps is skipping to the next day or to stay on your bike.

Well, there are many uses to the Master Cycle Zero and one more would be inside the Typhlo ruins, where the headlights actually shine the way...

Still, the dark areas in the game seem completely unfun and broken, because that's not realistic lighting in any way, and I could have saved myself the trouble, because there are no Koroks to find there.

The Master Cycle Zero wasn't my only way of traveling, however, because I also went over various waters with a raft. There's another new "Swift Sail" ability that comes with the Island Lobster Shirt from the newest DLC. If you wear this outfit, rafts are propelled with a lot more power and you can go much faster...

It's so fast indeed that I got thrown off during a Blood Moon or after ramming a Lizalfos in the water. That's a little annoying then, because the raft gains such a great distance that you have to swim for a while to catch up. But it's still fun and a nice hidden feature of one of the new outfits. I'd wish that there were more creative with the other DLC outfits as well and that you actually could enhance them.

What also has been helpful were the enhanced Champion abilities. Especially that Revali's Gale regenerates so fast now increased my mobility and my willingness to climb all kinds of mountains quite a lot. And with Urbosa's Fury engaging enemy camps again is usually also a job done quick.

To finish things up, whenever I felt like I was completely done with searching everywhere within an area, I checked on ZeldaMaps.com or similar online maps to see, if I really got everything. I found about a dozen missing Koroks that way and I'm not really happy about that, because when it comes to Zelda I usually want to do it all on my own, but it was a necessity at the end. The main problem is that the game doesn't provide any area-based data on the map. A Link Between Worlds did that for its Maiamais and that was a really short game. For Twilight Princess HD they even added regional counters for Poe Souls and there were "only" 60 of those. But for the massive amount of 900 Korok Seeds in the largest game world that Nintendo ever has created, for some reason they didn't bother with this.

If I knew, how many Koroks were left in each area, I could focus on clearing every area one after another and I would know, where to search for the remaining few. But the game didn't allow this, all I had was the Korok Mask and Hero's Path Mode, where the latter wasn't entirely useful, because you can't reset it. While I was looking for gaps, my Hero's Path still covered times, where I didn't even have the Korok Mask and ran by some Koroks without noticing.

The Final Koroks

So, where were the final few wooden guys? The last of the last...?

Of course I found about half a dozen more Koroks in the Hebra region. This area gave me trouble from the start, but at least I did found all except two without looking on any solution maps. I also missed a Korok in the icy parts of the Great Plateau, which was devilishly hidden, and my third from last was near Mount Lanayru. So, plenty of Koroks left in the cold. But at least I managed to completely clear the Gerudo Highlands before this.

Anyway, there was a beautiful moment in Tanagar Canyon, where I shot Dinraal for one of his claws and it landed right above a location with a Korok that I had missed so far. That was awesome.

Overall a common puzzle that I discovered multiple times at the end were "dead end rocks". These are simply Koroks hiding under a rock in what appears to be "dead ends" around cliffs. I missed several of those.

My final two Koroks were special, so I will post them directly here:

As a reference, here's how my Hero's Path looks like after scouting for the remaining Koroks and searching almost everywhere:

Tourok 3 - Shadow of Hestu

Well, I knew already what the final reward would be, but it's still fun to finally see this for myself...

Back to Boss

Master Mode?

So, this is it for my "Normal Mode" run of Breath of the Wild. Took me long enough, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. However, there's still the "Master Mode", where I want to fully complete the game a second time next year. But now that I have found everything I will do things more efficiently and use check maps right from the start to clear entire areas in one go, instead of aimlessly exploring everywhere a dozen times. So, this should go a lot faster and the focus of my "Master Log" will be on what has changed in Master Mode and how I had to adapt. This won't happen right away, but later in 2018.

Right now I'm not sure, whether I also want to do this on the Wii U or to play it on the Nintendo Switch. If Nintendo releases a Breath of the Wild Special Edition Switch with both the game and the DLC pre-installed, I'll be getting this. Otherwise I'll play "Master Mode" on the Wii U. There's also the chance that Nintendo releases more updates with some minor content, similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 crossover in version 1.3.3. In this case I might post another small edition of the "EX Log". But for now it's "Buh-bye!"