Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 30

It's the last day of April already and just now I managed to find and complete all 120 Sheikah Shrines in Breath of the Wild. Took me long enough, but this speaks for the game!


Horsing Around

One of my side goals is finding good horses and so far I didn't have much luck with that. Other than the three special horses, I want a black horse named "Hilda" and a blue horse named "Midna", after I had named the white horse "Zelda". But problem is that I keep getting the exact same stats:

Four strength, three Speed and four Stamina. This goes for both the black and the blue horses. It seems like the best that I can get, which is a little disappointing. I've been told that there are places, which give better horses, e.g. the Taobab Grassland, where you can find the Ganon horse. But I didn't have any luck there either, it usually starts with having lower Stamina.

It also doesn't help that you can't see the exact stats of a new horse, unless you let one go. That's somewhat annoying, ideally you could check the stats before replacing another horse, since you never can be sure, if it's really better.


Empty Areas

I've been looking for the last shrine and I arrived at a point, where even Sheikah Sensor+ on Treasure Chests doesn't give any readings anymore (other than the "ghost chests"). So, from time to time I was activating the normal Shrine Sensor, but that didn't really help me either. Nothing on the radar.

My target have been areas with nothing much to be found, like Mount Faloraa for example. Sometimes I would find some new Koroks, with certain named areas it's also likely to discover a Talus or Hinox. But sometimes it seems like there just isn't anything there at all.

Probably the most extreme example would be a part of the Faron Jungle, the Damel Forest and Dracozu River. Everything around this section has lots of stuff, including many Koroks, some Sheikah Shrines and more. But in this particular part of the jungle there's nothing to be found other than some treasure chests. And I have checked this area multiple times now, where I've climbed all the treetops looking for hidden rocks, balloons or windmills just in case there really still might be some Koroks there. What I found were three small caves behind destructible walls... Each of them got me excited for nothing, because there were just some ores inside.


The Final Shrine

Now, I've spent lots of time running all over Hyrule looking for the last shrine, where my intuition, which successfully led me to the previous two shrines, didn't help me this time. Even activating the Shrine Sensor every once in a while didn't help. So, I asked a simple question:

"What's possibly the worst place, where the last shrine could be hidden...?"

The answer was simple: Hebra, of course! And so I went back to the Hebra Mountains, where I just wanted to let the Shrine Sensor do its magic. However, I then switched back to the Treasure Chest Sensor, because I still was missing some chests around a certain area and funnily enough that's what brought me to the final shrine, the Maka Rah Shrine.

It's at Lake Kilsie. I stumbled over a new Korok in the hills above the lake and then heard the typical shrine cave music below me. I went down to check to find the shrine behind a crack in the rocks:

You now have to look for the real entrance to the cave, which is easy to miss. But discovering this shrine certainly was fun.

The trial was named "Steady Thy Heart" and it was an entertaining little trial, where you open gates and find some sort of threat after each one. I liked it and I'm happy that my last shrine was cleverly hidden and also not some mere Blessing.

One last time... before the DLC.

Other than getting the last Spirit Orbs, you also receive something else for completing all 120 Sheikah Shrines. The reward awaits at the Forgotten Temple, which is nice, because you can also use the big Goddess Statue there to do the last prayer.

If you don't want to know, what the reward is, stop reading now! To me this wasn't a surprise, because I had been accidentally spoiled about this on Youtube, but I don't want my blog to do the same for you. So, if you don't know yet and keep the surprise, stop reading!

It's the "Tunic of the Wild"!

If you already have all the amiibo tunics, it might not feel particularly special. But it's nice that players without any amiibo can still get a traditional tunic. Also, fully upgraded it does give the higher defense value and unlike the amiibo tunics you also dye the whole outfit, if you want to:

(Pants were not dyed here.)

It also has a "Master Sword Beam Up" Set Bonus... Which doesn't strike me as that useful. To be honest, for the longest time I didn't even know that you can "throw" sword beams with the Master Sword. I would have preferred it, if the sword beams came with each strike similar to the Windcleaver. Then this set bonus might even be useful.

Well, before the game came out, I was afraid that in the end you might just end up with the Master Sword, Hylian Shield and the traditional tunic, completely tossing the new look aside. And while I was right, the amount of time it needs to get all this stuff is pretty significant, so most of the game will still celebrate the diversity that Link can have. And nothing beats the Climbing Gear, imho.

Another Armor Upgrade

The rest of the day I spent upgrading the last set of armor. And I was right earlier this month (in Entry 24), when I upgraded all the other armor and speculated that there has to be at least one more piece of gear in the game that needs the claws of each dragon. That really was the case.

Other than that it needed Courser Honey Bee and Energetic Rhino Beetles. The bee hives were found quickly, pretty much every forest area in the game has some. The Energetic Rhino Beetles on the other hand were a little bit trickier and you need 15 in total of them. Don't give any to Beedle! As far as I know, there isn't anything gained from this anyway, other than him not being annoying for a little while. Him asking for the beetles really gets in the way of his business...

Anyway, there seem to be lots of them in Akkala and with the Stealth Armor equipped they are easy to grab. Unless some Yiga Blademaster suddenly spawns right in front of you and scares it of. Or some Stal enemies. Or it starts to rain. Or they just fly off on their own. Or, or, or... For Hylia's sake, the randomly spawning enemies and the rain are already annoying enough, but it's ten times worse, if they get in the way of your prey.

The last armor set also requires all different dragon parts of all three dragons, where I only was missing some of Naydra's. So, I spent the rest of the time on Mount Lanayru, waiting for the thing...

By the way, to farm the dragon parts I'm using the Twilight Bow that you can get with the Zelda Smash amiibo. It shoots in a straight line, so it's the best way to accurately target whichever part you need.

For the fourth upgrade it also costs a Star Fragment each, but luckily I have saved some, instead of already wasting them all on the amiibo gear. By now I've fully upgraded the Sheik's Mask, which took TEN Star Fragments in total. TEN!!!! The amiibo tunics don't seem to be as bad, but I still lost some motivation to "grind" for these. But I did get quite couple from defeating Lynels, so that's good.

I've also kept collecting amiibo gear, until my inventory was overstuffed, because I wanted to know the maximum. You can have a total of five pages of armor, which is enough for all the individual armor that you can get in the game and via amiibo. There isn't much room for having dyed duplicates, however.


What now?

I guess, I'm now finished with the important parts of the game, but there's still things left to do. Other than a total of 255 Koroks, I have still two Side Quests left to find, as well as three Talus and three Hinox for the Medals of Honor. And I have to complete Hyrule Compendium, but I have been doing a lot for this at the sidelines and I'm only missing a few entries.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 645/900
• Talus: 37/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 78.74%