Friday, December 8, 2017

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 8

The Champions' Ballad DLC Pack was released today as a surprise for the Game Awards 2017. If I wasn't already in the middle of hunting Koroks, this would have brought me back to the game for sure.

DLC Pack 2 includes a new Main Quest that leads to new shrines, new memories and a new dungeon. But it also comes with a series of six new EX Side Quests that lead to some new armor pieces. I started with those and it's pretty much the same junk quests that they added with the "Master Trials" DLC Pack. New Rumor Mills and journals with riddles about locations of treasure chests that they simply dropped somewhere. Nothing special.


Ancient Horse Gear


The first items that I went for were the Ancient Bridle and the Ancient Saddle. At first I thought that both riddles would lead to the same place at Mount Satori, but I got the second riddle wrong. It's not really complicated and you quickly can gather this new gear. I would even argue that this is one of the easiest to get...


Yet at the same time it's the most useful. The Ancient Bridle adds two blue spurs to your horse's stamina, while the Ancient Saddle lets you teleport your horse to your location by whistling. Again, like with the Korok Mask or the Travel Medallion this feels like something that should have been part of a free update, not paid DLC. And with these features there's no reason to use any of the other horse gear sets over this one. All saddles and bridles should have had abilities as well, while so far they only changed the looks of your horse. The Knight's Bridle and Saddle for example could have increased your horse's strength. But the way it is now, there's only one useful set.

I wanted more horse gear and specifically Ancient Horse Gear for a while now (see my Traveller's Gear Post for example), where I'm happy that they added this, but it has a sour taste to it, simply because it doesn't integrate into the existing game all too well.

It also doesn't work all too well. I tried to use it in multiple spots south of Death Mountain, but it just said that my horse isn't able to come. I actually had to go to the Foothill Stable, before I finally could summon my horse, which kind of beats the purpose, because I just could have taken it from stable. Maybe it works better in other places, but my first impression was not a good one. It's still a cool feature, though.


Too Much Armor Pack


I decided to collect all the new armor pieces next and was disappointed immediately by the fact that I couldn't even pick them up. Nintendo added nine new armor pieces here for a total of 107 individual pieces in the game, but the inventory has only space for 100! So, you now you have to decide, which pieces you don't want to have in your collection. I decided to sell the Tingle, Phantom and Salvage Gear sets for now, because they are useless anyway thanks to their inability of being enhanced. That applies to all the new armor as well, but you still need to make room to find them a first time and to clear the new EX Side Quests.

Luckily they made it so that you can now re-purchase all DLC armor from Granté in the 1.3.3 update from last month or otherwise you actually would have to sell good gear to make space for the useless DLC stuff, which you would have had to keep, because it was irreplaceable at first. But ideally they would add at least one more page of armor to your inventory with the next update, if there ever will be one.

Anyway, you get another lazy quest following Misko's Journals to some chests somewhere in the world. There it was a really "nice" idea to hide two new chests around Lake Floria, an area known for its glitched chest(s) to annoy you with the fact that they still haven't fixed this. Or if you're more of a casual player, the entire area might be still plastered with countless treasure chests making it hard to find the ones with the actual goodies. At least if you're relying on the Sheikah Sensor+.



The new pieces look nice, but as usual you can't upgrade them and they don't seem to offer any new abilities, except Ravio's Hood, which increases sideways climbing speed as a nod to the Wall Merge ability. It's not all too useful, though...


So, I'm done with the junk quests. Lets check out the new Main Quest in my next log entry and hope that it won't disappoint as much. However, from what I gathered in the trailer, it will be four new Sheikah Shrines and one new Divine Beast, alongside five new memories. This doesn't seem very original and it also doesn't seem to be much, but let's see...


Current Progress:
  • EX Memories: 0/5
  • EX Side Quests: 13/13
  • Koroks: 832/900
  • Map Rate: 93.07%

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