Friday, December 8, 2017

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 9



One Hit Wonder


Well, I didn't expect this part... Once you go back to the Shrine of Resurrection, you can find the One-Hit Obliterator, a weapon that kills everything with one hit, as the name might suggest. The catch? You're reduced to a quarter heart and everything will kill you with one hit, too. I just finished this part and it was somewhat stressful. In general I don't really enjoy "Don't get hit" challenges like this (they were a pain in Hyrule Warriors) and this one certainly resulted in some cheap deaths. I guess, I have to play another 200 hours looking for Koroks to erase these marks of shame from my Hero's Path timeline. Just kidding...

But it was demotivating as first. It's like with the Trial of the Sword, where they take all your stuff away. You work hard and invested hundreds of hours to become super powerful in the game and when they finally add new challenges after all this time, they make sure to cripple you first. "27 Heart Containers? Not with us!"

So, to beat the challenge you have to take on an enemy camp and then clear a shrine that appears afterwards. And this four times in total. Luckily you can save at any time, because if they did this with a "no saving allowed" mechanic like on Eventide, this would be an endless nightmare.

You can find two Phrenic Bows early on and I made good use of them to snipe enemies from a safe distance. I also ate through my collection of Savage Lynel Bows to clear the camps and to fight all the small Guardian Scouts. Sure, you have the One-Hit Obliterator, but it loses its power after two hits and then you have to run, so it's only useful to take out the really big enemies, like silver (or gold) level.

I did the four shrines in the following order, as probably most people:

  1. Yowaka Ita Shrine (in the Forest of Spirits)
  2. Rohta Chigah Shrine (near Eastern Abbey)
  3. Ruvo Korbah Shrine (near the Old Man's hut)
  4. Etsu Korima Shrine (next to Mount Hylia)

As if the Great Plateau needed more shrines on it... The shrines were actually quite creative, but the worst one by far was the Rohta Chigah Shrine. I only ever experienced so many cheap deaths in a Zelda game once and that was in the Hero's Trial in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition. Combining one-hit kills with lots of spiked traps was sadistic at best. It took me about a dozen tries to get through this mess. Especially the part with the three spiked balls was troublesome.

The Ruvo Korbah Shrine on the other hand was nicely done...



The other two shrines weren't that remarkable, but still good. I also liked the "Lost Woods" atmosphere on the Great Plateau, they completely transformed the place and even added new active Decayed Guardians in other spots. And lots of new wooden chests. At the end I felt like I was probably missing something and I could/should have explored all of the Plateau in this mode, but the whole one-hit thing wasn't really motivating enough.


Also, you can find Kass singing about summoning horses and I tried the whistle next to him, only to be surprised that the Ancient Saddle even teleports your horse up to the Great Plateau, even during the trial. I didn't find it useful in the scenario, though.

I also guess that I was mostly off with my final predictions, while my original predictions were more accurate. They did add new Shrines offering you new Spirit Orbs for a Heart Container (or Stamina Vessel).

They even added a new entry to the Hyrule Compendium for the One-Hit Obliterator (you can still find it in the Shrine of Resurrection afterwards). And there appear to be three new enemies in the game that weren't there before. I think, one is a new type of Molduga that we saw in the trailer. The other might be Electric Pebblits, judging from its location in the Compendium, right after Igneo and Frost Pebblits. And the other might be a new Yiga or a new form of Master Kohga... You can't buy the pictures from Symin, however, but Nintendo still didn't let them stop themselves from adding new stuff anyway. Though I suppose, all will just be re-skins of existing enemies, instead of actual new enemies.

And there seem to be at least four more shrines, where hopefully we will be able to get the full 30 Heart Containers and three Stamina Wheels now. And there seems to be a new Divine Beast, where my best guess is that it's a giant horse (probably placed somewhere on Hyrule Field) and they combined all aspects of the four other Divine Beasts in this one, e.g. using all four elements. This even might be, where you can re-battle all four Blights.

But I'm speculating here about something that's already known, sorry. With the instant release Nintendo stole the joy of speculating about the new trailer, so I have to do it while I'm playing. But I will probably see tomorrow, how many new shrines there are in total and how the new Divine Beast looks like. Please don't put spoilers in the comments.


Current Progress:
  • EX Memories: 0/5
  • EX Side Quests: 13/13
  • Koroks: 833/900
  • Map Rate: 93.48%

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