Welcome back!
Last weekend I finally decided to start the "Master Mode" of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my Wii U. Originally I thought about waiting until I bought a Nintendo Switch, but I got in the mood for the game and didn't have anything really left to do in Normal Mode. This way I will also have the Wii U version fully completed on both modes, after I'm finished. And if Breath of the Wild is getting a sequel, I most likely will want to replay the game shortly before, which means that I will play it on Switch in the next years eventually.
So, this will continue my Adventure Log series, but with focus on replaying the game through Master Mode. It won't be as detailed as my previous logs, so I will mostly talk about the ups and downs of Master Mode, my general progress and anything that I haven't noticed during my first playthrough.
My motivation is to complete Master Mode this Spring and generally I will be playing a lot faster than before, because I know where everything is located this time and all the things I have to do. So, I won't run around aimlessly looking for Koroks for months. It will be more about planning a different route through the game to alter the experience as much as possible.
To be honest, my impression of Master Mode so far isn't really a good one. I wasn't a fan of the enemy scaling in this game to begin with, because for the longest time it feels like you aren't making any progress. You get stronger, but so do the enemies all the time. And since the enemies scale with you, it doesn't really matter where you go. Ultimately, the tiers of enemies should have grown regional, instead temporal. Much like in the first Zelda game. There should be Red and Blue Bokoblins on the Great Plateau, while Silver and Gold Bokoblins wait in Hebra. As simple as that.
With the incremented tiers in Master Mode, all it does is make me shy from conflicts, instead of embracing the fights. They put a White-Maned Lynel on the Great Plateau, so what? It makes absolutely no difference, because you just will go around it, much like with most of the enemy camps in the beginning, because fighting Black Bokoblins with a Tree Branch is suicide.
What would have made a difference, are Guardians. They actively hunt you down. But it doesn't seem like Master Mode added any of those, which is a shame, because this would have been an actual challenge. You can still beat them right in the beginning of the game, if you're good at Shield Parrying. A Pot Lid would be enough, if you have the godlike reflexes. But adding a Lynel in early territories, where you have little to no chance of beating him and where you will only run around him, isn't really that interesting.
To add to the whole avoidance of enemies, you even receive the new Majora's Mask item super early. In fact, I landed right on top of the chest, after I left the Great Plateau:
And it's quite helpful, because it keeps the more conscious enemies guessing for a while. You can wander around without becoming a target around every corner. It partially even helps with Octoroks, but not all the time. And of course the Guardians will ignore it. But it still helps quite a lot, which is why I keep wearing it most of the time. Still, it sucks that it made Kilton's shop items absolutely obsolete. In the least it should have been part of his assortment and much more expansive than the other masks. This would be more balanced and you would have to visit Akkala at first.
In addition I'm using amiibo to boost my gear. Getting good weapons and lots of food items helps, as well as some of the armor pieces, especially the Fierce Deity armor, which works the same as the Barbarian set, but is available instantly. I know that the Phantom Armor is also available early on around Hyrule Field, but I didn't want to go there yet.
Overall my goal is to play much more efficient, because I don't want to spend 600 hours on this game again. So, I'm using ZeldaMaps.com to cross off all the Shrines, Korok Seeds and Treasure Chests on my way.
And to be fair, if you take away the awe of exploration, playing this game feels more like a chore. You cross off things on a map and move on to the next things. Korok here, Shrine there. These things act as nice and interesting rewards for exploring everything the first time, but I don't really see the replay value, at least not for completion, because then it's just all about the completion.
I'm still not clearing all at once thanks to Master Mode. The rewards for fighting enemy camps aren't really worth the trouble, often you will loose more resources than you would gain. I will do those later for the sake of completion, but it's probably a lot more fun and resource-saving to clear them, if you have Urbosa's Fury ready, ideally the upgraded version.
Anyway, after leaving the Great Plateau I actually listened to the King this time and followed the way to Kakariko. Boring, really, but it's best to get all the basic stuff ready as early as possible, like the upgraded Sheikah Slate runes or expanding your inventory. Apropos, I completely forgot that you can actually have Hestu's Maracas as a key item in your inventory:
In Kakariko I also did all the Side Quests right away and even cleared the "Sheikah Heirloom" quest already. This one had me baffled the longest time on my first playthrough, because I was missing the "Journal of Various Worries" and with that the Side Quests that triggered the stolen heirloom sequence. But overall Side Quests are just another thing to cross off from a list, because they are completely unrewarding in this game. 50 Rupees for gathering all Cuccos in Kakariko? Come on!
After dealing with Kakariko I arrived Hateno and directly made the torch relay to the Ancient Tech Laboratory, where I got my Sheikah Slate upgraded save for Stasis+, because this one needs three Ancient Cores. But I got those soon after, since they aren't exactly hard to come by.
Anyway, one "quirk" for my playthrough will be NOT taking any pictures for Hyrule Compendium. With the way, how Nintendo implemented things, personal pictures are shared between Normal and Master Mode files and overwritten without any warning. So, the new Sunshroom shot that you have to take for Symin will now be displayed in my Normal Mode savegame as well... But because I put quite some effort into taking nice pictures for my original Hyrule Compendium, I don't want those to be lost.
So, I decided to completely buy all stock pictures for the entire playthrough. This would be interesting to have, anyway, but of course you can't get the stock image for the Sunshroom. I was missing Master Kohga and some Lynel weapons in my first game file, where I thought about taking the shots now, but I decided to go for the "all stock" choice now. Whenever I replay the game on Nintendo Switch, I can focus on doing "all custom" shots.
This will be quite expansive, however, it costs 36900 Rupees to buy all the current pictures from Symin... And this doesn't include the boss images yet. But since I had over 90,000 Rupees left on my Normal Mode file, it should be doable. It's just a problem early on, when you need certain pictures in your Compendium right away.
I mostly use the Sheikah Sensor+ on Treasure Chests, where luckily it's in the smallest category with only four pictures. I still had to buy all four to get the entry, but that's alright. Later on I will also need pictures of certain enemies and creatures, where you have to take photos for Side Quests, like a Red Lynel, a Blupee or the different Guardian types. I will need to buy the corresponding pictures before that... But luckily those Side Quests can wait.
(Ideally, Hyrule Compendium between Normal and Master Mode would have been shared, like in a New Game+. But this would probably have been difficult to implement, since you can restart both modes at any time.)
After Kakariko and Hateno my next big goal was the Great Hyrule Forest, simply because I wanted the access to Hestu's stash expansions right away. I met him again at the Wetland Stable, where the Kaya Wan Shrine has an Ancient Core, which was helpful for getting Stasis+ on the way.
In general it's also good to pick up the Korok Mask as soon as possible, but since I'm using a map this time, it's not really needed. I think, Majora's Mask will probably replace the Korok Mask on this run. Apropos, with Majora's Mask on your face some of the dialogues in the game seem rather funny, especially in the Korok Forest:
I did the three trials of the wannabe Sheikah Monks right away, where the Test of Wood felt surprisingly easy. I just managed to use the updrafts created by the Fire Keese to fly over everything. I had more trouble with the "Lost Pilgrimage" trial this time, where you have to follow the scared, little Korok Oaki, because a Wolf spawned right at the end and attacked me, which revealed my presence to Oaki. Buttons. Apparently the wolf is part of the script, but it doesn't respawn on your second try.
I want to do things differently in my Master Mode playthrough and in that sense I decided to do the four Divine Beasts in the opposite order of how I beat them on my first playthrough. So, the Master Mode order will look like this:
Also, I want to provoke different reactions from the NPCs as often as possible, where in my original playthrough I only brought the Master Sword to the Gorons. The other races noted that it was missing. This time I want to do it the other way around, so I will go to the Gorons before claiming the Master Sword and do the rest afterwards.
Right now I'm spending all my Spirit Orbs on Heart Containers, until I have reached the 13 hearts for the Master Sword, because I want to get it as soon as possible. Afterwards I will complete both additional Stamina Wheels, because having low stamina isn't much fun. And then I will get the rest of the Heart Containers from the Spirit Orbs.
But my next big goal for now is clearing Vah Rudania. Luckily, Death Mountain is just next to the Great Hyrule Forest, so there is no big detour from where I've already been. Exploring Death Mountain also has the advantage that you will get lots and lots of minerals, which you can sell. And I will need the Rupees.
Did I just say that there's no big detour from the Great Hyrule Forest to Death Mountain? Well, I lied. I did make my way to the Foothill Stable, where you can buy Fireproof Elixirs (something that I completely missed on my first playthrough). But from there I decided to head over to Akkala first, because it was "just around the corner" and there are some key places here, including a Great Fairy Fountain and the Akkala Tech Lab.
I also climbed the Akkala Tower, which is kind of funny, because it was my last tower the first time. I completely shied away from it then, but when you know, where to climb to avoid the Guardian Skywatchers, it's not an issue. Together with the Woodland Tower I cleared two of the most hazardous towers right away. I even found that you can climb a broken archway on top of the ruins to jump over the black goo surrounding the base of the tower. So, you don't need to bring any large metallic objects to build a bridge.
What give me more trouble was the Korok hiding under a slab in a ruined pillar of the bridge of Akkala Span. You have to remove the slab with Stasis, but it would always bounce back from the borders and hide the rock again... Kind of annoying, because it broke all of my heavy hitters at the time.
I'm really off to the Gorons and Vah Rudania, now. I'm kind of excited, because it's been a while that I played through one of the four Divine Beasts. This will score me an additional Heart Container, so I will only need to clear 12 more Shrines for the Master Sword. Half of those can be covered by clearing all Shrines around Death Mountain, so this should be easy enough without engaging another Divine Beast.
The only thing that I'm worried about now is the Trial of the Sword, specifically the Beginning Trials, where you have to face two Silver Lizalfos with insufficient equipment. That room seems totally unbalanced and I only hear horror stories about it and how you have to trick the AI into consecutive sneak strikes. Oh, joy... But I'm not going to do the Trial of the Sword until the very end.
Here's my current Hero's Path:
Yes, I actually died early on, after getting the Paraglider. I ran off the infamous edge at the beginning of the game in full excitement, forgetting about my limited Stamina, and then crash landed... I could have started over at this point to avoid any death marks on my map, but chances are that I might score some cheap deaths in the "One-Hit Obliterator" trial anyway. And this one might possibly get erased, though I don't plan to play over 200 hours...
By the way, I arrived at the 20 hour mark at this point. In the same time frame I could fully complete one of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. Here I barely even got started.
PS: That black and red loading screen in Master Mode is absolutely atrocious and hurts the eyes. Who thought that this was a good idea...?
Last weekend I finally decided to start the "Master Mode" of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my Wii U. Originally I thought about waiting until I bought a Nintendo Switch, but I got in the mood for the game and didn't have anything really left to do in Normal Mode. This way I will also have the Wii U version fully completed on both modes, after I'm finished. And if Breath of the Wild is getting a sequel, I most likely will want to replay the game shortly before, which means that I will play it on Switch in the next years eventually.
So, this will continue my Adventure Log series, but with focus on replaying the game through Master Mode. It won't be as detailed as my previous logs, so I will mostly talk about the ups and downs of Master Mode, my general progress and anything that I haven't noticed during my first playthrough.
My motivation is to complete Master Mode this Spring and generally I will be playing a lot faster than before, because I know where everything is located this time and all the things I have to do. So, I won't run around aimlessly looking for Koroks for months. It will be more about planning a different route through the game to alter the experience as much as possible.
Master Mode? More like Majora's Mask Mode!
To be honest, my impression of Master Mode so far isn't really a good one. I wasn't a fan of the enemy scaling in this game to begin with, because for the longest time it feels like you aren't making any progress. You get stronger, but so do the enemies all the time. And since the enemies scale with you, it doesn't really matter where you go. Ultimately, the tiers of enemies should have grown regional, instead temporal. Much like in the first Zelda game. There should be Red and Blue Bokoblins on the Great Plateau, while Silver and Gold Bokoblins wait in Hebra. As simple as that.
With the incremented tiers in Master Mode, all it does is make me shy from conflicts, instead of embracing the fights. They put a White-Maned Lynel on the Great Plateau, so what? It makes absolutely no difference, because you just will go around it, much like with most of the enemy camps in the beginning, because fighting Black Bokoblins with a Tree Branch is suicide.
What would have made a difference, are Guardians. They actively hunt you down. But it doesn't seem like Master Mode added any of those, which is a shame, because this would have been an actual challenge. You can still beat them right in the beginning of the game, if you're good at Shield Parrying. A Pot Lid would be enough, if you have the godlike reflexes. But adding a Lynel in early territories, where you have little to no chance of beating him and where you will only run around him, isn't really that interesting.
To add to the whole avoidance of enemies, you even receive the new Majora's Mask item super early. In fact, I landed right on top of the chest, after I left the Great Plateau:
And it's quite helpful, because it keeps the more conscious enemies guessing for a while. You can wander around without becoming a target around every corner. It partially even helps with Octoroks, but not all the time. And of course the Guardians will ignore it. But it still helps quite a lot, which is why I keep wearing it most of the time. Still, it sucks that it made Kilton's shop items absolutely obsolete. In the least it should have been part of his assortment and much more expansive than the other masks. This would be more balanced and you would have to visit Akkala at first.
In addition I'm using amiibo to boost my gear. Getting good weapons and lots of food items helps, as well as some of the armor pieces, especially the Fierce Deity armor, which works the same as the Barbarian set, but is available instantly. I know that the Phantom Armor is also available early on around Hyrule Field, but I didn't want to go there yet.
Crossing off all the Things
Overall my goal is to play much more efficient, because I don't want to spend 600 hours on this game again. So, I'm using ZeldaMaps.com to cross off all the Shrines, Korok Seeds and Treasure Chests on my way.
And to be fair, if you take away the awe of exploration, playing this game feels more like a chore. You cross off things on a map and move on to the next things. Korok here, Shrine there. These things act as nice and interesting rewards for exploring everything the first time, but I don't really see the replay value, at least not for completion, because then it's just all about the completion.
I'm still not clearing all at once thanks to Master Mode. The rewards for fighting enemy camps aren't really worth the trouble, often you will loose more resources than you would gain. I will do those later for the sake of completion, but it's probably a lot more fun and resource-saving to clear them, if you have Urbosa's Fury ready, ideally the upgraded version.
Anyway, after leaving the Great Plateau I actually listened to the King this time and followed the way to Kakariko. Boring, really, but it's best to get all the basic stuff ready as early as possible, like the upgraded Sheikah Slate runes or expanding your inventory. Apropos, I completely forgot that you can actually have Hestu's Maracas as a key item in your inventory:
In Kakariko I also did all the Side Quests right away and even cleared the "Sheikah Heirloom" quest already. This one had me baffled the longest time on my first playthrough, because I was missing the "Journal of Various Worries" and with that the Side Quests that triggered the stolen heirloom sequence. But overall Side Quests are just another thing to cross off from a list, because they are completely unrewarding in this game. 50 Rupees for gathering all Cuccos in Kakariko? Come on!
Oh, Snap! No Snap!
After dealing with Kakariko I arrived Hateno and directly made the torch relay to the Ancient Tech Laboratory, where I got my Sheikah Slate upgraded save for Stasis+, because this one needs three Ancient Cores. But I got those soon after, since they aren't exactly hard to come by.
Anyway, one "quirk" for my playthrough will be NOT taking any pictures for Hyrule Compendium. With the way, how Nintendo implemented things, personal pictures are shared between Normal and Master Mode files and overwritten without any warning. So, the new Sunshroom shot that you have to take for Symin will now be displayed in my Normal Mode savegame as well... But because I put quite some effort into taking nice pictures for my original Hyrule Compendium, I don't want those to be lost.
So, I decided to completely buy all stock pictures for the entire playthrough. This would be interesting to have, anyway, but of course you can't get the stock image for the Sunshroom. I was missing Master Kohga and some Lynel weapons in my first game file, where I thought about taking the shots now, but I decided to go for the "all stock" choice now. Whenever I replay the game on Nintendo Switch, I can focus on doing "all custom" shots.
This will be quite expansive, however, it costs 36900 Rupees to buy all the current pictures from Symin... And this doesn't include the boss images yet. But since I had over 90,000 Rupees left on my Normal Mode file, it should be doable. It's just a problem early on, when you need certain pictures in your Compendium right away.
I mostly use the Sheikah Sensor+ on Treasure Chests, where luckily it's in the smallest category with only four pictures. I still had to buy all four to get the entry, but that's alright. Later on I will also need pictures of certain enemies and creatures, where you have to take photos for Side Quests, like a Red Lynel, a Blupee or the different Guardian types. I will need to buy the corresponding pictures before that... But luckily those Side Quests can wait.
(Ideally, Hyrule Compendium between Normal and Master Mode would have been shared, like in a New Game+. But this would probably have been difficult to implement, since you can restart both modes at any time.)
Following the Forest
After Kakariko and Hateno my next big goal was the Great Hyrule Forest, simply because I wanted the access to Hestu's stash expansions right away. I met him again at the Wetland Stable, where the Kaya Wan Shrine has an Ancient Core, which was helpful for getting Stasis+ on the way.
In general it's also good to pick up the Korok Mask as soon as possible, but since I'm using a map this time, it's not really needed. I think, Majora's Mask will probably replace the Korok Mask on this run. Apropos, with Majora's Mask on your face some of the dialogues in the game seem rather funny, especially in the Korok Forest:
I did the three trials of the wannabe Sheikah Monks right away, where the Test of Wood felt surprisingly easy. I just managed to use the updrafts created by the Fire Keese to fly over everything. I had more trouble with the "Lost Pilgrimage" trial this time, where you have to follow the scared, little Korok Oaki, because a Wolf spawned right at the end and attacked me, which revealed my presence to Oaki. Buttons. Apparently the wolf is part of the script, but it doesn't respawn on your second try.
Hearts and Goals
I want to do things differently in my Master Mode playthrough and in that sense I decided to do the four Divine Beasts in the opposite order of how I beat them on my first playthrough. So, the Master Mode order will look like this:
- Vah Rudania
- Vah Medoh
- Vah Ruta
- Vah Naboris
Also, I want to provoke different reactions from the NPCs as often as possible, where in my original playthrough I only brought the Master Sword to the Gorons. The other races noted that it was missing. This time I want to do it the other way around, so I will go to the Gorons before claiming the Master Sword and do the rest afterwards.
Right now I'm spending all my Spirit Orbs on Heart Containers, until I have reached the 13 hearts for the Master Sword, because I want to get it as soon as possible. Afterwards I will complete both additional Stamina Wheels, because having low stamina isn't much fun. And then I will get the rest of the Heart Containers from the Spirit Orbs.
But my next big goal for now is clearing Vah Rudania. Luckily, Death Mountain is just next to the Great Hyrule Forest, so there is no big detour from where I've already been. Exploring Death Mountain also has the advantage that you will get lots and lots of minerals, which you can sell. And I will need the Rupees.
Around to Akkala
Did I just say that there's no big detour from the Great Hyrule Forest to Death Mountain? Well, I lied. I did make my way to the Foothill Stable, where you can buy Fireproof Elixirs (something that I completely missed on my first playthrough). But from there I decided to head over to Akkala first, because it was "just around the corner" and there are some key places here, including a Great Fairy Fountain and the Akkala Tech Lab.
I also climbed the Akkala Tower, which is kind of funny, because it was my last tower the first time. I completely shied away from it then, but when you know, where to climb to avoid the Guardian Skywatchers, it's not an issue. Together with the Woodland Tower I cleared two of the most hazardous towers right away. I even found that you can climb a broken archway on top of the ruins to jump over the black goo surrounding the base of the tower. So, you don't need to bring any large metallic objects to build a bridge.
What give me more trouble was the Korok hiding under a slab in a ruined pillar of the bridge of Akkala Span. You have to remove the slab with Stasis, but it would always bounce back from the borders and hide the rock again... Kind of annoying, because it broke all of my heavy hitters at the time.
Game Plan
I'm really off to the Gorons and Vah Rudania, now. I'm kind of excited, because it's been a while that I played through one of the four Divine Beasts. This will score me an additional Heart Container, so I will only need to clear 12 more Shrines for the Master Sword. Half of those can be covered by clearing all Shrines around Death Mountain, so this should be easy enough without engaging another Divine Beast.
The only thing that I'm worried about now is the Trial of the Sword, specifically the Beginning Trials, where you have to face two Silver Lizalfos with insufficient equipment. That room seems totally unbalanced and I only hear horror stories about it and how you have to trick the AI into consecutive sneak strikes. Oh, joy... But I'm not going to do the Trial of the Sword until the very end.
Here's my current Hero's Path:
Yes, I actually died early on, after getting the Paraglider. I ran off the infamous edge at the beginning of the game in full excitement, forgetting about my limited Stamina, and then crash landed... I could have started over at this point to avoid any death marks on my map, but chances are that I might score some cheap deaths in the "One-Hit Obliterator" trial anyway. And this one might possibly get erased, though I don't plan to play over 200 hours...
By the way, I arrived at the 20 hour mark at this point. In the same time frame I could fully complete one of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. Here I barely even got started.
Master Mode Progress:
- Main Quests: 5/20
- Shrine Quests: 6/42
- Side Quests: 18/90
- Memories: 1/23
- Shrines: 24/136
- Koroks: 108/900
PS: That black and red loading screen in Master Mode is absolutely atrocious and hurts the eyes. Who thought that this was a good idea...?
I actually haven't played the game at all, but I've been wondering and you seem like the right guy to ask: Can you do Master Mode without clearing standard mode first? Does it overwrite your save data or not?
ReplyDeleteMaster Mode has separate save data and can be started right away. Note that you still start the game in Normal Mode, but you can then just leave and select Master Mode after the intro. You can switch between both modes at any time, where both modes have their own save data.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I was thinking of doing Master Mode from the start so I won't have to play it twice.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe that would be ruining a good game. Since you apparently have only one save slot per mode, I might feel compelled to do both anyway. Not sure if you have covered this aspect before.
I feel like Master Mode is somewhat unbalanced and basically makes you avoid all enemies early in the game. It's a twist for when you actually want to replay the game, like I currently do, but if you just want to casually enjoy the game, I would advise playing it on Normal Mode first.
ReplyDeleteHey there, I've been looking forward to your Master Mode logs and am a little disappointed that you don't seem to be enjoying it much. Personally, I got one hell of a kick out of clearing the Great Plateau on Master Mode (save that Lynel, obviously) before leaving, which is entirely possible if you're smart and a lot of fun. The Octorok platforms come in handy here, giving you strong weapons early on.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I'm not here to tell you how to play the game, that's up to you. I just thought I'd chip in and advise you to give the combat another chance. Hope you're enjoying the rest of your playthrough. :)
~Tim
I remember that I did that on my first playthrough in Normal Mode, clearing most of the Great Plateau before leaving. The joy was gone once I learned that there's a Blood Moon and it basically was all for nothing... :D
ReplyDeleteWell, the game keeps doing these kind of challenges with you enough in the DLC already, especially with the Trial of the Sword, so I don't need to impose it on myself, really.
But I'll find my way to have fun with Master Mode, don't worry. Otherwise I wouldn't be playing this.