Before taking on Vah Medoh, I decided to go back to clear the areas from my early adventures, which included the Great Plateau and the Necluda region. I also cleared certain areas around the center with the focus on acquiring horses. Overall I'm following more of an area-by-area approach for completion this time by using ZeldaMaps.com, something that I still miss in the base game.
Ideally, you could see for every tower by selecting it on the map, where the outlines of its region are and what you've achieved in that area so far. Icons could indicate that you got all Shrines, Koroks, Treasure Chests and overworld bosses in that area... After beating the game it could even display counters.
This would be a good addition and make my life as a Zelda completionist much easier, but for my Master Mode run I'm just helping myself out. So, before heading to the next tower(s), I try to complete as much as possible in the current area(s), as long as I can still see the outlines. It's "divide and conquer" and such an approach usually works best for such a massive task.
With the Master Sword in hand, I'm also good with entering central Hyrule, but I'm not planning on completing everything in and around Hyrule Castle just yet. At first my focus was on the stuff left to do around the areas of the beginning...
But I did go for the Central Tower early on, so I have a map for the areas around the Great Plateau. On the way I finished one of my favorite shrines, the Kaam Ya'Tak Shrine with the "Trial of Power". This one makes good use of both Magnesis and Stasis and has a series of several smaller rooms with obstacles and Guardian Scouts. It almost like a real minidungeon and is certainly one of the best shrines in the game.
Blue Lynel Boogalo
So, why not take on Vah Medoh already? Revali's Gale is certainly the most useful ability in the game, when it comes to clearing the environment, followed by Urbosa's Fury. And this Divine Beast is finished quickly. Well, other than my focus on clearing certain areas at first, this decision has something to do with the topic of enemy scaling and weapon scaling.
There's an internal point system, which controls the growth of enemies and weapons, including their modifiers. These points are mostly earned by defeating certain types of enemies, but there's a cap of ten kills. So, if you have defeated 10 Black Bokoblins, the 11th Black Bokoblin and all that come after won't count for the point system. You don't really need to max out your points and you also never see your total, so it isn't really something to be concerned about.
However, other than the Guardian Sentries, which only appear during the Vah Rudania chase sequence, there's another enemy in Master Mode that will grow extinct after a certain time: Blue Lynels. They earn you 12 points for a total of 120, but you won't be able to find any of them later in the game. Normal Mode has a fixed Blue Lynel in Hyrule Castle, but that one was replaced with a White-Maned Lynel in Master Mode. (Both modes have a fixed Red Lynel on top of Ploymus Mountain, by the way.)
So, just to make sure that I got my 120 points out of them, before they go extinct, I decided to hunt down 10 Blue Lynels now. There was still one at the gate to Mount Lanayru, near the Purifier Lake. And there were still two left in the Oseira Plains, the place where I encountered my first Lynel in the game without knowing, when I left the Great Plateau in Normal Mode.
However, they upgraded into White-Maned Lynels right at the time, when I went into the Ishto Soh Shrine in the area. This was bad news and I will have to keep this in mind, whenever I replay the game on Switch. Because then I also would like to complete Hyrule Compendium with pretty custom pictures, where in this case I would already lack the Lynel Spear.
Luckily, for this run there's still a spot, where you can encounter a Blue Lynel, as long as you haven't completed two Divine Beasts yet. The Coliseum Ruins:
The enemies in there are special and scale dependent on how many Divine Beasts you've freed, but it doesn't start until you've done two of them. So, as long as I don't touch Vah Medoh, I can take on as many Blue Lynels as I want in this arena. It's also a sword wielder, which are probably the easiest type of Lynels, because they offer many easy opportunities for Flurry Rushes. It's probably the best way to farm Lynel materials early in the game.
Apropos Lynel materials, the "Riddles of Hyrule" Side Quest was a nice example of how much faster things are going down on my second playthrough. In Normal Mode it took me a while to collect all the necessary materials, but here I just climbed on top the Deku Tree, presented Walton the four items and then I was done. Of course this is only natural when replaying a game. If you know what to do and where all the things are, you can prepare accordingly and you don't need to search. And even the strongest enemies like Lynels don't feel like an obstacle anymore.
(In this case it was also helpful to use the amiibo for all the fish. This was getting me a Voltfin Trout, before I found them in the wild.)
Getting the Good Gear
Well, after clearing Death Mountain and most of Akkala, I had a couple of flame weapons in my possession, which I could use to take on Mount Lanayru. Freeing Naydra is the most interesting part there, but I mainly did it to get the Climbing Boots, which you can find in these mountains in a hidden shrine, following "The Secret of the Cedars".
The Climbing Gear wasn't far from there, in the Shrine in the middle of the Necludian Sea. It was another Major Test of Strength, but it felt easy enough after the first one. So, I finally had my favorite armor set back.
I also purchased the stealth set and the Ancient set, which are both quite useful as well. In addition I focused on enhancing everything to two stars. So, as soon as I move to Vah Medoh and find a third Great Fairy there, I can focus on the ★★★ upgrades. The most "difficult" to upgrade pieces right now are the Fierce Deity set and the Champion's Tunic, where I need dragon parts on every step.
I also farmed some Star Fragments from the top of the Dueling Peaks already, but I don't really use any amiibo armor parts other than the Fierce Deity set, so this doesn't really have a priority right now. It's more something for the endgame grinding.
Horse Hunt
In addition to the Central Tower, I also conquered the Lake and Ridgeland Towers, because I wanted to focus on various things around horses: getting the special horses, getting good horses, getting all saddles and so on. I already registered Epona, when I first arrived the Dueling Peaks Stable, but I hadn't really bothered with horses so far in Master Mode. Since I'm basically running from Korok to Korok they didn't seem practical yet, while you can't use them at Death Mountain at all, which was the first major goal of my run.
First I was going for the White Royal Stallion and afterwards I went for the Giant Horse in the Taobab Grasslands. This brings back memories, because this was the spot, where I first left the Great Plateau on my Normal Mode run. And you can indeed tame the Giant Horse right away, as long as you have enough stamina. I named the special horses "Zelda" and "Ganon" again, which might be boring, but it still felt fitting to name them this way.
Before getting the Giant Horse, I cleared the path to the Highland Stable from all Lynels and riding Bokoblins just to be safe. And then I took various horses home, because this is one of two spots, where you can find horses with best stats...
In the end I settled for a black horse with the following stats:
- Strength: ★★★★
- Speed: ★★★★
- Stamina: ★★★★★
This is the best possible stats a horse can have in the game. You'd want more than three stars of Speed, so it's faster than the Master Cycle Zero. But the horses with five Speed only can have two points of Strength and three Stamina at best, which is a major downside. So, I'd sacrifice the full speed for having an overall good and balanced horse. According to HylianAngel's Horse Guide, these best balanced horses are usually the leader of a group of horses, so they are easy to identify.
Well, I named her "Hilda", like the lost black horse from my Normal Mode run, and equipped her with the Ancient Bridle and the Ancient Saddle, where she basically became my Master Cycle Zero replacement for now. The way I play Master Mode on an area-by-area basis, I won't be able to get the Master Cycle Zero until the end, so it won't be of much use to me this time. But calling a horse from anywhere is certainly helpful and helps to bridge some larger walking distances from time to time.
And with the Ancient Bridle she can have all the stamina in the world:
The only problem with the Ancient Saddle is that I sometimes I accidentally call the horse, while using Magnesis. I press "down" on the D-Pad to pull treasure chests towards me and sometimes release Magnesis while still pressing "down", which calls the horse to my location, even in the most ridiculous places at the most inconvenient times, like on a small island in Lake Hylia during a thunderstorm. Poor horsie.
Apropos thunder storms, since I also went for the Ridgeland Tower for my horse efforts, I cleared its area including all the shrines there. And here I thought that the Toh Yahsa Shrine inside the thunder cloud and the hidden Maag No'rah Shrine should have been swapped. Maag No'ran offers a Blessing and all you have to do here is find a shrine hidden inside a rock wall. For Toh Yahsa you have to solve this quite lengthy overworld puzzle with the orbs inside the thunder cloud on the Thundra Plateau, where a Blessing would have been appropriate. But instead you still get the "Buried Secrets" trial on top, which would have been a perfect fit for the Maag No'rah Shrine, which is basically a buried secret in itself.
Anyway, other than Mount Satori and the White Royal Stallion, there's also the Upland Lindor as a good horse-based reason to go for the Hyrule Ridge area, because that's the second spot in the game, where you can find top stat horses. And the road to the next stable, the Serenne Stable, is a lot shorter and much safer here. So much that I had to ask myself, why I made the Taobab Grassland tour multiple times earlier...
I placed my Travel Medallion at the hill, so I could try different horses in quick succession, where I was looking for a speed horse with the following stats:
- Strength: ★★
- Speed: ★★★★★
- Stamina: ★★★
Originally I wanted a pink one, because I wanted to name her "Styla", following my princess-based naming convention. However, it turns out that pink horses, even in a solid color, can't have the best possible stats. The same goes for light brown horses. So, in the end I had to settle for a purple horse:
I gave her the Extravagant Bridle and Saddle, because it seemed fitting and I've never really used it on a horse before. It's also the reward for the hurdle minigame.
Apropos, the Horse Obstacle Course and the Horseback Archery are the only mandatory minigames in Breath of the Wild, if you want to complete everything. Or at least I don't remember any of the other minigames giving you unique rewards or even Side Quest Adventure Log entries. And this is certainly nice, because I'm usually not a big fan of minigames, when it comes to replaying Zelda games. Some of them can be very annoying, to put it mildly. And that Breath of the Wild made it mostly an optional experience, is a good thing. If you like minigames, then they are still there to be enjoyed. But you don't have to force yourself through them to get every item in the game.
That being said, the Horse Obstacle Course can still be quite annoying, before you get it right. Especially the one hurdle near the rock wall seems to give trouble, because the horse likes to dodge to the right here. In general you don't want to speed up too much and keep the horse more to the left on that specific hurdle.
Towards Completion
If you know where everything is located in the game and use a map on top of that, progress feels so much more rapid. I've only done one Divine Beast so far and I've already maximized my inventory space from all the Korok Seeds that I've found - precisely half of them, to be exact.
This adds up quite nicely, since I've been focusing on clearing about half of the world's areas. Here's my current Hero's Path, following this entry:
Master Mode Progress:
- Divine Beasts Freed: 1
- Main Quests: 7/20
- Shrine Quests: 19/42
- Side Quests: 39/90
- Memories: 9/23
- Shrines: 64/136
- Koroks: 450/900
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