For the final part of my Master Mode run it was time to take on the Champions' Ballad, Eventide Island and the Trial of the Sword. What they all have in common are challenges, where the game takes away your stuff, so waiting until the end of the game, where you have all the Stamina and Heart Containers in the world, seemed like a good decision. But it also had the disadvantage that I wouldn't get the DLC rewards before the very end, where they aren't of any real use anymore...
Death #2
For the "One-Hit Obliterator" Trial I decided to don the Phantom Ganon Armor for a change... However, this led to my second death in the game, not far from the location of the first one, where I died after "gliding" from the cliff in front of the Shrine of Resurrection.
My mistake was that I thought the "Disguise" set bonus of the Phantom Ganon Armor works exactly like Majora's Mask. It's a Ganon costume, after all. But apparently it only works with Stal enemies and I paid with my life for this mistake, because I got hit by some Thunderbolts thrown by the Bokoblins at the first camp, who weren't really impressed by my "disguise".
I didn't die otherwise outside the shrines (and only once during that ridiculous Rohta Chigah Shrine with the many spikes) and I probably would have been pretty mad about this mistake, if it wasn't for that first death early in the game. So, my Hero's Path was tainted in any case and now my first death wouldn't taunt me anymore, since I died exactly, where I expected to die. The Forest of Spirits really was graveyard in this game. If I ever replay the game on Master Mode, I would try to achieve an entirely death-free run, however. It's doable, as long as you're careful on the Great Plateau, both during the tutorial phase and the "One-Hit Obliterator" madness.
But since I didn't have to worry about not dying anymore, I decided to fully explore the foggy Great Plateau during this trial. I didn't do this the first time on Normal Mode, because I wanted it to be done quickly, but I was curious what I could have missed. Well, turns out that I didn't miss anything at all!
All the other enemies that you normally find on the Great Plateau were gone. I was looking forward to killing both the Stone Talus and the White-Maned Lynel in one hit, but they weren't present anymore. Most of the enemies hang at the four points, where the trial tells you to go. There are some exceptions like multiple Ice Keese around Mount Hylia and some electric enemies at the bog near the Oman Au Shrine. There's also a new Decayed Guardian at the Temple of Time, but the Decayed Guardians at the Eastern Abbey are all gone.
And the enemy camps all look empty like this:
As you can see in the above screenshot, I've put Majora's Mask on after my initial mistake, which looks pretty nice together with the Phantom Ganon cape. But it also helps a lot with the enemies during this trial. The enemies tend to check you out personally, instead of sounding an alarm, where you can just lure them away and take them out one by one with the One-Hit Obliterator. Very useful.
But in general this seemed like the best opportunity to use the different DLC armor pieces in action. Since you die in one hit anyway, the lack of enhancements doesn't matter here, so you can go fight some Guardians in style:
Of course you can always choose to do so, but I personally prefer to have the defense at any time. And overall I did have a lot more fun with this part of the DLC than the first time.
The Realm of Nitpicky Memories
Off to the most relaxing part of the DLC, I was probably most busy being nitpicky about the "tacked on" nature of the content. I didn't even pay that much attention to certain things during my first playthrough of DLC Pack 2, The Champions' Ballad, but if you take the time to look, some things seem a little unpolished. Again, the devil is in the details here.
For example, if you go to Riju before doing the trial with the orb, she will say that this was yet another important Gerudo heirloom stolen by the Yiga just now, but they only treasured it for the hero, so when Link recovers the thing, he can use it as he pleases and doesn't have to bring it back like the Thunder Helm, which he only was allowed to borrow, because it is an important Gerudo heirloom and he can't just have it...
That doesn't make any sense left and right... They never mentioned this "heirloom" before and didn't think about giving it to Link, even though it was meant for him. And if this wasn't enough nonsense, the Yiga steal this thing in the exact second, where you're initiating Urbosa's trials. How convenient!
But I like the idea of throwing an orb down that giant hole at the Yiga Clan Hideout, where it would have been hilarious, if the dead body of Master Kohga would have blocked the orb slot. It's also nice, how the Kihiro Moh Shrine had a puzzle with lots of orbs to go with the theme. So, overall it certainly was one of the better trials in the Champions' Ballad, but I still didn't like the unnecessary Gerudo heirloom nonsense.
Another thing that I didn't like was how Kass essentially got cloned during the Champions' Ballad act. Well, he and other characters like Beedle, who are always present at the stables, already seem to have some sort of teleportation ability, but when Kass performs Revali's Song next to Divine Beast Vah Medoh, he really is in two places at once, because you can spot him all the way down playing with his children. When you talk to him, he even acts like he hasn't seen you in a while...
This seems rather sloppy and at least Nintendo should have thought of removing Kass from Rito Village during the time, where the Champions' Ballad Main Quest is active.
Well, I played Urbosa's part first, because having the fast reload for Urbosa's Fury was super helpful with the Realm of Memories, and went clockwise from there: Revali, Daruk and finally Mipha.
I chose Mipha for last, because Waterblight Ganon seemed like the hardest of the Realms of Memories. Thunderblight without full electricity protection can be tough as well, but I used a triple Shock Resistance dish before going into the fight, which works much like with the Trial of the Sword.
During the Windblight Ganon fight you only get a measly Feathered Edge, which breaks quickly, so it's best to use it for Urbosa's Furies as long as you have it. But the rest of the fight is doable with arrows alone. Fireblight Ganon is easily the easiest of the three, since you get multiple spin-to-win tools here.
It's really the environments that make the Blight fights tougher than they actually are, which is probably why they seem much easier inside the Sanctum. And Waterblight Ganon is the worst offender here, where he floods the room with water during the second half. This caused me quite some trouble, because for some reason, Link sometimes wouldn't draw his bow, when I jumped off a Cryonis block. So, I landed in the water and then had issues with getting back on land, while Waterblight would bombarded me with ice blocks... But if you use Urbosa's Fury, the ten arrows that you get are enough to beat him.
One thing that I didn't fully realize the first time was that Nintendo sort of recreated each official artwork of the Champions in their respective memories, the same artworks that were also used for the amiibo figures. It was really apparent during Urbosa's cutscene, where she makes her special stance by looking over her shoulder, but I didn't notice it with the other Champions until now.
Otherwise it still feels weird how you have to fight a bunch of Guardian Skywatchers and Turrets during Mipha's trial. Following the theme of upgraded overworld bosses, they probably could have introduced higher tiers of Hinox for the DLC, where you would have to fight a Silver Hinox on Upland Zorona for the trial. This could be a Golden Hinox in Master Mode, while all the Black Hinox could have been upgraded to silvers in that mode... This way the Hinox would have the five typical tiers, instead of stopping at the black tier.
Also, there's apparently another impossible chest with a Soldier's / Knight's / Royal Bow in the same area, at the north tip of Upland Zorana. I never knew this before, because the Sheikah Sensor+ doesn't pick it up, but according to ZeldaMaps.com and similar sites it's there.
Final Trial Revisited
As much as I liked this "dungeon" the first time as underwhelming I found it to be the second time. I was done with the "Final Trial" in less than 30 minutes and while the other four Divine Beasts aren't really long either, they at least felt like interesting places to explore, where I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the sense of adventure. You have these gigantic beasts inside the environment and you walk all around their outer shells, experiment with moving the beasts or parts of their bodies and so on.
Here you just get four chamber with typical shrine trials and you're done. And while there's a sense of mystery around this whole thing, there's no outside to explore or anything. It's not bad and it does something different with the Divine Beast mechanics, but it isn't really outstanding either.
The boss, however, is still boss and certainly the absolute highlight of the DLC...
It's funny, how you can actually distract him by dropping Mighty Bananas. This even helps during the phase, where he uses his Clone Jitsu.
About one of the rewards that you get for clearing the Champions' Ballad...
Otherwise I finally got my beloved bike back:
Sadly, it won't be of much use at this point. I've already found everything on the overworld, so using the bike would be just for fun now. But at least this way I've learned to appreciate horses much more. Thanks to the Ancient Saddle I've been using horses a lot more frequently during this run and they are probably even more convenient than the Master Cycle Zero in various situations. They're faster, you don't have to fuel them and you don't to hold the "A" button the entire time, which is a lot more comfortable.
The bike is still more fun and it has much better off road capabilities, while you also don't have to worry about it dying. So, it seems quite balanced and depending on the situation I would chose one or the other.
Stranded on Eventide +
So, I kept the island for later including the chests around it in the sea, which was a good source of Rupees.
And overall I like Eventide so much more than the Trial of the Sword. The atmosphere on the deserted island is fantastic and makes me hope for a sequel that takes entirely place on some large tropical island. Being stranded on Eventide has a nice touch to it and it's not just about confronting the enemies, but also about exploring the island for all its resources and maybe even finding a way around the enemies. It's the survival gameplay of Breath of the Wild at its best.
I know that you can just drop some good weapons before the trial, like on your raft or on the small island with the chest, and pick the up after the trial has started. But I didn't want to "cheat" this way, not so late in the game. So, I took the challenge the way it was intended.
Unlike in the Trial of the Sword you can actually use your Master Cycle Zero during the trial, which is funny, but probably not very useful. You can't use any amiibo, however, the game prevents you from it.
Also unlike in the Trial of the Sword, your Champion abilities are still active here. And "Urbosa's Fury +" fully trivialized the trial, because you can just eradicate all the enemies with it without any longer loading times. So, in the end this whole thing was a lot easier than expected...
It was still fun to experiment a little bit. For example, I tried to defeat the Hinox with thunder strikes (real ones, not the ones from Urbosa's Fury) this time, by pushing a metal weapon onto him with Magnesis, but the damage wasn't as high as expected. Also, when I hid up in the cliffs to try this, the Hinox dug up explosive barrels out of nowhere and threw them after me...
I didn't even knew that they could do this, but this seems to be a nice throwback to the classic Hinox enemy from A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, which threw bombs at you. But it's nice to see that I keep learning new things about this game, even after hundreds of hours of playtime.
I still wish that you could replay the trial at any time, because this would be fun.
99.75%
So, after I was done with both the Champion's Ballad and Eventide Island, I expected to have a map completion of 100% again. But this wasn't the case, I ended up with 99.75% and was still missing a couple of locations. I found two of them rather quickly by studying the map:
- Statue of the Eighth Heroine
- Maw of Death Mountain
I was at both of these places, but I didn't trigger the names there. I took a picture of the Statue of the Eighth Heroine from a distance, but I didn't get close to the statue. And I walked around the "bridge" at the Maw of Death Mountain, collecting all the Koroks. This is what happens, when you just follow points on a map, instead of really exploring the places.
When I found the last Korok in my Normal Mode run, where I avoided using any guide maps, I automatically ended up at 100.00%, because I've walked over every square meter of the map by that time. But if you know, where everything is located, and skip some of the empty space, you might miss a location name or two...
However, I then was stuck at 99.91% and I couldn't find the last one. For a moment I was even afraid that I've been the victim of some bug, but it would be the first time that I've heard about this. I was studying MrCheeze's Waypoint Map, but I couldn't find what was missing. The only thing left seemed to be the "Hyrule Kingdom" location that you first read after leaving the Great Plateau. I was worried that you might be able to miss that, if you land too far away from the Plateau. But then I checked my Normal Mode map and it wasn't there either...
Well, after I went fully through this checklist, I finally found the culprit:
The Gerudo Desert Gateway. Yes, this is what happens, if you just follow points on a map and try to be efficient about it. I never went through the gate to the desert, because there is nothing there to find. I went above it for the Koroks. And later I entered the desert by gliding from the Wasteland Tower straight to Vah Naboris.
Enhancing Wild Things
To enhance the final set of armor in the game you need all types of dragon parts twice, as well as four Star Fragments, but I got those covered already from my previous farming sessions. But you also need Acorns, Courser Bee Honey and Energetic Rhino Beetles (15 of each), where I was still lacking the last two. Time to farm!
As for the Courser Bee Honey, there is some on the Great Plateau, but you can find many in one spot at both Fort Hateno and Rutile Lake (on the southwest side of Satori Mountain). Satori Mountain in general is a good source for many materials.
For the Energetic Rhino Beetles I then figured out any easy farming strategy. Go to East Akkala Stable, skip until morning, collect them with the Stealth set equipped, repeat. There are lots of them in the woods nearby.
What do you mean? I found like a dozen of them in half an hour...
Also, was missing a Bladed Rhino Beetle and a Sanke Carp in my inventory as materials, but both could be found in and around Kakariko. Apparently the Sanke Carps never gets dropped by any of the amiibo or otherwise I should have gotten them before.
It's not a necessity for a 100% savegame, but I still like to have at least one of each material inside my inventory.
Anyway, I'm almost done with enhancing all the armor. The additional shrines of the Champions' Ballad housed two Giant Ancient Cores, which was exactly what I needed to upgrade the Ancient Helm. I got another one from farming Guardians for my inventory collection, so I was good here. Now, only the Twilight and Sky amiibo tunic sets still need to be upgraded, where I currently need 16 more Star Fragments, which is just a matter of time.
I want to have all enhanceable sets fully upgraded in my inventory at the end, but I don't really count this as part of 100% completion either, since most of them can be sold again and you currently can't have all the armor at once anyway. Only the eight armor pieces that can't be sold (Champions' Tunic, Thunder Helm, Zora set and Wild set) should be there and if possible also fully enhanced. But I will post my "full" armor collection soon, once it's finished.
The Real Final Trial
You could say that I saved the worst for last with the Trial of the Sword. You can do this a lot earlier in the game, but for this type of challenge I simply preferred having the maximum of stamina and hearts. Also, this was the one part of the game, where I was not looking forward to it and where I felt really uneasy about it. You know, the same feeling that you have before an important test. I don't like it, when video games make you feel this way, because they shouldn't. I play video games to relax. They should be fun and engaging, not stressful.
The only other challenge in the Zelda series that made me feel like this was the Hero's Trial in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition. But in case of the Trial of the Sword it was more about the lack of practice, because I've only beaten it once in Normal Mode, and one particular room in the Beginning Trials. Overall it's by far not as bad as the Hero's Trial.
And I've studied this impressive No Damage Run by sva161620, which helped quite a lot and really boosted my motivation to do this. There are lots of good tricks in there and I like, how he doesn't rely on techniques like bow spinning or perfect parries, where it's easy to screw up. Instead he uses methods that can be copied by anyone, which is a good learning experience. So, if you're having troubles with the Trial of the Sword, go watch this video. Be aware that he makes it looks easy, but you don't have to copy the speed and perfection. And it really helps to know how to avoid damage in all of the scenarios.
It's also a good idea to prepare with food before the trials, because you can take any status effects, extra stamina and extra hearts into the trial. So, eat some food for two yellow Stamina Wheels and to get your hearts to 30. Also, in Master Mode you certainly want that triple Attack boost, because offense is really the best defense here, where you need to cook three Mighty Bananas, one Mighty Thistle and a dragon horn for the effect that lasts for 30 minutes, which is enough to get through each trial.
So, with that I was finally fully prepared to enter the trial...
The Beginning Trials are really the hardest part of all this, specifically the tenth floor, where you have to fight two Silver Lizalfos, who like to fully regenerate inside the water. It was already quite tough with two Black Lizalfos in Normal Mode, but the Master Mode version seems really unbalanced, especially for something that is supposed to be the "Beginning Trials", where you'd think that this is the easiest. It seems almost like an oversight by Nintendo, because the rest of the trials were usually kept fair, where you can succeed on wits and strategy.
But in this case you just don't have the equipment for it. They will kill you quickly, because you don't have the protection. Their spit alone does like five or six hearts of damage. And they will last, because your weapons aren't that good. I've heard people say that they did it with the Lightning Rod from the previous floor by attacking the Lizalfos in the water, but this didn't really work too well for me. Other strategies involve to burn them to death in a fire trap, but that's hard to pull off.
The video above uses "Chain Sneakstrikes" as the method to do it, but you're essentially abusing a flaw with the AI here. Whenever you perform a Sneakstrike on an enemy, they will turn around afterwards, ignoring anything before them. So, if you do a Sneakstrike and then walk in front of the enemy, you can immediately do another Sneakstrike afterwards. You can keep repeating this, until the enemy is dead, and with this method even the strongest tiers aren't an issue, because Sneakstrikes do eight times the damage of your weapon. You can just quickly kill those two Silver Lizalfos with them.
So much for theory, in praxis it's also not easy to pull off, because the Lizalfos have a habit of noticing you, while you sneak up to them. This is why the guy in the video shoots arrows in front of them, so they are distracted. But even this might not help. My first try was a complete catastrophe and I had to leave the trial to give up.
I did it on my second try, but even that didn't went smoothly at all. I could take out the first Silver Lizalfos exactly like in the video, which was a huge help. But the second Silver Lizaflos kept noticing me, where I had to run back to the beginning of the jetty, hoping that the Lizalfos would reset to its original position, which sometimes they don't. They face inwards, which makes sneaking up to them impossible. But sometimes they turn around, when you get closer, which is a little weird... But it's much easier to deal with only one Lizalfos than two, which is why I ultimately succeeded with some patience.
Floors 11 and 12 afterwards are probably not even worth mentioning. Don't use the raft on Floor 11, but slowly take the archers out from Cryonis blocks. Then push the Bokoblins into the water with a Korok Leave and try the same with a heavy weapon on the Silver Moblin. Fighting a Hinox without taking damage was routine by now. Stasis+, shoot the eye, attack close, retreat, repeat.
And after I was done, I was in good need for a Hestu Dance Party. Collecting all 900 Korok Seeds never felt so rewarding, because you can just enjoy Hestu's stash expansion dances again and again. And after beating the Beginning Trials, it was party time!
Because I was somewhat stressed by these trials, I didn't attempt it all in one evening. I've beaten the Beginning Trials on Monday (sometime after 0AM), then did the Middle Trials on Tuesday evening and the Final Trials yesterday evening. The rest of the time I've spent with farming materials (mostly Star Fragments) to relax.
But I've bested both the Middle Trials and the Final Trials on my first try, where the Beginning Trials really are the toughest. You just have much more room for error and much better gear in the other trials. I would even say that the difficulty goes down with each one.
The Middle Trials start easy with the air rooms, where you can kill most enemies by pushing them into the abyss. The darkness rooms can be tough, however, because it has some strong enemies in there that you can hardly see. Even the Black Hinox managed to hit me hart despite my Hinox killing routine, because I couldn't see, where I was going... Well, I never was a fan of the artificial dark areas in the game, it just looks wrong. And if it wasn't for this part, the Middle Trials would be really enjoyable and fun.
Fighting the Guardians Scouts in the last part also felt surprisingly easy, almost as if they didn't scale up, but there are also lots of neat tricks here, like pushing them into the water, dropping a huge metal box on them or burning them to death.
Now, the Final Trials are certainly the longest, where my damage boost only lasted into the middle of the ice floors, but long enough to take down the Silver Moblin and the Gold Bokoblin on Floor 15. But it also felt like the easiest of the three trials, because you get plenty of food and good weapons, while most of the enemies don't scale here and can be easily killed in one hit: Stal enemies, Fire- and Ice-Breath Lizalfos, Chuchus, Pebblits and even the Guardians thanks to the nine Ancient Arrows that you can find.
I did fight the first Guardian Stalker and also the first Guardian Turret normally to save some Ancient Arrows, where I had exactly the two left at the end (I used one on each Lynel, one on the Gold Moblin on Floor 14 and the rest on the other active Guardians). I just wanted to be save in case I screw up hitting the Lynel on the final floor in that chaos.
And I almost screwed up badly by forgetting to collect that Blizzard Rod on Floor 15, which is a real life saver on the final floor as well, because it stops the entire army of riding Blue Bokoblins. It makes this almost too easy. And even, if you screw up somehow, there are plenty of fairies and multiple "hearty" ingredients to bring you back to form. You can actually cook up a triple defense meal for the final floor, which helped as much as that Ancient Arrow and the Blizzard Rod.
So, with that I was done and could finally claim the true Master Sword... again.
So, what to do with this new shiny sword? Felling lots of trees, of course!
Link is a true force of nature and the real Calamity in this game.
I needed to collect the firewood for some Star Fragment farming, because that's like the only thing left to do at this point. Well, I made very good use of both the enhanced Master Sword and the Master Cycle Zero during my Normal Mode run, when I kept looking for the remaining Koroks, but here I didn't get both of these until the end, sadly.
Of course this was my own choice and I could have gotten them a lot earlier, but challenges like the Trial of the Sword or the Realms of Memories give me an incentive to wait until I have gotten all the Spirit Orbs. With similar challenges in past Zelda games, like the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess, I also usually did them at the end of the game. In some cases you couldn't even do it before, because the game prevents you from entering the final floors in some way.
The Best Shield
What's even more pointless than getting the best sword at the end of the game? Right, getting the best shield at the end of the game! I waited so long to get the Hylian Shield, because I wanted to wait for its yellow modifiers to appear, which only happens late. The best possible one to get is "Shield Guard Up + 54" and here it is:
After you've beaten the Stalnox in Hyrule Castle, you can just save your game right before opening the chest and reload as long, until you get your desired modifier. That's save scumming for you. There is also "Durability Up +" modifier for the shield, but it has a hidden random stat to it and it's not that useful, because with the high Shield Guard value of 144 your Hylian Shield will rarely ever take damage.
I still don't like this, because it adds yet another thing to the game that won't last and can't be gotten back, because the Hylian Shield sold by Granté won't have modifiers. So, ultimately this is just a collectible that I probably will never use and just keep in my inventory for bragging rights.
Apropos bragging, with the last Hinox I also finally got all Medals of Honor and with that all key items in Master Mode:
I also still had to buy the rest of the pictures from Symin to get that Classified Envelope, where I needed to pay 18,500 Rupees for the weapon pictures. And I have to say that with buying all the pictures, purchasing armor and paying for the Great Faries I always had a good use for Rupees. It fully added up, one half-way efficient run of Master Mode scored me enough Rupees to purchase everything. Of course I had to sell some minerals to make this work, but I still have enough left to enhance the rest of the amiibo gear. So, only Star Fragments and dragon parts required some long-time farming.
Final Hero's Path
This is how my Hero's Path of my entire Master Mode run looks like:
I did get all 900 Koroks and all treasure chests again, except for those that are glitched. So, any empty space on the Hero's Path has absolutely nothing except for maybe some material sources that can be ignored.
You can also clearly see, where the Star Fragment farming took place with paths emitted from the same travel gates. They almost looks like the third of a star, a "star fragment" so to say.
According to my Wii U I've spent a total of 175 hours to complete the game in Master Mode. That's less than a third of my original playthrough, but still quite a lot considering I've tried to be somewhat efficient by clearing one area after another this time. That's a whole new level for Zelda games, where in the past even the longest Zelda games only took around 30 to 40 hours at maximum to be completed a second time, when you know what to do and where to find everything. Even playing through a Zelda game for the first time never really scratched the hundred hour mark, but Breath of the Wild is certainly in a different league here. It's quite the time investment, but an enjoyable one.
The End(?)
This is it for my Master Mode run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Wii U. I also own the Switch version of the game, but I don't have a Nintendo Switch yet. Once I do, it's likely that I will do another complete Master Mode run on that system, where I want to focus on fully completing Hyrule Compendium with personal pictures, which will be a new challenge, because you have to fight Lynels very early, before they start upgrading. But I won't be doing this anytime soon.
For now this savegame will act as a playground, where I want to practice my fighting skills from time to time. There are so many crazy things that you can do combat-wise in this game and I want to experiment with this somewhat in the future, where a fully completed Master Mode file will serve as the perfect platform to do this.
Master Mode Progress:
Divine Beasts Freed: AllMain Quests: 20/20Shrine Quests: 42/42Side Quests: 90/90Memories: 23/23Shrines: 136/136Koroks: 900/900Talus: 40/40Hinox: 40/40Molduga: 4/4Map Completion: 100.00%
All done, again! Thanks for reading!
