Breath of the Wild Master Log, Entry 6

Welcome to the Jungle

One area that I hadn't touched yet during my Master Mode run, other than the Gerudo Desert and the Gerudo Highlands, was Faron, so this was my next goal. I sneaked into the jungle one time already to go to the Spring of Courage and receive Shae Katha's Blessing, but that was it.

Apropos, a common theme during my Master Mode playthrough is that I already have completed most of the Shrine Quests before I actually got them. This one was no exception and Kass usually gives a small remark about.

After climbing the Faron Tower, I made my way into the most treasure chest infested area in the entire game: Lake Floria. There are around 70 treasure chests there and you have to salvage most of them out of the water, which takes quite a while. And of course you have two of the infamous glitched chests in the area, so the Sheikah Sensor+ will never stop beeping...

Afterwards I made my way to Lurelin Village for the first time during this run and it's quite nice that there's this entirely optional village in the game, other than Tarrey Town. All the other villages are tied into the Main Quests, so you will visit them eventually, but you can beat the story and fully ignore Lurelin while doing so.

Props to Nintendo for doing that. With later Zelda games they have been more and more reluctant to add really optional things, where Skyward Sword was probably the worst offender, and it's good to see that Nintendo is willing to create an entire village that some players might never experience. Stuff like that really adds to the exploration value of the game.

But... for the most part you also just keep salvaging treasures there...

I haven't been to Eventide Island yet, because I'm keeping this "strip Link naked" challenge for the end, much like the Trial of the Sword. It's probably easily doable at this part and you can also cheat by dropping good weapons on your raft before going to the island, but I still want to be as strong as possible without any gear this time and maybe not use that cheat tactic...

So, here's my current Hero's Path for the Faron region:

The most important goal for this area was finally completing the Rubber armor set, where two of the pieces can be found around Lake Floria. I've already upgraded them to ★★, so that they have the "Unshockable" set bonus, which should be useful in my adventures ahead.

In terms of armor I also finally got all amiibo pieces by now. To complete the Twilight set I had to save scum, however, because I didn't have any luck with the Super Smash Bros. Link amiibo, while at the same time I kept getting pieces of the Wind set.

Hyrule Castle Raid

 

If there's another area that has a high density of treasure chests, then it's certainly Hyrule Castle. So, this was my next goal, before I finally head to the desert. However, before I went there, I wanted to see if the "Royal Recipe" Side Quest can be done without ever visiting Hyrule Castle. And turns out that this is possible, you can just bring a Fruit Cake and a Monster Cake to the guy and be done with this Side Quest without actually looking for the recipes inside Hyrule Castle.

In the castle itself there are many silver and gold enemies, which can drain your weapons quickly, but luckily there are many strong weapons to be found inside the castle. And it's nice how you can clear the entire castle without the Blood Moon having an effect. The atmosphere and the music of this final dungeon are certainly great and it's always a great feeling to clear the whole thing, so you can just roam the place freely without being bothered by any Guardians.

Anyway, I did place my Travel Medallion right above the entrance to the Sanctum again, much like at the end of my Normal Mode file:

I wish that I would have know earlier that this is actually possible. When I first tried using the Travel Medallion at Hyrule Castle, I was under a roof and therefore probably at the inside part of the map, where you are not allowed to place the thing. I then was under the wrong impression that it doesn't work at Hyrule Castle at all, so I never bothered with trying this again...

And every time I wanted back to the top of Hyrule Castle, I had to go from the Saas Ko'sah Shrine deep down in the basement of the castle. But this will be a nice shortcut for whenever I want to take on the final boss.

Otherwise I got everything inside the castle except for the Hylian Shield. I want to get one with the best possible modifier (Shield Guard Up +54), because in my Normal Mode file I didn't have a modifier at all. It's silly, really, because that way I will probably never use the the shield, because it's irreplaceable, but it might be an interesting thing to have. And before that I will probably have to defeat some more Lynels to make sure that I can get the yellow modifiers on the shield (see this Reddit topic for more info).

Well, at the end I donned my new Rubber set to be ready for the next battle...

Thunderblight Ganon!

It was interesting to fight one of the Blights in Hyrule Castle myself for the first time. This happens, whenever you haven't freed one of the Divine Beasts yet. Then you'll have to face the respective Blights inside the Sanctum, which is also the only time, where you can move freely inside this place without triggering the Calamity Ganon fight and falling down below.

At this point Thunderblight was laughable easy, but the same cannot be said about Calamity Ganon. Master Mode really boosted this guy, if only for the fact that he likes to hide behind his invincibility shield and uses his extensive wall crawl periods to regenerate. At first he even generated towards 100% again, after the three freed Divine Beasts did 37,5% damage.

This fight dragged on for quite some time here, but luckily he's unable to fully heal at certain points, so there are caps to the regeneration, where 50% is the first one. Still, as long as he got back to half of his health, it didn't seem like I could beat him, because even the strongest weapons combined with attack boosters only deal little damage on him. Before I could do enough damage, he was back on the wall again...

But once I've became better at perfect-dodging most of his attacks and parrying his lasers, I was able to accumulate enough damage, where he seemingly stopped regenerating around a third. At that point I managed to successfully flurry-rush him a couple of times in a row and he finally was history. This should be a lot easier with Urbosa's Fury, but I wanted to do it without this ability for the accomplishment. And rarely ever felt beating a final boss in a Zelda game so accomplishing.

I don't even count the Dark Beast Ganon form here, the game is over after beating Calamity and the battle on Hyrule Field is nothing more than a glorified cutscene, where I could relax... But I can see, how beating Calamity Ganon very early in the game must be an absolute rush.

Here's my Hero's Path for Hyrule Castle:

Next stop: Gerudo.

Master Mode Progress:

• Divine Beasts Freed: 3
• Main Quests: 11/20
• Shrine Quests: 31/42
• Side Quests: 70/90
• Memories: 15/23
• Shrines: 100/136
• Koroks: 793/900
• Talus: 32/40
• Hinox: 36/40
• Molduga: 0/4
• Map Completion: 86.55%