Breath of the Wild Master Log, Entry 7

Star Fragment and Dragon Part Farming

To enhance all the armor in the game, especially if you have all the amiibo pieces, you will need lots of Star Fragments. 88 in total, if I'm not mistaken. And this is why after the last entry I proceeded with farming them, so that I don't have to do it all at the end and I can enhance most armor pieces, when I approach the last Great Fairy.

Ideally the golden enemies in Master Mode would drop Star Fragments (more often), but that's not the case, so you have to do it the old-fashioned way. I was experimenting with Star Fragment farming a little bit, where I followed suggestions from GameFAQs and people I know. One was to do it next to your house in Hateno, because you don't need any resources at all, since you can simply skip times with the Cooking Pot in front of your house or via your bed. You then have to look towards Hateno Tower...

This sounds nice in theory, but I often had the issues that the Star Fragments would drop somewhere behind the cliff with the tower, where you don't see it...

So, in the end the quickest method still seems to be the Dueling Peaks one, where you have the full overview of every possible landing spot. I probably should go through the basics here again for everyone, who doesn't know how this works. Bring some wood and ideally also a flaming weapon, then follow these steps:

1. Warp to the Shee Vaneer Shrine on top of the Dueling Peaks.
2. Sit by a fire until morning.
3. Sit by a fire until night.
4. Face west on top of the mountain, looking between the Great Plateau and the Central Tower. Try to have any large surfaces of water out of your sight, e.g. Lake Hylia.
5. Wait for the star to fall. You can fully idle during this time and do something else, e.g. surf on your Smartphone and read this blog.
6. After the star finally dropped, mark it on your map with the scope and warp to the nearest location (often the Great Plateau Tower).
7. Repeat.

The skipping to the next morning is key here. People often forget that and just skip from one night to the next, in which case the star won't fall. You want it to become morning first, then you can skip to the next night. You you can also simply wait for 5AM and do something else in the meantime, where I personally like to combine this with dragon part farming to get all those scales, claws, fangs and horns that you need.

This worked extremely well, because the three dragons tend to instantly appear in certain spots, when you follow the day-to-night-skipping method for Star Fragment farming. You just need to teleport to the following shrines for the respective dragons:

• Shae Loya Shrine at Tabantha Bridge → Dinraal
• Qukah Nata Shrine at Lake Floria → Farosh
• Dow Na'eh Shrine at Lanayru Promenade → Naydra

Update: When you're done with Revali's Song, you can also use the Shira Gomar Shrine at the Tanagar Canyon for Dinraal.

The fastest here is Farosh, who comes out of Riola Spring the minute you teleport to the Qukah Nata Shrine. Naydra takes the longest, because it appears over Mount Lanayru and you can see it descend once you've climbed the ruins of Lanayru Promenade:

You could also warp to Mount Lanayru directly, but hitting Naydra there usually has the disadvantage that the dragon parts fly off into the far distance, where it's hard to find them and it completely cancels any time advantage that you might have up there. At Lanayru Promenade things are simple and certainly not as disorienting.

You should wear armor with the Fireproof, Unshockable / Lightning Proof and Unfreezable effects respectively to protect you from the dragon emissions. In case of Naydra it's enough to wear Zant's Helmet from the last DLC, which offers the "Unfreezable" bonus. I had to use the Rubber armor set for Farosh, but it's also enough to use the Thunder Helm, once you have it.

Back to the Arena

To score kill points for the best possible Hylian Shield I probably still need some more Lynel kills, where you always have a White-Maned Lynel at the Great Plateau.

Early in the game this guy is a significant threat that you might want to avoid, but later on he's the easiest source for Savage Lynel Crushers, the most powerful weapon in the game.

As long as I didn't clear my last Divine Beast yet, I could also return to the Coliseum Ruins for an easy Silver Lynel. Afterwards there's only one left in Hyrule Castle, which is not as convenient.

And even after all this time I got a lot better at fighting these guys. Well, for the most part this means that I'm cheesing the rodeo method. Score a headshot, mount the Lynel, stab, stab, stab and score additional headshots in slow motion after being thrown off. When you attack the Lynel, while riding on his back, it doesn't cost any durability, which you can abuse greatly. I personally don't like this, however, because now you have a reason to preserve your most powerful weapon(s) just for the rodeo hits.

But there are some other tricks, like crouching below a Crusher Lynel, while he's doing his 720° spin attack. I can only advise to take a look at RinHaraSaki's Youtube Channel, which has some amazing fighting montages (like Open Your Eyes) and neat tutorials about Breath of the Wild combat tricks. I was quite surprised about what's possible and this really inspired me to try out some new techniques. The combat in this game is utterly amazing.

Gerudo Canyon Curiosities

Well, other than farming all the things, there was still one big area left in the game for me to conquer: Gerudo. Saving the best for last. I thought about entering the area via the Gerudo Highlands for a change, but I ultimately took the classic Gerudo Canyon route, because it seemed more convenient for completion.

For example there is one guy at the canyon road, who needs a normal-sized horse. If you know this in advance, you can prepare by bringing any horse from near the north end of the Great Plateau, where you usually have some packs running around.

Anyway, I've encountered a couple of secrets on my way through the canyon, which starts with the Test of Will. Normally the Gorons prevent you from wearing pieces of the Flamebreaker armor during the test, but they don't account for the Vah Rudania Divine Helm:

You can also use the Island Lobster Shirt to help you out with the heat in the first test. So, all these added armor pieces really trivialize some of the tasks and challenges in the game.

Also, I've discovered more locations of the lowest tier enemies:

There's ANOTHER Green Lizalfos to be found on the higher levels of Gerudo Canyon:

From what I've heard, this is the exception, so there's still only one Red Bokoblin and so on. Apropos, I also found the latter riding a horse between the Great Plateau and Mount Faloraa.

This should be all of them except for the various types of Wizzrobes, where I'm usually too lazy to check them. But I might go looking for them with the Sheikah Sensor+ later on.

Also, I had a very lucky Star Fragment drop near the Wasteland Tower, where a Star Fragment landed right on top of a Korok Puzzle at a cliff wall:

I'd wish I had so much luck, when I was actively searching for all the Koroks in Normal Mode, instead of following a guide map... A situation like this would have been a jackpot.

Circling Vah Naboris

As an experiment for this run, I wanted to know, how much of the Gerudo Desert can be completed, while the Divine Beast Vah Naboris is still roaming the area causing sandstorms...

Well, it turned that you can do almost everything. You can go for all the shrines but one, you can defeat all four Moldugas and do most of the Side Quests around town, except two of them, which apparently won't trigger before the Thunder Helm is on the table ("The Mystery Poluter" and "The Search for Barta"). The only "major" thing you can't do in the desert yet is the Sand Seal Race, because Vah Naboris was blocking the race track.

You can still enter the sandstorm area, however, where Vah Naboris slowly targets you with its lightning strikes:

Even with the Rubber armor set and the "Unshockable" set bonus this does plenty of damage, so you wouldn't want to spent too much time in its proximity, but you can easily get all the chests and Koroks around the sandstorm area. So, the only thing that Vah Naboris occupies is really the race track.


With having access to the Kara Kara Bazaar (where I still find it annoying that this place doesn't have its own shrine for no reason), I could finally complete the Tarrey Town quest line, where I already could get the complete Desert Voe set thanks to Rhondson.

For one of the Side Quests in Tarrey Town I also needed more Tabantha Wheat, where I noticed that cutting grass near the Rito Stable brings out many Hot-Footed Frogs. This would have been very helpful to know earlier, because this method is much faster than running after the frogs in the Hyrule Ridge area.


Back to the desert, I started clearing everything beginning in the southeast with Mount Granajh. From there I made surprisingly short work of the South Lomei Labyrinth... Originally it was my first labyrinth in my Normal Mode run, so it left an impression on me at the time, but this time I went directly for the treasure chest in the southeast quarter, where from there I quickly found the entrance to the shrine in the center:

I didn't look up any solution maps, it just happened. Now, both the North Lomei Labyrinth and the Lomei Labyrinth Island still took me a while on my second playthrough, while this one was completely done (found the shrine and all chests) within minutes and without any trouble, so I could move on fairly quickly to clear everything else around the desert...

Tricks in the Desert

A nice trick that I've learned has to do with the triple tree or triple cacti Korok puzzles that you can find in many places...

Normally you have to remove all fruits but a certain one from the third tree / cactus, as indicated by the other two trees / cacti. If you do this manually, it's a little bit of a hassle and there's even room for error.

But it turns out that there is a foolproof and quick method to solve this puzzle. Simply use Stasis on the fruit that shall remain and fell the tree or the cactus:

Yes, this works...

I always thought that the tree also has to remain, but apparently the game only checks for the fruit, so this "solution" is possible and makes dealing with these puzzles very convenient. It's certainly good to know for any future playthroughs.

The desert also has many enemy camps, where I'm getting more and more confident in my fighting skills, other than dueling Lynels. For example I've learned to appreciate the "bow spin" technique quite a lot, where you start spinning with a two-handed weapon and then both switch to your bow and do a dash cancel at the same time. This makes you spin with your bow in your hand, while the two-hander still does damage on your back, it even doubles the hits per second.

In addition this makes any elemental effect go on as long as you keep spinning, where you can lock enemies in constant freezing damage with a Giant Frostblade or keep shocking them to death with a Giant Thunderblade hitting something metallic. Any metal chest inside the enemy camps will do fine, but this is something where even the amiibo Rune can support you in combat by dropping a metal chest, whenever you need it.

But I've even used Korok puzzle blocks and I became more and more a beast, where Master Mode with its tanky enemies finally starting being a lot of fun to a point and where I wouldn't want to return to Normal Mode at all.

However, the camp chests are certainly not worth the resources or trouble. Since I didn't have Urbosa's Fury yet, fights still could get quite resource-intensive, where in one case I broke several Savage Lynel weapons to clear a camp of Golden and Silver Lizalfos, just to get a Gerudo Spear as the reward... That's the game giving you the finger.

Yes, there are the platforms with weak enemies sometimes giving you good stuff in Master Mode, but there aren't many in the Gerudo area - in fact I only found some at the Sheikah Towers and that was about it.

Return of the Yiga

The most annoying this thing in this game are the "randomly" spawning enemies, especially the Stal ones. Oh, getting off your horse for a change? Say hello to a group of Stal Moblins! Oh, want to sneak up to a Lizalfos? Let his Stal buddies alarm him in the last second! Oh, you want to tame a horse? Have some Chuchus to scare it off! Oh, you like exploring the environment in peace? Kiss some Electric Keese!

It's not fun and because they all die in one or two hits, you're inclined to not waste any of your good weapons on them and either carry always one junk weapon with you or use Bombs, where both is inconvenient. So, ultimately it's just annoying.

Putting off Vah Naboris till the end of my Master Mode run did have the disadvantage of not being able to use Urbosa's Fury for the longest time, but it certainly had the advantage that it significantly reduced the number of random encounters with the Yiga. Those don't start actively pursuing you, until you've entered their based and defeated Master Kohga. In my Normal Mode run I did this very early in the game, so I was constantly annoyed by them in addition to all the Stals, Keese and Chuchus. Not so in my Master Mode experience.

And because I did the Yiga Clan Hideout early in my first playthrough, I didn't consider fighting my way through the place. And I didn't even know at the time that the Yiga Blademasters inside the Hideout will one-hit you to create some cheap challenge as an incentive to actually use stealth here.

But since I've already died once in the beginning of my Master Mode run, I had nothing to loose here. As with the Lynel on Ploymus Mountain there was no reason to sneak and I wanted to push through the place with guns blazing. So, I donned my Fierce Deity armor, readied my best sword, equipped my almost unlimited arsenal of Shock Arrows and... stood in front of closed doors.

It turns out that you actually have to speak to Riju first here, otherwise the Yiga will have closed their shop. I thought about surprising Riju by already bringing the Thunder Helm to our first conversation for some altered dialogues, but apparently this isn't possible.

Still, after my audience with her I went back to proceed with my initial plan. Annihilate all Yiga! And at this point it was easy enough...

I find the promise of being killed by one hit quite stressful, naturally, but it's still more fun than doing stealth. I never liked the stealth sections in Zelda games and it's neat how this game gives you the option to fight, sort of.


So, here's my Hero's Path right when entering Vah Naboris. Compare that with my Korok Mask run through the desert from last time and it certainly leaves a lot more empty space.

That cross from the beginning of the game, where I accidentally fell off that infamous cliff, is still taunting me, however... I probably should have restarted at that point to have a deathless run of Master Mode at the end. But at least it let's me take risks like battling my way through the Yiga Clan Hideout, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise, since the game keeps your deaths in the Hero's Path for the next 200 hours of moving around the overworld, even if you rollback to a previous savegame for some reason.

So, for a deathless run you really can't die at all, which wasn't the case with Zelda games like Link's Awakening or Ocarina of Time, where you could just turn off or not save the game to stay at the pretty "000" death counter.

Vah Naboris Revisited

Vah Naboris was the first Divine Beast during my first playthrough, but this time I saved the best for last. It's certainly the one Divine Beast that comes closest to being an intricate "dungeon", though I have to say that I missed the possibility to actively control the beast itself in some way at any time. This is only achieved indirectly via electrical circuits, where you can "only" control the three cylinders in the belly of the beast.

But it's certainly the most complex of the Divine Beasts and I really enjoy the atmosphere of riding this thing through the desert. This is the one Divine Beast, where you really can feel how it's a "living" thing inside the environment.

What else? Thunderblight gave me more trouble than he did in Hyrule Castle, where it might be that the Blights have more health in their Divine Beasts. But that's about it.

Everything for a Pair of Boots

After Vah Naboris was down, I could finish the remaining quests around Gerudo Town and finally score the Thunder Helm. It's funny, how you get a total of three distinct gear items from Urbosa, while the other Champions only have one.

Also, at this point you have to make sure that your armor inventory is not full or otherwise you will potentially miss the Thunder Helm. Riju doesn't check for a full inventory unlike other characters, who are giving you armor pieces, where the Thunder Helm ceases to exist, unless you go back to an older savegame, where it wasn't lost yet. With only one automatic and one manual save this is easy to miss in Master Mode, however, and you wouldn't be the first.

So, make sure that you're not on full five pages (one hundred pieces of armor), which at this point is entirely likely. Even if you don't have any duplicates, you might be full, because there 107 pieces of individual armor in the game. So, you have to get rid of at least seven items. I sold the three basic armor items from the Great Plateau and I also didn't get any of the Kilton masks, since Majora's Mask made them fully obsolete. I did keep all of the DLC stuff this time, so my armor collection will be different from my Normal Mode file, where I kept both the Great Plateau and Kilton items, even two duplicate pieces of the Hylian armor, but sold three of the DLC sets.

I do like the order of armor items, when you leave out the three Plateau rags, though. With the exception of the Ancient set, where I tend to use the inconveniently placed Divine Helms on the last page anyway, all of my favorite armor sets have all their items on the same line: the Stealth, Climber and Fierce Deity sets. Which is practical, though it would be even better, if there were a quick-equip feature, where you only have to select one armor item for the full set...

Well, I did get the dark series from Kilton, so now I had five spaces left and what's missing is the final set of armor and the two pairs of boots that you can get from the loser, who hangs outside of Gerudo Town. For this I needed to go to the Gerudo Highlands, which was the last area in the game that I had to clear.

But clearing the Gerudo Highlands is 99% just doing this:

Pulling treasure chests out of the snow with Magnesis. There are tons of them there, as if it constantly hailed treasure chests on that place. Otherwise it's only three shrines, about 25 Koroks and the two pictures that you need for the boots.

Well, I did find my 900th Korok there, so this is done "already":

Buh-bye!

Buh-bye!

Here's the Hero's Path for the Gerudo Highlands:

After getting both the Sand and the Snow Boots, I needed to collect some Swift Violets to fully enhance them both (30 are needed), which I did in the Hebra area, where a couple of enemy camps were still waiting to be dominated.

Well, by now I got all enhanceable non-amiibo armor to ★★★★ with one exception: the Ancient Helm. That ugly thing needs two Ancient Cores, where I started farming Guardians around Hyrule Castle.

But no luck. I've enhanced the four Divine Helms to the max already, so there is no need for the Ancient Helm to be fully enhanced, because I will probably never use it. But that goes for many armor pieces and I've still enhanced them. It's just annoying, how low the drop rate for these things are.

Oh, and I've been wondering about this the last time, but you don't actually have to take a picture of the picture on Impa's wall to trigger the final memory. You can still find it and Link simply doesn't look at his Sheikah Slate then.

So, for the last part I've saved the major DLC quests and Eventide Island, so basically all challenges,where the game takes some of your stuff away. This will be "fun" in Master Mode for sure.

Master Mode Progress:

• Divine Beasts Freed: All
• Main Quests: 15/20
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Side Quests: 88/90
• Memories: 18/23
• Shrines: 119/136
• Koroks: 900/900
• Talus: 40/40
• Hinox: 38/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Completion: 98.20%