Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 10

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 6 (Completed)
  
• Battles: 17
  
• Challenges: 107
• Quests: 245
• Contribution Rate: 65%

 

I haven't progressed in the story yet, where for the last evenings I was solely focused on clearing Challenges. So, this is more of an appendix to the previous entry.

Master of Elements

After finally finding a good mission to refill rods and apples ("Nap Quest!"), thanks to Master Kohga, I really wanted to have that next rod usage upgrade, so I gave the Thunder and Ice Training III Challenges another try. Link is already in the middle of the 60s and also got a Royal Broadsword with a base damage that makes the Master Sword look puny, so it was definitely doable.

The most challenging part here were probably beating the elemental Lynels within three minutes, but I've gotten really good at dodging their attacks by now for some regular Flurry Rushes, which helps tremendously. Earlier in the game I was playing a lot more defensively, often just waiting for the Rune weakpoint attacks, but with a defensive play style the time limits are simply not doable, so you need to take the risks.

Curiously, the Blights gave me much less trouble, where you get five minutes for each. Waterblight Ganon is simple enough by now and Thunderblight Ganon didn't perform his clone trick for some reason. He still did this when we played this mission in co-op last weekend, so I was a little bit worried, but the game was uncharacteristically nice to me here and I could finish this boss without facing such shenanigans.

(Also, no love for Windblight Ganon here. I guess, that "wind" just wasn't an interesting enough "element" for this game, where in Breath of the Wild only the Korok Leaf really made use of it as a weapon.)

Next up were all the "training" missions combining the elements, four in total. They all give a relatively generous time limit and you are allowed to use two fighters, except in the last one, so it was again Mipha's time to shine, who is my second character in the 60s. I was somewhat over-leveled for these missions, but I really wasn't in the mood of doing some last second finishes again and I just wanted to be done with these Challenges, so this felt right.

And when I was finally done with all of them, I realized that I forgot something important... You need 30 Courser Bee Honey for the rod upgrade! It's ridiculous enough that this Malon knock-off is still selling goods despite the fact that her farm is swarmed with Guardians, but you can also only buy three at once, so I really should have kept purchasing the honey between every Challenge.

But I simply replayed some older Challenges that I've only played once or twice to pass the time and finally claim the reward of having five rounds for every rod. Oh, the power...! The POWER!

Only the Best

Playing all those hefty missions with Mipha gave me the resources to build a decent weapon for her, the second weapon in my game which hit the first maximum of Level 20. Since this came up in the comments previously, I've experimented here with four slots, where you can actually get a boost for two different types of seals by adding two of each type:

Update: The damage bonus will be lower, however, where it's +15 for four seals of the same type. Still, this might be a good choice if you want to combine certain seals of different types, e.g. Flurry Rush Damage and Perfect Dodge Timing Window. (Update for the update: You will later have six seals and then a combination of four and two is actually the best outcome for a total of +20 bonus damage.)

Well, with so much power, I was finally able to beat the cursed "In the Clutches of the Yiga" mission, a lot more easily. It helps tremendously when you're able to defeat Sooga right away, instead of facing him as another extra in the turmoil at the end. Three minutes were still quite close for Kohga, but with all the rods in the world this can be done in any case...

In addition, I was able to finally beat "Stronger Yet", a Challenge where you have to face two Hinox and a Lynel, potentially all at once, with a five minute time limit. I previously wasn't able to do this with Mipha, but now I even had one and a half minutes left on the clock. It made that much of a difference.

Now, while it's great that I'm finally able to beat all these Challenges, it has this spiraling effect, where you keep relying on the same characters. It's only normal that you tend to play with fighters that you're good at, but here your good characters get better on each step with the leveling and new weapons, thus making them automatically the best choice whenever things are getting even more difficult.

So, maybe it's good that the remaining Challenges forced me to play specific characters, namely the Gerudo ladies with Riju's "Chief-in-Training" and its follow-up missions. The first one can be quite tough, because Riju doesn't seem to be as good against officers as she's against crowds. So, fighting a bunch of Yiga Blademasters and also Sooga can be a bit of a challenge.

Luckily, her Special Attack is quite powerful and I also now have all the rods in the world, where I've learned to use the environments more and more to my advantage for some cheap weak point smashes, other than the obvious things like water puddles or grass. In this case you can find some old wooden carts in the area, which boost your Fire Rod. This also works on any wooden beams inside the Yiga Clan Hideout for example.

The next two missions were about helping the Zora and the Gorons with your lightning powers and this reminded me of how I always thought that it might have been a good idea to give the different characters elemental resistance or weaknesses. The Gerudo ladies could be nearly immune to lightning attacks for example, while the Gorons shouldn't take damage from fire. The Zora would be weak to lightning, but they could potentially take less damage from fire and ice. Likewise, the Rito might be weak to fire, but resistant to the cold.

This way I would have an incentive to play different characters in missions with a certain elemental focus, instead of relying on Mipha all the time, just because she is my second best character at the moment. In the least my best character (other than Link) changed throughout the game, where early on I was heavily relying on Revali, even calling him the "Chosen Hero", who now doesn't get chosen this often these days, mostly because my play style has heavily changed.

But it's probably time to focus on the other characters a little bit more...

Challenges Complete... For Now

With all of this I've finally finished all available Challenges and Quests, before going into the first story scenario of Chapter 7, the Great Plateau. Since this place is where the whole Breath of the Wild saga started, this felt like the right time to clean house and basically create a new start where I've left everything else behind me.

When I played the game in the early chapters, it was my plan to do this at each step of the story. But then the Challenges started to become more and more ridiculous, mostly because of the time limits, where either I was under-leveled for the "Very Hard" difficulty or simply not skilled enough, most likely both. So, I've kept postponing certain missions for quite a while, always leaving these unfinished marks on my maps. But both my characters and my skills have grown since then, where I might be able to continue this trend. Unless the game comes up with even more ridiculous stuff...

The only thing I haven't done yet are getting all treasure chests and Korok Seeds from every story scenario, but I'm keeping those for later, because replaying older scenarios is very relaxing and a good way to refill rods and apples, so it's perfect for in between some tough Challenges. 

Anyway, at this point in time I've completed 17 scenarios, 107 challenges and 245 quests, which is already quite the number. My "Hope of all Hyrule" completion rate is at 65%, about a third of the game. And this had me curious about the contribution levels of each individual area.

• Central Hyrule: 57%
• Akkala: 58%
  
• Necluda: 59%
• Gerudo: 64%
  
• Faron: 73%
  
• Hebra: 76%
• Eldin: 81%
• Lanayru: 83%
  

To my understanding these contribution rates are only for the Quests (and not the Challenges) and most of those are character-specific, where it's highly interesting what areas have a relatively low rate. The homes of the Rito, Gorons and Zora are near completion, so there probably isn't much else to find here.

Of course Central Hyrule is still at the lowest, where I suppose lots of it will be for King Rhoam. And  the next story scenario(s) will take place here, probably spawning more quests afterwards.

Interestingly, the Gerudo area isn't even at two thirds yet, which gives me hope that Sooga might become playable in the base game after all, with most of his personal Quests placed around the Yiga Clan Hideout, similar to Kohga. I would love this very much, because this is such a cool original character.

Likewise, there is a lot open in Akkala and Necluda, which would be a perfect fit for Robbie and Purah... But I don't really want to get my hopes up here. I haven't looked at the full roster yet and even if it's only the King left, it would be already quite tremendous what Koei Tecmo has achieved here. 16 characters for a new Warriors game is a lot and I'm very happy with the roster so far.

Update: Sooga was put into the gallery behind Robbie and Purah as another character without their own icon. So, that doesn't look so great for the guy.

Sorry again for speculating about something that already is known to the world, but I simply like to share my thoughts from my limited view for documentation. I will play the Great Plateau mission probably this evening and I might be a little bit smarter afterwards. I'm very excited for this mission, it looks so cool from the previews images.