Yesterday was the release of version 1.2.0 of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, together with the first major DLC expansion, "Pulse of the Ancients". There are a couple of new features and improvements coming with this update, but the majority of it gets actually unlocked via the "EX Royal Ancient Lab", so this Expansion Pass follows the trend of the one for Breath of the Wild, where quality of life and gameplay improvements get locked behind paid DLC...
Improved Camera
Now, this one you get for free as part of the 1.2.0 update. There are now separate inversion options for horizontal and vertical camera movement, as well as camera controls and aiming. In addition there is a new automatic camera that can be turned on and off, as well as more fine tuning for the camera speed. That's very useful and certainly a good improvement, but that's all you get unless you're willing to pay.
EX Royal Ancient Lab and EX Challenges
The Royal Ancient Lab is the main focus of the first DLC wave. When you start the game after installing the DLC, only this and two new EX Challenges will appear on the map (with more to unlock). Everything on the map related to the Expansion Pass is marked with "EX", similar to some of the DLC additions in Breath of the Wild.
In the Royal Ancient Lab Robbie and Purah provide you with a tree of new Quests, which let you unlock and improve a variety of things. This includes:
- The Flail and Master Cycle weapon types for Link and Zelda.
- The ability to purchase apples.
- Improved baked apples.
- More damage for the Sheikah Slate Runes.
- More weapon spaces (now up to 70).
- Vicious Monster Alerts.
- The Battle-Tested Guardian.
To complete the Research Quests in the lab you will need to collect a variety of new materials, where most of these can be gathered from the new "Vicious Monster Battles", as well as the new EX Challenges. Some of the Research Quests require you to fulfill certain conditions, like killing 100 enemies with Remote Bombs, where this is completely new. The Research Quests are also arranged in a tree structure, where you need to have cleared certain Quests before you can do others.
Some of the Research Quests will lead to new Challenges and Quests on the main map, also marked with "EX". For example purchasing the first Flail for Link will unlock the Flail Training Challenge, as well as the Quests to get its bonus combos and enhanced ability. Some of the unlocked Challenges put a focus on research, where you need to escort Robbie and Purah or perform certain actions for them. The new Challenges range from level 50 to the mid 90s (except for the new training missions), where most of this is supposedly late game content. Update, here is a complete list:
The new EX Challenges focus a lot on the three new enemy types, the upgraded Wizzrobes from Breath of the Wild, the Giant Chuchus and the bomb-throwing Moblins. But there is also a big focus on Robbie and Purah, who are during research during various of these Challenges. This actually makes it seem like they are not planned to become playable during the Expansion Pass.
Expensive Apples
Purchasing apples, once unlocked, can be done before you go into any mission, right next to the "Onward" button. However, while this sounds like a very good and necessary improvement to the game, Koei Tecmo made this ridiculously overpriced again, where even with the discount (which can also be unlocked in the lab) a single apple still costs 344 Rupees...
You're better off investing this money into levels and upgrading weapons and there is still no way of refilling your rods, so it's probably still best to replay Challenges, like "Nap Quest!", for refills. And overall this doesn't really help with the game's very bad healing system, only a little.
Story-wise this is also quite nonsensical. They want to help out the heroes by supplying them with apples, but they are charging them like 3000% of what they would normally cost (an apple costs 12 Rupees in Breath of the Wild and sells for three). This is robbery.
Even Better Weapons
There is some good news and some bad news when it comes to grinding. The good news is that Koei Tecmo hasn't raised the level cap yet, so 100 is still the maximum and you can focus on getting all the characters to that level. However, the real damage output always came from the weapon levels and there is now lot more to improve weapons, where these Blacksmith upgrades can be unlocked via the Royal Ancient Lab:
- The maximum weapon level can now be raised to 50.
- On level 50 you can now remove the hidden seals.
There are no additional hidden seals, but the latter lets you now freely design any weapon and always go for that quadruple "Attack Speed++" builds, if you so desire...
On top of it, the base attack damage of weapons has been now raised by 10, where you might find tier 3 weapons with a base attack of 80 now, instead of 70. Since there is still no way to maximize the base attack via the Blacksmith, so this update effectively renders all previously "perfect" weapons as inferior. That's a big slap in the face of all the players who have invested a lot of time into building such weapons.
DLC Weapons
The Flail and Master Cycle can only be obtained via the Royal Ancient Lab by purchasing them there, so you can't find them as loot during battles. Unlike all other weapons they don't come in three different strength tiers. Instead they have three variants with identical base attack values, but different C1 attacks.
The Guardian Flail for example lets you do a grapple attack to move forward, while the Ancient Bladed Flail has a charge shot and the Fortified Flail lets you summon a small shield (similar to Kohga's). And it's actually very similar for the three different Master Cycle variants.
The Flail is a very versatile weapon in any case, if not the most versatile weapon in the game, because it lets you copy enemy weapons with its ZR ability. This changes the moveset for the different weapon types, where for example a Fire Rod from a Fire Wizzrobe lets you set everything ablaze all around you.
Vicious Monsters
These are a new type of Challenge that can be unlocked via the Royal Ancient Lab and which appear randomly with a red icon, similar to Blood Moon battles. However, they have their own positions on the map, they stay for a while and there can be multiple ones at once.
These Challenges have no time limit and are always rather simple, but they end on one or more of these "vicious monsters", which have a red glow to them and are much more tanky than usual. They have these funny boss headlines to them, like "Stronger than Strong" or "Full of Life". These vicious monsters can be the new Giant Chuchus, the stronger Wizzrobes, Silver Moblins (including the bomb-throwing ones), Silver Lynels and similar foes. What monsters await you at the end are always random and you can unlock a preview at the Royal Ancient Lab.
During these boss battles the game will spawn waves of Wizzrobes and elemental Moblins on top of you to make things more difficult, but there is a limit to this. These battles are set in the higher levels and are well suited for obtaining weapons of the new base attack maximum and are the main source of the new materials required for the Royal Ancient Lab.
The best part is probably that the Vicious Monster battles come with new music tracks, which are as excellent as the rest of the soundtrack.
Apocalyptic Difficulty
This seems to be just another stat increase, so for replaying early missions later in the game this doesn't make any difference compared to "Very Hard". The enemy tiers stay the same, so still no golden enemies. This is quite disappointing and seems rather unnecessary.
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