Age of Calamity War Log, EX Entry 5

Expansion Pass Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• EX Battles: 8 (Completed)
  
• EX Research Quests: 35 / 35
• EX Quests: 77
  
• EX Challenges: 26

Well, this is it, at least for now. I'm done with the game again with all Quests and Challenges completed, where the DLC really didn't add too much. Most of the play time after my previous post went into figuring out the secret Memory Quests and then there isn't really much anything left to do, other than the usual grinding. But more on these topics a little later.

Spoiler warning: If you don't know who the unannounced third DLC character is and still want to find out for yourself, then you will have to stop reading right now. I'm not turning this into some ultra secret, like I did with the final base game character. If you're looking for help to solve all the Memory Quests, then check out my updated summary post, where you can find a spoiler-free solution.

Anyway, moving on, you've been warned...

Intervention Inventions

While replaying the new scenarios and also grinding some more Vicious Monster Battles, I've been using Purah & Robbie quite a lot. I love this new character, it's a really great addition. The range is enormous, while Robbie doesn't have such a massive hitbox as some of the other larger fighters. And any hits on Purah don't subtract from your life energy, she's basically an invulnerable dummy and can even be used to block some enemy attacks, though it somewhat feels wrong to "abuse" her like that. But it's also hilarious when she gets flipped all over the place without a scratch.

The real deal are the "inventions", however, which you can place with your ZR ability whenever the meter has refilled, which happens quite quickly. Not only are these some of the biggest area attacks in the game, they reveal weak points and eat away the gauge like crazy. It's like you're getting access to deployable Special Attacks all the time.

This ability is insane and really helps with groups of stronger enemies, which is why I've been playing them happily in the Vicious Monster Battles. It's probably my favorite of all the DLC movesets, because it's so versatile. The other one in this DLC wave comes close, however, but for different reasons...

But no matter how good the character is, one thing will always be devastating and those are archer attacks. I've probably mentioned this before, but I have to do this again: the lack of any invulnerability frames for your character is not okay. If you get hit by ten arrows within half a second, because a group of archers or Lizalfos is spamming at you, that's ten hearts down when one arrow causes one heart of damage. And this can cause some surprise Game Overs when you're getting hit by such a rapid fire attack that you can't even heal yourself in time. But that's just a side note, unrelated to the topic of new fighters. This can happen to anyone, even the best.

Mystery Memory

Okay, the obscured Memory Quests were absolutely dumb and I've wasted so much time figuring out what the game wants me to do, stuck in a frustrating replay loop of my own wrong assumptions, that this sincerely dampened the enjoyment of this last bit of DLC.

In theory it's a nice idea, but in praxis there shouldn't have been a character unlock tied to this and ideally these mystery quests are something that you can figure out yourself by observing the map, listening to the dialogues and exploring. And to be fair, this is the case for a majority of these secret missions. But it's a real problem for the ones where it's not. Three of them gave me some real trouble, where I've spent the entirety of two evenings playing them over and over again without a real clue

The first one is "EX Battle for Kakariko Village" and here I have to admit that my thorough way of playing was getting in the way. My first instinct was that this was about the many open enemy outposts all around Kakariko Village, but capturing them yourself doesn't do anything, so I assumed that it had to be something else. And since capturing them early prevents the many waves of enemies flooding into Kakariko, it gave me the necessary time to explore all of the stages for any other secrets. So, I've kept doing that out of convenience, all while being confused about what I actually had to do...

For a while I even thought it must have something to do with the Great Fairy pond. Maybe you're supposed to call her for help to fight Sooga or something, as a throwback to the first Hyrule Warriors? It's not like I knew what the game wanted me to do...

After a while the realization came that I had to do things differently and the most obvious thing was to stop capturing all the outposts. When I first played the mission I was so focused on defending Kakariko from the swarming enemies, because this was another Memory Quest, that I never even bothered switching to Daruk, so I didn't know that you could capture the outposts with Vah Rudania. Hence the confusion about what to do. Playing a scenario for the first time can be a little bit overwhelming, where I'm not paying attention to everything. But on my repeat playthroughs I was just too thorough for my own good.

The hidden Memory Quest in "EX Liberate the Ancient Lab" was by far the worst, because here I just had no clue at all. I've played this scenario a dozen of times without a single idea what could be the secret mission here. It was really bad and I became desperate eventually. I thought that maybe you had to defeat many enemies with lightning attacks, because there is a similar Memory Quest at Goponga Village and you're originally playing as Urbosa and Riju. With that also came the thought that the condition may be tied to a specific character, but that would be mean, because there are no fixed characters after beating the battle once. So, they wouldn't possibly do this. Right? Riiiiight...?

Since you can use any character to replay the scenario, I mostly played whoever I liked best, where Purah and Robbie were usually my first choice. They were the new hot thing, after all... But this way I could have searched forever, because the super secret mission expects you to defeat Kohga with Riju. How are you supposed to know this? When I first played the scenario, I defeated him with Urbosa, simply because I'm more comfortable with her in boss fights. And since I didn't HAVE to use Riju for anything, it hasn't occurred to me that she was necessary for anything until much, much later. What an annoyance...

But the real tragedy lies in "EX The Yiga Clan's Retreat", where this is probably the most "obvious" one out of the three. Kohga makes a big fuss about not leaving anyone behind and I've been replaying the mission with Mipha specifically because of this to keep everyone healed and happy. However, there is the one guy who closes a gate behind him to purposefully sacrifice himself, where the gate normally doesn't open until he gets defeated by the Hollows. And I've kept assuming this was part of the script and you couldn't do anything about it. So, I thought it had to be something else, like getting to the end really fast, capturing all the keeps, not using the Sheikah Slate and other nonsense. I had lots of ideas, but I also never could be really sure what to do, where you're always in doubt.

Well, it turned out that you can actually open the gate to the guy who stays behind at a specific point during the battle, when the Hollows appear. There is this tiny window where you can actually save him and with that finally solve the puzzle. And when you do so, you can suddenly play as Sooga... You unlock the man.

This was the hardest facepalm moment for me in the entire game. When I first played this scenario I was convinced that this had to be the place where you unlock Sooga. And when for some reason this didn't happen, I was just so very disappointed. You should have seen my sad face last Saturday. He was my "most wanted" for the DLC and I was convinced that it had to be him, but at that point it just didn't look like it any longer and I simply assumed that he wasn't going to be playable after all. Maybe Koei Tecmo came up with some other great idea of who is going to be the character, like Malice Dumpster Ganon... You can never really be sure about these things and I was kind of nervous what all of this would finally lead to.

This could have been avoided if unlocking him wasn't tied to some obscure condition. Or if said condition wasn't obscured. I probably wouldn't even complain about these secret Memory Quests so much, if they were just treated as this 100% bonus and didn't prevent you from getting the last fighter.  Well, technically Sooga isn't even the last fighter, because you can unlock him even before Purah & Robbie... And I would have loved getting him right there at this point, without any shenanigans, just like any of the other characters you get from the story scenarios. Or if the game simply told me to protect all allies, then this wouldn't have been an issue as well. But no, it had to say "???". Thanks, Koei Tecmo... This was really not fun.

Supah Sooga

While the path to unlocking Sooga wasn't the happiest one for me, finally playing as him makes up for it. I loved Koei Tecmo's original characters for Hyrule Warriors, especially Cia, and Sooga is my favorite one in Age of Calamity. Sorry, Terrako, but you're just an R2D2 rip-off... Of course Sooga also nails a certain stereotype – the reliable and disciplined henchman who secretly runs the organization for his master, who on the other hand is incredibly incompetent. But there is just something about him that works so very well in contrast to the goofy Kohga.

You really have to give it to Koei Tecmo, they know how to stage characters. Kohga was just this one mini-boss encounter in Breath of the Wild and they've added so much to his person, it's absolutely incredible. And Sooga is a big part of this, where it's always a highlight when he appears.

It's so good that he's finally playable and he does not disappoint, at least for the most part. His ZR gimmick is a counter, which is such a good move that you'd wish that this became a thing for every character in the game. It's a solid alternative to dodging, where you can even keep up combos after a successful counter.

One of the biggest struggles with the whole battle system of Age of Calamity is that the game is quick to punish you for carelessly attacking while fighting bosses. It's always best to play it safe and should you start a combo when it's not, then pray to the Goddesses that Mr. Lynel isn't about to strike you. But with Sooga you can actually risk it more thanks to his counter, which is great and a fun mechanic.

And his Special Attack is dope, it's the coolest animation in the entire game. The music stops, the visuals are all turned into black and white, all so that Sooga can do his red slash in style. Awesome, I love it. The only downer here is that it seems that Sooga doesn't really use any wind beams in his moveset, where this is actually his signature move and also that of Yiga Blademasters in general. Some of the weapon effects look similar, but they don't travel as far, where his moveset could have been even better with some more range.

There are apparently no restrictions to using Sooga in the scenarios, where you can go and fight Sooga as Sooga in many of the missions. But this also already worked as Kohga. Speaking of, they've also updated the DLC Challenge from last time where you play as the baddies, "EX Conquering Hyrule", so that you can now also play as Sooga. Very nice. For me personally this makes this Challenge so much easier to play, so that it's actually quite fun. And when grinding rod and apple refills on "Nap Quest!" Kohga now finally has the perfect partner for the job.

After obtaining all 21 characters the character select screens all look a little weird, though. There is always enough space to show all of the icons, but for some reason they decided to make it a panel that scrolls, where the character(s) on the last row are faded out at the beginning. And it just looks amateurish.

The End?

With everything cleared once more, I'm feeling a little unsatisfied. There simply wasn't that much to do in the Expansion Pass, especially when compared to the DLCs for Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors: Legends, where the additional Adventure Maps could keep you busy for countless hours. This isn't the case here. Well, the content certainly has more quality to it, where the existence of new stages alone is so much more interesting than anything Hyrule Warriors did with its DLCs besides adding more fighters. But at the same time these new stages don't really get used much.

So, this is a quality over quantity case, but with the addition of the two new characters, which are both really fun, I kind of want to keep playing. And the only options here are weapon grinding and playing through the game again on its "Apocalyptic" difficulty, which shouldn't make any difference until the higher recommended levels. But that's probably better than nothing at all.

Weapon grinding still puts me off, however. There is so much that you can do in Hyrule Warriors to build "perfect" weapons, but there is nothing really to use them at the end. The only weapons that I consider as part of 100% completion are the Master Sword and Bow of Light, because those are fixed. Everything that can potentially be sold or lost in any way doesn't count, even if you would never do so.

Getting the best possible base weapon damage for the normal tier 3 weapons also seems to be a massive pain after this DLC. This can be as high as 84 now (88 with Octo-polished weapons) and the only way of getting those is beating the new boss in the new Lv. 93 Challenge. And that's not a fun or quick mission to be playing over and over again. If the "EX Alert" Challenges could give these best possible weapons, I might consider doing it, because they at least offer some good variety, but there is no way I'm putting myself through playing the same painful Challenge again and again

With that in mind, the new special weapons for the Champions and their descendants are interesting, because they are a one-time offer and you can't get better versions of them at random. They work exactly like the Prototype Ancient Short Sword, which was the Expansion Pass bonus and has its own special growth rate, which is pretty good. So, you're free to work on them right away and I've already started upgrading them.

But there really should be a way of re-obtaining all these special weapons somehow. Same with the Training Sword and Lucky Ladle. If you fuse or sell these weapons, you can't get them back, which is stupid. A game like this shouldn't have anything that is lost forever. Why can't I just do the quests a second time? It works for the Flail and Master Cycle at the Royal Ancient Lab and it should be the same here.

Generally, there are so many things that they still could add to the game, like all the missing costumes, golden enemies, or even more fighters, that I feel like we might be getting a second Expansion Pass. But more on that in a separate post. I'm not holding my breath here, because we're talking about Nintendo, who loves nothing more than to leave potential unfulfilled. But it's still a possibility that this might happen next year as another way to pass time until the sequel to Breath of the Wild.

Age of Calamity War Log, EX Entry 4

Expansion Pass Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• EX Battles: 8 (4 Completed)
  
• EX Research Quests: 35 / 35
• EX Quests: 60
  
• EX Challenges: 24

For a moment there I was almost having fun with the game, but thank Din that Koei Tecmo knows how to keep you frustrated on the hardest difficulties. And you also should be careful what you wish for. Yesterday I was complaining that the new stages don't really seem to get used outside of the new scenarios, but there is a small selection of new Challenges, where some of them even use the new stages.

And more Challenges is really the last thing this game needed, at least not more of the same old time-limited multi-boss-battle nonsense that was already plaguing the main game to no end... This DLC really wasn't aimed at people who are just looking for some carefree content additions, it's all endgame stuff.

Anyway, I'm finished with the playing through all the new memory scenarios, which unlocks Robbie & Purah, and I'm also done with the all the new Challenges, which all get unlocked at that point as well.

I haven't unlocked the second new character, however, where my best guess is that this is tied to doing all the "Memory Quests". And here I'm at a loss, because I simply didn't get what some of the "???" conditions want me to do. Now, I could look this up on the internet, but this would risk me of learning about the final character prematurely – and I don't want that. So, I'll have to keep playing the new scenarios and figure it out eventually...

But it's kind of like the hard Gold Skulltula conditions in Legend Mode of the first Hyrule Warriors, only worse, because you don't get any clue at all. You have to do something special and that's all you get to know. Well, in some missions it seems pretty obvious what you have to do with what's going on on the battlefields, but in others it's really not...

Roads

"The Princess and the King" was a very unique and beautiful scenario, which takes place at Lanayru Road. The environment is absolutely gorgeous and it's amazing to see how the whole place looked before it all grumbled down.

It's also interesting to have a battlefield that's essentially split in two, where you have to switch between characters to do things in the respective areas. This was already done on a smaller scale in the Kakariko Village scenario, but here it's on a whole other level and also gets used in an interesting way for the story.

It appears like these two fights are not actually happening at the same time, because Urbosa shows up at the end to save King Rhoam, while for Link and Zelda she should be still trapped inside her Divine Beast. It's either that or it took King Rhoam's group a very long time to get from the Cliffs of Quince to the Great Plateau for some reason. During the scenario there is only really one point that suggests that the fights are happening simultaneously, however, so both explanations are possible.

After this battle there is one last, named after the second DLC, which loops back to the first EX scenario and also reuses the Mount Daphnes / Coliseum stage for this. I personally think that this one wasn't really necessary, where the first scenario would have been enough to tell about Terrako's heroics. It's also hard to pinpoint when this event actually takes place.

And while the fact that they actually came up with a new boss for this is pretty awesome, it felt equally unnecessary and uninspired. The boss is way over-the-top and also doesn't make much sense within the storyline of the game. But I suppose they needed a somewhat meaningful finale for their DLC missions.

Even More Challenges

Once you're done with the new scenario, it actually gives you some new Challenges. Not many, but enough to want you to be done with them forever. Well, yes, it's called "Challenges" for a reason and the "Very Hard" difficulty is supposed to be very hard, so I shouldn't be whining here, but it feels like it would physically hurt every employee at Koei Tecmo to implement something fun for a change, instead of the usual stuff that we already had to endure a hundred times in this game.

Well, to be fair, it's not all bad. There is an interesting challenge at Lanayru Road, called "EX A Moblin Feast", where you go against all the different types of Moblins one after another, now that there are actually like ten of them... And the training mission for Purah and Robbie is a lot of fun, but this is thanks to them.

It's also nice that Coliseum finally gets actually used for two more Challenges at the Coliseum, instead of the Sheikah Shrine, "EX Coliseum: Master" and "EX Utmost Strength". This place really should have been in the main game since the beginning, but it's nice that it's finally here. The new Challenges couldn't exist without some "fight two bosses at once" shenanigans, however, where the former has two Malice Lynels and the latter partially makes you fight Windblight and Fireblight Ganon at the same time. But I'm surprised it wasn't all the Blights at once in these closed quarters...

If you want something different for a change, then "EX Evacuating Hyrule" has a you covered, where you have to protect fleeing forces as Link, Zelda and Impa. This can be equally infuriating, however, because the way this game works is that NPCs don't take any damage (or only very little) when the player is in their proximity. But here you have three NPCs in three different places, which constantly get swarmed by dangerous foes, and when you're not next to them they lose all their health very quickly. And you can't protect them all at the same time, of course. At the end they were all almost dead for me, but I was lucky enough to make it anyway...

"The Final Battle" was a lie and the game actually added one more Challenge going even further with the recommend level. It takes place on the Hyrule Field part of the Hyrule Castle Town stage and wants you to defeat all types of Malice enemies within a time limit, before facing the new boss at the Lon Lon Ranch (which looked totally awesome). And I really had to make a plan for this one, because even with my four Level 100 fighters and Lv. 30+ weapons the time limit was rather strict... Well, I could have used the last months to grind for Lv. 50 weapons if it wasn't so boring.

But my plan was very simple. At the beginning you go over Hyrule Field with everyone of your characters and plow through the many Silver Bokoblins to fill your Special Meters. When you're done with one of the characters you send them to the targets at the outer areas and then switch to the next. The last character then can take care of the Malice Guardian at the center and then you simply have to switch from character to character to quickly kill al the major enemies and bosses. The Special Attacks will help a lot with the interfering enemies, but you can also utilize rods quite nicely in this mission.

The Purah & Robbie Show

Well, you have to say it, Purah and Robbie are really the stars of the entire Expanion Pass. They run the Royal Ancient Lab in the "Pulse of the Ancients" pack and come up with new weapons for the heroes while doing so. And now they narrate the "Guardian of Remembrance" story, while also finally becoming playable at the end...

But they are simply another bonus character, where they get two Challenges (including their training) and that's really it. It feels like yet another missed opportunity that they didn't get a story scenario of their own, where they can't rely on the heroes and have to find their own way of battling foes, or something like that. They just decide to enter the fight at what's basically the end of the game, where everything is already said and done. And this doesn't feel all that satisfying...

Their moveset is pretty entertaining, though. The weapon type is called "Sheikah Arms" and Robbie even has installed his Ancient Blade Saws for the third tier, which looks so cool. The ZR ability, which summons different devices based on the Divine Beasts, is also quite powerful. You can easily bombard a Stone Talus with the Vah Medoh power for example. It adds a random component to their moveset, but you always see what you get next, so it's not too bad.

The dynamic of these two characters working together like that is also quite hilarious. For the finishing move Purah teleports Robbie up like two meters, just so he can jump slash the enemy afterwards... You would think that there is an easier way to do this, but it certainly looks cool.

Overall I'm very happy with this character addition, despite the fact that I might not be playing them as much at this point. But they are fun and quirky. Well, let's see who the final character is going to be... I hope it's not a disappointment. (Please be Sooga.)

Age of Calamity War Log, EX Entry 3

Expansion Pass Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• EX Battles: 6
  
• EX Research Quests: 35 / 35
• EX Quests: 42
  
• EX Challenges: 17

This time getting back into the game felt almost natural, like riding a bike. And it's good to be back for more with the "Guardian of Remembrance" expansion. Yesterday I've played some of the new memory battles, but I haven't gotten very far. I don't even have any of the new characters yet, where I've also avoided social media like the plague to dodge spoilers about the last fighter. I'm really excited about this, but I want to find out at my own now that the DLC is already released.

New and Old Places

The highlight of the second DLC wave so far were certainly the new stages, because that's a first for a Hyrule Warriors game. The only time they've added new stages to Hyrule Warriors was with the battlefields from The Wind Waker in 3DS version, Hyrule Warriors Legends, but those didn't make it onto the Wii U. And it always felt like a missed opportunity that they didn't include something from Majora's Mask for example.

Of course this DLC comes with some missed opportunities of its own, where in this case it's mainly the fact that these new stages don't seem to be utilized much outside of the new story scenarios. And that's a shame, because they've put quite some work into them, where it would have been neat to get a hand full of Challenges for each of them. But there still might be and I just haven't unlocked them yet... In the very least there is a new "EX Alert" challenge that takes place at Kakariko Village, which is awesome.

Speaking of Kakariko Village, the music there is godlike and the scenario was overall pretty cool with the Gorons watching over the village, much like in old times. It's extremely narrow inside the village, however, which might fighting all the waves of dangerous enemies somewhat annoying. It was also interesting that you could visit a Divine Beast as an actual part of the stage, instead of just being a glorified boss chamber.

Again, one of the highlights is looking at places before they got destroyed by the Calamity, like the fishing village at Goponga Swamp.

The DLC is also reusing old stages for new scenarios for the first. The original Hyrule Warriors liked to do this a couple of times, especially in the DLC with Cia's Tale, but whenever Age of Calamity did this it heavily altered the look, atmosphere and sometimes also the layout of the stage to make things fresh. But not in this case... You're getting back to the same old stages without any alterations. Together with the fact that there are no new Koroks or even treasure chests to find in the reused stages, it makes it seem quite lackluster. In the very least it would have been nice to visit these places at a different time of day, e.g. the Breach of Demise during the night.

Memory Quests

While there are no Koroks in any of the DLC scenarios, you have to fulfill new tasks to truly complete these battles. Some of them might not be as easy with the initial characters, but you can replay the scenarios with any character to make things easier.

Best example is probably "EX Searching Hyrule Forest", where you have to keep the health of a Rito Captain above 50%. Not so easy with all the enemies around and when there are also other tasks at hand. In my case he lost most of his health to a giant Chuchu when I wasn't paying attention... But with Mipha this shouldn't be much of a problem.

The most annoying part are probably the "???" Memory Quests, where the game doesn't tell you what to do. In some cases it's easy enough to figure this out, but in others I have absolutely no clue. I feel like I have to look this up on the internet, unless I want to replay these scenarios over and over again in the hopes that I find the answer myself...

Poor Sooga

The biggest mystery right now for me is who the final playable character is going to be. I always thought that it would be Sooga, because he made the most sense to me. But after "EX The Yiga's Clan Retreat" I'm not so sure anymore...

However, it technically makes sense that he wasn't made playable at this point. It's supposed to be a memory and we already knew that he effectively sacrificed himself for Master Kohga, who arrives at Zelda's army alone. But we also know that he is alive and well in the Terrako credits... So, let's see. The memory of how he arrived at the Yiga Clan as a small boy was pretty awesome, however. They really managed to make you feel emotional about these crazy villains and this would have been the perfect opportunity to add Sooga as a playable character, which is why I'm bummed about this.

It was also strange how the only new Challenge in the beginning made you collect Monster Extracts... For a moment there I was worried that the final character was going to be Kilton. But let's leave it at that. The fact that Tulin also made it back in time also opens up the possibility for more time travelers, e.g. Kass.

Still, I'm not a fan of Teba, in any way or form. He's alright as a character personality-wise, but it's all so boring. I would much preferred to have a Rito lady as the descendant, one who doesn't have a high opinion of Revali, where their personalities clash a bit. A character like him shouldn't get a whole fan club...

Age of Calamity War Log, EX Entry 2

Expansion Pass Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• EX Research Quests: 35 / 35
• EX Quests: 24
  
• EX Challenges: 16
  

And I'm done again. At least with the new Quests and Challenges that came with the first wave of DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, "Pulse of the Ancients". It didn't really take this long, where the focus was more or less on grinding, while there is only small number of new Challenges that need to be mastered, in fact only a tenth of what the main game had to offer. That's not counting the new "EX Alert" Challenges with the random "Vicious Enemies" that keep coming, where those were part an important part of the grinding, however.

Battle-Tested

Once you've progressed enough in the Royal Ancient Lab, you can unlock a special "EX Alert" battle, which stays on the map and doesn't really have to do anything with the other Challenges of the same name, where this could have been just a normal Challenge, really... But whatever. Curiously, it takes you to new place from the world of Breath of the Wild, which could already be seen in the E3 trailer for the DLC:

The Forgotten Temple! While the first DLC wave wasn't supposed to have any new stages, it's nice to get something small here, where this is very similar to the Sheikah Shrine battle stages in function, just larger.

Now, when they've announced that a Guardian was going to be playable, I was concerned about the fact that they were making a "regular" enemy playable in some form, which they have never done before in the Hyrule Warriors series. But that's actually not what they have done here, at least not really, where this "Battle-Tested Guardian" is supposed to be a very special Guardian that has guarded the Forgotten Temple for ages, one of its kind. So, it's treated like its own character and it's also not corrupted by Ganon's Malice, unlike all other Guardians.

In any case it leads to a very interesting boss fight, because this Battle-Tested Guardian really knows how to screw with you. The usual tricks don't work on this guy. It's the only enemy in the game that actively dodges your rod attacks. It reflects reflected Guardian Beam right back at you. And it has some attacks that are really tough to dodge, where overall this is one of the most challenging boss fights in the game. And that without any time limits or other enemies... imagine that!

So, of course it feels super rewarding when you finally beat this battle and add the "Battle-Tested Guardian" to your entourage. But like with similar characters of this size, the joy doesn't last too long, at least not for me personally.

It's great that you can play as a Guardian, since this has been the signature enemy for Breath of the Wild right from the start. This one is even very reminiscent of the first Guardian that we ever saw, in that E3 2014 trailer. I love how it crawls around on those many feet. I love how it only moves its head, when you change directions. I love you can target enemies as your ZR ability. And the Bomb Rune is crazy good.

But... this thing is another walking hitbox, where it's just hard to dodge stuff properly, especially things like Wizzrobe attacks. And since it would be too unbalanced, the attacks of the playable Battle-Tested Guardian are by far not as impressive as the real deal. You can lock onto an enemy and fire a laser at it, just like a real Guardian, which is awesome in theory, but in practice you can happy if that kills a single Bokoblin...

The Guardian laser is one of the strongest and most deadly attacks in both Breath of the Wild and this game, but once you get to use it yourself it becomes pathetically weak. It's like the Ganon's Fury mode in Hyrule Warriors, where you get to play as this gigantic boss monster, but it all just feels so weak and you're so vulnerable to all attacks around you. Koei Tecmo can't seem to get these playable boss characters to be really fun. It would be okay to let the players have something overpowered for once, especially if these boss characters only unlock after beating the game (which seems to be the case here).

Of course I haven't built a good weapon for it yet, where this will improve things, but certainly not to the point that you would expect. Speaking of the weapon, it's actually the same thing as the last two unlockable characters, so a type of Guardian Screw, Spring and Gear. If they make Harbinger Ganon playable next, they could have a full row of this stuff.

Interestingly, one of the Quests for the Battle-Tested Guardian actually uses up that one leftover Ethereal Stone from the main Challenges. The new EX Challenges don't give any of those, however...

EX Challenges

The moment the game spawned new Challenges onto the map I could only frown, because these things got considerably unfun after a while, with their never ending time limit and boss battle fetish. But the EX Challenges actually turned out rather unique, where Koei Tecmo was trying some new things for a welcomed change. Well, here's a full list of all the new Challenges:

• EX Link: Flails (Lv. 5)
• EX Zelda: Master Cycle (Lv. 5)
• EX Road to Akkala Citadel (Lv. 50)
• EX Purah & Robbies's Study (Lv. 52)
• EX Ancient Threats (Lv. 55)
• EX Battle-Tested Guardian Training (Lv. 57)
• EX Request from the Lab (Lv. 57)
• EX The Knight's Nightmare (Lv. 59)
• EX Conquering Hyrule (Lv. 76)
• EX Battle Research: Skill (Lv. 83)
• EX Battle Research: Items (Lv. 83)
• EX Handle the Horde (Lv. 85)
• EX Rupee Rescue (Lv. 85)
• EX Survival of the Fittest (Lv. 86)
• EX The Final Battle (Lv. 91)

Vicious Monster Alerts (Lv. 78):

• EX Alert: The Forgotten Temple (Fixed)
• EX Alert: Hyrule Field
• EX Alert: Breach of Demise
  
• EX Alert: Hyrule Outpost
  
• EX Alert: Great Hyrule Forest
• EX Alert: Crenel Peak
• EX Alert: Akkala Citadel

There is a lot of focus on Robbie and Purah with these Challenges, who are studying combat situations in various ways and you have to help them out. In the two "Battle Research" Challenges for example they want you to fight enemies in a specific way, like going for Perfect Doges or killing a Lynel with a Remote Bomb.

There are also two new Challenges that are all about going for highscores, "Handle the Horde" and "Rupee Rescue". These are simply about scoring as many K.O.s as possible and collecting as many Rupees as possible within ten minutes, where the initial goal is easily fulfilled, but the goalpost gets shifted again and again. These are quite easy, but that's certainly refreshing and a fun change from the usual stuff.

Another unique Challenge is "Survival of the Fittest", which is the only other Challenge that takes place in the Forgotten Temple. Here you just have to survive for ten minutes, while it keeps spawning a ridiculous of strong enemies. My strategy here was simple: pick Daruk and hold ZL for ten minutes long, while spamming the R button to slow down time (but not the timer) for additional safety.

Even with Daruk you can't just be completely careless any longer thanks to the new Bomb-Throwing Moblins. These guys are absolutely ridiculous. Their bomb attacks come out of nowhere, deal an insane amount of damage and go through everything, even Daruk's Protection. Not sure what Koei Tecmo was thinking here, other than "this game isn't unfair enough yet".

Now, once you've completed all the Research Quests in the Royal Ancient Lab, it unlocks one final Challenge, fittingly named "The Final Battle". However, it doesn't really compare to "The Siege of Fort Hateno", where here all you have to do is defeat two Malice Lynels (staying together), as well as a Malice Guardian surrounded by the three new upgraded Wizzrobes.

You still have to defend your base, where it keeps sending Moblins there from three outposts all around it. Similar to "Hold the Line" in the Lost Woods, you can stop these waves by capturing the outposts, where in this case they are occupied by an Ice Hinox, a Fire Hinox and for some reason not a Electric Hinox, but a Electric Guardian. This sounds simple enough, but there is a catch. These three enemies keep respawning, where they take those keeps without warning, which immediately starts sending those Moblins again (which include those nasty bomb-throwers). It's extremely stupid how the game doesn't even let you try to save these outposts, they are just gone in an instant...

Two of these outposts are quite close to each other, so they can be handled by the same character, but you still have three places that need constant attention and only four characters available, where it takes a lot of back and forth to finish this annoying mission... This is exactly the stuff that's not really fun, where I feel like the name of this Challenge will be a false promise by Koei Tecmo, since there is no way that they are not going to add new Challenges for those new stages in wave 2. But those might be easier on the level requirements...

Except for the training missions for the two new weapons, all these Challenges start from Level 50 onward, where all of this is clearly meant to be endgame material. "Conquering Hyrule" even requires to have that final unlockable character, where here you team up with Master Kohga to fight the good guys. This is a really cool mission, because you rarely ever fight Link, Zelda and the Champions for real in this game, mostly only in training scenarios.

 

The Final Characters?

The "Conquering Hyrule" Challenge makes you wonder about Astor and Sooga, who are your additional allies in this mission, where you have to babysit them. If there were plans to make them playable, why wouldn't they save this Challenge for when all the baddies are playable?

As for Robbie and Purah, the first DLC wave puts such a huge focus on them, where it feels like they won't be playable at all, just support. But on the other hand, the entire Expansion Pass could be focused on the two, not just the first wave. We still haven't gotten the real ancient weapons and armor stuff, only the prototypes from the purchase bonus, where there still is a chance that Robbie might wield that stylish Ancient Blade Saw in the next DLC. I also like the suggestion of Robbie and Purah acting as a duo character that I keep seeing quite often.

In any case, I don't really know who's going to be playable after this. There are five unplayable characters in the game and five open slots, where they could go for all of them, some of them or even none of them... We will have to see. But I still hope that we're getting at least one free character in between, as some free bonus DLC outside the Expansion Pass.

Back to the Grind?

With all Quests and Challenges done once again, that leaves me back to building weapons and leveling up the characters. Leveling everyone to 100 seems quite reasonable, though, especially since the level cap doesn't seem to get increased this time.

It's still weird how there are these three extra hearts on a third row, it just looks so wrong. They could have made the maximum number of Heart Containers 30 and then add a food that gives you six extra hearts, so that the entire third row could be made out of yellow hearts... But that's nitpicking.

As for the weapons, in the very least I want to get the Master Sword and the Bow of Light to Level 50, because these are the two fixed weapons that can't be fused or sold. (It feels very wrong that you can remove their hidden seals then, however, because you cannot get these weapons back.) And if that's not enough grinding, I will focus on the DLC weapons. For both of this I will have to exclusively play as Link and Zelda from now on, however...

The "EX Alert" battles work relatively well for this, where they aren't too bad or annoying, while they also offer some variety. There still could be more than just the six existing stages, however.

These missions also give you some good stuff, but for the new base attack maximum it seems that you have to go with "The Final Battle" to get them and there's no way that I'm playing this Challenge over and over again. It's probably best to wait for the 2nd DLC wave here, because either the maximum base attacks gets increased even further or there might be some new Challenges in the Level 91 to 100 range, where you can get the best possible weapons more easily.

One incentive to work on better weapons could be the "Apocalyptic" difficulty, where I haven't touched this yet, only tried it once. It doesn't seem to make a difference for the lower level missions, but the higher levels might require you to have some really good gear. So, I'm saving this difficulty for later, maybe even for last.

Age of Calamity War Log, EX Entry 1

Well, here we go again... It feels really weird to return to this game for more content after four and a half months. At the end of January I had 100% completed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in terms of Quests and Challenges, where only some grinding was left to do and (luckily) I decided against it in favor of some other Nintendo Switch games, mainly Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

I was also quite burnt out on the title, since I had forced myself through the "Very Hard" difficulty from start to finish. It was just fierce boss battles after fierce boss battles with time limits over and over again, where this Hyrule Warriors severely lacks some fun mission variety. And sadly, the first DLC doesn't really change anything about this, except for using time limits much more sparingly. So, going into the Expansion Pass felt really exhausting and somewhat overwhelming at first, because it removed the achievement of being done, without offering anything that's truly different from all the Challenges before.

But the gameplay is still great and after warming up for a little, it started to be fun again. The DLC is also very well put together, where it certainly helps that it's all sold as a bundle this time. You don't just get new weapons and characters out of nowhere, you have to earn them, where all of this integrates into the game very well via the Royal Ancient Lab.

You do Research Quests, unlock new tasks and new things on the main map, you go do those and then back into the lab to grab the rewards. Rinse and Repeat. It's a nice cycle and also shouldn't interfere with the main game as much, should you (re)start now, at least not as much as giving you a completely overpowered sword for free right at the beginning of the game, which is what the Expansion Pass bonus did... Come to think of it, both the Prototype Ancient Short Sword and the Prototype Ancient Gear probably should have been rewards in the Royal Ancient Lab, instead of being these things that you get out of nowhere.

While there is the new "Apocalyptic" difficulty now, I've decided to stay on "Very Hard" and keep that nonsense for later. It doesn't seem to be special, just another stat increase, where replaying the entire game in that difficulty might be extremely boring and not even make any difference for the early missions. I would have liked to have the gold tier enemies from Breath of the Wild here for an interesting change, but this way this feels like the most unnecessary addition of the DLC, since the "Very Hard" difficulty was already tough enough.

 

Expansion Pass Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• EX Research Quests: 27 / 35
• EX Quests:  12
  
• EX Challenges: 8

 

Good New Weapons

Anyway... by now I've unlocked all variants of the Flail and the Master Cycle and got all their combos, so I can talk a little bit about those additions. Well, they are very fun, both in their own way. With the Flail it's interesting to experiment what the weapon grab will do, though it often turns out to be quite slow, and the Master Cycle is the Master Cycle.

That bike was my favorite thing about the Expansion Pass for Breath of the Wild, as well as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and its version in Age of Calamity does not disappoint. First of all, it's nice that Zelda gets to ride it this time, where this fits her character in this game very well. The attacks are absolutely crazy and it's more of a crowd pleaser, but that was to be expected.

Its ZR ability lets you go really faster for a change, which is very unusual, because they normally keep the speeds of the characters always the same. You couldn't go faster with Epona in Hyrule Warriors either, but the Master Cycle finally delivers, where it's fun to speed over the battlefields with Zelda.

It's also of note that Zelda gets yet another set of Sheikah Slate Rune abilities with the Master Cycle, unlike Link, who has the same abilities with all four of his weapon types. With the Master Cycle the craziest one is by far Cryonis, where you can just keep driving over a street made out of ice blocks. In order to unlock the Master Cycle you also have to do freeze 60 enemies with Cryonis for one of the Research Quests. If you want to get this done quickly, take Yunobo into the "Mastering Cryonis" Challenge, where his gigantic ice pedestal will freeze dozens of enemies at once in the water and you can easily clear this in one go here.

Otherwise I love the Special Attack of the Master Cycle, where Zelda fuels it with a Star Fragment in order to make it shoot a laser like the other Divine Beasts. Also, you can't put Zelda's dress on while you're on the bike, but that's okay. I wonder how the game handles this during the part where you're normally stuck with the dress...

Both the Flail and the Master Cycle come in three variants, where unlike other weapons they all have the same tier and attack stats, but instead they change the C1, where this is quite similar for both weapon types. The default version lets you do a forward moving attack, while you can also have a shield (Fortified Flail / Master Cycle Sentinel) or an aiming attack (Ancient Bladed Flail / Master Cycle Hunter). The shield is probably the most useful, because it can reflect Guardian beams, which is something only few characters could do so far. But I personally like the default variants the best.

This was also a little bit confusing at first and not well explained by the game. When I got the other Flail variants, I merged the default one into one of them without realizing that they had different attacks, so I had to purchase the normal Flail again. At least you can do that, which is more than what you can say about the three purchase bonus weapons. (And with that there are also more than five weapons for Link that you want to keep locked, but this is still limited to five...)

And if you want to build good weapons for the Flail and Master Cycle, you theoretically have to do it three times over to cover all options, which seems somewhat excessive. But I appreciate the fact that Koei Tecmo wanted to do something special with these DLC weapons.

Bad Old Weapons

Now, when finishing up the game back January, there was the question whether I would continue to grind for best weapons or not. I did it for a few characters, mainly the ones I liked playing the best, and then stopped, where this turned out to be a good decision by now. Why? Well, the potential maximum base attack values for all randomly obtainable weapons has been raised and there is still no way to increase this value manually, so this made all the best weapons you had so far suddenly inferior to what you can get now.

There are certainly a lot of players out there who have already invested a lot of time and effort into building "perfect" weapons, where I can feel their pain now, but luckily I don't have to share it to the same extent. Well, at least you can fuse already existing Level 30 weapon for a massive XP boost, but all the good seals on them will be gone, except for one. Getting weapons to the new Level 50 is an absolute drag otherwise, where it takes forever and just results in a ton of mindless grinding for weapons with all characters. And for what...?

If I were to invest into weapon building now, I would probably focus primarily on the fixed weapons: the Master Sword, the Prototype Ancient Short Sword, the Bow of Light and the three different Flails and Master Cycles. Because those are guaranteed to stay as they are, so that turning all these into Level 50 super weapons won't be for naught. With everything else there is the chance that Koei Tecmo might decide to increase the base attack values even further in the next DLC wave...

Vicious Grind

Sadly, unlocking everything in the new DLC takes a lot of grinding to get all the new materials. And for this the game introduced the new "Vicious Monsters" battles, which keep re-appearing on the map and have randomly selected "bosses" at the end, where these monsters simply tank a lot. But these new Challenges are okay. They are quite short, except for battling the tanks, and there is no time limit, which is always appreciated.

The only annoying thing here is that they keep throwing Moblins and Wizzrobes on top of you while you fight the lengthier boss(es), but there had to be a catch, because it would have been too easy otherwise. If you've mastered all the boss enemies in the game, the only real way of screwing you up are either strict time limits or other enemies attacking you from all sides. And since there no time limits here, it had to be the enemies.

However, there is a trick here, because both the bosses and the additional enemies are programmed to stay in a certain area, which you can use to your advantage. This works especially well for the Silver Lynels, where it is constantly conflicted between attacking you and returning to its spot, so you can lure it out. But of course this is also somewhat dependent on the map, where Akkala Citadel seems to be a good example for where you can avoid the other enemies.

What's nice about these new type of Challenges is that these keep giving you something to do, even if you're done with all the other Challenges in the game. They are always a little bit different thanks to the random bosses and there is a number of locations where they can appear, so they don't get boring as quickly as repeating some of the fixed Challenges. They are also on a high level and give good weapons, so it's worth it to do them.

Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 15

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 7 (Completed)
  
• Battles: 20 / 20
  
• Challenges: 161 / 161
  
• Quests: 376 / 376
  
• Contribution Rate: 100%
• Map Completion:  100%

Done. Finito. 100%. After two months of playing this game on "Very Hard", I've finally cleared all Challenges and Quests, which earned me the Hyrule Warriors outfit for Link as the last unlockable item:

This really takes me back, where my plan is to actually play Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition afterwards, at least as long as there is no DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. But once there is some, I will be prepared...

It's been a while since my previous post and this is mostly because I didn't play as much, where I was busy with some other hobbies and my motivation was quite low for a time. Well, playing the game on the hardest difficulty from start to finish was quite exhausting, so I simply needed a pause. And after unlocking all the characters, I was solely focused on grinding to level up all the characters and build better weapons, which isn't the most engaging task.

The Final Challenge(r)s

I was saving the last open Challenges, so I would have at least one goal left. But curiously you don't actually need all Ethereal Stones to clear all the Quests, where there's one leftover. So, I was trying the Challenges from time to time to see which ones could be already done and then to save the worst one for last. As a reminder, these were the last Challenges in the game:

• The Fiercest of Foes (Lv. 76)
• The Heart of the Calamity (Lv. 77)
• The Siege of Fort Hateno (Lv. 78)
• Unnatural Disaster (Lv. 80)

Curiously, I did all of these in the opposite order. The one with the highest recommended level, "Unnatural Disaster", turned out to be the easiest of the bunch and I cleared this Challenge early on. It puts you against all five Malice bosses one after another with a time limit, but since you can just fight them 1on1 and there is a lot of grass around for some Fire Rod boosts, it's not really that difficult.

From what I've heard it's also a really good mission to grind weapons with the best possible base attack, where I've also had a lot of luck with "The Siege of Fort Hateno". It's really a mix of having a high recommended level and many bosses.

"The Siege of Fort Hateno" is actually quite a special Challenge, where it's as lengthy as any of the later story scenarios. I would even say that this probably should have switched places with "Unnatural Disaster", because it feels like this was truly supposed to be the final mission in the game.

It gives you this you this feeling of a major threat by the Guardians, probably what "Each Step Like Thunder" should have been. This Challenge also has an interesting mechanic, which is completely unique in the game. While there is a ten minute time limit, the timer only counts down whenever a Guardian is inside Fort Hateno.

So, if you strategically take down all the Guardians out one by one, you're at no risk at losing against the clock here. The trickiest part of this Challenge might be the many Guardian Scouts, especially in the outposts where Astor and Harbinger Ganon retreat to, where it's best to have one or two Special Attacks ready... But with all of this in mind, it was another Challenge that I could beat on my first try.

The next one, "The Heart of the Calamity", on the other hand required some actual preparations. In this Challenge you will have to face all six versions of Ganon one after another: Windblight Ganon, Fireblight Ganon, Waterblight Ganon, Thunderblight Ganon, Harbinger Ganon, and finally Calamity Ganon.

You don't get to use any items and there won't be any apples around either, plus there is a time limit. It could be worse, however, because the time limit of 25 minutes is actually very generous and it doesn't make you fight all six Ganons all at once – instead it's 1on1s again. So, it's just a matter of defeating each Ganon quickly enough.

I've chosen Daruk for this Challenge, because you can always stay close to the bosses and immediately retaliate whenever they use their big and slow areal attacks. You can just shield and stay safe within their vicinity. The only exception to this is Waterblight Ganon, where the huge ice blasts will still hurt you, much like the large Lynel blasts. But otherwise you are completely safe while shielding with Daruk's Protection, so the lack of healing items and the time limit doesn't seem like a problem.

Still, when I tried the mission for the first time I couldn't do it in time... Daruk was simply too weak and all the Blights took way too long to defeat. So, I had to do my best Rocky montage with the Goron to level him up and build a good weapon with him. It was even my first weapon in the game with the highest possible attack value for that weapon type. But more on that later...

And once Daruk reached the peak of his potential, this Challenge became almost too easy, where I still had half of the time left when Calamity Ganon fell. So, I overdid things here, but it's fine and this finally scored me the Hyrule Warriors outfit for Link. I've cleared this Challenge on January 21st, exactly two months after the game came out, so this felt like a good timing.

But there was one more Challenge left after all this: "The Fiercest of Foes". Here you have lots of Lynels and Lizalfos with a strict time limit. Out of the final Challenges I've tried this one first and despite bringing all my best warriors at the time it wasn't enough. And even when I returned here with some Level 90+ characters and Level 30 weapons with the highest possible attack value, the mission was still quite tough and far from easy, despite being massively over-leveled.

There is another double Malice Lynel fight waiting for you in this Challenge and this time you can't separate them as easily as at the Temple of Time. In addition, the many Lizalfos are all set to sniper mode and therefore are constantly shooting at you from all sides, which is super annoying and can cause insane amounts of damage very quickly. And there are a lot of them all around the Lynels, not making this easy, because when you try to take the Lizalfos out, the Lynel(s) will most likely hit you.

Well, it's best to save the double Malice Lynel for last and try to get as many Special Attacks ready with all your characters as you can. When you've defeated one of the single Lynels, you want to hit some more Lizalfos for the Special meter and then send the respective character up to the Malice Lynels, so they will already do some damage. But be careful and ready to immediately trigger your Special Attack, should you swap to one of those characters, because you'll end up in hell.

My characters of choice here were Daruk for the shield, which will help a lot with the Lizalfos and the Malice Lynels, as well as Mipha for the healing Special Attack, which can be a lifesaver at the end. Revali with his arrow spam was also a good choice, because you can take out the surrounding Lizalfos a lot more easily with him. And I also brought Link, simply because he was my first character on Level 100 and he's generally quite good against Lynels.

Weapon Building

All Chapters cleared, all Quests cleared, all Challenges cleared... Is that the end of the game? Is there nothing left to do? Well, actually, if you're the type of gal or guy who enjoys some good grinding, then you could say that the game has just started. Not only can you level every character to 100, you can also build good or even "perfect" weapons for them, where having a high damage weapon does you a lot more favors than the levels. But do you really want to do all that?

To grind, or not to grind, that is the question. 

Well, as of now, I've focused on only a few characters: Link, Zelda, Daruk, Mipha, Revali, and Terrako. I could continue with everyone else, but I'm on the fence here, as long as there no DLC announced. If the game were to get some sort of "Master Mode" as a continuation of your current save file, then it would be really worth the effort.

But I've spent a lot of time with building "perfect" weapons in Hyrule Warriors on both the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS and by the time I was done with most of it, I didn't really have any use for them, because there was nothing else left to do. So, I'm not too motivated to go forward right now, since it could all just be for naught...

At least the effort doesn't seem to be as bad, because you don't have any sealed skills, where you need to get thousands and thousands of K.O.s with multiple weapons to unlock it all... Putting together a good weapon in Age of Calamity is not as costly and time consuming as it used to be in the first Hyrule Warriors, which is a good thing.

But you still have the luck factor of finding the right weapons, which have the seals that you want to use. In addition, the base attack value is also random and there is no way of increasing it in the Blacksmith, so you have to be lucky with that as well. Playing any scenarios with a recommended level from 71 to 80 will increase the chances significantly, however. For most weapons the maximum is 70, but you can get above this via rusty weapons that you can find for certain characters.

As for finding "++" seals, any of Blood Moon scenarios will be favorable here, so I'm spending most of my time replaying the story missions and chilling under the red sky. Even with the increased level recommendations, the different Chapters are still much easier to play through than they were the first time, mostly thanks to the better weapons.

If there's no Blood Moon, you can just quickly play "Mysterious Arrivals" as Master Sword Link, which will take less than a minute. It's even the reason, why he ended up as my first Level 100 character, followed by Daruk because of all his training.

If you bring a weapon to Level 25 and 30, it will unlock two hidden seals. These cannot be removed or transferred and are predetermined for each weapon. The first ones I encountered were on the Master Sword and Mipha's Trident, where the Level 25 seals curiously were the exact ones I already had on the weapons: "Damage at Full Hearts++" and "Special-Attack Charge Rate++". Their values are a little bit better, though not by much.

There are also completely new seals that you can't get otherwise, like "Heal a Percentage of Damage Dealt" on the Master Sword. There is even a seal that lets you "Detect Nearby Koroks" with certain weapons, like the Forest Dweller Sword, the Shaka Maracas, or the Ancient Overclock Unit, where there is some irony to this. When I've learned that this ability even exists, I had already found all Koroks...

I wouldn't even have invested that much in any weaker weapons to begin with, where only the Sheikah Slate was on my upgrade list. And again there is some irony to this, because the Sheikah Slate couldn't detect Koroks in Breath of the Wild. You needed the Korok Mask for this...

Originally, I was going to find all of this stuff out by myself, but I quickly had to realize that this is just way too much and it was time to tap into the hive mind of the internet. The people on GameFAQs have compiled a very useful spreadsheet that contains everything you could possibly know about the weapons in Age of Calamity: best base attack values, all (hidden) seals, and so on.

And this helps me with planning, because it's good to know the secret skills of the weapons in advance. For the the best damage bonus of 20 you want four seals of the same shape and then two other seals of a different shape. Six seals of the same shape sadly won't do the trick, but since having six seals of the same shape is rarely ever useful, this isn't much of a problem.

Well, here is my first weapon that has reached the maximum damage output, a Boulder Breaker for Daruk:

It's not the best build ever, far from it. The idea was to go for full heart damage, since he won't take damage that often and can also heal himself with the last seal. And then there's a K.O. bonus on top, where this best utilized in a mission with lots of small foes. In the end you might even want different builds for the same weapons, e.g. one focused on looting with the circle shaped skills.

However, the general consensus seems to be that you want to go with "Attack Speed++" whenever possible and make that three or four times to get what "Hasty Attacks" would do for you in Hyrule Warriors with a single weapon skill slot. And I can't really argue against this, because faster weapons will do more damage naturally and also make it easier to break weak point gauges in time.

But there are certain characters where the increased attack speed might break their movesets and I personally find the focus on Attack Speed to be very boring. So, I'll probably only use it on weapons that I find somewhat too slow, like Zelda's.

Very Hard Conclusion

This ends this blog series for now. And it's been quite the ride, where I'm even getting a little bit sentimental when returning to the early parts of the game. It's been that long.

In fact I've spent over 170 hours on the game already, which is a lot and shows how much of a difference the "Very Hard" difficulty can create here. Each major enemy will take three or even four times as long to be defeated, you will to face several defeats yourself (mainly because of the time limits) and there will potentially be some grinding, even if it's just to refill your items regularly. In comparison, the playthrough on "Normal", which I had joined for some co-op play, took about 60 hours for 100% completion and basically no grinding at all.

To be honest, I had to realize that I was going full "try-hard" with this, where the experience was equally frustrating as it was satisfying. But I don't regret it, because I feel like the challenge made the game better and more interesting overall, while it also gave an excuse to invest more time into building characters and such things. And it's not a true game if you can't lose somehow.

The "Very Hard" difficulty also works quite well with this game, where the focus is a lot more on fighting bosses than handling multiple emergency situations all at once, like it used to be the case in the first Hyrule Warriors. Having a crazy difficulty level wasn't enjoyable at all in that game, where the Twilight Princess Adventure Map on the Wii U was the best example. And there are no A/S ranks either, so there is no penalty for taking damage other than the damage taken and the difficulty only really clashes with the many time limits.

But the most frustrations probably came from the fact that it was taking me quite long to complete Age of Calamity, where I was out of the loop for quite a while. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, because I got a lot more out of the game because of this. And in the end all that counts is that I did it, where the battle records don't have a single entry on the three lower difficulties anywhere in my game and I'm proud of that.

There's also the hope that this blog series has been a little bit more entertaining for it, because I wasn't just quickly checking off all the boxes. And this is where I want to thank you, the readers, for sticking with me for so long (and not throwing any spoilers into the comments). Thank you!

Here's hoping that this journey will continue in 2021 with some DLC. But with the 35th Anniversary of Zelda happening this year and all the missing armor items from Breath of the Wild (which would be perfect for the anniversary, because most of them are based on other Zelda games), I'm certain that this won't be the last of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Until then!