Breath of the Wild Switch Log, Entry 5

Another week went by and I've been proceeding smoothly, more or less. After freeing all four Divine Beasts, I first went on to collect all the missing memories. And here the strangest things happened with Guardians...

When I moved between the Piper Ridge and the Rayne Highlands, the Guardian Skywatchers patrolling the round rock formations suddenly disappeared when I got close. Well, this was certainly helpful and they re-appeared once I got some distance, but it was still strange. I vaguely remember that something like this has happened before, where there seem to be a variety of glitches with unloading enemies, but I still wanted to take note here.

The game then made up for it at the Sacred Ground Ruins, where two Guardians homed in on me and then it spawned three Stalmoblins and a Yiga in my face... Not nice. I've never been a fan of the randomly spawning enemies, and here is why. Well, it can also get annoying quickly, but the main problem is that it sometimes screws you up in various ways. For example, I might just want to sneak up to an insect or a horse, when suddenly something spawns right in front of me, scaring my target away.

Eyes on the Prize

Now, after a bit of distraction, it was finally time to get what I wanted the most right from the beginning: the Master Cycle Zero. Sadly, even after meeting the prerequisite to start the Champions' Ballad quest, I still had long ways to go, where the first part is easily the worst – the One-Hit Obliterator Trial.

Whoever had the idea for this, I really hope that this person has moved over to the Super Mario team, because I'd hate for any Zelda game to have this again. Tears of the Kingdom will be the better game already if it doesn't have some cheap challenge like this. Now, I haven't died a single time during this playthrough up until this point, only to now get about ten Game Overs, sometimes from the silliest things. After I successfully made the Yowaka Ita Shrine appear at the Forests of Spirits, for example, something just randomly hit me. It looked like thorns that fell off the large tree or so... I'm not sure.

I could have recorded it, but instead I just closed the game to avoid that red X on my map. At least this works really well on the Nintendo Switch, though the Hero's Path mode still behaves weirdly. If you load any previous save game, it will show you the Hero's Path up until that point, as it should be. But if you save your game now and then load this file again, it will have merged any lost progress, where it looks like you were teleporting around. This might be a bug or fully intentional, but it's a mess and it doesn't help to show you pathways that didn't take place, especially if you're using the paths to see what you could be missing.

Then there was this random swarm of bees near the Rohtah Chigah Shrine, where this shrine is still the place that has caused me the most deaths. It's like a miniature version of the Path of Pain, where all it needs is some buzz saws, and maybe someone from the development team got inspired there. Though, even Hollow Knight doesn't give you a Game Over just from a single mistake.

Anyway, it's just not fun. In the very least it shouldn't disable fairies, but ideally such cheap deaths shouldn't be part of a Zelda game to begin with, where the Yiga Clan Hideout is another offender. Suddenly, the Yiga Blademasters can kill you with a single hit and your fairies are on vacation... It just forces you to play the game in a certain way, which seems like the entire opposite of what Breath of the Wild stands for.

My frustrations only grew with the following part and not because any of it was unfair or so (except for the aforementioned Yiga Clan Hideout, but at least this is very short the second time). It was purely because there was still so much to do. You have to revisit each Divine Beast's area and do three trials, complete a Sheikah Shrine after each trial, and rebattle the Blight of that Divine Beast. They meant well with the DLC and wanted to create a substantial quest line here, but it just doesn't sit right with me in the overall picture.

All I wanted was the motor bike and the game now made me literally jump through hoops to earn it. It's fine if you look at the DLC separately, as something that you do in addition to the main game, but in the context of the main game it's a bit much. If you want the Master Cycle Zero, you will have to complete all the main quests around the Divine Beasts, which is already a lot. But then you need to do the One-Hit Obliterator Trial on top, revisit all the Divine Beasts again, and finally clear one last Divine Beast.

It almost makes it feel like it's not worth it and I would enjoy it more as something that you can get earlier in the game. The base game handles things like this very nicely, where every major goal you might set is achievable pretty much after leaving the Great Plateau. There are some prerequisites here and there, naturally, but the main goals don't depend on each other. You can just focus on clearing enough shrines to obtain the Master Sword first, for example. You don't have to free all Divine Beasts to get it, but that's exactly how it is with the Master Cycle Zero and then some. Well, this is what inspired me to write my post about rearranging the Champions' Ballad, so maybe check this one out to see how I would have done things differently with this DLC quest line.

I went with the same order as I did the Divine Beasts before, so I started with Vah Medoh, then did Vah Naboris, Vah Rudania, and finally Vah Ruta. I think that the abilities provide the best utility in that order as well, though they are all very useful and nice to have. With replaying a big, open game like this there is always the danger that the order of things doesn't matter at all, or that you tend to do things in a specific order.

A Link Between Worlds is a great example here. If you're going to replay the game in Hero Mode, chances are that you will start heading for the Swamp Palace first in Lorule, simply because this scores you the Blue Mail and this helps a lot with the extra damage. And out of the three dungeons that give you a Master Ore, Thieves' Hideout is the best choice, because this dungeon also unlocks the Sand Rod. With the other two it doesn't really matter... You see where I'm going with this.

In Breath of the Wild there are a lot of options, but none of them are clearly preferable over the other. Well, of course you will want to start things with the Hateno Ancient Lab to get all the extras for the Sheikah Slate, but afterwards it's really about what gives you the advantage that you want to have first. It's just too bad that the Master Cycle Zero is not part of this equation and essentially requires you to obtain most other advantages first...

Well, out of the extra Divine Beast quests, Medoh probably took the longest, because it made me go deep into uncharted territories with the Hebra Mountains, where at first I was following the Hebra Mountain Climbing Path starting at the Trailhead Lodge. But it's easy to get distracted with lots of Koroks and treasure chests around.

Speaking of chests, I was not amused by how the "Big or Small" trial in the Keive Tala Shrine, after defeating the King Molduga at the east barrens of the Gerudo Desert, is just giving a you a Radiant Shield from its treasure chest after all the effort... This is a big issue of Breath of the Wild, where I really hope that Tears of the Kingdom will fix it somehow: getting weapons or shields on a full inventory.

I don't mind that the weapons can break, because it forces you to not rely on the single good weapon, but I do mind how frequently the game just throws weapons in chests at you when you don't need them. I just want to have the chests cleared, so now I have to open my inventory, drop something, just so I can open the chest again. But maybe I didn't even want a Radiant Shield, because I have enough better shields, so I will have to drop it as well, and then pick up what I had dropped previously. It's so inconvenient and it already would help if I somehow could just quickly drop things.

Maybe the Fuse feature in Tears of the Kingdom will make getting lots of stuff more interesting, but ideally you wouldn't drown in lots of weapons to begin with. I'm at a point where I love it when treasure chests just have Rupees in them, because I do always have use for them... It's upside-down Hyrule when compared to past Zelda games, where there was nothing more boring than finding Rupees in a chest. But it certainly beats getting yet another Royal Bow.

Anyway, moving on to Rudania... roaming the lava lakes around Death Mountain really made me excited to see it without them. There is going to be a lot of new ground here. Oh, wait... I'm just getting distracted again, where I sometimes really had to force myself to focus on the main goals. The more I explore at this point, the less usage I will have for the Master Cycle Zero. Though, you can't use the Master Cycle Zero in the intense heat areas anyway, so it didn't really matter that much. But for Ruta's quests I just went straight over Ploymus Mountain, where I battled the Lynel there for the first time, and ignored the Tingle islands to finally finish all these extra shrines. Almost there...!

Just one more dungeon to go, where the Final Trial might be the most clever of the Divine Beasts with its rotating engine, though Vah Naboris is probably still the most complex. In any case, this is the only part about getting the Master Cycle Zero that I didn't mind... It's a fun little dungeon with great music and a fantastic stage for obtaining the grand prize.

And here we go! Finally! I was around the 100 hour mark when I achieved this goal... And that's way too long for what's essentially just a practical alternative to horses. It might not even make horses obsolete for you, where I've sworn on them during my Master Mode run five years ago and only made little use of the Master Cycle Zero. But I can't say that I still agree with myself from back then...

Cruising over Hyrule

Words will fail to describe how good it feels to finally be able to do this. After over a month of thinking, "it would be nice to have the Master Cycle Zero for this", I can just now summon the thing and go.

And it's as much fun as I remember it to be, where you can just do the craziest things with it. That stunt scene in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, where Tom Cruise jumps off a cliff with a motor bike and then continues with a paraglider? I'm sure that one of the writers was playing Breath of the Wild when he or she came up with that idea... And even though I would never want to do something crazy like this in real life, replicating this stunt in Breath of the Wild just feels amazing.

It's also incredibly resilient while going downhill, where I'm using it in all sorts of terrains just for fun. And this time there will be plenty of opportunities to make use of it, where I haven't even found half of the Koroks yet. In both my Wii U playthroughs I only got it very late, but there's about half of the map left to explore at this point, where I can't wait to do most of it with the bike.

Right now, I'm even convinced that the Master Cycle Zero will be the main reason for me to go back to this game after having played Tears of the Kingdom. Sure, you also will be able to put together vehicles and have fun with those, but this probably won't be as convenient. The Master Cycle Zero can be summoned in most places out of thin air, where it works similarly to the amiibo rune. And you can just hop on it, drive it over the next cliff, and jump off, without a worry in the world...! It's the best!

Survival Trials

Now, there was one more major thing left to do in the game and that was the Trial of the Sword. And I definitely wanted to be done with that before Tears of the Kingdom comes out as well, because that thing can be a bit of a buzzkill. But before that I went to Eventide Island as a small warmup, since this has the same survival gameplay on an empty inventory.

It does let you use a couple of things that are unavailable in the Trial of the Sword, however, where Urbosa's Fury certainly does trivialize the challenge. So, I probably should have played this much earlier to get some thrill out of this, like I did during my first playthrough, but since I now know what's going to happen, I just feel like I need to come prepared somewhat.

However, these type of challenges are a lot more fun in Normal Mode, because they were balanced for that. In Master Mode I waited until the end of the game and with the Trial of the Sword this felt more than justified. In Normal Mode you could theoretically do it right after obtaining the Master Sword, I guess, though having more stamina is very helpful.

The difference between the modes is only really relevant for the Beginning and Middle Trials, however, because the Final Trials (not to be confused with the Final Trial) focus a lot on enemies that can and should be one-shotted. Still, I dread the day where I might replay the Nintendo Switch version one more time in Master Mode, because I still feel uneasy during the whole thing, even though it's technically easy enough in Normal Mode. Well... I had to start over the Middle Trials, because I took some bad hits in the first few rooms, where you are greeted by Ice and Bomb Arrows, so I guess it's not that easy, even in Normal Mode. But for the most part it's fairly doable if you know what you're doing.

During the Final Trials there was this one naughty fairy, who tried to lure me onto the teleporting platform inside one of the resting floors, the second one. If I had gone up there to try and grab it, I might have accidentally activated the portal and warped right to the next floor without getting any of the other supplies... So, I waited for it at the border of the pedestal, but it then just flew off when it got closer to me... Stupid ball! Luckily, you get enough fairies during the Final Trials and I didn't actually need any of them, but it still feels good to have them as a reassurance.

Ready for Real Hyrule Housing

After the Trial of the Sword I also finished the whole Tarrey Town quest. Well, I actually invited Kapson already when I first went for Vah Ruta, but I didn't bother with finishing the wedding up until now...

I'm thinking of just leaving Bolson and Karson right there, because my house is already finished as well. It would be nice to have it truly for myself this time, instead of having these two hoodlums loafing on my lawn.

Anyway, I'm curious how the house creation in Tears of the Kingdom will unfold. It was a nice idea in Breath of the Wild, but all you really do is gather wood, collect enough Rupees, and then talk to people. Mainly the latter. So, I would love to have something more substantial and something where you can bring in your own creativity. Don't get me wrong, I don't need this to turn into Animal Crossing, but somewhere in the middle could be nice.

And with that I think I have finished all the important things. All that's left to do is looking for Koroks and Shrines, hunting all overworld bosses, clearing some more side quests, completing my armor collection, and spending lots of money on Hyrule Compendium pictures. Well, and there are two whole areas that I haven't even touched yet: Faron and the Gerudo Highlands.

Progress:

• Divine Beasts: 4/4
• Main Quests: 20/20
• Shrine Quests: 23/42
• Side Quests: 55/90
• Memories: 23/23
  
• Towers: 13/15
  
• Shrines: 92/136
  
• Koroks: 388/900
• Taluses: 15/40
• Hinoxes: 9/40
• Moldugas: 3/4
• Map Completion: 50.36%

Breath of the Wild Master Log, Entry 8

For the final part of my Master Mode run it was time to take on the Champions' Ballad, Eventide Island and the Trial of the Sword. What they all have in common are challenges, where the game takes away your stuff, so waiting until the end of the game, where you have all the Stamina and Heart Containers in the world, seemed like a good decision. But it also had the disadvantage that I wouldn't get the DLC rewards before the very end, where they aren't of any real use anymore...

Death #2

For the "One-Hit Obliterator" Trial I decided to don the Phantom Ganon Armor for a change... However, this led to my second death in the game, not far from the location of the first one, where I died after "gliding" from the cliff in front of the Shrine of Resurrection.

My mistake was that I thought the "Disguise" set bonus of the Phantom Ganon Armor works exactly like Majora's Mask. It's a Ganon costume, after all. But apparently it only works with Stal enemies and I paid with my life for this mistake, because I got hit by some Thunderbolts thrown by the Bokoblins at the first camp, who weren't really impressed by my "disguise".

I didn't die otherwise outside the shrines (and only once during that ridiculous Rohta Chigah Shrine with the many spikes) and I probably would have been pretty mad about this mistake, if it wasn't for that first death early in the game. So, my Hero's Path was tainted in any case and now my first death wouldn't taunt me anymore, since I died exactly, where I expected to die. The Forest of Spirits really was graveyard in this game. If I ever replay the game on Master Mode, I would try to achieve an entirely death-free run, however. It's doable, as long as you're careful on the Great Plateau, both during the tutorial phase and the "One-Hit Obliterator" madness.

But since I didn't have to worry about not dying anymore, I decided to fully explore the foggy Great Plateau during this trial. I didn't do this the first time on Normal Mode, because I wanted it to be done quickly, but I was curious what I could have missed. Well, turns out that I didn't miss anything at all!

All the other enemies that you normally find on the Great Plateau were gone. I was looking forward to killing both the Stone Talus and the White-Maned Lynel in one hit, but they weren't present anymore. Most of the enemies hang at the four points, where the trial tells you to go. There are some exceptions like multiple Ice Keese around Mount Hylia and some electric enemies at the bog near the Oman Au Shrine. There's also a new Decayed Guardian at the Temple of Time, but the Decayed Guardians at the Eastern Abbey are all gone.

And the enemy camps all look empty like this:

As you can see in the above screenshot, I've put Majora's Mask on after my initial mistake, which looks pretty nice together with the Phantom Ganon cape. But it also helps a lot with the enemies during this trial. The enemies tend to check you out personally, instead of sounding an alarm, where you can just lure them away and take them out one by one with the One-Hit Obliterator. Very useful.

But in general this seemed like the best opportunity to use the different DLC armor pieces in action. Since you die in one hit anyway, the lack of enhancements doesn't matter here, so you can go fight some Guardians in style:

Of course you can always choose to do so, but I personally prefer to have the defense at any time. And overall I did have a lot more fun with this part of the DLC than the first time.

The Realm of Nitpicky Memories

Off to the most relaxing part of the DLC, I was probably most busy being nitpicky about the "tacked on" nature of the content. I didn't even pay that much attention to certain things during my first playthrough of DLC Pack 2, The Champions' Ballad, but if you take the time to look, some things seem a little unpolished. Again, the devil is in the details here.

For example, if you go to Riju before doing the trial with the orb, she will say that this was yet another important Gerudo heirloom stolen by the Yiga just now, but they only treasured it for the hero, so when Link recovers the thing, he can use it as he pleases and doesn't have to bring it back like the Thunder Helm, which he only was allowed to borrow, because it is an important Gerudo heirloom and he can't just have it...

That doesn't make any sense left and right... They never mentioned this "heirloom" before and didn't think about giving it to Link, even though it was meant for him. And if this wasn't enough nonsense, the Yiga steal this thing in the exact second, where you're initiating Urbosa's trials. How convenient!

But I like the idea of throwing an orb down that giant hole at the Yiga Clan Hideout, where it would have been hilarious, if the dead body of Master Kohga would have blocked the orb slot. It's also nice, how the Kihiro Moh Shrine had a puzzle with lots of orbs to go with the theme. So, overall it certainly was one of the better trials in the Champions' Ballad, but I still didn't like the unnecessary Gerudo heirloom nonsense.

Another thing that I didn't like was how Kass essentially got cloned during the Champions' Ballad act. Well, he and other characters like Beedle, who are always present at the stables, already seem to have some sort of teleportation ability, but when Kass performs Revali's Song next to Divine Beast Vah Medoh, he really is in two places at once, because you can spot him all the way down playing with his children. When you talk to him, he even acts like he hasn't seen you in a while...

This seems rather sloppy and at least Nintendo should have thought of removing Kass from Rito Village during the time, where the Champions' Ballad Main Quest is active.

Well, I played Urbosa's part first, because having the fast reload for Urbosa's Fury was super helpful with the Realm of Memories, and went clockwise from there: Revali, Daruk and finally Mipha.

I chose Mipha for last, because Waterblight Ganon seemed like the hardest of the Realms of Memories. Thunderblight without full electricity protection can be tough as well, but I used a triple Shock Resistance dish before going into the fight, which works much like with the Trial of the Sword.

During the Windblight Ganon fight you only get a measly Feathered Edge, which breaks quickly, so it's best to use it for Urbosa's Furies as long as you have it. But the rest of the fight is doable with arrows alone. Fireblight Ganon is easily the easiest of the three, since you get multiple spin-to-win tools here.

It's really the environments that make the Blight fights tougher than they actually are, which is probably why they seem much easier inside the Sanctum. And Waterblight Ganon is the worst offender here, where he floods the room with water during the second half. This caused me quite some trouble, because for some reason, Link sometimes wouldn't draw his bow, when I jumped off a Cryonis block. So, I landed in the water and then had issues with getting back on land, while Waterblight would bombarded me with ice blocks... But if you use Urbosa's Fury, the ten arrows that you get are enough to beat him.

One thing that I didn't fully realize the first time was that Nintendo sort of recreated each official artwork of the Champions in their respective memories, the same artworks that were also used for the amiibo figures. It was really apparent during Urbosa's cutscene, where she makes her special stance by looking over her shoulder, but I didn't notice it with the other Champions until now.

Otherwise it still feels weird how you have to fight a bunch of Guardian Skywatchers and Turrets during Mipha's trial. Following the theme of upgraded overworld bosses, they probably could have introduced higher tiers of Hinox for the DLC, where you would have to fight a Silver Hinox on Upland Zorona for the trial. This could be a Golden Hinox in Master Mode, while all the Black Hinox could have been upgraded to silvers in that mode... This way the Hinox would have the five typical tiers, instead of stopping at the black tier.

Also, there's apparently another impossible chest with a Soldier's / Knight's / Royal Bow in the same area, at the north tip of Upland Zorana. I never knew this before, because the Sheikah Sensor+ doesn't pick it up, but according to ZeldaMaps.com and similar sites it's there.

Final Trial Revisited

As much as I liked this "dungeon" the first time as underwhelming I found it to be the second time. I was done with the "Final Trial" in less than 30 minutes and while the other four Divine Beasts aren't really long either, they at least felt like interesting places to explore, where I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the sense of adventure. You have these gigantic beasts inside the environment and you walk all around their outer shells, experiment with moving the beasts or parts of their bodies and so on.

Here you just get four chamber with typical shrine trials and you're done. And while there's a sense of mystery around this whole thing, there's no outside to explore or anything. It's not bad and it does something different with the Divine Beast mechanics, but it isn't really outstanding either.

The boss, however, is still boss and certainly the absolute highlight of the DLC...

It's funny, how you can actually distract him by dropping Mighty Bananas. This even helps during the phase, where he uses his Clone Jitsu.

About one of the rewards that you get for clearing the Champions' Ballad...

The Picture of the Champions that you get from Kass and that you get to put in your finished house:

How was this even made? This picture was taken with the Sheikah Slate after all. Did some artist redraw it? Did Purah invent a Sheikah Slate compatible printing device? Both is possible and we probably will never know...

Otherwise I finally got my beloved bike back:

Sadly, it won't be of much use at this point. I've already found everything on the overworld, so using the bike would be just for fun now. But at least this way I've learned to appreciate horses much more. Thanks to the Ancient Saddle I've been using horses a lot more frequently during this run and they are probably even more convenient than the Master Cycle Zero in various situations. They're faster, you don't have to fuel them and you don't to hold the "A" button the entire time, which is a lot more comfortable.

The bike is still more fun and it has much better off road capabilities, while you also don't have to worry about it dying. So, it seems quite balanced and depending on the situation I would chose one or the other.

Stranded on Eventide +

This time the "Final Trial" wasn't really the final trial for me, because there was still the Trial of the Sword left and another Sheikah Shrine: the one on Eventide Island. Both of these trials have in common that you will lose your entire inventory except for (some of) the key items. And with no armor and the upgraded enemies, it seemed like the best idea to wait until the end of the game, where you have lots of health and stamina.

So, I kept the island for later including the chests around it in the sea, which was a good source of Rupees.

And overall I like Eventide so much more than the Trial of the Sword. The atmosphere on the deserted island is fantastic and makes me hope for a sequel that takes entirely place on some large tropical island. Being stranded on Eventide has a nice touch to it and it's not just about confronting the enemies, but also about exploring the island for all its resources and maybe even finding a way around the enemies. It's the survival gameplay of Breath of the Wild at its best.

I know that you can just drop some good weapons before the trial, like on your raft or on the small island with the chest, and pick the up after the trial has started. But I didn't want to "cheat" this way, not so late in the game. So, I took the challenge the way it was intended.

Unlike in the Trial of the Sword you can actually use your Master Cycle Zero during the trial, which is funny, but probably not very useful. You can't use any amiibo, however, the game prevents you from it.

Also unlike in the Trial of the Sword, your Champion abilities are still active here. And "Urbosa's Fury +" fully trivialized the trial, because you can just eradicate all the enemies with it without any longer loading times. So, in the end this whole thing was a lot easier than expected...

It was still fun to experiment a little bit. For example, I tried to defeat the Hinox with thunder strikes (real ones, not the ones from Urbosa's Fury) this time, by pushing a metal weapon onto him with Magnesis, but the damage wasn't as high as expected. Also, when I hid up in the cliffs to try this, the Hinox dug up explosive barrels out of nowhere and threw them after me...

I didn't even knew that they could do this, but this seems to be a nice throwback to the classic Hinox enemy from A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, which threw bombs at you. But it's nice to see that I keep learning new things about this game, even after hundreds of hours of playtime.

I still wish that you could replay the trial at any time, because this would be fun.

99.75%

So, after I was done with both the Champion's Ballad and Eventide Island, I expected to have a map completion of 100% again. But this wasn't the case, I ended up with 99.75% and was still missing a couple of locations. I found two of them rather quickly by studying the map:

• Statue of the Eighth Heroine
• Maw of Death Mountain

I was at both of these places, but I didn't trigger the names there. I took a picture of the Statue of the Eighth Heroine from a distance, but I didn't get close to the statue. And I walked around the "bridge" at the Maw of Death Mountain, collecting all the Koroks. This is what happens, when you just follow points on a map, instead of really exploring the places.

When I found the last Korok in my Normal Mode run, where I avoided using any guide maps, I automatically ended up at 100.00%, because I've walked over every square meter of the map by that time. But if you know, where everything is located, and skip some of the empty space, you might miss a location name or two...

However, I then was stuck at 99.91% and I couldn't find the last one. For a moment I was even afraid that I've been the victim of some bug, but it would be the first time that I've heard about this. I was studying MrCheeze's Waypoint Map, but I couldn't find what was missing. The only thing left seemed to be the "Hyrule Kingdom" location that you first read after leaving the Great Plateau. I was worried that you might be able to miss that, if you land too far away from the Plateau. But then I checked my Normal Mode map and it wasn't there either...

Well, after I went fully through this checklist, I finally found the culprit:

The Gerudo Desert Gateway. Yes, this is what happens, if you just follow points on a map and try to be efficient about it. I never went through the gate to the desert, because there is nothing there to find. I went above it for the Koroks. And later I entered the desert by gliding from the Wasteland Tower straight to Vah Naboris.

Enhancing Wild Things

To enhance the final set of armor in the game you need all types of dragon parts twice, as well as four Star Fragments, but I got those covered already from my previous farming sessions. But you also need Acorns, Courser Bee Honey and Energetic Rhino Beetles (15 of each), where I was still lacking the last two. Time to farm!

As for the Courser Bee Honey, there is some on the Great Plateau, but you can find many in one spot at both Fort Hateno and Rutile Lake (on the southwest side of Satori Mountain). Satori Mountain in general is a good source for many materials.

For the Energetic Rhino Beetles I then figured out any easy farming strategy. Go to East Akkala Stable, skip until morning, collect them with the Stealth set equipped, repeat. There are lots of them in the woods nearby.

What do you mean? I found like a dozen of them in half an hour...

Also, was missing a Bladed Rhino Beetle and a Sanke Carp in my inventory as materials, but both could be found in and around Kakariko. Apparently the Sanke Carps never gets dropped by any of the amiibo or otherwise I should have gotten them before.

It's not a necessity for a 100% savegame, but I still like to have at least one of each material inside my inventory.

Anyway, I'm almost done with enhancing all the armor. The additional shrines of the Champions' Ballad housed two Giant Ancient Cores, which was exactly what I needed to upgrade the Ancient Helm. I got another one from farming Guardians for my inventory collection, so I was good here. Now, only the Twilight and Sky amiibo tunic sets still need to be upgraded, where I currently need 16 more Star Fragments, which is just a matter of time.

I want to have all enhanceable sets fully upgraded in my inventory at the end, but I don't really count this as part of 100% completion either, since most of them can be sold again and you currently can't have all the armor at once anyway. Only the eight armor pieces that can't be sold (Champions' Tunic, Thunder Helm, Zora set and Wild set) should be there and if possible also fully enhanced. But I will post my "full" armor collection soon, once it's finished.

The Real Final Trial

You could say that I saved the worst for last with the Trial of the Sword. You can do this a lot earlier in the game, but for this type of challenge I simply preferred having the maximum of stamina and hearts. Also, this was the one part of the game, where I was not looking forward to it and where I felt really uneasy about it. You know, the same feeling that you have before an important test. I don't like it, when video games make you feel this way, because they shouldn't. I play video games to relax. They should be fun and engaging, not stressful.

The only other challenge in the Zelda series that made me feel like this was the Hero's Trial in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition. But in case of the Trial of the Sword it was more about the lack of practice, because I've only beaten it once in Normal Mode, and one particular room in the Beginning Trials. Overall it's by far not as bad as the Hero's Trial.

And I've studied this impressive No Damage Run by sva161620, which helped quite a lot and really boosted my motivation to do this. There are lots of good tricks in there and I like, how he doesn't rely on techniques like bow spinning or perfect parries, where it's easy to screw up. Instead he uses methods that can be copied by anyone, which is a good learning experience. So, if you're having troubles with the Trial of the Sword, go watch this video. Be aware that he makes it looks easy, but you don't have to copy the speed and perfection. And it really helps to know how to avoid damage in all of the scenarios.

It's also a good idea to prepare with food before the trials, because you can take any status effects, extra stamina and extra hearts into the trial. So, eat some food for two yellow Stamina Wheels and to get your hearts to 30. Also, in Master Mode you certainly want that triple Attack boost, because offense is really the best defense here, where you need to cook three Mighty Bananas, one Mighty Thistle and a dragon horn for the effect that lasts for 30 minutes, which is enough to get through each trial.

So, with that I was finally fully prepared to enter the trial...

The Beginning Trials are really the hardest part of all this, specifically the tenth floor, where you have to fight two Silver Lizalfos, who like to fully regenerate inside the water. It was already quite tough with two Black Lizalfos in Normal Mode, but the Master Mode version seems really unbalanced, especially for something that is supposed to be the "Beginning Trials", where you'd think that this is the easiest. It seems almost like an oversight by Nintendo, because the rest of the trials were usually kept fair, where you can succeed on wits and strategy.

But in this case you just don't have the equipment for it. They will kill you quickly, because you don't have the protection. Their spit alone does like five or six hearts of damage. And they will last, because your weapons aren't that good. I've heard people say that they did it with the Lightning Rod from the previous floor by attacking the Lizalfos in the water, but this didn't really work too well for me. Other strategies involve to burn them to death in a fire trap, but that's hard to pull off.

The video above uses "Chain Sneakstrikes" as the method to do it, but you're essentially abusing a flaw with the AI here. Whenever you perform a Sneakstrike on an enemy, they will turn around afterwards, ignoring anything before them. So, if you do a Sneakstrike and then walk in front of the enemy, you can immediately do another Sneakstrike afterwards. You can keep repeating this, until the enemy is dead, and with this method even the strongest tiers aren't an issue, because Sneakstrikes do eight times the damage of your weapon. You can just quickly kill those two Silver Lizalfos with them.

So much for theory, in praxis it's also not easy to pull off, because the Lizalfos have a habit of noticing you, while you sneak up to them. This is why the guy in the video shoots arrows in front of them, so they are distracted. But even this might not help. My first try was a complete catastrophe and I had to leave the trial to give up.

I did it on my second try, but even that didn't went smoothly at all. I could take out the first Silver Lizalfos exactly like in the video, which was a huge help. But the second Silver Lizaflos kept noticing me, where I had to run back to the beginning of the jetty, hoping that the Lizalfos would reset to its original position, which sometimes they don't. They face inwards, which makes sneaking up to them impossible. But sometimes they turn around, when you get closer, which is a little weird... But it's much easier to deal with only one Lizalfos than two, which is why I ultimately succeeded with some patience.

Floors 11 and 12 afterwards are probably not even worth mentioning. Don't use the raft on Floor 11, but slowly take the archers out from Cryonis blocks. Then push the Bokoblins into the water with a Korok Leave and try the same with a heavy weapon on the Silver Moblin. Fighting a Hinox without taking damage was routine by now. Stasis+, shoot the eye, attack close, retreat, repeat.

And after I was done, I was in good need for a Hestu Dance Party. Collecting all 900 Korok Seeds never felt so rewarding, because you can just enjoy Hestu's stash expansion dances again and again. And after beating the Beginning Trials, it was party time!

Because I was somewhat stressed by these trials, I didn't attempt it all in one evening. I've beaten the Beginning Trials on Monday (sometime after 0AM), then did the Middle Trials on Tuesday evening and the Final Trials yesterday evening. The rest of the time I've spent with farming materials (mostly Star Fragments) to relax.

But I've bested both the Middle Trials and the Final Trials on my first try, where the Beginning Trials really are the toughest. You just have much more room for error and much better gear in the other trials. I would even say that the difficulty goes down with each one.

The Middle Trials start easy with the air rooms, where you can kill most enemies by pushing them into the abyss. The darkness rooms can be tough, however, because it has some strong enemies in there that you can hardly see. Even the Black Hinox managed to hit me hart despite my Hinox killing routine, because I couldn't see, where I was going... Well, I never was a fan of the artificial dark areas in the game, it just looks wrong. And if it wasn't for this part, the Middle Trials would be really enjoyable and fun.

Fighting the Guardians Scouts in the last part also felt surprisingly easy, almost as if they didn't scale up, but there are also lots of neat tricks here, like pushing them into the water, dropping a huge metal box on them or burning them to death.

Now, the Final Trials are certainly the longest, where my damage boost only lasted into the middle of the ice floors, but long enough to take down the Silver Moblin and the Gold Bokoblin on Floor 15. But it also felt like the easiest of the three trials, because you get plenty of food and good weapons, while most of the enemies don't scale here and can be easily killed in one hit: Stal enemies, Fire- and Ice-Breath Lizalfos, Chuchus, Pebblits and even the Guardians thanks to the nine Ancient Arrows that you can find.

I did fight the first Guardian Stalker and also the first Guardian Turret normally to save some Ancient Arrows, where I had exactly the two left at the end (I used one on each Lynel, one on the Gold Moblin on Floor 14 and the rest on the other active Guardians). I just wanted to be save in case I screw up hitting the Lynel on the final floor in that chaos.

And I almost screwed up badly by forgetting to collect that Blizzard Rod on Floor 15, which is a real life saver on the final floor as well, because it stops the entire army of riding Blue Bokoblins. It makes this almost too easy. And even, if you screw up somehow, there are plenty of fairies and multiple "hearty" ingredients to bring you back to form. You can actually cook up a triple defense meal for the final floor, which helped as much as that Ancient Arrow and the Blizzard Rod.

So, with that I was done and could finally claim the true Master Sword... again.

So, what to do with this new shiny sword? Felling lots of trees, of course!

Link is a true force of nature and the real Calamity in this game.

I needed to collect the firewood for some Star Fragment farming, because that's like the only thing left to do at this point. Well, I made very good use of both the enhanced Master Sword and the Master Cycle Zero during my Normal Mode run, when I kept looking for the remaining Koroks, but here I didn't get both of these until the end, sadly.

Of course this was my own choice and I could have gotten them a lot earlier, but challenges like the Trial of the Sword or the Realms of Memories give me an incentive to wait until I have gotten all the Spirit Orbs. With similar challenges in past Zelda games, like the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess, I also usually did them at the end of the game. In some cases you couldn't even do it before, because the game prevents you from entering the final floors in some way.

The Best Shield

What's even more pointless than getting the best sword at the end of the game? Right, getting the best shield at the end of the game! I waited so long to get the Hylian Shield, because I wanted to wait for its yellow modifiers to appear, which only happens late. The best possible one to get is "Shield Guard Up + 54" and here it is:

After you've beaten the Stalnox in Hyrule Castle, you can just save your game right before opening the chest and reload as long, until you get your desired modifier. That's save scumming for you. There is also "Durability Up +" modifier for the shield, but it has a hidden random stat to it and it's not that useful, because with the high Shield Guard value of 144 your Hylian Shield will rarely ever take damage.

I still don't like this, because it adds yet another thing to the game that won't last and can't be gotten back, because the Hylian Shield sold by Granté won't have modifiers. So, ultimately this is just a collectible that I probably will never use and just keep in my inventory for bragging rights.

Apropos bragging, with the last Hinox I also finally got all Medals of Honor and with that all key items in Master Mode:

I also still had to buy the rest of the pictures from Symin to get that Classified Envelope, where I needed to pay 18,500 Rupees for the weapon pictures. And I have to say that with buying all the pictures, purchasing armor and paying for the Great Faries I always had a good use for Rupees. It fully added up, one half-way efficient run of Master Mode scored me enough Rupees to purchase everything. Of course I had to sell some minerals to make this work, but I still have enough left to enhance the rest of the amiibo gear. So, only Star Fragments and dragon parts required some long-time farming.

Final Hero's Path

This is how my Hero's Path of my entire Master Mode run looks like:

I did get all 900 Koroks and all treasure chests again, except for those that are glitched. So, any empty space on the Hero's Path has absolutely nothing except for maybe some material sources that can be ignored.

You can also clearly see, where the Star Fragment farming took place with paths emitted from the same travel gates. They almost looks like the third of a star, a "star fragment" so to say.

According to my Wii U I've spent a total of 175 hours to complete the game in Master Mode. That's less than a third of my original playthrough, but still quite a lot considering I've tried to be somewhat efficient by clearing one area after another this time. That's a whole new level for Zelda games, where in the past even the longest Zelda games only took around 30 to 40 hours at maximum to be completed a second time, when you know what to do and where to find everything. Even playing through a Zelda game for the first time never really scratched the hundred hour mark, but Breath of the Wild is certainly in a different league here. It's quite the time investment, but an enjoyable one.

The End(?)

This is it for my Master Mode run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Wii U. I also own the Switch version of the game, but I don't have a Nintendo Switch yet. Once I do, it's likely that I will do another complete Master Mode run on that system, where I want to focus on fully completing Hyrule Compendium with personal pictures, which will be a new challenge, because you have to fight Lynels very early, before they start upgrading. But I won't be doing this anytime soon.

For now this savegame will act as a playground, where I want to practice my fighting skills from time to time. There are so many crazy things that you can do combat-wise in this game and I want to experiment with this somewhat in the future, where a fully completed Master Mode file will serve as the perfect platform to do this.

Master Mode Progress:

• Divine Beasts Freed: All
• Main Quests: 20/20
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Side Quests: 90/90
• Memories: 23/23
• Shrines: 136/136
• Koroks: 900/900
• Talus: 40/40
• Hinox: 40/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Completion: 100.00%

All done, again! Thanks for reading!

Breath of the Wild: Expansion Pass Review

For the price of $19.99 / 19.99€ you can currently expand your experience of Breath of the Wild with two DLC Packs: The Master Trials and The Champions' Ballad. The packs can't be purchased individually for unknown reasons. Maybe most people bought the similar DLC bundles in case of Hyrule Warriors and Mario Kart 8 anyway, so Nintendo saved themselves the trouble of selling the packs separately this time. But it's certainly disappointing for people, who might only want to have a part of the DLC, like a certain armor piece. Then they still have to go all in. In any case, both packs have been released by now and we can finally evaluate the DLC contents as a whole.

Breath of the Wild is actually the first main Zelda game that offers purchasable contents, yet the series still was no stranger to add-ons. Two years ago Tri Force Heroes received a free downloadable update with two new outfits and the Den of Trials, a multi-floor survival dungeon similar to the Savage Labyrinth or the Cave of Ordeals in past Zelda games. Shorty after, Twilight Princess HD added a similar dungeon to the game with the Cave of Shadows, as well as the Hero Mode difficulty and a Miiverse Stamp collectible quest. And adding content to the various Zelda remasters goes all the way back to 1998 with Link's Awakening DX, where they added the Color Dungeon and a new photo side quest that led to some new story moments.

The Expansion Pass of Breath of the Wild doesn't really re-invent the wheel here. It simply sells the same type of add-on contents that the series saw before: there are new armor pieces, a trial cave, new shrines, a way to re-battle bosses, a new dungeon and a new difficulty mode. There are also some new memories to view and a couple new challenges that lead to the shrines. What you shouldn't expect from the DLC are new areas to explore. Instead it adds more to existing areas in the game, making them feel less empty at times.

New Armor

The DLC adds a total of 18 new armor pieces to the game. This includes five new hats/masks, a new shirt and four complete sets of armor:

• Korok Mask
• Majora's Mask
• Midna's Helmet
• Zant's Helmet
• Ravio's Hood
• Island Lobster Shirt
• Tingle Set
• Phantom Armor Set
• Phantom Ganon Set
• Royal Guard Set

With two or three exceptions, these new armor pieces don't provide any new abilities or bonuses. Instead they simply copy existing ones, e.g. the Tingle Set works exactly like the Dark Link Set, which is funny. You also can't enhance any of them, so later in the game they are only there for the looks, because they won't provide the necessary defense. On the other hand, some of these items seem overpowered for how early you can find them in the game. Majora's Mask specifically combines the effects of all monster masks, making those completely obsolete, while you can find it right away after leaving the Great Plateau... And this doesn't seem like it was really thought through by Nintendo.

(On top of things, there isn't even enough space in the Armor Inventory to collect all the pieces anyway, so you have to sell some of it to make space. It feels like an oversight from Nintendo, which hopefully will get fixed in future updates.)

The way they added the armor to the game also wasn't really thoughtful. You simply get spammed with a series of new "EX" side quests that appear in your Adventure Log out of nowhere and that lead you to journals in various places. These journals then provide the locations, where you can find the treasure chests with the armor. If Nintendo wanted to be any lazier, they could have just dropped all those chests right in front of you after starting the game... Breath of the Wild didn't have many outstanding side quests to begin with, but the whole armor hunt even lowered the bar. It's the most lackluster feature of the DLC.

In the very least the new armor pieces all look very nice and add quite a high amount of fan service to the game with various costumes from past Zelda games.

Quality of Life for a Price

Probably the most interesting and useful new armor piece is the Korok Mask, which starts to react to nearby Koroks. The radius is quite limited, but it's still your best chance of finding all the Koroks in the game without the help of a guide. And it probably was an often requested feature before the DLC, which raises the question why this became DLC to begin with, instead of a feature in a free update.

It's similar with other additions in the DLC. The Hero's Path Mode lets you follow around the last 200 hours of movement on your map, which is certainly a useful feature for discovering areas, where something still might be hidden. Nintendo planned this feature from the beginning, where your movements got even recorded before the DLC was released, but you have to buy the DLC to actually see the data.

In addition there are the Travel Medaillon, which lets you set a personal teleport point on the overworld, and the Ancient Bridle and Ancient Saddle, where the latter lets you teleport your horse to your current location, so that you can finally summon it whenever you want, much like you could with Epona in past games. Other than the fact that the rest of the horse gear basically became obsolete, these are all comfort features to improve the game for everyone, where you shouldn't have to pay for them. All of this could and should have been included in free updates, instead of being hidden behind a pay wall.

Trial of the Sword

As part of "The Master Trials", the DLC added floor-based survival dungeon to the game, where you have to defeat all enemies to proceed to the next floor. These have been featured in several Zelda games of the past, where the most prominent examples would be the Savage Labyrinth in the Wind Waker and the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess. The "Trial of the Sword", however, is closer to the Den of Trials in Tri Force Heroes, where each floor has an individual layout and where the whole trial was divided in individual sections.

There are the Beginning, Middle and Final Trials with a total of 12, 16 and 23 floors respectively (including resting points). You can play all three parts individually without starting over from the beginning, which makes the whole thing much more bearable. The three trials themselves also have individual sections based on the various areas and themes in the game. For example you start the Beginning Trials in a forest area, but the second half places you in rooms full of water. Various assets from the overworld have been use to build these rooms, which creates a unique look in the game thanks to the shrine visuals, where you normally wouldn't find things like Bokoblin camps or even trees.

The trials can be entered by pushing the Master Sword back into its pedestal, which transports you into some sort of spiritual realm. It's a nice throwback to Skyward Sword, but it also prevents you from bringing any gear into the trials, where you start only with your hearts, stamina, Sheikah Slate and the Paraglider available. The rest of the inventory is empty and the Champion abilities are disabled as well, so it really limits you to what the trials give you. It's similar to the survival trial of Eventide Island, where you have to work with what the island provides you with (unless you drop stuff before the trial). So, if you like this type of situation, you're in for a ride.

On the one hand this restriction is exciting and understandable, because otherwise you could just cheat through everything with Ancient Arrows (though the Final Trial sort of lets you do that), while the Champion abilities might just slow you down, because you want them to recharge first. On the other hand it diminishes most of your achievements throughout the game. Why would you even bother with collecting the best weapons and gear, if there's no challenge, where you can really use them? A trial cave like this would have been the perfect opportunity to let the players go all out.

Curiously, with the limitations present, the Beginning Trials appear to be the hardest of the three, where in a water area you have to face some stronger Lizalfos with only very limited gear, which in the new Master Mode is one of the toughest challenges in the game, unless you trick the AI somehow. The later trials let you find more gear and helpful items to prevail on all the floors.

For your troubles you will be able to increase the Master Sword's strength with each trial up to the point, where it's constantly in its glowing state. And that's certainly a useful reward. However, if you're able to get the through the entire Trial of the Sword, it doesn't seem like you need such an upgrade to begin with.

Master Mode

When the first The Legend of Zelda game offered a second difficulty, it completely changed all of its dungeons in the so called "2nd Quest". Ocarina of Time also received a "Master Quest" variant, where the dungeons have been altered in interesting ways. But ever since Skyward Sword, if Zelda players wanted a more challenging playthrough, they had to settle for the simple "Hero Mode" variant, where only the received damage got increased and where you might not find any hearts, besides other small changes. But there were no big alterations anymore.

The "Master Mode" of Breath of the Wild is somewhere in between. It doesn't touch its dungeons, so the Divine Beasts and Sheikah Shrines stay mostly the same, but it adds more enemies in certain locations, which might also lead to some interesting surprises.

The core feature of the Master Mode, however, is that all enemies have moved up one tier. So, all the red Bokoblins now became blue ones and so on. They did leave single specimens of the lowest tier enemies for you to find, so you can still take pictures for Hyrule Compendium. But overall everything has moved up in rank, where the Master Mode even introduces new golden enemies that didn't exist in Normal Mode. But their main difference is that they simply have more health than their silver counterparts. Health can be a deciding factor, however, because all enemies now regenerate. This adds a sense of urgency to all battles, where some of the bosses, which are able to evade you for a time, even provide a tough challenge.

Probably the biggest addition to Master Mode are the floating platforms everywhere, which might transport enemies or additional treasure chests. The chests often provide you with better weapons, so that dealing with all the upgraded enemies isn't completely unbalanced. But the platforms themselves are probably the most interesting part, because they add a layer of aerial exploration to the game, which wasn't there before.

Master Mode lets you start over, but it does come with its own save slots (one auto and one manual save), where you can switch between your Normal Mode and Master Mode saves at any time.

(As a side note, there's a technical issue, where Normal Mode and Master Mode share the same files for personal pictures in Hyrule Compendium. So, if you take a picture in any mode, it will be overwritten in the other, unless you're using the purchasable stock pictures. Playing Master Mode on a different profile prevents this issue, however.)

The Champions' Ballad

This is more or less the core part of the Expansion that came with the second DLC Pack of the same name. It adds a series of new main quests to the game that are accessible after you've beaten all four Divine Beasts. You're then invited back to the Great Plateau, where it all started.

There you are greeted by the One-Hit Obliterator Trial, where you carry a weapon that defeats all foes in a single hit, but you're also reduced to a quarter heart, which means that every little scratch will kill you as well. Anyone, who has played the "Don't get hit!" missions in Hyrule Warriors should be already familiar with this type of gameplay. You're confined to the one melee weapon, but you can use everything else in your inventory, where you might heavily rely on bows and playing it safe from the distance. You have to clear four enemy camps that lead to new shrines, where one of them stands out in this scenario with a long series of now very deadly spiked traps.

This can be fun, but for the most part it feels like more like a turn-off that gets in the way for the more enjoyable part of the DLC. So, it probably would have been a good idea to keep it separate. As a reward you get enough Spirit Orbs for another Heart Container or Stamina Vessel (you still can't maximize both, however, even with the DLC) and it creates obelisks near the Divine Beasts that show you locations of three additional trials per Champion. It's a big scavenger hunt all over the areas and probably the most guided part of the game, but you can still do all the trials in any order.

The individual Trials of the Champions have you chase through blue light rings at a fast pace, fight new enemies on the overworld (which includes two new variants of existing overworld bosses) or pass other smaller tests. Each of them lead to an additional Shrine, where all shrines in the DLC feature completely new puzzles and trials, so there are no normal "Tests of Strength" or any "Blessings", which filled up the shrine count in the main game.

Some of the new shrines turn out rather simple, if you already have full protection against flames or electricity. Others provide more complex puzzles, where especially the Mah Eliya Shrine as part of Mipha's Trials has spawned lots of different videos with creative solutions all over the Internet. These 12 new shrines don't reward you with the usual Spirit Orbs, however, but with Emblems of the Champions.

These Emblems can be traded at the Divine Beasts to re-enter them in so called Realms of Memories. These let you battle the bosses of the Divine Beasts again in obscured visions, which feels similar to the boss encounters in Ganon's Tower of the Wind Waker. You also get pre-defined inventories, which again tries to create some sort of challenge by stripping you of all your (overpowered) stuff. But only one of the bosses offers a real challenge due to the inventory limitations, especially in Master Mode. Afterwards you can also chose to re-battle the bosses anytime you wish, which is certainly nice to have.

As a reward the corresponding Champion abilities recharge now three times faster, which is of similar value to the upgraded Master Sword. You will also receive new Memories of how Princess Zelda recruited the Champions, which adds some beautiful moments to the overall story.

A New Dungeon

If you're done with all the trials, the game invites you to the Final Trial, the new dungeon of the DLC. It's essentially another Divine Beast, which combines elements of all the four other Divine Beasts. It's again similar to Ganon's Tower in the Wind Waker, where you have a central room with a big door that opens after you've cleared the four individual rooms. Such a final dungeon, where the rooms are based on the individual dungeons of the game, can be even considered as a staple in the series, where for example Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask or Skyward Sword did this as well. It's nice that Breath of the Wild now received something similar, but you also shouldn't expect too much here, because they kept things rather short and simple.

The ability to alter the dungeon at any time, in this case the direction of gears that would effect all the rooms, felt special as usual. The visuals of the dungeon, however, are pretty much the same as in the others.

At least the boss of the dungeon is a nice surprise and certainly one of the absolute highlights of the DLC. And Nintendo also thought of the option to fight this boss again at any time, if you want.

The Master Cycle Returns

As a reward for the first victory you receive the Master Cycle Zero, which is certainly the most fun addition to this game. You can summon it almost everywhere (major exceptions being Death Mountain and the desert) via a new Sheikah Slate Rune, you have full control over it and you can even make small jumps, where the bike lets you climb steep hills in ways that wouldn't have been possible with horses. Horses may still have other advantages like speed or autonomy, but overall the Master Cycle Zero completely outclasses them, where its only downside is that you need to refuel it every so often. But at least that way you have a new use for the many materials that you keep collecting throughout the game.

Essentially making its way into Zelda over from Mario Kart 8, the Master Cycle Zero does feel "out of place" at first. But it still fits the theme of Sheikah Technology in the game and it's so much fun to travel the vast lands of Hyrule with this new mount that you quickly get used to its presence in the game.

New Old Things

What's noteworthy about the DLC is that other than the new armor pieces and the Master Cycle Zero there aren't really any new assets in this package. Most of it simply recycles and remixes things that already have been in the game. So, you shouldn't expect any new visual themes for dungeons for example, it's just more of the old stuff, even though here and there it creates some interesting combinations. The new enemies are mostly just reskins and resizes of existing foes as well.

While the new boss looks completely new, even there they managed to cleverly combine existing models and animations to create something different. It's probably the pinnacle of what you can achieve by reusing assets, but at least there new music pieces around the Champions' Ballad, which include tracks for the new dungeon and boss and which are pretty amazing.

Nintendo is known for keeping things compact in size and maybe that's the reason they did this, but it's clear that the DLC didn't get the full attention of the entire development team. They are probably keeping the good stuff for a sequel, but it's still a shame that they couldn't put a little more effort into the DLC to go the extra mile with Breath of the Wild, a game that certainly would deserve the care and attention

Final Thoughts

Overall Nintendo played it safe by relying on the typical types of add-on contents that the series has seen before, like new outfits, a new difficulty mode, a trial cave dungeon or re-battling bosses. All of this works very well as DLC, but because most of these features had been part of the whole package in past Zelda releases, fans might feel cheated out of something that the game should have per default.

It's especially troublesome with additions that serve as basic improvements for the game, like the ability to call your horse from everywhere or some indicator for hidden Koroks. In that case Nintendo crossed a line, where they should have provided these features via free updates, instead of paid DLC.

Also, the integration of the new armor has been sloppy at best and most of the DLC simply recycles existing assets, where it feels like the majority of the development team already left, when they started working on the DLC. It feels like Nintendo didn't really care about the DLC, which is a shame.

A common theme in all of the DLC are trials, where the game either takes away all your hearts, your abilities or parts of your inventory to create an artificial challenge. It doesn't try to create a challenge for those, who have enhanced all their armor, collected very good gear and alike, where there's seemingly no real endgame challenge other than taking on the new golden enemies in Master Mode. And in that sense the DLC is absolutely lacking.