Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 12

Done. 100%. Just right before the end of the year, I've finally completed Breath of the Wild in "Normal Mode", where I finished the final task of collecting all 900 Korok Seeds. This massive journey of a game started in early March and lasted for over 600 hours according to my Wii U, which is a lot, probably a lot longer than for most people. But keep in mind that I usually let the game run while writing this blog or even while doing other things at home, so it's not all pure game time. And I haven't been using any guides, so I kept searching through the wide landscapes of Breath of the Wild again and again in order to find all Sheikah Shrines, overworld bosses and Koroks, instead of clearing everything more efficiently in few swoops.

The Champion Diaries

When I first played the new DLC, the Champions' Ballad, I was kind in a hurry, so I didn't pay much attention to the new dialogues that they added around the four Champions. Kass points out that you should talk to the important persons in the respective towns, but I didn't take the time for this until later. Turns out that for each Champion you can find their diaries and read about their thoughts at the time, which adds some interesting details.

Some of it is fun, other stuff is completely weird, though, especially the part, where Link seemingly was able to best Hylian Knights at the age of 4. If he was around ten years old (like in Ocarina of Time), I wouldn't mind that fact, but four year old Link doing this seems rather extreme. But whatever.

Also, with Revali I had hopes that his diary might redeem his character a little, but instead it even made him look like a bigger douche...

Another nice detail is that you can hang the Picture of the Champions, which you got from Kass, in your house, next to your bed (this only seems to work, when you're finished with purchasing all parts). This was a surprising and beautiful little moment.

Looking for Koroks in All the Right (and Wrong) Places

After leaving my four walls behind, I donned my riding suit to embrace the wild with my brand new bike. This "riding suit" used a Korok Mask instead of a safe helmet (as if Link would ever need that), because it was time to hunt those last little wooden friends. 67 Koroks were left for me to find and I got them all in less than two weeks.

The Master Cycle Zero was a big boost of motivation for that and helped tremendously in exploring the vast areas. To me this was like a completely new way of experiencing the world of Breath of the Wild. But to be fair, I rarely ever used horses, because they seemed inconvenient and they often have a mind of their own. They are very nice to travel swiftly along the roads, but you rarely find Koroks at the roads, you find Koroks by leaving the designated paths and by exploring in all the corners. And the bike really helps with that, because you can summon it absolutely anywhere outside of the Gerudo Desert, Death Mountain and for some reason also Rito Village and Zora's Domain. But if you're in some rocky mountains, you can just summon it and go faster. You don't have to worry about it falling into an abyss, because you can just summon it again right away. It just makes exploring everything so much more fun, convenient and faster.

Otherwise my strategy was using a combination of the Korok Mask and Hero's Path Mode, two features from the Master Trials DLC. I kept studying my path for gaps in the last 200 hours and then I would explore these gaps with the Korok Mask. Often this would lead to nowhere, empty hills with nothing but dirt and rocks, but in the very least the Master Cycle Zero helped covering all that ground quickly. In other cases I hit the jackpot, for example I found three Koroks at the entrance to Gerudo Canyon...

The Master Cycle Zero even prove itself useful in one of the Korok puzzles:

There's another set of hurdles on Rowan Plain, but it turns out that you can also use your bike for this instead of a horse. It works just fine.

It's interesting that this type of puzzle only appears twice in the game. They seemed to make such a big deal out of the horses that you would expect more of them.

But there are even puzzle types that are entirely unique. Like the tree branch that you have to pick up at the Bridge of Hylia. And the Luminous Stone in one eye of the statues over at Lake Floria. I expected more of those as well, but I guess it's nice to have something unique here and there. Especially in a game, where everything gets copy pasted at least once.

Going by bike (or horse) also prevents random spawns like the various Stal enemies, which is a blessing. One of the most annoying things while looking for Koroks have been the ridiculous amount of Stals popping up every two meters. They either just drain your weapons or you have to take them out inconveniently with bombs. Sometimes, when you leave them in the middle of a fight, the battle music also keeps going on... All that really helps is skipping to the next day or to stay on your bike.

Well, there are many uses to the Master Cycle Zero and one more would be inside the Typhlo ruins, where the headlights actually shine the way...

Still, the dark areas in the game seem completely unfun and broken, because that's not realistic lighting in any way, and I could have saved myself the trouble, because there are no Koroks to find there.

The Master Cycle Zero wasn't my only way of traveling, however, because I also went over various waters with a raft. There's another new "Swift Sail" ability that comes with the Island Lobster Shirt from the newest DLC. If you wear this outfit, rafts are propelled with a lot more power and you can go much faster...

It's so fast indeed that I got thrown off during a Blood Moon or after ramming a Lizalfos in the water. That's a little annoying then, because the raft gains such a great distance that you have to swim for a while to catch up. But it's still fun and a nice hidden feature of one of the new outfits. I'd wish that there were more creative with the other DLC outfits as well and that you actually could enhance them.

What also has been helpful were the enhanced Champion abilities. Especially that Revali's Gale regenerates so fast now increased my mobility and my willingness to climb all kinds of mountains quite a lot. And with Urbosa's Fury engaging enemy camps again is usually also a job done quick.

To finish things up, whenever I felt like I was completely done with searching everywhere within an area, I checked on ZeldaMaps.com or similar online maps to see, if I really got everything. I found about a dozen missing Koroks that way and I'm not really happy about that, because when it comes to Zelda I usually want to do it all on my own, but it was a necessity at the end. The main problem is that the game doesn't provide any area-based data on the map. A Link Between Worlds did that for its Maiamais and that was a really short game. For Twilight Princess HD they even added regional counters for Poe Souls and there were "only" 60 of those. But for the massive amount of 900 Korok Seeds in the largest game world that Nintendo ever has created, for some reason they didn't bother with this.

If I knew, how many Koroks were left in each area, I could focus on clearing every area one after another and I would know, where to search for the remaining few. But the game didn't allow this, all I had was the Korok Mask and Hero's Path Mode, where the latter wasn't entirely useful, because you can't reset it. While I was looking for gaps, my Hero's Path still covered times, where I didn't even have the Korok Mask and ran by some Koroks without noticing.

The Final Koroks

So, where were the final few wooden guys? The last of the last...?

Of course I found about half a dozen more Koroks in the Hebra region. This area gave me trouble from the start, but at least I did found all except two without looking on any solution maps. I also missed a Korok in the icy parts of the Great Plateau, which was devilishly hidden, and my third from last was near Mount Lanayru. So, plenty of Koroks left in the cold. But at least I managed to completely clear the Gerudo Highlands before this.

Anyway, there was a beautiful moment in Tanagar Canyon, where I shot Dinraal for one of his claws and it landed right above a location with a Korok that I had missed so far. That was awesome.

Overall a common puzzle that I discovered multiple times at the end were "dead end rocks". These are simply Koroks hiding under a rock in what appears to be "dead ends" around cliffs. I missed several of those.

My final two Koroks were special, so I will post them directly here:

The second to last Korok was in the Applean Forest. That's just a big forest area full of apple trees and a Hinox in the center. The kicker here was that there is actually a triple apple tree right in the middle of all that! How evil! I didn't notice it, until I drove my Master Cycle Zero through the forest again to cover unvisited ground...

My 900th Korok was right at the path that leads to Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Castle. And I can't think of any more fitting position for the last Korok, except for maybe the one right on top of the castle. But I was really happy about this spot.

As a reference, here's how my Hero's Path looks like after scouting for the remaining Koroks and searching almost everywhere:

Tourok 3 - Shadow of Hestu

Well, I knew already what the final reward would be, but it's still fun to finally see this for myself...

Hestu then gives you this:

Wow! A giant golden turd?! Aww, Hestu, you shouldn't have! What a nice Christmas gift! I'll put it right next to the 459 other golden turds that you left me already...

Well, actually the game doesn't put it right next to the remaining Korok Seeds, because for some reason it puts the Classified Envelope in between:

Why, Nintendo? Just why...? It's small details like this that Breath of the Wild keeps getting wrong. Anyway, I wouldn't even mind, if you could actually trade the 459 leftover seeds for something. Ideally I could buy additional armor space from them, which would solve the problem, where you currently can't store all 107 individual armor pieces in your 100 slot inventory...

Maybe Nintendo will still fix this in an upcoming update, but for now Hestu's dance will have to do. That's actually a nice part of his "gift", you can now watch him do his dance any time you want. And I love that!

But still, the golden turd was a Nintendo's "polite" way of saying that you probably shouldn't spend so much time on video games...

Back to Boss

Since my last Korok was found right before Calamity Ganon, I just had to try the final boss fight once again. I haven't fought him since my first times in March, so it's been a long time and I have grown much more stronger since then. In fact, I'm now at the full maximum that the game allows. And as expected, the fight has become pathetically easy... (Though he got me hard in the beginning.)

I understand now, why they give you pre-defined inventories for the re-battling the Blights in the "Realms of Memories". At least this somehow induces some level of challenge, especially Waterblight Ganon with only 10 Arrows in your pocket can be tricky.

Apropos, by beating the Blights again, the game also initiates additional voice acted "dialogues" with each Champion, which can be interesting. But you can find this all on Youtube, if you don't want to go through the trouble of repeating the fights yourself.

The "Realm of Memories" also lets you explore the Divine Beasts again, if you want. You can just leave the battles and go to different parts of the dungeon. I wonder, if you can still find any treasure chests that you might have missed here earlier in the game. My Sheikah Sensor didn't pick any up, but this might be because I found them all already. Of course it would be annoying, if the Realm of Memories eternally reminded you that you'e missed something so early in the game...

About "Dark Beast Ganon"... You can now use the Master Cycle Zero in this battle, which is fun, but it's still kind of an underwhelming finale.


Update:

Previously I wrongly assumed that you cannot place the Travel Medallion in Hyrule Castle. But apparently this only applies to the inside of the castle, not the outside:

So, after all this time I finally have my shortcut to Ganon... Not that this was of any use. :D

Master Mode?

So, this is it for my "Normal Mode" run of Breath of the Wild. Took me long enough, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. However, there's still the "Master Mode", where I want to fully complete the game a second time next year. But now that I have found everything I will do things more efficiently and use check maps right from the start to clear entire areas in one go, instead of aimlessly exploring everywhere a dozen times. So, this should go a lot faster and the focus of my "Master Log" will be on what has changed in Master Mode and how I had to adapt. This won't happen right away, but later in 2018.

Right now I'm not sure, whether I also want to do this on the Wii U or to play it on the Nintendo Switch. If Nintendo releases a Breath of the Wild Special Edition Switch with both the game and the DLC pre-installed, I'll be getting this. Otherwise I'll play "Master Mode" on the Wii U. There's also the chance that Nintendo releases more updates with some minor content, similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 crossover in version 1.3.3. In this case I might post another small edition of the "EX Log". But for now it's "Buh-bye!"

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 19/20
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Side Quests: 90/90
• Memories: 23/23
• Medals of Honor: 3/3
• Shrines: 136/136
• Koroks: 900/900
• Map Rate: 100.00%

All done!

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 11

The Final Trial

Finally back, so it was time to take on the new Divine Beast. The control mechanic here was very simple, where you could just change the direction of the main gear, but this would lead to various "complex" puzzles. I still love the ability to alter the dungeon at any time, this was a great invention in Breath of the Wild. And this would have been interesting in Majora's Mask for example, in fact this reminded me somewhat of the Great Bay Temple, where you also had a main gear in the center and could change the flow of the water for the entire dungeon. If you could do that at any time, it would have been so much more interesting.

Overall it doesn't get revealed what kind of animal this Divine Beast really is. I do like this, however, because it adds some mystery to the game. It's simply one Divine Beast that they failed to excavate. It's not part of the legends, so they probably weren't even looking for another beast somewhere. And we probably will never know, how this beast looked like from the outside.

Whatever this Divine Beast is, it's one thing for sure: a classic final dungeon with single room trials based on the other dungeons in this game. You even have a lock that reminded me of the door in Ganon's Tower from the Wind Waker:

And like in that game you can now re-battle the Blights, even if it's not part of this dungeon. The rooms also focused on a specific Rune each, as expected, but there's one exception: the fire room doesn't have any use for the Bombs, in fact you don't need Bombs in the entire dungeon at all. This was a little disappointing and so was the length of the dungeon. Like all the Divine Beasts it was rather short and certainly not the "complex maze" it claims to be in the beginning.

At least there were some cleverly hidden chests, but I was annoyed by the weak early game gear that they dropped. Way of taking me back to nine months ago. In the very least the music (which you could also hear in the trailer) was pretty awesome.

So, after clearing all four rooms, I actually left the dungeon to cook myself some hearty food to prepare for the worst. I expected a Dark / Shadow Link battle at the end of the dungeon, but I didn't know what to expect, when I saw this...

Was this just it? Does the dungeon simply end with another Sheikah Monk like all 136 Shrines in the game? This can't be...!

Of course not. And I really liked the sequence, when the Sheikah Monk started to move. This was so creepy, because after them doing the exact same thing 136 times, I did not see this coming.

So, you're battling Monk Maz Koshia and this was so much better than another Dark / Shadow Link battle, I have to admit. It's scary to finally fight a Sheikah himself and he is using all different weaponry like you. The constant switching between Fire, Ice and Shock Arrows also makes it difficult to adjust to him with armor.

This is a nice new boss battle and after I was done, my first instinct wasn't to try the Master Cycle Zero reward, but to see, if I could fight him again. And you can! You can revisit the dungeon and re-battle him at any time, which is nice.

I also like the remix of the fight tutorial music from the shrine near Kakariko. It creates some catchy boss music here.

After the dungeon the Champions' Ballad gets a very beautiful ending with the final memory of Link, Zelda and the four Champions. I love the sequence and overall the five new memories certainly added a new layer to these characters. Sure, they could have done more, but overall this DLC left me really satisfied. Especially with the reward at the end...

Born to be Wild

Yeehaw... What an amazing reward! This is so much fun. I like, how the Master Cycle Zero is a Rune, where you can summon the bike at any time like Wolf Link or other amiibo rewards. That's probably also why they added the Ancient Saddle, because it will be hard for horses to get your attention afterwards. This tweet sums it up perfectly. I suppose, it's fine, because you get it so late in the game and horses have still the advantage that they can go faster and autonomously, where it's a little easier to fight on them. (Update: The Master Cycle Zero requires more skill for fighting, but if you master it, you can do pretty crazy things, especially since it lets you jump with the bike and still perform the mid-air slow-motion with the bow. That's really powerful.)

Also, horses don't need fuel. That's a disadvantage of the bike, but I like how this adds another use to the tons of useless materials that you collect during the game. I keep feeding it Chuchu Jelly, because I had over 900 of those and they fit the blue color of the fuel refilling animation. If it would go a little faster and if it had a horn, this thing would be perfect.

But driving the bike is a lot of fun and I'm happy that I actually still have Koroks left to find, because this will make the Korok hunt so much more enjoyable and crazy. With the Master Cycle Zero I feel like going anywhere... But certain areas don't allow the bike, like the desert and the heated areas of Death Mountain.

I went for both these areas, because I wanted to check something. Actually I was on a ride through Gerudo Canyon, when the Blood Moon struck. And this was perfect timing, because I wanted to see, if the Molduking respawns. And it does. Same goes for the Igneo Talus Titan. This is very good, because this now means that you can re-battle all the bosses in the game with one sole exception: Master Kohga. He will be lost forever and coincidentally he's the only boss in the game, where I forgot to take a picture... Well, stuff happens.

From the Kamia Omuna Shrine, where the Igneo Talus Titan resides, you can now drive your Master Cycle Zero down the Deplian Badlands. This gives you a much faster access to the three Lynels there, if you want to fight them, but the ride is also pretty badass with Dinraal around you. He even set me on flames a couple of times, which looks really cool while going on the bike.

Nice addition! Overall a very satisfying conclusion to the DLC. If it wasn't for how they handled the DLC armor, I wouldn't have much to complain here.


Current Progress:

• EX Memories: 5/5
• EX Side Quests: 13/13
• Koroks: 833/900
• Map Rate: 94.53%

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 10

Trials, Trials, Trials

And more trials. It's funny, what they put Link through to prepare him for the tasks ahead, while beating Ganon is probably a lot easier and less dangerous than many of the trials of the Sheikah that he has to master.

Anyway, my first impression of the DLC wasn't a good one. They did a bad job at handling the DLC armor and the "Don't get hit" trial on the Plateau wasn't really fun. My mood is a lot better now, after I did the individual trials of the Champions. There was a lot more to do than I expected and it was quite entertaining.

I thought that there might be four additional shrines waiting for me at this point, but for each Champion you can face a series of three different trials, where each trial leads to a new shrine. So, that's new 12 Sheikah Shrines, where the DLC added a total of 16 shrines to the game. That's twice as much as I had hoped! Nice!

But the 12 shrines that are uncovered by the Champion trials don't offer new Spirit Orbs, instead you receive Emblems for the respective Champions, which are basically Spirit Orbs with the Divine Beast symbols on them. You can trade them at each Divine Best to enter a "Realm of Memory", where you will re-battle the four Blights. I was hoping that the DLC let me fight them again at any point and my wish came true.

It's actually quite similar to the boss rooms of Ganon's Tower in the Wind Waker, where you can re-experience four of the game's bosses. The visuals are different, it all looks a lot darker, because you're playing a memory. You get all your hearts and stamina, as well as the Champion abilities, but the rest of the equipment is pre-defined. It's mostly the specific Champion's weapons, as well as some other tribe weapons and the full armor set of the corresponding trial, e.g. you get the Lightscale Trident, a Zora Bow with 10 arrows and a full Zora Armor when facing Waterblight. (You don't get the Great Eagle's Bow in Vah Medoh for some reason, however, only a Falcon, Duplex and Phrenix Bow, as well as a Feathered Edge, but not Revali's trusted weapon.) It's fun to play, but again you have to follow certain rules based on the limited equipment and can't really experiment much here.

Beating the Blights again will reward you with upgraded Champion abilities, where the reload time is shorter than before. I would have liked it, if they also incremented the number of consecutive uses for each ability, but it's still better than nothing. And I do like that you can replay the Blight battles now at any time. This also adds more to the Divine Beasts than just being another teleport point on your map and I like this. I'm still sad that you can't re-enter them, but the Realms of Memories are at least something. So, overall this feels quite rewarding.

In the Footsteps of the Champions

I did the trials in the following order: Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa. So, I went counterclockwise and saved the best for last.

The trials themselves aren't really that special. Each Champion has a trial, where you have to follow blue rings of light in higher movement speed, e.g. by gliding or surfing. At first I was afraid that this would be another Tadtones hunt, but this was probably the most fun part of the trials. Otherwise you have to defeat certain enemies or do other smaller tasks. It's nothing too special, but it gets the job done.

Highlight was certainly discovering all the new shrine locations. I was really excited about this, because there were several spots, where another travel gate would have been useful. And the ridge above Zora's Domain was certainly one of them. Before the DLC there was nothing on Upland Zorana and Ploymus Mountain, so whenever you wanted to get back up there, you had to swim up the waterfalls behind Zora's Domain. But now there are two shrines up there...

There's a new piano piece around these obelisk shrines and overall the quality of the shrines was above average. No Blessings or (normal) Tests of Strength in the DLC, which is nice. And many of the puzzles were really clever, I enjoyed doing all these new shrines quite a lot. And it was nice to get back into shrine play after such a long while.

But I don't get, why Mipha actually faced some Guardians as part of her trial. At the time they shouldn't have been corrupted and maybe they should have used some other enemies for this, e.g. a modified Hinox.

At least Daruk got a more fitting enemy as part of his trials with the Igneo Talus Titan. It's not really a new enemy, but simply a larger version of the Igneo Talus. "Don't get hit" challenges and enlarged enemies sold as "new" ones? Was this DLC developed by Koei Tecmo by any chance? It feels incomplete that only this form of the Talus got a Titan version and the others didn't, however...

Anyway, both the Rinu Honika Shrine ("Block the Blaze") and parts of the Sharo Lun Shrine ("Blind Spots") were very easy with the Flamebreaker set, because you can just walk through the flames completely unharmed.

Position-wise it's nice to have shrines at the east and north borders of Death Mountain, because there weren't any teleportations points there yet. I always wanted some faster access to the Delian Badlands to fight the Lynels there, where using the Shora Hah Shrine with the minecart rails wasn't really convenient. So, I usually went over there from the Zuna Kai Shrine above the Skull Lake in Akkala. But the Kamia Omuna Shrine at the north of Death Mountain should be much shorter, which is nice. (I also found the cannon puzzle there very enjoyable until the part with the motion controls...)

Out of Revali's trials, the two new shrine positions in the Hebra Mountains aren't really that useful, because they are in the proximity of other shrines, but I liked the puzzles "Four Winds" and "Master the Orb" very much. I also noticed that the shrine counter on the loading screen doesn't increase, it's still at 120, so the new shrines only seem to affect the completion rate on your map. (Update: This might be, because the new shrines have different icons, which doesn't fit the icon on the loading screen.)

The Shira Gimar Shrine on the other hand is probably in a more useful in location with Upland Lindor, where you can find the best horses in the game. It's a good shortcut there. The trial to uncover this shrine, where have to shoot Dinraal's horn, was also nice, but if you've upgraded all your gear in the game, you probably did this many times already... So, this didn't anything new, really, other than the glowing horns. It's pretty much the same with the target practice trial, so it seems like Revali really got the short end of the stick here.

Well, with the cutscenes it was clearly noticeable, how much this has evolved since the beta footage in July. It was day, when Zelda (who looks really lovely in that winter dress) visited Revali and not night, while the activated Sha Warvo Shrine also wasn't visible anymore. This and the fact that you couldn't really tell, whether Urbosa or Riju was sitting in the Gerudo Throne, led to the speculation that this might become an epilogue scenario, while it really was simply the memories about how the Champions were recruited by Zelda.

Off to the desert and the trials of Urbosa, you have to face another "mod" of one of the overworld bosses, in this case a "King Molduga". While I took pictures of both this guy and the Igneo Titan Talus, it makes me wonder, whether you can actually miss them in Hyrule Compendium. They might respawn with the next Blood Moon, but my impression was that they are only there for the trials, really. And it might be that Symin offers them after you're fully done with the new Main Quests, but since Nintendo keeps getting details like this wrong with the game, I wouldn't be surprised, if they actually managed to sneak in missable pictures with the DLC...

At the same time it makes me worry about entry 137. At first I thought that this would be another type of Yiga, maybe a new version of Master Kohga, where I expected to face the "new" enemy in the trial with the orb. But while it brought back a "stealth" sequence in the Yiga hideout, where I could now just easily defeat them instead of sneaking around, it didn't seem to include any new foes. I'm still worried that I might have missed something here. It's either that or 137 is the boss of the new dungeon.

Anyway, the new shrines in the desert offered some interesting puzzles as well. It took me a while to figure out the "Big or Small" trial of the Keive Tala Shrine. I even experimented with Yellow Chuchu Jelly in the water, which allows you to feed the contact at the beginning with electricity without any metal objects in between, but of course this isn't necessary.

The "Dual Purpose" puzzles of the Takama Shiri on ther other hand are very easy with the Thunder Helmet, because you just walk and climb over the energized boxes without any harm. It's similar to the new flame puzzles and the Flamebreaker set. But I might try these puzzles a second time without the Helmet just for the fun of it.

So, I kept Thunderblight Ganon as the last boss and he is still the toughest of the four Blights by a margin. When I started the game, Vah Naboris was my first Divine Beast and I had trouble defeating Thunderblight. By now I have an easier time dodging his fast attacks to initiate a Flurry Rush, but the electricity is still annoying. I dropped the Scimitar of the Seven and the Daybreaker multiple times...

What's funny is that Urbosa's Fury wrecks the Blights including Thunderblight. You can do massive damage on him with this attack, while it really shouldn't, because it's just lightning strikes. But it helped with the battle, so I don't mind about the logic here too much. And that it now reloads even faster, makes you a lot more powerful.

Entering the Final Dungeon

After finishing all the trials and concluding the Champions' Ballad, you get invited back to where it all started, both the main game and the new DLC: the Shrine of Resurrection. I was surprised that they used the cryochamber room as an elevator to the dungeon, which lies under the Great Plateau. This is ingenious and such a great location to what's labeled as "the Final Trial".

I didn't have the chance to beat this new dungeon yet and I won't be able to play it until Monday evening, but I took a first glimpse... It's certainly not very large, one main room and four tube like rooms at the sides, where this appears to be the typical final Zelda dungeon that the 3D Zeldas usually have - like Ganon's Castle and Tower in Ocarina of Time and the Wind Waker, the moon minidungeons in Majora's Mask or the Sky Keep in Skyward Sword. So, there are small rooms based on the individual dungeons of the game, like one lava room, an electricity room, a wind room and a water room. Each room probably also makes use of one of the main Sheikah Slate Runes. It's a typical Zelda game feature and it makes sense that Breath of the Wild now got this as well, much like a trial pit dungeon or a Hero / Master Mode.

I doubt that you get a new Rune here. If anything, the new Master Cycle Zero will be summoned by one, similar to the amiibo goodies.

The dungeon itself is supposed to be another Divine Beast and it does look a little bit like a creature, but it's hard to tell what exactly. The four tubes are like the limbs, the elevator entrance looks like a tail and there's a head (probably the boss room). But it doesn't look like a horse, more like a giant underground turtle. But maybe this is part of the mystery, where we will never know for sure. On the other hand it would be epic to see this Divine Beast emerge from under the Great Plateau, where it was hidden all this time and never excavated like the others...

I hope this has a new boss, which will fill 137th entry in the Compendium, and this won't just make you fight the four Blights yet again... I think, Dark Link / Shadow Link still makes the most sense in this scenario, because this Divine Beast shows no sign of corruption from Ganon, so the Blights wouldn't fit in. And that you have to face yourself as the final trial would be an awesome throwback to the Great Temple in Zelda II - The Adventure of Link, where it would fit that the Sheikah impose this trial on you, like the Old Man protecting the Triforce of Courage. I also hope that - whatever the boss is, if there's one - you will be able to replay the battle, now that this option is available for the Blights. But let's see on Monday...


Current Progress:

• EX Memories: 4/5
• EX Side Quests: 13/13
• Koroks: 833/900
• Map Rate: 94.45%

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 9

One Hit Wonder

Well, I didn't expect this part... Once you go back to the Shrine of Resurrection, you can find the One-Hit Obliterator, a weapon that kills everything with one hit, as the name might suggest. The catch? You're reduced to a quarter heart and everything will kill you with one hit, too. I just finished this part and it was somewhat stressful. In general I don't really enjoy "Don't get hit" challenges like this (they were a pain in Hyrule Warriors) and this one certainly resulted in some cheap deaths. I guess, I have to play another 200 hours looking for Koroks to erase these marks of shame from my Hero's Path timeline. Just kidding...

But it was demotivating as first. It's like with the Trial of the Sword, where they take all your stuff away. You work hard and invested hundreds of hours to become super powerful in the game and when they finally add new challenges after all this time, they make sure to cripple you first. "27 Heart Containers? Not with us!"

So, to beat the challenge you have to take on an enemy camp and then clear a shrine that appears afterwards. And this four times in total. Luckily you can save at any time, because if they did this with a "no saving allowed" mechanic like on Eventide, this would be an endless nightmare.

You can find two Phrenic Bows early on and I made good use of them to snipe enemies from a safe distance. I also ate through my collection of Savage Lynel Bows to clear the camps and to fight all the small Guardian Scouts. Sure, you have the One-Hit Obliterator, but it loses its power after two hits and then you have to run, so it's only useful to take out the really big enemies, like silver (or gold) level.

I did the four shrines in the following order, as probably most people:

1. Yowaka Ita Shrine (in the Forest of Spirits)
2. Rohta Chigah Shrine (near Eastern Abbey)
3. Ruvo Korbah Shrine (near the Old Man's hut)
4. Etsu Korima Shrine (next to Mount Hylia)

As if the Great Plateau needed more shrines on it... The shrines were actually quite creative, but the worst one by far was the Rohta Chigah Shrine. I only ever experienced so many cheap deaths in a Zelda game once and that was in the Hero's Trial in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition. Combining one-hit kills with lots of spiked traps was sadistic at best. It took me about a dozen tries to get through this mess. Especially the part with the three spiked balls was troublesome.

The Ruvo Korbah Shrine on the other hand was nicely done...

It pretends to be yet another "Major Test of Strength", how boring! Especially with the One-Hit Obliterator this was a clear joke, but instead of a Sheikah Monk you find a switch that opens a basement with Guardian Scouts crawling the tunnels. This was unexpected, nice trolling!

The other two shrines weren't that remarkable, but still good. I also liked the "Lost Woods" atmosphere on the Great Plateau, they completely transformed the place and even added new active Decayed Guardians in other spots. And lots of new wooden chests. At the end I felt like I was probably missing something and I could/should have explored all of the Plateau in this mode, but the whole one-hit thing wasn't really motivating enough.

Also, you can find Kass singing about summoning horses and I tried the whistle next to him, only to be surprised that the Ancient Saddle even teleports your horse up to the Great Plateau, even during the trial. I didn't find it useful in the scenario, though.

I also guess that I was mostly off with my final predictions, while my original predictions were more accurate. They did add new Shrines offering you new Spirit Orbs for a Heart Container (or Stamina Vessel).

They even added a new entry to the Hyrule Compendium for the One-Hit Obliterator (you can still find it in the Shrine of Resurrection afterwards). And there appear to be three new enemies in the game that weren't there before. I think, one is a new type of Molduga that we saw in the trailer. The other might be Electric Pebblits, judging from its location in the Compendium, right after Igneo and Frost Pebblits. And the other might be a new Yiga or a new form of Master Kohga... You can't buy the pictures from Symin, however, but Nintendo still didn't let them stop themselves from adding new stuff anyway. Though I suppose, all will just be re-skins of existing enemies, instead of actual new enemies.

And there seem to be at least four more shrines, where hopefully we will be able to get the full 30 Heart Containers and three Stamina Wheels now. And there seems to be a new Divine Beast, where my best guess is that it's a giant horse (probably placed somewhere on Hyrule Field) and they combined all aspects of the four other Divine Beasts in this one, e.g. using all four elements. This even might be, where you can re-battle all four Blights.

But I'm speculating here about something that's already known, sorry. With the instant release Nintendo stole the joy of speculating about the new trailer, so I have to do it while I'm playing. But I will probably see tomorrow, how many new shrines there are in total and how the new Divine Beast looks like. Please don't put spoilers in the comments.


Current Progress:

• EX Memories: 0/5
• EX Side Quests: 13/13
• Koroks: 833/900
• Map Rate: 93.48%

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 8

The Champions' Ballad DLC Pack was released today as a surprise for the Game Awards 2017. If I wasn't already in the middle of hunting Koroks, this would have brought me back to the game for sure.

DLC Pack 2 includes a new Main Quest that leads to new shrines, new memories and a new dungeon. But it also comes with a series of six new EX Side Quests that lead to some new armor pieces. I started with those and it's pretty much the same junk quests that they added with the "Master Trials" DLC Pack. New Rumor Mills and journals with riddles about locations of treasure chests that they simply dropped somewhere. Nothing special.

Ancient Horse Gear

The first items that I went for were the Ancient Bridle and the Ancient Saddle. At first I thought that both riddles would lead to the same place at Mount Satori, but I got the second riddle wrong. It's not really complicated and you quickly can gather this new gear. I would even argue that this is one of the easiest to get...

Yet at the same time it's the most useful. The Ancient Bridle adds two blue spurs to your horse's stamina, while the Ancient Saddle lets you teleport your horse to your location by whistling. Again, like with the Korok Mask or the Travel Medallion this feels like something that should have been part of a free update, not paid DLC. And with these features there's no reason to use any of the other horse gear sets over this one. All saddles and bridles should have had abilities as well, while so far they only changed the looks of your horse. The Knight's Bridle and Saddle for example could have increased your horse's strength. But the way it is now, there's only one useful set.

I wanted more horse gear and specifically Ancient Horse Gear for a while now (see my Traveller's Gear Post for example), where I'm happy that they added this, but it has a sour taste to it, simply because it doesn't integrate into the existing game all too well.

It also doesn't work all too well. I tried to use it in multiple spots south of Death Mountain, but it just said that my horse isn't able to come. I actually had to go to the Foothill Stable, before I finally could summon my horse, which kind of beats the purpose, because I just could have taken it from stable. Maybe it works better in other places, but my first impression was not a good one. It's still a cool feature, though.

Too Much Armor Pack

I decided to collect all the new armor pieces next and was disappointed immediately by the fact that I couldn't even pick them up. Nintendo added nine new armor pieces here for a total of 107 individual pieces in the game, but the inventory has only space for 100! So, you now you have to decide, which pieces you don't want to have in your collection. I decided to sell the Tingle, Phantom and Salvage Gear sets for now, because they are useless anyway thanks to their inability of being enhanced. That applies to all the new armor as well, but you still need to make room to find them a first time and to clear the new EX Side Quests.

Luckily they made it so that you can now re-purchase all DLC armor from Granté in the 1.3.3 update from last month or otherwise you actually would have to sell good gear to make space for the useless DLC stuff, which you would have had to keep, because it was irreplaceable at first. But ideally they would add at least one more page of armor to your inventory with the next update, if there ever will be one.

Anyway, you get another lazy quest following Misko's Journals to some chests somewhere in the world. There it was a really "nice" idea to hide two new chests around Lake Floria, an area known for its glitched chest(s) to annoy you with the fact that they still haven't fixed this. Or if you're more of a casual player, the entire area might be still plastered with countless treasure chests making it hard to find the ones with the actual goodies. At least if you're relying on the Sheikah Sensor+.

The Royal Guard Uniform is found searching Hyrule Castle and for me this took a little while thanks to the imprecise "second floor" hint. The second floor to me would be somewhere in the tunnels, where you find the other two chests, but then I remembered the scene from the trailer with the throne room... So, with "second floor" they meant the room above the room, where you enter the battle with Calamity Ganon. It's nice that they put something there, because the room was rather useless before, if I remember correctly. And I probably should have waited, until I started the new Main Quest, because something tells me that a new memory will be triggered there as well. But I walked up there so many times, one more time probably won't hurt...

The new pieces look nice, but as usual you can't upgrade them and they don't seem to offer any new abilities, except Ravio's Hood, which increases sideways climbing speed as a nod to the Wall Merge ability. It's not all too useful, though...

So, I'm done with the junk quests. Lets check out the new Main Quest in my next log entry and hope that it won't disappoint as much. However, from what I gathered in the trailer, it will be four new Sheikah Shrines and one new Divine Beast, alongside five new memories. This doesn't seem very original and it also doesn't seem to be much, but let's see...


Current Progress:

• EX Memories: 0/5
• EX Side Quests: 13/13
• Koroks: 832/900
• Map Rate: 93.07%

Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 7

Tourok 2 - Seeds of Korok

This is just a small update on my Korok hunt, which has been going on for the last two weeks, before we jump into the newest DLC. Since my last post I only found 15 more Koroks, which is slightly demotivating.

Part of the problem was probably that I kept wandering from where I left off last time, at the Oseira Plains. This brought me to areas, where I've already been exploring with the Korok Mask and I didn't find new Koroks for several hours, even though I kept aiming at gaps in my Hero's Path history.

Also, there are so many places in the game where something could have been hidden... I often climb a hill or investigate a small forest in anticipation of a new Korok only to find nothing at all. It makes me feel like the game could have used 100 additional Koroks, easily.

So, I didn't find any new Koroks in a long time, where my motivation to play went down quite a bit... But the breakthrough then finally came by changing my strategy. I would study the map and look for suspicious spots, then teleport there to investigate. And my first stop was a lava pool at the southwest area of Death Mountain, where in fact a little Korok waited for me.

And because I haven't explored Death Mountain with the Korok Mask yet, I found a lot more in the area, especially around the Maw of Death Mountain...

So, this was a successful haul and I will continue using this strategy to look for the remaining 70 Koroks. But for now I will focus on the new DLC contents that have been released today.


Current Progress:

• Koroks: 830/900
• Map Rate: 92.90% (This got actually reduced due to the DLC)

Breath of the Wild @ Game Awards 2017

What a show! I've had a feeling that they would show a trailer or a teaser for the Champions' Ballad DLC at the Game Awards, but I didn't anticipate that they would release it at the same day. Certainly one impressive way to make the show floor. It got me hyped instantly and the game certainly deserved the awards it got (source):

• Game of the Year
• Best Game Direction
• Best Action / Adventure Game

It was also nominated in the following categories:

• Best Art Direction
• Best Score / Music
• Best Audio Design

It's understandable that it lost in the latter two, but maybe it gives Nintendo an incentive to try a more powerful score with their next Zelda game.

Anyway, the trailer for the DLC looked really nice, like there was a lot of new content. Some of my early predictions came true: there are new Sheikah Shrines and an Ancient Saddle and Bridle. Looking forward to all this! The Master Cycle Zero was also a big surprise. I bet no one saw this coming, but it's a nice possibility thanks to the technology theme.

I'm not fully aware of all the new content that the DLC and the Update 1.4.0 brings as of yet, because I want to go in blind. But I'll create posts later today and in the upcoming days all about it.

Also, I'm not happy about the fact that they are releasing things like this out of the blue. Yes, it has been a nice surprise for the show, but I had weekend plans, while I also really want to play this new content, so now I'm conflicted. This wouldn't have happened, if they at least announced a release date some time in advance, instead of leaving us guessing.

On a side note, Metroid: Samus Returns won Best Handheld Game. Well deserved!