Breath of the Wild: DLC - Part 2 & Final Thoughts

The downloadable content (DLC) for Breath of the Wild (BOTW) added extra side quests and challenges, and definitely fueled my interest in playing the game again. Some of the side quests involve helping people find items. A lot of the side quests involve finding cool items from previous games, such as Majora's mask or Midna's helmet. These items do provide some boost, such as increased Guardian resistance. But they mostly just serve as cool relics to showcase from previous games. My favorite item is the Korok mask. It shakes and makes noise when you are close to a Korok seed. This is a significantly less tedious way to find Korok seeds, versus looking at a map of their locations on my iPad and finding them that way. I have found numerous Korok seeds just wandering around wearing my Korok mask.

One of the main additions that comes with the DLC is the Trial of the Sword. In this trial, you loose all of your items and have to fight increasingly difficult enemies. I haven't done it yet and probably won't do it in the future. It sounds tedious and difficult and likely would just frustrate me. I think completing the Trial of the Sword strengthens the Master Sword, but from what I've read, it still needs periodic recharging despite extra strength. The fact that weapons break and the Master Sword has to recharge is my least favorite aspect of this game.

The other main addition is the EX The Champion's Ballad. I also haven't done this one because it looks hard and tedious. However, I might attempt this at some point because I'd really like to get my hands on the Master Cycle Zero.

I was able to progress on several aspects of the game after acquiring the DLC. Currently, I have played the game for over 190 hours. I've completed 15/20 Main Quests, and I think the 5 that are left are all in the EX The Champion's Ballad. I've completed 42/42 Shrine Quests, and after 190 hours of gameplay, I finally located and completed 120/120 Shrines. I have completed 73/90 Side Quests. Some of the remaining side quests sound tedious and I likely won't complete them. However, there's a chance I will go back and complete some of the remaining side quests that I just haven't taken the time to do yet. There are always more Korok seeds. Despite putting some effort into finding them (using the map from my iPad) and consistently wandering around with my Korok mask on, I have only found 206 seeds. There are 900 Korok seeds spread throughout Hyrule. I think the high number of remaining Korok seeds to find is why, despite all of my above mentioned accomplishments, I have only completed 40% of the game. This is up from 33% completion before playing the DLC. This is one of the reasons why this game is so great - there is just so much to do and discover. This is also why I am publishing this post now and not after I have a higher completion rate. There is still so much to do, and with BOTW 2 scheduled to release in 2023, there is a really good chance I won't get above 50% completion. What an amazing game.