Zelda: Trial of the Sword Complete

I know, I know.  I don't blog anymore. (That may change; I miss it.)  But I have to mark this milestone.

Last night, we finally completed the Trial of the Sword in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

It's one of the quests added by the expansion downloadable content, and it is easily the hardest thing we had to do in the game. Battle strategy, adaptation, resource planning, honing skills, using every resource you have, learning from your mistakes -- it was amazingly difficult, and thus, in the end, gave us a real sense of accomplishment.

We did not read any of the hints available on line, so we really felt like WE did it. (The "we" includes Sherry, who strategized with me, and who kept an eye out for things in the environment on each level and warned or advised me. Video games are a two-player thing for us.)

Anyway, this challenge is broken up into three stages. Each was tough, and each subsequent stage was tougher than the previous. The final (third) stage took us more than two nights to master. What frustration! What FUN!

If you bought this game, there are several great reasons to get the $20 DLC. This quest is the best of them. Oh, sure, the game-play enhancements are very useful (map & teleport enhancements make it worth the $20 alone) but here's why I say this is the best:

By the time many of us face "The Boss" in this game, we've advanced Link to a point where fighting Calamity Ganon is fun, but it's not likely to make us feel like we're challenged.
The Trial of the Sword is CHALLENGING!

Great expansion. Great game.

==============  Link (hah!) and Image and Spoilers ==========




Here's the link to the page that advertises the expansion, and a picture of the fully powered Master Sword.  I will try to get around to writing some spoilers -- things you should NOT read if you want to play the quest without knowledge.  I'll post those below the sword picture.

https://www.zelda.com/breath-of-the-wild/news/expansion-pass-dlc-pack-1-detailed/

=====  Design discussion with Spoilers  =====

Zelda: Trial of the Sword Play Notes

OK, so for the rest of this blog, I’m going to just write about the Trial of the Sword, with no attempts to limit spoilers.  There are things I want to say about how the Trial is put together, about how we approached it, and what made it so challenging.

General design:

There are three phases to the Trial.  After successful completion of each phase, the Master Sword increases its damage strength by 10, so by the time you’ve completed all three, the sword will progress from a decent 30-strength, to an impressive 60-strength (which doubles around Ancient technology to an overwhelming 120-strength.)  That is the in-game reward for completing the quest.  The REAL reward is knowing you figured out how to get through these trials.

Each of the phases has these similarities:

• ·         Link is stripped of all material possessions at the start of level 1 of the phase.
• ·         Link can keep any objects he finds in one level to carry forward to the next, limited by his current capacity at the time he enters.
• ·         The weapons carried by foes in the levels are constant, but the contents of containers in the levels are only mostly-constant.  There is some randomness.
• ·         Each phase has sub-phases – after a certain number of battle levels, there is a replenishing level. 
• ·         The replenishing level is directly preceded by a mini-boss fight.
• ·         Link loses all possessions gained when he completes each phase.
• ·         If Link dies during a level, he must start the WHOLE PHASE again, from the beginning.
• ·         You CANNOT SAVE during a phase. 

Each of these design points has significant effects on what strategy and tactics you need to adopt.

From here on, I am going to talk about how each of those design points affected our game play.  I am sure others will approach the challenges differently, but this is what we learned, and what we did with what we learned.

Link is stripped of all material possessions at the start of level 1 of the phase.

The quest tells you this as you start, so it’s not really much of a spoiler.  But how do you deal with this fact?  Is there anything you can do to mitigate some of the loss you experience when everything is taken away?

We did two things before entering each phase:

·         We ate a meal which over-filled our hearts.. Generally, this was a +5 meal.

·         We consumed something that increased our defense for a long period of time.

You see, it’s going to be tough to get healing in the phase. There will be chances – I’ll get to that – but every fractional heart you bring in will be important in the long run, and for us, adding extra hearts (the more the better, clearly) and preventing loss of hearts was more crucial than being able to attack better or than having some resistance. 

But we learned early on that this is basically one of the only ways you can use what Link has gained outside the Trial to help inside the trial.

But here is a very important point – while Link is stripped of material, and (sadly) stripped of the powers granted him by each of the Champions, he still has all of the powers he gained at the beginning of the game – two bomb types, magnesis, etc.  These powers are, in my estimation, crucial to survival.

And also importantly, the size of Link’s “pack” – the number of weapons, bows & shields – remains as well.  So, the farther these are advanced, the more options you’ll have.  We were maxed out on Bow pack, and had almost all the spaces for weapons.  This was very helpful.

 

Link can keep any objects he finds in one level to carry forward to the next, limited by his current capacity at the time he enters.

Items are scarce during the Trial.  Things you would never pick up when playing an advanced Link in Hyrule will be helpful during the combat levels.  We found ourselves using “arms” – you know, actual stal-creature arms! – as our weapons early on, because they were the best things Link could find, and you need to have something to attack with.  And though you might never use an acorn to cook in Hyrule, they help boost you when cooking the limited meal options you’ll have in the Replenishing levels.  More on that later. 

Our advice – don’t leave anything behind, until you don’t have space to carry more.

The weapons carried by foes in the levels are constant, but the contents of containers in the levels are only mostly-constant.  There is some randomness.

Because Link can only use items he finds, it’s very helpful to know which weapons he’ll have the chance to get as he progresses.  We found, as we repeated the Trial several times, that we needed to analyze which weapons we ought to use for which situations.  Using the strongest weapon available was definitely NOT the best strategy.  If you wear out a 48-strength one-handed sword in Level 8, you’ll be frustrated in level 15 when you’re using rusty broadswords.

However, weapons are not the only things you pick up.  You can get ingredients and arrows from barrels and crates.  Most of the time, the contents of those are consistent.  But there is a bit of variability. By the time you get to a Replenishing Level, most of the ingredients you have will be the same, but sometimes you will be able to create speed boosts, and sometimes you won’t.

Oh, and some levels have chests.  Do not miss them!  I should have mentioned this earlier, but for us it was critical that we had our Sheikah Slate set to detecting Treasure Chests when we entered the Trial.  This allowed us to ensure we did not miss any chests.

Each phase has sub-phases – after a certain number of battle levels, there is a replenishing level. 

The replenishing levels give you a chance to cook food and pick up equipment.  The first thing to do is look to see if a Fairy is hovering around.  If so, sneak up on it (or them) and get it (or them.) 

After that, we made sure to take absolutely everything we could into our inventory before we cooked some meals.  You’ll make different decisions than we did, I’m sure, but we tended to maximize hearts in our meal preparation (so it helped a lot to have experimented with this, and kept notes, while playing the game.)  The exception to this is for specific “boosts.”  There are some levels where resistance to specific dangers are important.  When that’s true, the ingredients you find in the Replenishing Levels make such boosts possible.  If you find ingredients to make cold resistance, you can be pretty sure you’ll need it.

The replenishing level is directly preceded by a mini-boss fight.

Oh, you can just count and you’ll know when the last combat level of a subphase is upon you, but it’s important for you to know that you’re going to be facing a mini-boss.  You can guess the kinds of creatures which are mini-bosses – they’re the ones you face in Hyrule that pop up as special fights: Hinox, Taluses (Talusi?) and so on.  Find a way to defeat these, and you get to Replenish (or you get to finish the Phase, and the Master Sword gets stronger.)

Link loses all possessions gained when he completes each phase.

This doesn’t matter so much from a full-game point of view.  You’re not going to get anything in the Trial that you couldn’t get elsewhere, and most of what you have left when you’re done with each Phase is no better than what you probably have in inventory already. 

But, it does mean this: after you’ve finished one phase, and the Master Sword gets stronger, and you decide to go on to the next phase, you start all over again.   With NOTHING. 

Each successive phase is different from the preceding one.  It’s longer.  And the levels are harder.

And you start with nothing.

So you have to learn all over again.   It’s frustrating.  And it’s great.

If Link dies during a level, he must start the WHOLE PHASE again, from the beginning.

This is the crux of the challenge, of course.  Get beaten by that final mini-boss before you can enhance the Master Sword?  Start over again at Level 1 of the phase.  You don’t realize how casually you’ve been treating death until you don’t have an autosave point.  Which brings up the final design point.

You CANNOT SAVE during a phase. 

Period.  Once you’ve started, you just keep going.  Oh, sure, once you’ve been killed, you will be sent back the Korok Forest and you can decide to leave and try again later (we did this after each phase, and in fact gave up for a while after trying the final phase a few times so we could go get another couple shrines to get one more heart.)  But, during the levels of the phase, there is no saving.  So, make a mistake and let that bokoblin hurt you for three heart on level 3?  Sorry.  You can start all over again, but you can’t start just before level 3.